Silly things I do sometimes

I'll be honest -- I don't really have a post in mind again today. It's a shame, because it's shaping up to be another blog-neglect week since work will be busy (yeah, there's yer warning). So... I guess we're going to talk photography. Somewhat.

I like taking pictures, but I don't really care if they're award-winning. Which is a good thing, because I know that about 95% of what I take (ok, more like 99%) is immensely forgettable. That's fine with me. Most of the photos I take are pointless, which is why they get used on the blog. By the way, if you've ever wondered whether I carefully save all of the shots that have been posted here over the years, the answer is a big fat undeniable NO. They're disposable. They get deleted from my nerdstick almost as soon as they're posted, for the most part. I rarely regret that, because one of the beauties of digital photography (especially when you're posting it on the web) is that it's pretty darned easy to recover something if you suddenly decide that the artful shot of the downspout covered in ice just has to be sent into some completely useless photography competition that you're not going to win anyway.

Um, not that I do that sort of thing.

Ok, once. But it wasn't a downspout, and I'm not going to tell you which one it was because, as predicted, I wasn't going to win anyway.

And I'm not bitter.

Actually, I'm really not. I probably would have dropped down dead if I had won.

Anyway.

Like anyone who takes a lot of photos I occasionally get lucky, even with a point-and-shoot camera. Those ones I'll hold on to. Sometimes they become resource photos when I'm doodling, sometimes they get posted here... sometimes I think a bit about getting one or two of them printed and mounted, but it doesn't happen. I hold onto them just in case, though.

As for the rest, the decent ones show up on the blog, the bad disappear completely, and the mediocre? Well, sometimes I play. Like the version you see above of the photo to the left. Not a bad composition, I suppose, but in the original you can't even tell that they're apple blossoms. The angle was a nice try, but you didn't get it. Usually those ones just hit the bin, but sometimes I'll run them through the various silly filters in the photoeditor to see if anything comes out of it.

Like an inverted-colour purple portrait, I suppose. Or at least in this case.

If you went waaay back in the archive you'll find that I used to do this sort of thing a lot more often. I was using a different photoeditor back then, and it had a lot of useless toys. Useless because I could never figure out when you'd actually, seriously use them, but they were kind of fun to tinker around with when I had an iffy picture on hand. Then that software got pretty outdated, and I switched to using one of the free editors you can download from the internet. It did the trick for basics, but no toys.

Oddly enough, I didn't really miss the toys. I guess all toys get old after a while.

Anyway, a while back I updated the software.

And gained some toys.

Apparently, there are people out there who really use the toys, and not just for silly things.

Who knew?

So what does this mean for the blog? Well, probably not much in the end. I've probably grown out of (or maybe got bored with is more accurate) spending way too long fooling around with bad pictures to make them look... I dunno, arty? You might find one now and then if I haven't got anything better to do with my time, I suppose, but I wouldn't expect much more.

Or who knows? Maybe I'll just surprise everyone and turn this into the Pointless Assaults With A Photoeditor blog. Whomever knows that the blather part hasn't been going all that well lately.





That's it for now, then; see you at some point. This week might be interesting. Or at least blog-deficient.