On Photography

My mother loves her family. Almost more than that, she loves taking photographs of her family. As our self-appointed archivist, dear mom has dogged us relentlessly with her camera at family get-togethers small and large for the past 5 decades. It's reached the point where our pupils automatically constrict to pinpoints in mom's presence in wincing expectation of the barrage of flashes we receive at birthday dinners, graduations and anniversaries. It's one of the things about which we love to groan; in a loving way that is, every time we all get together. Her passion for capturing "Kodak moments" is often followed by disbelief at the result! Tragically, mom has a tendency to chop off heads with the reliability of the guillotine during the French Revolution. The law of large numbers prevails however; and due to the sheer volume of shots taken we have ample photographic documentation of our family's history.

Mom is not alone in her passion. The consuming desire to capture the moment, preserve the memory and manipulate the resulting image can be traced back to 400 BC with a pinhole camera devised by Chinese philosopher Mo-Ti and further explored around 300 BC by Greek philosopher, Aristotle. Innovation was not rapid. The "Camera Obscura," credited largely to the Arab scientist al-Haitham, in approximately 1,000 AD, was the state-of-the-art, sole camera of little choice for many centuries. This invention gave way to image capture with photosensitive paper in the 1800s and a progressive march of triumphant technologies that have since spawned countless legions of maniacal, image-thirsty mothers in families the world over.

My own passion with photography has evolved from "old" SLR photography and black and white dark room developing in the 1970s to digital, still photography, videography and video editing. I have a part-time job and a very part-time home business. I have freed up time to explore my interests with a view to making certain that whatever remaining, sweet life I am blessed with is spent in the most creative and productive way possible! What a buzz it is to sit down and decide what work I choose to pursue and in what way I shall proceed! Technologies abound to put powerful creativity tools in the hands of the average "Jill." With a computer background, I have no problem unlocking the powers behind photo album and movie maker software. I've dabbled in photo restorations, starting with the Microsoft program "Paint." Loving this sort of detailed work, I downloaded the trial version of Adobe's Photoshop – the industry standard in photo manipulation and so much more! It puts into your eager hands hundreds of tools for obtaining every type of enhanced image imaginable. Alas, however, my trial period ended.

Unwilling to believe that free alternatives to Photoshop were not available; I put the query to my inexpendable, dependable oracle who never lets me down, - "GOOGLE". My virtual friend returned a most invaluable answer – www.gimp.org - the answer; "GIMP." GIMP stands for "Gnu Image Manipulation Program"; it was originally created as a university project by Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis in 1995 at the University of California, Berkeley and now, in the hands of the GIMP development team, undergoes regular maintenance and enhancements. GIMP employs a set of drawing and selection tools comparable to Photoshop; it has approximately 150 standard effects and filters including Gaussian blur and mosaic effect and has interchangeable terminology like "layers" (a concept I am still trying to master), channels and paths. I've had a lot of fun using this program. One thing that I especially enjoy is the vast quantity of video tutorials available on the internet. YouTube for instance, has hundreds of user-posted help for GIMP topics. Since discovering how much they can boost productivity and surfing enjoyment, I now work constantly using not one, but two monitors. I use one monitor for a work space and the other for my tutorial instruction (or entertainment).

I have also been turning, with ever-more seriousness, to videography and video editing. My "pro bono" family projects have launched me into a small home-business venture called "Time of Your Life Productions" – www.LifeTimeProd.com I upgraded my equipment from a DVD style camcorder to a hard disk camcorder this year. Originally excited about the new high definition technology I nevertheless opted for a standard definition camcorder – a JVC Everio, 60 GB. After doing extensive video editing on my lap-top computer I am happy to say that I made the right choice! Video editing places a VERY high demand on your computer's resources particularly on your graphics card. After a few months of editing on my 2 year old laptop computer my graphics card died which, with laptops, means a prohibitively priced "fix" so I invested in a new desktop system which has put me confidently back in business.

After working with Windows Movie Maker which comes bundled with all Windows operating systems, on my first 3 or 4 projects, I became familiar with the more advanced applications available and could no longer accept the limitations of entry-level editors. I now work with Pinnacle Studio Ultimate, finding new features to unlock with each new project. Some of my work can be viewed on my own YouTube channel – www.youtube.com/juds2u
Like many people, I love travel and wildlife photography. I stumbled recently upon a couple of blogs that feature very cool, very beautiful photos. Please visit them...
An English Girl Rambles and Reductio ad Absurdum