Patterns

Here's another get website: Patterns. It's a slide show of photos by Ian McAllister that reflect the patterns of life: natural, and social/human. What a wonderful idea!

I learned about this photo album from "Comet", the monthly e-newsletter from Lonely Planet. The article I saw talked about the problem of storing photos while traveling. Many respondents talked about the iPod solution, which is what I discovered and used for our recent trip to Europe. Every night I would download my photos from the SD card onto my 60 gig video iPod (a wonderful birthday present from a fabulous partner). I had moments of trepidation many times when the iPod was insufficiently charged, a problem for which I eventually figured out the solution. However, I lost narry a photo, and when I got back home I could download all of them to the computer for further processing.

Unfortunately - that's where they lie now! As my father the economist describes it - there's no COST to creating digital photos, so that one can easily do as I did: take 500 photos/day. There IS a cost, however. As I've discovered, that cost is in the form of time. I just don't have the TIME to revisit all my photos - to editorially manage them, to identify and name them, and to upload them to the web.

Furthermore, I've finally admitted I have a defective camera. Almost ALL of my Pentax Optio 550 photos are too dark! That means that I have to manually lighten them, and otherwise color-correct them. What a drag! After 3 years, I've finally figured out the solution: when taking photos, I need to add .3 or .7 EV - I'm not quite sure what that means, but it seems to solve the problem. Meanwhile, I'm left with this TON of unprocessed images. Sigh. To further complicate the matter, I keep signing up for new classes at Foothill, so I have ever-decreasing amounts of available time for the project. What I'm hoping is that I will, through time, develop the skills and knowledge to efficiently approach this backlog of images. Meanwhile, I'll enjoy the efforts of others, such as this fine album of Patterns.