Photo school indeed!!!!

I believe that Facebook is a rather nice place to 'lime' if and when you don't have anything better to do. If because a person would always have something better to do, like sleep, instead of Farming at 2, 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning. When is your consciously controlled time to 'lime' with your Facebook friends and family. The Facebook addiction may be a reality but nobody is taking that on these days. It may be better to be facing-the-book than out on the street, and getting into trouble, because that usually finds you especially when you least expect it.

The Government of St Kitts and Nevis should be pleased to see so many of our people Facebook farming, and I hope that when they drop this interest in the real world, they are prepared to deal with the Agricultural revolution. I have relatives who have already invested in hydroponic equipment to precipitate some cyber farming into the real world. I am concerned that we may soon see a migration to the real Farmville[s] overseas, and I sometimes wonder if this cyber farming is any part of a stimulus and subtle agricultural inculcation and outreach to ......[whoa] this is a photo blog, that political and economic talk is for my local blog on another site.

I believe that Facebook now have more images than the other storage and sharing sites. I see everyone digging photos from the bottom of their trunks and suitcases and posting on Facebook. I don't think they would be motivated enough to post them on Flickr, because all the family friends and more are all on Facebook, so something is really working for somebody, somewhere, and even though some seniors like me could have a serious 'social' concern, it is a waste of time airing it because nobody wants to hear the academics. So I will join the Facebook crowd where I can and stay in the background and out of harms way, if that is at all possible.

Yesterday I saw a a post linking to this YouTube video which I found rather informative, because I do not use Photoshop. I recently made the transition from film to digital and took the decision not to go to Photoshop school to tangle with steep learning curve software. To date I do not feel that I am missing anything. You see, I guess it is what you want from your photography. I am of the view that I want to capture images as they are and reproduce them as I actually see them, not as I perceive them or imagine they should be. There may be the odd occasion where I may want to slightly enhance the rendition, but that is as far as I may go.

The linked tutorial is great for those photographers who wish to alter the reality and make over the world. I have no problem with people altering the reality for their own personal benefit, but when you float that altered reality into the public domain and want me to accept it as the truth, I must get concerned. This is the illusionary world that we now live in so it is the norm for graphic artists and photographers to jerk out chain with contrived images. Now I know that the picture on the diet products boxes are not real but a figment of someones imagination, and the function of the contents may not be guaranteed to work, after they collect my money.

I guess nature needs plenty help when we try to transfer its images to paper, or maybe more correctly the printing paper needs more help with the reproduction. Some of us want to capture every detail, every nuance, and the better we get at it, the more we seem to be lauded as the professional photographers. I guess that is when we are younger and rising, but after you reach the crest we may get cranky and, like me, develop a photographic attitude, which I am still trying to define.

So I do not use Photoshop, not that I do not have it on my computer, but I do not use it to process my digital negatives. If you are serious about photography you will find out that there are far better and cheaper tools on the market. Whether you are a professional photographer or not, if your camera can shoot RAW, use it and the FREE Google Picasa3 to make yourself look like a real pro. Most of the time the images wanted are for like Facebook, and other uploads, so no big deal. If the image is to make a wall mural, that is a different story, but I still have to check how close Picasa3 can get. Maybe over the weekend I will find someone to sit for me to take a couple mug shots, and some.

In my first blog I mentioned some of the negative processing software that I use. I believe that I am better off using software specifically designed and optimized than to use one piece of general purpose software. True it may cost me more for the separate pieces of software but I have programs that far surpass the jack of all trade, master of none. So I am not going back to photo school to learn Photoshop, but if you want to be 'somebody' in photography today, you better take Photoshop serious. When I need to distort reality on the behalf of a client I employ my graphic artist associates to do that, you may not have that luxury, so get with the program.

Today is nice and sunny so I may take the canon camera for a walk, for now it is breakfast time.

Later.