Fun with Better Photo

I mucked about some more with my cell phone and BetterPhoto, and managed to get one more interesting image while waiting at my vet's house. I sliced this out of the image and again PSed it until I saw something I liked. And, it is still one of my favorite images, though of course it is quite small.

Ellen and I began talking on the phone several times a week, looking at each other's images that we sent up to BetterPhoto. As I looked at our images, I felt an incredible longing for a "real" camera. Basically I was doing 0-60 in a two-week period here. But the crushing debt on the CC kept me tamped down. But only for another couple of months. I fell in love with one of Ellen's images--you can see it here and began to drool excessively. I dug out my old b/w contact sheets from the years when I first got into photography--all film, all b/w.

Then something happened; don't remember exactly what it was, but got dealt another financial blow which hit the card again and I said "screw it". After a great deal of research, (but not quite enough), I bought a Pentax K100D. And, of course it came on a dark and stormy night (UPS comes very late where I live.) Without having the foggiest about the myriad buttons, I snapped one of my cats in low-light (really non-existent light). Crappy image for sure, but dear to my heart.

Damn Kodak, Hello Nokia

All I had was a cheap Kodak DX3215 that I bought a few years ago to quickly get images of pianos up on the web. BUT, for some reason the software to do this no longer worked and when I tried to update it, I got a humungus program called "Easy Share" which did everything except connect my camera to my computer. (I'm very computer savy and surfed for hours trying to fix my issue, only to discover that it was Kodak's issue.)

I blew it off and looked at my Nokia cell phone, which heretofore I had considered to be "only a phone" and started taking pictures with it. Too poor to even afford a visit to a local campground, we set up our ancient camper in the backyard and spent a wonderful 24 ours enjoying Vermont! As the sun was setting, I saw this image of our old railroad lantern and its shadow, snapped it, and mucked about with it in Photoshop to get the second one. I had joined BetterPhoto and uploaded it. And, among all the Nikons, Canons, Pentaxes, and Canon Powershots, it received an Editor's Choice.

Serendipity Can Change A Life

I think it was sometime in July or August of 2007 that I went to tune my friend Ellen's piano. We go back a few years to when I took bass lessons from her--she's a brilliant jazz bassist, well-known in New England and an amazing teacher.

While I was tuning, she was hunched over her computer, and when I finished I went to see what she was doing. She was mucking about with beautiful images and they were hers. She had recently discovered photography and proceeded to show me her images on her BetterPhoto Gallery.

They were stunning and I was transfixed. My past intimate association with things visual came flooding back. I drove the 35 miles back home in a fog of excitement and memories. Days passed and the fog did not dissipate.