Monday, August 29, 2011

A Hunt for a Cure For Writer's Block with Photography

A Picture or 1000 words?

Not today.

Actually, I'm always on the look for new things to take a quick picture of.  It has been said here many times, you should always take your camera with you since you never know what you will see.

Being involved with web development, sometimes it is much easier to decorate a blank page with a background picture and use less text.  It's a style question - what does the owner want the page to look like.  There are similar concerns in home decoration, construction, urban design, as well as many others.

Maybe that last paragraph should be "decorate a blank page with a background and useless text"?

Depends on how cynical you are.

With the tools at hand to someone who has the means to use them, or simply the open source and free tools I am fond of using, you can do some intriguing things with those pictures.  Reduce the opacity of a picture so instead of it being bright and in your face, that beautiful frame is now more background and subtle.

Grab just a section of something, shrink it, spin it, invert the colors, then use it again as a watermark.  Add text and you have your basis for creation, your digital canvas is complete.

On this particular picture, I was standing outside at the 6pm dog walk following after my dog.  Instead of grabbing the plastic bag, I managed to grab my camera instead.   The light was just right to make an interesting texture out of her sunlit side.  It was shimmering in the sunlight, and I thought I might like to see what that looked like close up when I am not dealing with sun glare. 

So what I have there is a bit of a Hair of the Dog Cure for Writer's Block.  I may even sneak it into a web page in the future, you never know where my dog will show up.

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