We are all here in SLO County now, with a bunch of boxes in a garage, a shed, and every room in the house...gradually we are putting up our clocks, mirrors, etc...it is beginning to look like home! Once we got cable for TV and the net, things got a lot more fun, and having a refrigerator is so civilized compared to coolers with bags of ice. Fortunately the park is having a community sale this weekend so we can maybe turn the things we brought that now look excess into a little cash...what does not sell goes to my buddy Wade at the Goodwill box in Grover Beach....I got to know Wade right away...maybe we can relax in a month or so...
An apologia on the making of an acceptable photographic file. One hears from lay people and even some photographers a disdain for image manipulation, particularly using modern programs such as Photoshop, and it's ilk. I used to be one of the latter. I was all about the "in camera manipulation", ie, get the composition and exposure as close as possible to the desired result before pressing th e shutter release, then print as-is. This may have been because I had only a primitive darkroom, and depended on commercial labs for prints, with all the attendant miscommunications about the final look. I have since learned otherwise. Since photography was discovered/invented the making of a visible print was the obvious goal. Early photographers had to go through great efforts with bulky equipment and hazardous chemicals to produce an acceptable product. That is to say, from the beginning, there has been no way to make a print directly from the camera w...