Yesterday I took my camera to the Nelson Gallery in Kansas City to get re-started with some photography. I rarely get any picture-taking done in the winter (unless I'm traveling), except for maybe a few (usually lousy) indoor shots of the household cats and dogs. They always try to avoid me when I approach them with my flashing camera. I tend to like to take pictures of inanimate stuff, mostly because it holds still, and isn't self-conscious. Sometimes I get good shots of people, if they don't know I have the camera aimed at them; that makes me feel a bit guilty and intrusive. Maybe I have a shred of belief in the idea that when we take a person's picture, we are in a sense taking something from them; not quite their soul, but certainly their image. And a person's (self-) image is something that is closely held, "owned," in a way. So I end up with a lot of shots of interesting scenes from architectural details, or nature, or sculpture/art. And then I play around with the images in PhotoShop Elements, or Picasa, sometimes enhancing the image, sometimes changing, even distorting the image. I really enjoy the "posterize" feature in PhotoShop, but I try to use it sparingly. The photo of the African mask that appears with this blog entry is posterized, and I think it's a nice effect.
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