Photoshopaholic!

Hello, my name is Fermicat, and I am a photoshopaholic.

PDM got me Photoshop Elements 6.0 for Mac as a birthday gift. Here it is just a few days later and I am already addicted to messing with my digital photos. I lusted after this program for months. Digital photography is fun, and I wanted to take it to the next level: creative art (or pure crap, depending on your perspective). Not only do I find lots of stuff in my photos to fix (limitations due to both camera and photographer), I keep seeing really interesting, unnatural special effects on other people's Flickr photos that look very cool. I want!

So much to try... old fashioned hand tinted look, Orton effect, fake HDR, fake LOMO, removing clutter from photos, mixing objects from different shots, or creating a totally unique effect. While experimenting with these special effects, I am also trying to learn how to use Photoshop Elements. I know enough to be dangerous. There are probably better ways to do what I am doing, but learning by trying things is not a bad way to go.

This distraction is not good for my study plans. Another downside is that I am monopolizing PDM's Mac. Oh well. The newness will wear off soon and things will calm down. In the meantime I am having a blast taking ordinary photographs and making them into something special.

The Varsity street scene at the top of this post is my first attempt at the LOMO technique. It took me a couple of hours of adjusting to achieve. The boring photo I started with can be viewed here. The one below combines the Orton effect with fake hand tinting to create a dreamy, ethereal feel. I made a Flickr set to showcase my creations. There are several Orton photos in there, some hand tinted shots, and an attempt to recreate a vintage postcard type of look.

Why I Hate Winter

So, we're in the dead of winter and I'm feeling the blahs an awful lot of the time. Not much to watch on TV due to the writers' strike. Not enough daylight at the end of the day to do anything outside. The bathroom project has been slowed to a crawl due to the cold weather. There is always reading, but that makes me sleepy and leads to napping. It has been slow at work, although that might change due to an assignment I was just given.

Bored at work, bored at home. I can't seem to motivate myself to do much of anything. This is why winter will always be my least favorite season. (At least I moved back to Atlanta, where winters are short and mild. All this was definitely worse when I lived in New England.) I feel sluggish, lazy, and uninspired.

What do YOU do to fight the winter blahs?

If Rupert Murdoch Owned The Weather Channel

I saw in today's news that The Weather Channel may be for sale. What would happen if Rupert Murdoch's News Corp buys it? Here are just a few of the changes you could expect:

1. Red states consistently given rosier forecasts than blue states.
2. Hurricane coverage eliminated due to confusion about “No Spin Zone”.
3. Local traffic will continue to be covered on the eights, but “obstruction tactics of Democrats” will be listed as the cause for each jam.
4. O'Reilly to interview disaster victims and yell at them for not evacuating.
5. Every report on snow or ice to include mandatory joke about global warming.

Yes, it was a slow day at work today. Why do you ask?