Gahh!

Hey guys.

I'm back, for the moment.

I'm writing a blog as a way to chop up the tedium of editing pictures.

I mean, I *like* editing pictures - to a degree. But often, I just don't have the patience to sit and fuck with them for hours.

For instance, I have a photograph here that I personally think is brilliant. I was on N. 12th Street this afternoon, shooting stuff for the Tampa project, and I saw a car pull up near me and park. Two people got out, a very attractive girl and a cigarette-smoking guy. They locked the car and started walking towards Kennedy. I, meanwhile, got the Garry Winogrand inspiration, and, without raising the camera to my eye to frame the shot, released the shutter as they walked by.

The single frame I got of them is pretty good, I think. The problem is that its horribly tilted - probably because I didn't want to seem so creepy as to actually be *taking a picture* of this couple, so I just acted like I did it accidentally. The camera wasn't level, of course. This is proving to be a bitch to edit, purely because of my options - let me explain...

When I pull the shutter on the Nikon D60, I make ten million pixels happy. They get to soak up light, and color, and do the job they were created for. They rarely complain, and the only benefit they ask for is that their sensor - their home - is kept nice and dust-free. The sensor cleaner does this with ease, of course, providing safe, good working conditions for all ten million of those pixels. That's the short of how the camera works - ten million employees, or something like that.
Anyway, with TEN MILLION of those things working full-bore (except for two or three slackers - hot pixels - but that's a different story...), I have very, very clear total resolution. I could probably make prints up to 24" by 36" without losing detail, or having to blow the image up.
With that kind of resolution, I can do all kinds of cropping. My options have opened up - so much so, that I'm kind of drowning in them. The picture I referred to above - the one of the couple - can be anything it wants to be, basically. I can make it perfectly straight; I can also crop it almost any way I want to - and it would still be greatly clear, and quite sharp. That's ten million pixels for you.
But, I can't decide how to crop the damn thing. My options have become a trap - six months ago, I would have considered this picture trash, and would have regretted not holding the camera straight - all of that stuff. Now, I can *make it work* - and now that I have the option - the means to *make it work* - I'm stymied by it.

That's life, I guess.

Other than those problems, editing is pretty easy. I do a lot of pre-editing in the camera, on-site, in terms of deleting photos that obviously aren't going to work when I edit them for real. This gives me extra card space, and we all know how convenient that can be.
Editing can be monotonous, though - and that's why I'm writing this blog in the first place... to clear my head before I tackle this Winogrand-ish frame again. Working the fingers can do wonders for the brain, especially if you ramble.... Derek Taylor, ladies and gentlemen...

See ya'll later.

P.S. My top photo-editing music:

1. Charley Pride - She's Just an Old Love Turned Memory
2. the Beach Boys - Surfin' Sufari
3. Lightnin' Hopkins - Lightnin'
4. Avril Lavigne - anything.