making owls cool since 1986

We moved to Arizona to see burrow owls. Where the hell are all the burrow owls?

Friday, February 08, 2008

Surrending to the Digital Image

After years of shunning Photoshop, I have finally broken down and I'm beginning to learn to use it. We recently updated our Flickr account to "Pro" which is not really any sort of recognition of professional status, merely an expenditure of $25 for more space. I've been using Flickr a lot more ever since Sean started posting prolifically. I love seeing his pictures from home and reading the commentary. While looking around on Flickr I have seen some folks doing some great stuff with Photoshop. For instance, sometimes Sarah and Damien use Photoshop and I always really dig their pictures. I also know the Kev is a Photoshopper. So I threw my reticence to the wind and I have begun attempting to use Photoshop.

Erin took these 2 pictures on Nantucket. I think one reason I've been Photoshopping lately is that it gives me a reason to go back and really look at some of our pictures. I like revisiting all the places we've been.



The picture above was taken in Brattleboro, Vermont. I think the windmill was taken in Oklahoma or Texas. I antiqued the Brattleboro shot and tried to make a faux lomo with the windmill.


I like making fake antique pictures. The one above was in Douglas, MA and the one below is from Jerome, AZ.


This Volkswagen bug gathering takes place at the Sonic near our house. The following three pictures are from Bisbee, Arizona.

In other news, Erin got an unexpected raise at work and I joined the Society of Early Americanists and The Charles Brockden Brown Society. I recently read "The Culture Industry" which is an essay in The Dialectic of Enlightenment by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. Its premise has been largely refuted by postmodernists, but the basic idea is that Capitalist consumerism proliferates bad art, which chokes out real art and redefines the culture in terms of artificial aesthetic needs. The negative effect of the Culture Industry corrupts all the way down to the personal level. The Culture Industry would include for-profit film, music, photography, etc - any art created for a Capitalistically functional purpose. I think I have made this sound much more jargony than it is in my attempt to paraphrase. If you've ever been frustrated by bands that "sell out" or the millions of bad movies out there, reading "The Culture Industry" may be very enlightening (pun intended).

2 Comments:

Blogger Damien said...

you're doing a bang-up job with the photoshoppery.

7:36 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nice pictures!

8:32 AM  

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