Stupid Computer Tricks
Like a lot of bloggers, I take a lot of pictures. We have an elderly Kodak, a DX3900 I think, and while I do sometimes wish I had something with more oomph — when photographing an owl at 100 feet, for example — most of the time it's just fine.
When I say elderly I mean that we bought the camera in 2002, which, if you will cast your mind back, you will realize in normal calendar time was not that long ago (we had the same president we do now, heaven help us), but in technotime was somewhere in the Paleozoic. But if it ain't broke, as the saying goes, and I keep happily clicking away, being thankful that my 19 out of 20 "meh" shots aren't a waste of film. Now and then I take one I really like, and occasionally I even say to myself "that's so nice I should use it as wallpaper."
Friday's tree shot was one of these, and I got motivated not only to set it as wallpaper but to see if there might be free software that I could use to cycle through some of my favorite pix. Turns out there is plenty of it; I'm using this one, which seems to be fairly basic, but, like the camera, it does its job. So now instead of Windows fish I have this
and this
and this
and of course Rangeley Lake gets in there too...
there are more of them, but you get the general idea.
That last one just blisses me right out.
When I say elderly I mean that we bought the camera in 2002, which, if you will cast your mind back, you will realize in normal calendar time was not that long ago (we had the same president we do now, heaven help us), but in technotime was somewhere in the Paleozoic. But if it ain't broke, as the saying goes, and I keep happily clicking away, being thankful that my 19 out of 20 "meh" shots aren't a waste of film. Now and then I take one I really like, and occasionally I even say to myself "that's so nice I should use it as wallpaper."
Friday's tree shot was one of these, and I got motivated not only to set it as wallpaper but to see if there might be free software that I could use to cycle through some of my favorite pix. Turns out there is plenty of it; I'm using this one, which seems to be fairly basic, but, like the camera, it does its job. So now instead of Windows fish I have this
and this
and this
and of course Rangeley Lake gets in there too...
there are more of them, but you get the general idea.
That last one just blisses me right out.
posted by Lucia at
7:05 PM
5 Comments:
Nice work on the photos! I need to check out the photo programs and try to salvage some of my old photos, too. Love the lake shots!
By
margene, at 7:54 AM
MMmm, that last one blisses me out, too. Lovely!
By
roxie, at 9:37 AM
We have our screensaver set to flash through our pictures. It generally takes from the first folder in 'my pictures' (which we named 1 and filled up w/ the best pics), but there are some that show up that I have no idea where they really live. I'll have to tell dh about the rotating wallpaper though. So, I'm at work (on what is a Mass and Maine state holiday), and on my way in I saw one of those 'orange' maples... so I got to wondering if they are dioecious. Here's what Fernald says (in Gray's Manual of Botany, 8th ed) about maples: Flowers polygamodioecious (how's that for a scrabble word?). Which means polygamous (meaning with hermaphrodite and unisexual flowers on the same or on different individuals of the same species) but chiefly dioecious (meaning unisexual with the two kinds of flowers on separate plants or in separate parts of the inflorescence). Or as we commonly say dioecious = two houses. I wonder if what you saw were male and female flowers. For red (aka scarlet, soft, swamp) maple, he says the flowers are dark red to scarlet, or yellowish in forma pallidiflorum (so maybe you saw a subspecies?), appearing long before the leaves in at first dense clusters, the staminate in capitate clusters, the hermaphrodite and pistillate in sessile umbels with fruiting pedicels elongate (so there's some more scrabble words for you!). No mention that the staminate flowers are one color and the pistillate another... oh well... Lovely pictures!!! Now back to work...
By
knitnzu, at 10:30 AM
I love the first lake photo.
By
Danielle, at 2:24 PM
I have one of these available to me too. I should make a folder for it though so it doesn't cycle through all of the 'meh' pics too... Your lake pics are lovely.
By
Annie, at 7:29 AM
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