F'n with Fotos or...Goldielocks Photography

Photography is one of those activities that almost all of us mess around with at one time or another.  In the "old days", we had to wait up to two weeks to get our prints back from the drug store to be able to marvel at our own artistry.  My first camera was a Kodak Brownie whose main feature besides a built-in flash was that you could not double expose.  (Lucky for me.)  However, over/under expose or blur were well within my capabilities.  Along the way, I acquired better and more complex cameras but the result was usually the same; crappy photography.

Back in the mid-50's, when I was a kid, one of my neighbors was a photographer for the Seattle Times.  One of my uncles had his own dark room.  They both gave me pointers and recommended reading materials before kicking me in the ass and telling me to quit bothering them but even with all this high level mentoring, my photography was still crappy.

Zooming (notice the photographer terminology) ahead a couple of decades of more crappy photography, digital cameras arrive.  At first, the main difference for me was I could transfer my photos via a USB port rather than scanner to my computer.  Once there, I could mess with them more; organize them into folders and add witty captions but the bottom line was, the photos themselves were still crappy.

A few months ago, a friend gave me his old Lexmark web cam and surprisingly enough, the original driver disk.  After hooking it up and installing the drivers, I discovered something called Lexmark Photo Center included with the software.  Since it was already on my hard drive and ready to go, I started f'n around with it.  It was easy and kind-a fun.  But wait!  If this simple little photo processor is out there, what else may there be?  My only requirement is that it be free.  So, if Lexmark represented the bottom of the line from my point-of-view, why not go straight to the top?  So I down-loaded and tried GIMP.  Way to complicated.  Anyway, I'm not going through each trial so suffice-it to say, some were too hard, some too soft and some, just right!  (For me.)

Nothing I found does everything I want in the way I want so I’ve settled on several tools that allow me to f around with, catalog, display and back-up my photos.  These being my original Lexmark, Zoner Photo Studio 12, Picasa and Flicker.  I know there are others, but so far, these are neither too hard nor too soft, they work fairly well for me.

The last element is my current camera gear.  That would be the camera on my aging T-Mobile Dash.  I'm currently digging around some of Seattle's finer hawk shops for a better digital camera but until then, the T-Mob has the job.  Anyway, below # 1 is a shot straight off the T-Mob.  Below # 2, the same shot after being Lexmarked!  So, all this just goes to show that even a crappy photographer  like me can at least turn out a mediocre end result that I'm not completely embarrassed to show someone else.