Mike Broadway – PhotoBlog

Trees and Ripples

Color is the first thing I see, the main thing I photograph. There is no obvious subject in this image other than color itself. If you look long enough you will find the sunlit pine trees and a breeze blown pond of the Colorado Rockies, but it could be anywhere, anytime.

This is another re-found picture, overlooked for seven years, for which I owe thanks to Adobe Lightroom’s all-in-one-place catalog view of my photographs. However, I am hesitant to praise Adobe too much or too soon; I will reserve judgement until after the just announced announcement of Creative Suite 5. Earlier this week, Adobe told the press that on April 12 it would tell the press about the still later release of CS5. The updated product suite will not be available on April 12th, that’s just the date when we will be told the release date.

What this manic game of marketing musical chairs means for me is that almost certainly, yet again and as predicted, I will have been forced to upgrade to the current release of Photoshop just in time to be too early to qualify for a free upgrade to the new release. So pretty much the only thing I care to hear announced on April 12th is that my March 1st CS4 purchase qualifies for an automatic CS5 upgrade.

I had to buy Photoshop CS3 just before CS4 was announced in order to be able to read the images from a Nikon D300 camera, I had to buy CS4 just before the CS5 fanfare to convert my license from Windows to Mac. That I am getting free use of of the Lightroom 3 beta is small consolation because I am going to have to buy that when the beta runs out; having got used to what it can do I am unlikely to be willing to give it up. The free beta is both a good way to gather product feedback and a still better way to get new customers hooked. Adobe knows what every street corner drug dealer knows: give away free samples and they will have no choice but to come back and buy more.

All in all though I should be grateful, and I am, that I can afford to buy the expensive equipment that demands this expensive software. Few are so lucky.

[April 5, 2010 – looking back at this post and Thom Hogan’s 2010 News and Comments archive I realize that my title probably borrowed too much inspiration from his news report on the subject. I’m am pretty sure I first learned of Adobe’s plans from reading his site and while the sentiments that it generated are my own I need to acknowledge their origin.]

Log Bridge, Colorado River

It is better to present one Image in a lifetime
than to produce voluminous works – Ezra Pound

I came across this Ezra Pound quote while reading The Discovery of Poetry by Frances Mayes, better known as the author of Under The Tuscan Sun but a teacher of poetry before adopting a run down Italian villa. Pound was speaking of verbal images but I naturally thought of photographs and how it would be would be clever and cultured of me to reference it in my blog. However, reading it again this evening my slow intellect has caught up with my pretentiousness and the potential irony is now obvious – better one perfect photograph than a web site full of mediocrity. I have a lot more than one photograph on this site so it seems that I am much more likely to be erring on the side of volume; never mind the quality, feel the width (to quote a cheap taylor).

Meanwhile, the web site image count increases as my love affair with Adobe Lightroom continues and I unearth more overlooked images from years past. Dating from 2003, this log across the upper reaches of the Colorado River in Rocky Mountain National Park, is one of those discoveries. You be the judge of whether it is a worthy addition or just more unnecessary padding; I was never much good at editing myself whether pictorially or verbally.