I've been thinking lately about the cost of doing photography and finishing photographs for web publication. A recent, erm, thread got me steamed up enough to post this. Basically, how much can you accomplish without spending any more money than it cost you to obtain your hardware? First some assumptions and then the rules.
Assumptions: 1. You have access to a computer with an operating system installed and a connection to the Internet. Said computer is capable of running photo editing software and displaying the images on a screen. 2. You have access to a working digital camera or a scanner that you can connect to the computer. The rules: 1. You can use the software that came with your computer. Your computer probably came with an OS installed. If it didn't, whatever OS is currently installed is fine. OSX, Windows, Linux, whatever. From what I understand, the Mac has some basic photo editing software installed by default. Most Linux distros do, too. All of this is fine. 2. You can use the software that came with your camera or scanner. If you had to buy a third party application to get your scanner or camera to talk to your computer that's fine, too. 3. Since most of us like to print photos from time to time, you can use the software that came with your printer. In my case the Epson R320 came with Elements 2.0, so that's allowed. 4. You can use any freely available software, open source or otherwise. e.g. - Irfanview, Lightzone for Linux, Picasa, the GIMP, etc. Trial versions, software that watermarks your photos until you pay for the real thing, etc. are not allowed. You should be able to use the software indefinitely (and legally, so no warez) without having to shell out extra cash. To sum up, if it came with your hardware, is absolutely necessary for operating your hardware, or is freely available (no strings attached) it's allowed. Nothing else. Within these limitation try to produce something you're proud to call your own. When discussing digital (or digitally scanned) photographs with someone who's never done it before, you should be able to show them the photo and say something like "All you need is your computer, your camera, and whatever software came with them." In an attempt to add some credibility to the challenge, I should state that I have submitted two photographs to the Pentax Gallery. One of them was accepted. I shot the photograph on a K100D, JPEG, and edited it with Picasa on a PC running Windows XP. It was a PESO a few weeks ago and can be seen here: http://picasaweb.google.com/sdloveless/PDMLPESO/photo#5035527265195980162 If you're interested in playing along, simply post a link to your photo(s) in a reply to this message, or mark it as a Cheapskate Challenge photo in a separate thread. Let us know what software you used to process/edit the photo. Compare it to the software you would normally use. If you're not interested, I won't be offended. If you think I need to revise the assumptions or rules please let me know. If you think this is a ridiculous waste of time I'd like to hear about that, too. Have fun! -- Scott Loveless www.twosixteen.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
