Hi Karen, lovely scene. My fascination with digital photography began with Sony Mavica too. You are on the right way and sooner or later you are going to be full time digital camera "addict"! I would like to make sugestion, could you visit any work of Barb Langer, http://www.usefilm.com/photographer/14055.html she is Mavica user too.... My self, as a former Mavica user I envy her work ! She is fantastic, I hope that you will like her work too. Friendly and kind regards, Rafal
No, the pixelation is not intentional. In the two years that I have been playing with digital, I have gone through 4 generations of the Sony Mavica, 2 generations of Casio, and one Canon, and two offbrands of something else that didn't suit me, and have now graduated to a Nikon something or other that is a pain to upload to the computer. Also some of the posted pics are digital photographs of a film print.... as my scanner operates with no facimile of reliability... in my opinion it produces a lesser resolution than a digital 'photocopy'.
"The Bee & the Lotus" -- somehow I detect the makings of a cross cultural fable here.
In looking over your portfolio, I notice extreme pixelation in some of your Mavica images, but little or none in others. Is this intentional?
If not, there are a couple of things you might want to check out. The first is the resolution, or quality, setting on your camera. I don't know the Sony, but on my little Nikon CP 5700 the quality setting button ends up right under my finger and even though the only settings I ever use are RAW or FINE, if I'm not extremely careful, I keep accidentally nudging it to BASIC or NORMAL.
Also, if you're cropping away more than, say. 15 percent of an image, this will also increase the pixelation, especially if it was take at a low resolution/quality setting to begin with.
Thanks for your many flattering (I love it!) and insightful comments. As for the positioning of the middle finger on "The Secrets of Successful Photography Revealed," this is pure serendipity. In fact, I never noticed it until your comment! But perhaps there is some subconscious process at work.
I did this image a couple of days after an extraordinarily gifted photographer was "removed from competition" at another site following many months of nasty exchanges with hard-core photo "purists." They certainly aren't "traditionalists," since the pictorial techniques they despise -- collage, montage and even incorporating drawing and painting within the photograph -- were all developed by photography's earliest pioneers, and have been used ever since.
In any event, as you correctly perceived, "Secrets" was my response.
As for using Illustrator in my work, no I don't. Truth is, I just don't have a knack for Bezier curves. However, I do frequently use Clipping Paths in PS to convert bit-mapped selections to vector equations. Best--Jim
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