Sleep - you fickle, elusive friend ....

I've decided a picture is worth a thousand words. My 'Sleepless Lair':

Note the 3:55 (that would be am, of course) on the clock. The laptop out, because, I mean, who can do with one pimped out computer with two monitors ... jeez .... The all important surround headphones laying there on the desk whilst I take my photos with Lady Gaga screeching out since I am listening to headbanger'ish music aka depression - and don't want to wake up Gary or hurt the dogs ears. A pile of reading material to the left of my desk. Facebook online - catching up with old friends.

And on that sad note, getting a message from someone I thanked for saying something nice about my photos. He replying - being apologetic about a 32 year old prank done on me (by accident I learn tonight). This all being confessed by a person I knew hardly at all 32 years ago, who lost his wife on October 6th and takes the time to apologize for a 'superglue on a chair' prank which was not intended for anyone in particular, just the next sap to sit down in the library. I feel I am up with a crowd I don't belong to - these are people who are up for reasons other than pain .... well physical pain and it makes me sad.

Doesn't make me tired, though ...

So I stare at this:


I LIKE my clock - but I just cannot get the photo wider to make it shorter - thus not taking up so much real estate above our fireplace. I also wonder if I can pull this one off - we have a CURVE. I have to have extra to go around the sides of the gallery wrap frame (which Gary will make - this was his idea, of course, any photo of mine hanging in our house is his idea ... sweet, sweet man). I don't think I can do the math (OK, I can - I only need to worry about the overlap on a straight edge), but just might need to 'make up' parts of the photo for the upper curve because I don't think I had 2" to spare - so I sit ... and I stare at the photo - and wonder if I can pull it off.

I know what I will do next and I sigh. I realize that knowledge is power - but power that can drive someone with OCD to distraction. For a few years I have periodically complained about accidentally setting my big camera on the setting just past 'auto' called 'P' for Program - it is supposed to program the Shutter Speed and Aperture Value based on your ISO, but all I would get when I used it on accident was 'blue'ish' photos. OF COURSE I learned what it was a few years into getting my camera - which does nothing to fix all my old blue photos:


I have tried everything on them. None of them are photos that are 'life or death' needed. Like this boring photo of bear lake. Just a photo ... but the blue bugged me!

I tried filters, taking out the blue, adding red and green and yellow, even cyan ... and they never looked right.

Today I saw one in my 'trusty' Lightroom program and started thinking about it. "It has to be something with exposure." I thought. I am sure there was a flashing warning when I took these photos that it "could not automatically compute a Aperture Value and Shutter Speed based on the ISO so it was going to be crap", but I blissfully snapped away ... outside .... I realized. ALL the photos I had were outside.

There is a way to open up a .jpg file in Camera Raw in Photoshop and I thought, pull it in, and try to change the White Balance (what the camera sees as white - our eye sees something ENTIRELY different). It was not going to give me all the options for White Balance that a pure Camera Raw photo would have (tungsten, indoor, etc) but it had 'As Shot' (what my setting was), 'Auto', and 'Custom'. I clicked 'Auto' White Balance and got this:

My greens were green! My reds were red!

OH MY GOSH! EUREKA!

I had done it




Crap.




Now I need to do it to hundreds of other photos.

I can fake it in Lightroom and do it in batch but it just affixes the change in Lightroom, does not permanently change the photo and I wanted them CHANGED. So pull in each one, one at a time into Photoshop Camera Raw, change the White Balance, open in real Photoshop, and click 'save'. That is a big deal - I am covering up my original - a BIG, BIG NO NO. But these, I have decided look good enough - washed out, yes .... but I can do something about that if I feel like it:


So, I am off - to find more blue photos, chat with fellow insomniacs on facebook and try not to wake up Gary ....