So, 2006 hey?

Well it has taken me long enough as you can see. And probably because this blog has been posing me the thorny question that blogs do when you think about what they are about when actually they are about nothing.

So I was thinking, and this evening my good friend Vanessa came round and we talked and then I thought about it some more. The question was, why do I so love gadgets and technology? Well I don't. I don't think that I am - come on nerdy friends, correct me if I am wrong - the most technology obsessed of people (my phone doesn't take pictures, never mind video, I don't own a PDA, Hannu is the iPod owner in the house...). I do however love what technology can do for me.

I was thinking back to 10, 12 maybe almost 15 years ago. To the days when my camera was a plastic point and shoot affair, won in a school summer fair raffle. To be fair, it did an amazing job considering the amount of time it spent in a back pack bouncing down the side of a large rock strewn hill, through streams and extreme heat and pouring rain, shooting cheap film in difficult light conditions to be developed at the local supermarket... But they were long summer days of perfect vistas from hard earned hilltops. Flawless skies glimpsed through oakey forest canopies from faultless singletrack. Dark and dappled moments grabbed, a wheelie, a bunny hop or a crash and the undergrowth. Such challenging tasks for any camera. And so these mind's eye sketches would be seen through the plastic view finder, projected onto the film more through enthusiasm than photographic ability and the patient wait for the prints to return would be so long. And though the results are still marvelous today - pure atmosphere of innocent days - how it would be frustrating to not see what was projected through that view finder.

And today. Well even yesterday actually, a small silver plastic box not so far from what we used to carry around. But this time with a magic screen on the back that gives you instant results. A chance to correct, to narrow the depth of field, to crop out what is superfluous to the real image, to push up the contrast under the trees... How it is easy to take the shot that you actually have in your head. You see what you are going to get, you can blow it up and crop it or process it straight away and then e-mail it to your friends and amaze them. So here we are 2006, probably around the period that the 21st century is starting to be different from the last.



So, 2006 and technology is good. As for inspiration I am not so sure, but I have a shiny new camera to take the best pictures ever with so maybe there will be some of that too. Time to stop going on then...