Imagine There's An Image

A few months ago, I wanted to print a copy of a photo I took in August 2003. It was a nice image of sunset over Spa Creek in Annapolis, one that I had sold a few copies of over the past two years.

I put the CD I had burned with that month's files into the CD drive on my desktop computer, it spun a bit, and then... nothing.

I tried another CD, and it came up fine. I took the August 2003 CD to several other PCs in the house, and none could read it. I took it to work the next day, and ... nada!

I tried several recovery utilities, and none did any good. As far as any PC was concerned, the CD was now blank.

Phooey!

That CD had not only Spa Creek Sunset, but also 420 Racers, another Annapolis photo that had sold a few copies. Oh well.

So the other day, I moved 5 GB of image files from my 3-year-old laptop to my the second 80 GB drive that I had just installed in my desktop. I started to take a quick peek inside each of th transferred folders to recall what was there, and suddenly, there were my August 2003 photos!

Yes, it was just like finding the $10 bill in the proverbial pants pocket. Actually, it was better than that, because it gave me an opportunity to look at the images with a new eye, more than two years later.

One of the things that's different now is that I know a little more about how to "develop" a digital image. In the old days, in terms of brightness and contrast, all I knew about was... well, the Brightness and Contrast control. Since then, I've learned to use Levels, and mirabile dictu I now get much more out of my digital "negatives."

The images in today's post were ones that I saw as well-composed two years ago, but back then, I just wasn't able to "develop" them properly and get the look I wanted using only Brightness and Contrast.

There's just one downside to this good-news story: My friend Steve N. bought a print of Spa Creek Sunset last June, and after I "lost" the original file, I told him he now owned a much more valuable and rare work of art. Oh well.