editing

Over the last several years I've made a lot of artist trading cards, mostly by extreme editing of photos in National Geographic. I took that ATC-size 2.5"x3.5" frame, and picked out pieces of photos that I thought were interesting.

I believe I was misunderstanding copyright -- I thought that I owned *that copy* of that image, and could do whatever I wanted with that one copy. I knew I couldn't make copies of anything I made from that one original, but I thought I could use that one original however I chose. I now think that is not true, and my making something of a recognizeable piece of someone else's work is not ok. I'm not throwing out my binder of ATCs, but I won't be showing them anywhere or trading them, either......

Taking my own pics offers me the same opportunity to do extreme editing, and since my current pics are all digital, I can not only edit by cropping, as I did with the ATCs, I can go in and remove distractions, heighten contrast, etc, etc, etc.

I can take a very snap-shotty pic like this, and turn it into an image I think is actually rather interesting, like the one that follows......

I *LOVE* that I can do this. I love doing it. When I am working on pictures, I am late to dinner, and I don't hear people in the same room who talk to me. When I get up on a stormy morning, I resent the lightning that means it's really not a good idea to turn on the computer........ Wonder if there's a way to get people to pay me to do this...................