Monday, February 28, 2005

What do I use for pics?

Now that Webshots has inspired me, what do I do for my own collections of pics, and how do I determine theme for the 'savers?
I took a look at some of the digital art websites I found in Webshots for inspiration, and then I heard a new word for searching. "Google"
When my neice-in-law told me about this new search engine I thought ,'Who would use such a silly name for a business" What did I know???
So I found other sites that made and offered screensavers. But I was dissapointed at how many were showing lots and lots of skin, and heavy in the sports and movie stars area. First, they were not my favorite subjects, and second, they were certainly not something I could copyright to sell.
Yes, I had discovered what copyright meant! I couldn't just gather any ol' pictures and put them together and call them mine. I had to take the pics , or design the pics with my own ideas.
So now I had to gather from my own archives (boxes and albums of pictures taken over the last thirty or so years) I started looking at what was available and also went out and bought a scanner/printer combo cause I needed to get those snapshots into the computer to use them!
Fortunately I had a lot to work with. Over the years we had tried raising every kind of animal you can think of for a mini-farm . We had cows, pigs, donkeys, chickens, goats, sheep and of course dogs, and cats. Many, many, many cats. We lived at the edge of the state forest, and had 30 acres of our own for the animals to enjoy. The forest apparently seemed a good place for folks to drop off cats they didn't want anymore. What made them think their cat could forge for themselves after being raised and fed daily in a home???????????
I had always enjoyed taking pics of the kids and their animals and also lots of pics of just the animals, especially the cats. We had 28 living with us at the peak of things. So that was a great place to start. And then there was all the scenic photos of places we have been.
The St. Croix screensaver is the most expensive screensaver I have made. We went there for our 40th anniversary and by then I had a digital camera and took dozens of pics of the fantastic scenery and all that gorgeous ocean. I drove a jeep for the first time, and drove on the OTHER side of the road for the first time. What a Hoot!! I get bad motion sick if I am not driving, so my husband is used to me always being the driver. He loves it as he gets to relax and really enjoy the scenery!
But I didn't have the digital ' til way later, so we are back to sorting out all these photos and learning how to make them into a cohesive theme. More tomorrow...

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