Microsoft Photo Draw 2000

The name will tell you the age of this piece of software. I used it quite a bit up through probably 2003 or 2004. My first digital extreme manipulations were done with Photo Draw. I loved it. I loved what it did to images. Somewhere along the line, a new computer and it didn't get reinstalled. Well a couple of months ago I came across the disc and decided to give it another try. After it installed I tried to open a few files and got a message that the files were likely damaged and could not be opened. Well, I knew the files were not damaged so I made an assumption that there was something about the program that was no longer supported by Windows. Disappointing but that's software. Yesterday I accidentally opened a file that automatically opened in Photo Draw--very surprising.

Some investigation and I have discovered that it will no longer open my full res files. Easy to understand when you consider how much larger image files are now compared to 2000. But it will open 200dpi with a long dimension of 10 inches which is enough for playing. I have forgotten much of want I knew about using the various manipulations but I am having a ball. I have been very bored with my photography which is what accounts for the number of manipulations that I have been doing lately. They are nothing new I have been doing them since I first got into digital. I may have been doing what I call extreme manipulation even before I purchased my first digital camera--can't remember that far back. I do know that I have been photographing abstracts or what I call randomness since the Fifties.

I guess I have known it all along but I don't usually put it into words but I am not interested in photography--I am interested in photographs. I am not interested in correct exposure, true color, technique, all the minutia that most photographer seem to be so hung up on. I am often chided because I do not treat my equipment with the reverence that most seem to think is necessary. The camera is simply a tool on the way to the photograph. I actually think of my photographs more as images rather than photographs. I sometimes make a distinction between what I call pictures and photographs. I feel there are many camera operators taking pictures, not so many are making photographs. Minor White carried it slightly further by making an interesting distinction between a photograph and an image. Like me, Minor seemed to think that it is images that are worthwhile. Images, at least to me, are not incumbered with all the attributes of what is or can be captured with a camera. Images do not come from cameras, they are the end, the camera is the means.