A S C R A P B O O K O F S O L U T I O N S F O R T H E P H O T O G R A P H E R
Enhancing the enjoyment of taking pictures with news that matters, features that entertain and images that delight. Published frequently.
24 September 2014
It's been one of those days. After scrambling to put our Elements 13 review together in time for the launch, we mopped up the office and went to bed last night at midnight.
Refreshed, we tackled a printer issue we were working on with the manufacturer. We started a print job, documenting every step. But everything worked fine. For the life of us, we couldn't reproduce the problem as long as we were looking for it.
Later in the day, just before dinner, we remembered it was George's 80th birthday in a couple of days. We had just the photo to put on a card for him. And just the text to put inside. Hilarious. All we had to do was print a 4x6 of a 2001 image. And to our surprise we found the image immediately, just by telling Lightroom to filter our collection on the word "Wedding."
There he was in his tux with a red rose, pointing his finger at us from a church window. Perfect birthday card image.
We worked it over in Photoshop -- and that's the printer balked. As soon as we had a 4x6 print we had to print. Suddenly the driver couldn't find the printer.
Then, out of the blue (or teal as it would be), we remembered our petty ambition to create a logo for Photo Corners.
One of those days.
When we finally got our print (it's a long story but we're more resourceful than any silicon chip) and finished the project (well after dinner), we leaned back in our chair and hoped for one of those Lourdes-like apparitions to make our day. "You have done well, my son!" the apparition would smile. "Here are three secrets for you."
We got a cramp leaning back in our chair before any apparition showed up, though.
Then, out of the blue (or teal as it would be), we remembered our petty ambition to create a logo for Photo Corners.
This popped into our mind, no doubt, because we published two reviews (about twice our monthly average) yesterday, awarding a certain number of photo corners to the products. Invisible photo corners.
When we launched the site we goofed around with a few illustrations (even a scan) or actual photo corners. Cheesy stuff. We abandoned them but not the idea.
But tonight it occurred to us that we could use CSS to create an abstract photo corner in our highlight color that just might do the job with a little elegance. So we got to work on it (feverishly, because we haven't been feeling too well the last few weeks) and in five or ten minutes we had the logo you see on our headline page.
We liked it so much that we added it to all our headline pages, the Archive page and the Bests and Books pages, too. Just the big ones. No sense distracting you on every page with our attractive logo (although a simple global search and replace across the site would do that too).
We kind of like it on just the main pages, though. It indicates you're at the top level. And it doesn't distract you from the content of our actual stories.
Of course, we reserve the right to change our mind on that.
Meanwhile we're going to make a concerted effort to find some other way to wind down after one of those days. We just hope it's as much fun.