This picture was taken on the way home on Friday evening. I’d seen these bikes parked outside the main railway station on several occasions and thought they may just make an interesting picture. For those railway enthusiasts among us, the carriage just visible on the right belongs to the 20:40 hrs. train to Vienna and Belgrade.
Being a keen Linux user (currently Ubuntu 10.10), I’ve been trying to get to grips with The Gimp (GNU Image Manipulation Program). An almost never ending maze of colour menus, enhancement tools and filter plug-ins.
I don’t think I’ll ever become an expert, but whether that’s due to a lack of time, patience or simply my IQ remains an open question.
Do I really want to explore all those fascinating settings? Do I want to spend hours in front of the monitor trying to create the perfect picture? Might it not be more prudent to learn how to use the camera properly in the first place?
My answer to all three questions is “No, not really”.
There’s no doubt, whatever camera one uses, a bit of ‘developing’ can sometimes work wonders. However, practice makes perfect, and requires hours of experimentation (well it does with me anyway). So I’ll just stick to using the software to adjust contrast here and there, turn colour into black and white now and again, and if I’ve got time on my hands I’ll perhaps play around with a few Gimp features a bit and who knows… one day, purely by chance, I may even create that perfect picture?