Mr. Potatohead

More than a few years ago, I acquired a Photoshop program. Notice how I said acquired instead of bought? That is because I am not absolutely sure that the program came into my possession in a strictly legal manner. Sometimes this happens, like say you are walking along the street and an expensive Photoshop program falls off of a truck. You can’t just leave it there, that would be criminal and you unfortunately didn’t get the license number of the truck. It would behove you to take that program home and care for it as if it were your very own, which is just what happened.

Now, over the years I have entertained myself by manipulating pictures in one way or the other. Mostly it is done just to improve the overall look of the photo. I took an old degraded photo of my grandfather with pieces missing and when I was finished you could hardly tell that there had been anything wrong with it.

I have brought the colour back to some early pictures of my brother and myself. Over the years I have made a few slideshows with Photoshop commemorating our wedding, the Depot where I worked, my retirement, the West Coast Trail backpacking trips and my answer to how socks disappear. http://www.youtube.com/my_videos?feature=mhee  Once I took a photo of the Last Supper and photo shopped over 140 different images to make a fitting retirement picture for Louise’s brother. For the most part, I have a lot of fun doing this.

I have noticed that a lot of people are doing the much the same things as I do, only in a lot of cases they are considerably more talented than I. Today I burst out laughing at an email with a picture in it of Gollum and the woman from “Precious”. There are so many wonderful witty and talented people out there. What a great world to live on.

It occurred to me that in a lot of ways, Photoshop is a lot like the grown up version of Mr. Potato Head. You take something that is pretty innocent and by putting this bit here and that bit there you will end up with something quite different than the original that will make you laugh. With Mr. Potatohead you are limited to a set number of pieces, but there is really no limit to where you can put the pieces. Now, there are all sorts of Potatoheads, from the old standby to Darth potato, Elvis potato and there is even a Lego potato head. Hell, he is a movie star now. When I was a kid you would just get the parts and would have to supply your own potato. In the years since then it has been decided that kids will hurt themselves if the parts have points and would start to smoke if they see Mr. Potatohead with a pipe.

Well, I have a few projects to work on with the Photoshop, and who knows, I might even do something with pictures of Mr. Potatohead. We have several, and if anyone asks I tell them that we got them for the grandkids.