I would eventually like to write feature articles professionally. HowExpert Press explains, ‘The body of a feature article… consists of a number of paragraphs that expound the main topic or theme’. It is then explained that, ‘Photographs, tables, diagrams, graphs, and other graphic aids’ should also be considered for use in an article. (HowExpert Press, p.904).  Research that I have done strongly indicates that to get paid for writing feature articles I would have to pitch an idea first to a magazine. This establishes if the magazine is interested in the idea and if they would be willing to pay for it. Even when it’s written the magazine might still reject it.

On Monday evening I went to the first session of an Adobe Photoshop course. I’ve been looking forward to the course for months with a view to getting stuck into the visuals for my first feature article. The evening didn’t go quite as well as I’d hoped.

I’m confident using a PC but getting to grips with the Apple Mac made me feel like Moonwatcher in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Maybe Apple made the monolith. The Apeman in the film is aware that the bones can be used for something useful but it takes him a while to figure it out. There is a clip of Moonwatcher on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtbOmpTnyOc&list=PL4C5804B6D1FD8B96&index=2

The room was swelteringly hot which made it difficult to concentrate. Was this because the heating was on or were the Apple Macs responsible for generating excessive heat? I couldn’t locate the button to turn on the Mac. The tutor showed me the camouflaged button hidden at the back of the monitor. I couldn’t remember what order to press Command, Alt and Shift. When was I supposed to take my finger off the mouse button? I also had a coughing fit half way through the session and had to wait outside the room for ten minutes until I was able to breathe again. Most of the time I found myself haphazardly striking the keys like Moonwatcher smacking bones around.

The first session involved spending forty-five minutes of the dreaded getting-to-know each other introductions. I came away feeling like I hadn’t really achieved much. I suppose these things take time and the word I constantly remind myself of is ‘patience’. At least next time I’ll know how to switch the monitor on – it’s a start.

My partners view of Photoshop is it’s fine for creative work but he feels it’s sloppy to use it to fix photographs. This picture of a beetle was taken using a Sigma 105mm F/2.8 macro lens. There is a review of this lens at www.kurtmunger.com. To put this photograph in perspective below is the beetle crawling off a pound coin. Both pictures are straight off the camera with no post-processing.

We’re not entirely sure that this is a beetle because we can’t find anything similar on the Internet. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the character HAL is such an advanced Artificial Intelligence that it demonstrates humanlike characteristics. To try to find out what the beetle is we used the Google Image Search which allows the photograph to be uploaded and then returns images that it thinks are similar http://images.google.com/. This uses some sort of AI but isn’t quite as sophisticated as what was envisaged in 2001. The results of our search were hilarious. Amongst the images that are supposedly similar to our beetle include; a baby, a cat, a pair of shoes, a bracelet, fish hooks, a lizard, pears, a boot, a naked woman on a beach.

HowExpert Press (2011) How To Write Feature Articles, Kindle Edition

2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick (1968), Two-Disc Special Edition DVD – there is a fascinating documentary with this edition. To read more about 2001 go to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/?ref_=sr_1