Rules of photo-engagement

—1) Facebook first. Facebooked pictures can be big and large resolution; the bigger they are the better.
Sized small they display small. Upload full size — don’t downsize. Smartphone pictures are HUGE; my iPhone pictures are only 72 pixels-per-inch, but huge.
Run ‘em that way, and they display full-screen on Facebook. Downsize and they don’t fill the screen. If tiny they display tiny.
Then —2) Pictures for e-mail. Screen resolution is 72 pixels-per-inch. E-mail runs at 72 pixels-per-inch resolution. Higher rez has to scroll.
For e-mail pictures I downsize that Facebook picture to perhaps 72 ppi by 10 inches wide. Such a picture won’t hafta be scrolled. Scrolled e-mail pictures inflame my old college friend, who thereafter tells me I’m stupid, and inferior.
Finally —3) Pictures for this blog. This blog displays at 72 ppi, and the column is 5.597 inches wide: 403 pixels. Higher than 72 will step on my blurb at right. Same if the pic is more than 5.597 inches wide.
So what happens to an original photo-file, which may be at 300 ppi (the rez of my camera jpegs,) is -a) pretty much nothing for Facebook. -b) The Facebook image gets downsized for e-mail, but not blog-size. Blog-size would display small in an e-mail. -c) The e-mail image then gets downsized to blog-size. E-mail pictures would step on my blurb, and Facebook size pictures would be beyond-the-pale.
This begs the question of when screen-resolution will advance beyond what it is now, and has been since days of yore = 72 pixels-per-inch; adequate, but last century.
Giant leaps move computer technology way beyond what it was a few years ago. My first personal-computer had only a 40-meg hard-drive. This 10-year-old laptop has 500 gigs. That’s 12,500 times my original hard-drive.
Back then everything was packed in an air-cooled box: horizontal desktop or vertical tower. Hard-drives were rapidly rotating discs. Now the entire universe can be stored on a tiny chip. Hard-drives no longer need to be rotating discs.
My Apple G4 tower had a 60-GB hard-drive. I used to brag that was enough to swallow the entire Pacific fleet.
500 GB is HUGE; I’m only at 25%, and that includes hundreds of 300 ppi jpegs my brother and I photographed of trains in Altoona, PA.
A few years ago I drove my cousin’s Apple tabletop. Its hard-drive was one terabyte; that’s 1,000 gigs. I bet by now multiple terabyte hard-drives are available. Which have me asking “for what?” My cousin’s one TB hard-drive was only at 2%; all he was doing was e-mail. That’s like using a Ferrari Formula-One racer as mom’s taxi.
I can safely downrez a 300 ppi to 72 ppi, but I can’t uprez from 72 to 300 ppi. It “pixilates” (“jaggies”).
With picture-files I follow the order noted above, pertinent to what I need. Most pictures only get blog-sized. Facebook and e-mail size are only if I’m gonna do either. Blog-size pictures to Facebook always ran too small. Blog-size pictures e-mailed also ran smallish.
Facebook seems programmed to resize gigantic image-files automatically to screen-size. Upload blog-size (smaller) and Facebook can’t do that. That file had already been downsized.
The old waazoo: “try it and see what happens” —what got where I am today.
Yet screen-rez remains at 72 ppi; adequate, but ancient. So I gotta do all this resizin’ just to get pictures to display right.
Facebook is doing it for me, I guess. Along with plumbing my tastes for Pooty-Poot, and disseminating pro-Trump malarkey. (Why, pray tell, does Facebook surmise me a dirty-old-man just because I’m a 74-year-old male?)
I upload the image-file, and it displays correctly. And it better be gigantic at high resolution, i.e. something Facebook can safely downsize.
I’m not downsizing it myself like I had to do with my wallpaper picture. But Facebook is displaying on a 72 ppi screen.

Click-click-click-click-click!

“If **** is one of yer Facebook-friends, what ya do is go to his Facebook to see all the fabulous landscape photographs he posted.”
“Is that how it works?” I asked. “Seems not long ago I was getting Facebook notifications for every post a Facebook friend made. I never understand Facebook. Looks like they changed something.”
I was talking to *** *****, a lady I once worked with at the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger newspaper. We both are ex; me retired, and she laid off.
**** is also ex Messenger. He moved to Denver. Together we did the Messenger website.
****, like me, fell to the allure of photography. With me it’s trains (I’m a railfan), with him it’s landscape, especially if weather is dramatic.
Weather is more extreme out west than here in Western NY. And landscape more interesting.
Giant thunderheads tower over purple-mountain majesties, and amber waves of grain.
**** sees it and photographs.
Another friend and I are discussing whether photography is art.
He suggests it isn’t when it’s so easy to snag an excellent photograph.
*** and I discussed this. Ansel Adams, perhaps the most famous photographer of all, was in Yosemite Valley, and had only one chance to snag his famous “Half-Dome” photograph.


Moon over Half-Dome. (Photo by Ansel Adams.)

One of my best photographs is one of 12 I took in quick succession. (Multiple exposures = “motor-drive.”)
After that I could jazz up the photograph with my Photoshop-Elements®.


Last or second-to-last. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

There’s Adams in his darkroom, burning-and-dodging his 8-by-10 negative to get the print-results he wanted.
I do that too, but on this computer. No more darkroom for The Keed.
Composition also plays a part.
*** noted how she and her husband (deceased) would photograph the same topic. Yet his pictures looked better than hers. It was his eye for composition, versus her alleged lack thereof.
“There are things I’ve learned,” I said.
“—Every picture needs a foreground. I’m at the park with my dog, and a couple is photographing the pond with their hyper-expensive camera, usually with a gigantic telephoto lens.
‘I hate to butt in, but I suggest ya move back 30 feet.’
‘I do that, and that picnic table will obscure the pond.’
‘For viewers to get a handle on what they’re looking at, ya need that picnic-table. Tree-trunks too.’


”Step back 30 feet.” (Photo by BobbaLew.)

—Simple as possible:
‘Goodie-goodie. No sky to distract; just woods in the background.’


Goodie-goodie! (Photo by BobbaLew.)

—Frame if I can get it: “That overpass will frame the subject.” Various siblings objected, but with a frame viewers can more easily make sense of what they’re looking at.


The overpass is the frame. (Photo by BobbaLew.)


Ditto. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

—Modeling if I can get it. That is, my subject partially in shadow.
Gotta be careful though. Shadows can ruin a picture. There are locations I can’t take because they’re too backlit if the sun is out.


Modeling exemplified. (Photo by BobbaLew.)

All of this is figgerin’ into whatever I take, and I’m sure **** does it too.
So there’s **** bombing along in the Colorado outback: “Wow! Lookit that sky!” Unholster camera, engage artistic input, then click; or perhaps as in my case click-click-click-click-click!

• “****” in Denver is photographer at Rocky Lakes Photography.
• The “Canandaigua Daily-Messenger” is the newspaper from where I retired over 11 years ago. Best job I ever had — I worked there almost 10 years (over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern [I had a stroke October 26th, 1993, from which I recovered fairly well]). (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city nearby where I live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 14 miles away.)
• “The Keed” is me, Bob Hughes, “BobbaLew.”