The Last Refuge . . .

. . . of an inept photographer is Photoshop . . . or in my case, the Special Effects thingie on Picasa, the free for the down-loading program I use to deal with my pictures.

Day before yesterday I took my new camera for a walk along the top of the pasture and into the woods. It was early and the fog hadn't yet burned off so I hoped for lots of great shots in this misty, mysterious world.

I took close ups of flowers in the pasture and of mushrooms, leaves, lichen, and bark along the trail running through the woods.

Imagine my surprise when I downloaded 149 pictures to find that most of them were black! Fiddling with the light level thingie on Picasa showed that there were images -- but I had evidently done or not done some vital thing at the beginning of the walk.

No, I haven't read the manual through yet.

Yes, I should have been checking my monitor to see what the shots were like. (Unbelievable that I didn't!)

Yes, I'm waiting for Cory, my technical adviser to tell me where I went wrong.

Meanwhile, I play with special effects.