Photoshop and the 'Cloud'

In case you haven't heard, Adobe will be offering their products via

the cloud. The one product getting the most rif is Photoshop. Basically

how it works is, no more hard copies of the software. You download

Photoshop to your hard drive. You're then charged a monthly fee to use

it. At the time of this entry, about $20 a month.

First, this isn't cloud computing even though this is the term Adobe is

using. If it was cloud, the software would be on their servers, not on

our hard drives.

If anything, it's more like leasing their software. As long as you pay,

the software will work and will be updated. Don't pay and Photoshop is deactivated. In other

words, it's kind of like activating your software for the very first

time. It goes out to the internet and your software is activated. Same

thing here, except it's doing it every 30 days for a fee.

I'm on the fence on how I'm going to proceed. Right now I'm trying a 30

day free trial. For $20 a month it makes sense up until about 2 1/2 years,

which is roughly the cost of the software itself. But after that? Paying

$20 a month for an update here or there seems expensive.

Magee Marsh

This past Friday (March 10) was the big trip to Magee Marsh. The

forecast was calling for 90% rain in Cleveland and Magee Marsh.

Not good. I ran into some sprinkles at 6am while on my way to

the meetup. Really not good.

Then, everything cleared! Actually, it cleared to much. With

the sun being out and the group arriving late in the morning,

about 10am, the light was a little harsh.

Magee Marsh was crowded! The entire parking lot was almost filled.

But the actual walk on the boardwalk wasn't that bad. I'd run into

a crowd every now and then to get a look at a special warbler,

but that's it.

The number of Warblers was decent, but the photography wasn't. Most

of the birds stayed further back in the woods. I still could've

snapped off a few, but they wouldn't have been up to my standards.

I always find it amazing on the photographers out there, with tens

of thousands of equipment and they're photographing a bird covered

by branches and horrible backgrounds.

I also got a chuckle when another photographer made a comment to me

that the only way to get a good bird photograph is by having at least

$20,000 in photography equipment.

That's why my images are published and my presentations in demand and

they're not. I understand that it's the photographer, not the equipment.

If you have $20,000 worth of equipment but still photograph into

the sun or don't even know how to read a histogram, you're just embarassing

yourself.

I came away with a few nice images which is pretty much all I was

expecting.