writer, warrior, whack-a-doodle

Swiss Clean

Swiss Clean

May 17, 2011
Posted in: Totally Random | Reading Time: 2 minutes

I've been spring cleaning my computer lately. In the last two weeks, I cleaned off about 90 Gigs of data and photos from my hard drive.

I told you my photo composition wasn't great. Here's a beautiful shot of the mountains-- with a trashcan that is so prominent, it looks like it was Photoshopped. It's not. It's just another example of my bad eye when framing a shot.  But as I was going through my photos this shot moved me, so I saved it.

The trashcan taunts me, like a pair of rabbit ears intentionally mocking a subject's head to ruin the shot.

"Ha-ha," he laughs, "you cannot ignore me. It is because of me and my well-placed friends that you are able to enjoy the majestic mountains without the worry of stepping in dog poop or a cigarette butt."

Some may call Switzerland "antiseptic" for its strict discipline for cleanliness. But juxtaposed so elegantly against the mountains, the trashcan reminds me of its contribution to my experience and that my own creativity cannot move if it is bogged down with junk.  It inspires me to tidy up loose ends in my own life and return to my days as a methodical clean freak to give myself breathing space for creativity. Armed with a new system of organizing data, I'm committed to using that trashcan with every photo download.

Ninety gigabytes of useless data later, I feel as light as the wind in the sails of that boat on Lac Leman.

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8 comments on “Swiss Clean”

  1. Ya know, it must really suck to take a zillion pictures and discover that you've got those damn mountains hiding the scenery. 😉

    (I actually really like the trashcan. It's a clean trashcan! 🙂 And I'm still oozing jealousy. Did I mention it's snowing here. No. Really. It is. If I spend another day on the trainer, I may just shoot myself. Or break out the snowshoes.....)

    -Dr. Liz (the girls are napping after their latest foray into the snow...)

  2. You mean the lake and mountains ruining the photo of the trash can? We love trash cans, besides the smells they are a wonderful place to leave mail.

    Remy and Flash

  3. OK, so let's hear you wax poetic about that jetty sticking out there 🙂 Just kidding. The message came through loud and clear. One I need to hear myself - and frequently!

  4. hey - I have loads of photos like that but most people never realise because of a little magic wand called the "CROP TOOL" - hee! hee! 😛 Seriously, you could just crop that photo into a more panoramic shot and remove the trash can easily. In any case, even if it hadn't been there, I would have cropped this photo as all that expanse of blue sea in the bottom 3rd of the photo is just unnecessary and detracts from the grandeur of the mountains in the background. You would only need a bit of sea - a strip - for the colour contrast & to set the scene.

    You probably have far more sophisticated tools but I find Picasa works really well for simple edits like this. It also easily exports all your photos with a watermark.

    Hsin-Yi

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