Patterns

The other day I discovered that I no longer had digital copies of a number of black and white pictures that I had scanned years ago.  At the time, I was using software called NTI Backup Now, which had gone through a few revisions since I had  first started using it. 

I spent a few obsessive hours last night searching through backup DVDs, looking for my old black and white scans.  The problem was that I couldn't restore them.  Once I had located the files and told Backup Now to restore them, the application just went into a catatonic state.  I finally determined that my 64-bit version of Windows was not compatible with the version of Backup Now that I was using.  Early this morning, I booted into an older 32-bit version of Windows that I kept around, and I was finally able to restore the black and white pictures.

With that done, I figured that I'd better restore a few more files that I didn't particularly want to lose, such as photos from my pre-DSLR days.  Frankly, most of those were disappointing, but I did find one interesting brick pattern that I played around with a little.

I'd shot this with an old Canon Powershot S60 that I bought for my birthday in early 2005.  This is a brick walkway close down to the McQuain Park at the riverfront. The original shot featured a poorly exposed sparrow eating some pieces of bread that were thrown to it.  Through the miracle of Photoshop's clone-stamp tool, bird and bread are gone, leaving just a little grass between the bricks.

I thought I'd keep this picture around as a pattern that I could use for texture blend photos.  I'm still on the lookout for a good subject that would lend itself to this pattern, however.  I played around a little bit with a seascape picture that I took a couple of months ago.

This is "Bricks on the Water"

It's cool how the sunset colors blended with the neutral brick to make them more brick-like.