Scattered Thoughts . . .

I don't know what it is about the State of Liberty... I've always been bothered by this French gift of art. Don't get me wrong, I love French art and architecture but the Statue of Liberty bothers me deeply for some reason... it creates conflict within me when it really should create welcoming warmth...  Perhaps it is the horrendously ugly and overbearing cyan color... perhaps what bothers me is the prison-like facilities on this tiny island and its sister island, Ellis Island, used to process our poor immigrants... perhaps it is a cluttered, poorly arranged harbor that has bothered me... perhaps the vision of a monstrous, overbearing "Lady Liberty" to greet our east coast immigrants bothered me... perhaps I agree with some movie-makers and think this piece of art is more aptly suited to be featured in movies like Planet of the Apes ... perhaps I just find this monstrous piece of "art" a bit unappealing or even hideous (of course, my own personal opini

So, since I am sitting around waiting for my spinal inflammation to subside, I thought I would sit here on my pillows and work on some old photos while sipping on some coffee.  I'm still sorting through the folder that holds photos from our 2013 trip to Manhattan. I was using an old, crappy Olympus camera back then so I often left whole folders of images left untouched because I was so frustrated by the images. This was one of those folders. After my experiences with two Olympus cameras, I don't ever want to use another Olympus camera for the rest of my life... the colors absolutely suck, white balance is always a problem, the noise is horrendous, the files are very shallow causing the image files to fall apart very quickly in post-processing... I just hate working with these files. I've found, however, that I can get some decent black and white images out of the files when color is my main problem as is the case with this particular folder of images. The Empire Sta