I went abstract with the Prompt to depict a welcoming space from which to create in the future. Note: WP fucked with my type again!
The sky blazing with sunset. A shell with her boundaries and her secrets. And a leaping big cat with a body of prose.
The collage speaks to time, self, and energy, rather than to space.
I spent part of today at Staples, hoping to have fun making shiny copies of some of the last month’s collages. I transferred images from phone to a thumb drive in advance, but turns out the machine needed pdf’s and mine were jpeg. A young guy helped with the conversions. That took awhile.
A few pix were weirdly formatted (HEIC?). He speculated: an apple format designed not to be compatible with anything. Printer guy smiled when I muttered, “the fuckers.”
But the real disappointment was the copier itself. On the former color copier I could adjust for scale (necessary to make SoulCollage cards) and could play with color saturation.
Not anymore. Just print. Plus each print required four button presses, each with their dragging delay. More if I wanted a preview.
You can email pix to a staples website, too, so I tried that after a while. You email pix to their site and they shoot you a code and you input it and go from there. But since I chose medium resolution (thinking higher would take forever), the results were disappointing.
There you can see my nifty phone-jacked thumb drive.
Why is it that so many technological advances strip out features that were critical to an interesting and satisfying result?
Prompt #29:
collage a welcoming PSYCHIC space that supports your ongoing creative goals & activities.
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See also my Flickr album, SoulCollage, and the tags for SoulCollage and collage here on the blog.
interesting timing. a metro west collage friend called me the other day really beside herself because her full-service indy printing/copy center is folding and the machines at Staples “have nothing” by comparison. Said there is zero depth of field and the subtle tonal shifts she relies on. like you it’s inconceivable she can’t boost the color to suit her needs.
think all the’good features are becoming non-existent to discourage ‘misusing’ the machines. Less features, less maintenance, etc. Kind of enforced mediocrity. gives me a welcome to facebookland kinda feeling …
The irony is my Staples just did an expensive and nice refurbish — with wider aisles and better lighting and carpets, etc. But the machines? Give me a break.
The technological frustrations on the increase as great practices are one by one being eliminated at local and national copy centers.
Two dimensions are being challenged!
Gosh that all sounds complicated. But, the green and flower view, view between trees and Finney-Boy enjoying nature is a balm for the soul.
I was on a learning curve so perhaps I made it sound more complicated than it was. There were layers of steps to take and stuff to learn at each layer.
I’ve long used my HP inkjet printer/scanner/copier … matte and shiny printer paper … editing features on my iphone … always thinking “who knows how stable any of this is … how long it will last” as I recall the magenta degeneration of 1960s snapshots from my trusty Brownie …
and for months now, my laptop has refused to recognize the Microsoft Office that I used to use for composing images … frustrating in the extreme and I’m (almost) over it … Acey’s collage challenge showed me how much I can accomplish without Office … here’s to YES! paste and thinking out of the box …
I try to print less and less at home because toner is so ridiculously expensive and our fricking printer doesn’t tell you whether it’s low on color or black and white so every time it’s low you have to replace both cartridges. But thanks for reminding me about shiny paper. I have some decent paper on the shelf and maybe I’ll churn a few prints out.
Those recognition issues can get truly bizarre. I have had to change my google password so many times of late that it now includes the letters: Fuckyou