Don't count your chickens before they're hatched

Well Most Excellent Blog Fans, here ends another chilly day in London Town for your photographic correspondent. After some rather terrifying moments yesterday dealing with "computer issues" (firing up the disc drive caused the computer to emit sounds reminiscent of a Boeing 747 on take off), I have managed to today hunker down in the digital darkroom processing photos.

Unfortunately, while an actual photo shoot might only be a few hours long, the post-processing can take many, many hours (days, weeks!!) to complete. And outsourcing retouching work just isn't an option unless the work is for a magazine or advertising- just think of a figure per hour in your head and triple it!

Retouching isn't simply about making someone 10kg thinner, lengthening legs to Naomi Campbell-esque proportions or removing an ex from a photograph (although all these things are possible)- it is about colour tweaking, ensuring the white balance is correct, "enhancing" beauty, creating different moods etc. Yes, it is best to get things right "in camera", but in my view, most photos are helped along by a little post production zhooshing. Retouching has always been around... it just used to be done in the darkroom (with lots of stinky chemicals) rather than on the computer.

Now to my post title....well, blog fans, as some of you know by now, I have received word that a travel article and photographs I took for a magazine have been accepted for publication!! I am, of course, extremely excited by this news (think: Labrador presented with an unattended buffet at a wedding reception) and can hardly wait to see my work "in print". I can already picture myself at Borders, proudly clasping an armful of magazines, telling strangers that "um, yeah, see this article here, well, um, yeah, see I WROTE IT!!!!"

It is, of course, against my nature to announce such news before seeing hard evidence of same (and it could all go VERY pear-shaped) but I am throwing caution to the wind and counting my (organic, free-range, happy lifer) chickens before they hatch.

Good things people, good things :)