The 'Nearly' Pictures

Even though I am an IT teacher I am very reluctant to embrace new technology. A small Luddite gene kicks in and I go through the following process...

• First I deny the technology is useful.
• Then I deny it will catch on.
• Then I convince myself I've lived without it and don't need it.
• Then I appall myself by researching a price and convince myself it's more money than sense.
• Then I remember that if I wait a year it will be twice as good and half the price.
• Then I buy one.
• Then I wonder how I ever lived without it.

Because I'm not very interested you will notice that researching the product does not feature at all. I am glad that organisations such as 'Which!' exist. I know that the law says something about "buyer beware", but I really just can't get interested so of course sometimes I make idiot errors.

For example I bought my first iPhone the week before the 3G version was released at a third of the price of the first version. Thank goodness Vodafone were really slow in giving me my PAC code so I hadn't started using it and did eventually get a refund but it indicates what a salesmans dream I truly am.

So it was the case that I held out and held out and held out and held out considering buying a digital camera until last year. It wouldn't work. It would get damaged. Memory sticks were more loseable than films. The pictures would never be as good as a real photo. How my worries melted away the first time I uploaded my first pictures. I love my camera. Love it love it love it.

So now I take it everywhere and snap everything. I took over 1000 pictures on my last month long jaunt to the Far East for example.

And maybe because I have never read the instruction book to find out what the 8 picture settings mean; perhaps because I'm not patient enough; perhaps because I'm just not a very good photographer; despite the viewback screen, despite the ability to take as many versions of the picture as I like, I still find I come away at times only with 'nearly' pictures. Images that were not quite what I wanted. The sort you might usually delete. The flag not quite unfurled. The river not quite in the frame, the whole composition just slightly rubbish. Not the sort of thing you own up to on a blog and certainly not the sort of thing you'd ever publish...