let's talk megapixels

the two people who still visit this blog may have noticed the utter utter lack of photos here. it's not that i don't have photos to post--i have several gigabytes' worth of photos in my hard drive and on CDs. and lovely photos they are too.

my problem is sifting through them and choosing the prettiest ones and making them web-ready will take waaaaaaay too long. i'd have to fire up photoshop for that (a rogue copy of which, thanks to my recent reformat, i no longer possess) before i can upload em.

you see, i use a casio exilim 6.0 megapixel camera, which in these 10-megapixel days isn't impressive at all. but snapping away with my lovely resurrected camera results in gonzo photos, megapixelly speaking. the average file size of my photos is between 1 to 2 megabytes. and i have a couple of thousand of them hibernating peacefully in this laptop.

of course, as tenzin pointed out to me last year, i can always adjust the settings on my camera. at the moment, i create photos with a resolution high enough to be used to make those monster billboards on edsa. a simple change of settings will let me take web-ready photos that need no fiddling.

so why do i insist on what i have now?

well, one summer day outside jogyesa temple near insa-dong with my buddy JD, i captured a lot of nifty details using that resolution without even realizing it. i remember taking photos of people at prayer who were circling this stone pagoda. they walked counter-clockwise several times and would pause and bow towards the pagoda from various directions. i just kept snapping away while looking for the best angle and orientation for this old man in dark grey pajamas, praying and waving incense sticks.

once i got home and started looking through the photos in my camera, i spotted a tiny figure seated on one of the tiers of the pagoda above the head of the old man. i zoomed in as much as i could and found it was a doll dressed as a bald monk and smiling serenely at me. it was a little creepy at the time but now i see it as a of benediction of sorts.

so... i'm keeping the camera settings. but who knows? maybe one of these days, you'll finally finally see some photos here.