Meet a Hardcore Journaler

Hi folks -- so, I was looking over the current batch of responses to Blogger John's latest Blog Photo Shoot, "Something Unexpected", when something caught my eye -- in her comment, Journaler Mosie1944 wrote "...because of its graphic nature, you may want to delete my comment here."

How can you not look at something like that? (This assumes that you are me.)

Naturally, I popped over to her Journal, My Country Life, to see the Photo Shoot entry in question.

It seems that Donna (that being her name), had a run-in with a cattle panel (Which is a type of wire fence. It's kind of a panel. For cattle. Why yes, I am a city boy.), which left her with a pretty nice gash in her leg.

Being a hardy sort and not wanting to go to the ER, she had it wrapped up and waited until the next morning to go to the doctor's office (not the hospital).

However, that's not the hardcore part.

No, the hardcore part is that while Donna was getting her stitches, she was taking pictures for her blog:

I don't care how much lidocaine they're giving you -- taking pictures of your wound as the doc is stitching you up is hardcore.

You can see Donna's full photo series in her blog entry -- as she notes, it's not for the squeamish, so if you get light-headed at the sight of blood, you probably don't want to click past picture #4. (The photo above is kind of bloody, though it's kind of abstract -- I didn't zoom and crop on the actual wound... though I could have -- it was a nice, big, detailed photo.)

So, Donna gets Journals Editor Joe's Hardcore Journaler of the um, Month Award.

In the event that someone else out there suffers an injury, I recommend that you go get medical attention and not worry about the "blogging about it" part.

(Incidentally, if you want to submit your own photo for this week's Photo Shoot, you still have a day and a half or so. Again, the theme is "Something Unexpected," not "Big, Bloody Injuries.")

On a photo note, I used the photo above (after getting permission and a photo release from Donna of course, but that's a special consideration since I'm a corporate blogger) because I thought it was dramatic without being overly graphic.

In addition, there's a bright spotlight effect that really focuses your attention on the action in the middle, with these disembodied hands coming out of the darkness.

Now, in Photoshop CS, which I am fortunate enough to use, there's an easy way to pull out details from underexposed areas -- it's the Shadow/Highlight settings adjustment; after using it, you can see a lot more of what's going on -- not that I necessarily think it makes it a better photo. It's definitely more documentary in nature, though:

I don't know if there's a similar functionality in other graphics programs (such as the free GIMP image editor) -- check out the entry and comments in this blog entry discussion
about the Shadow/Highlight adjustment.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: hardcore journaler, Monday Photo Shoot