East (Manipulated Moon), 2008

When this was taken, I was literally looking eastward from my attic window. Not towards Asia but in the sometimes paradoxical truth of  geography, towards Europe. However one can clearly see from the photo that I was thinking of Japan. More specifically the old Zen proverb about mistaking one's finger for the moon: giving such importance to the map that one ultimately forgets the destination, can't see the forest for the trees, lost in the details… 

Although I do not have Photoshop on my computer, I do have iPhoto which gives one an interesting assortment of image adjustment tools to tinker around with. Of course these are primarily designed to tweak & correct bad exposures, which is what (for the most part) I do with them, but if taken to the extreme one can seriously manipulate an image; almost to the point of unrecognizable. I now see how tantalizing all those Photoshop effects must be…

Naturally, like alcohol or drugs, one has to learn to cut oneself off while the buzz is still pleasant ~ in other words before things get unattractive.