My Photo Album
About Photography:
I have been interested in photography for almost 50 years and the changes in photo technology in that time has been tremendous. From B&W to color new films and methods have been frequent and one has to study constantly just to keep up with the changes. The first computer I was exposed to was a whole lot of vacuum tubes with memory on punch cards. At that time one could not even imagine that the computer could become a photographic tool.
In 1986 I heard that there was a computer, the AMIGA, that could do photography. since I was in the landscape business I had interest in taking an image of a property and drawing in plantings, stairs, walls etc. The pictures that I first produced using this process were very crude but my customers were impressed as the type of proposal was easier for the customer to interpret than a scale drawing.
I had some exposure to FORTRAN and COBOL in the 1960s but now my interest in photography motivated me to learn programming. Since "C" is the primary language for the AMIGA I began learning in this language. Fortunately "C " became the primary language for the IBM and the transition from "C" to "C+ " is not difficult.
The AMIGA quickly improved during the late 1980s starting with 16 color, then 32 color, then 64 color extra half bright, and finally to the 4096 color HAM mode. While IBM was using CGA there was no possibility to use that platform for graphics and EGA was not a great step forward. In 1990 IBM introduced SVGA (256 color) and for the first time the IBM became a machine capable of photography.
When I first started using the IBM platform I was very disappointed with the graphics software available. I was buying software only to find that it did not do what I wanted. I had gained a little experience with the "C" language on the AMIGA and as I needed a tool I started writing the code and found this easier than purchasing and learning other peoples programs. It has always been that necessity has been the mother of invention and as the years progressed I wrote a paint program, several graphics conversion programs, a pictorial identification program for plants, a multitude of business applications. I continue writing programs but the main focus of my effort remains photography, video, and sound. .
The digital camera now produces images which rivals film. it has been many years now since I have endured the smell of hypo. The computer has become my darkroom. About 12 years ago I started writing programs in the C# programming language. C# is a dedicated language for the Windows operating system which has extensive picture handling capability. I have recently written numerous programs for the display and processing of pictures. For information about these programs see:
https://sites.google.com/site/electricfarmcsharp/image-software