When did picture-taking become work?

So, I went down Observatory Avenue on Thursday like I'd planned and took 50 billion pictures.

It was so beautiful.

Spring is early this year: all the trees are either blooming or done blooming, and the azaleas are out. I strolled down the road and back up Butler Avenue and took pictures of everything.

So...why aren't those pictures online?

My camera does something weird when I don't use its automatic settings. It'll imprint a bright pink or green dot here and there on the photo. My original camera, same model, used to do this too. It could be this particular model, or it could be what happens when digital cameras get old...regardless, the pictures I took on Thursday have those bright spots everywhere.

And so since yesterday I've been working on cleaning them up in Photoshop.

This is pretty boring work, and since I took so many pictures, it's taking awhile. But I've also been slowed down by something else.

It was overcast on Thursday, which is good for getting details in photos but not so good for natural color. So I started messing with Saturation, and wouldn't you know it, the colors came back! I bumped up the Contrast and the colors really popped.

And so I've been doing that with most of the detail shots and some of the others, saving to a separate file.

I'm glad that I am able to take better photos and then edit them to look the way I want them to, but at the same time it's kind of sad that what started out as a fun hobby, one that only required me to point and shoot and upload and caption, has become somewhat laborious.

Then again, I wouldn't be doing the edits if I didn't want to, would I?