Wednesday, December 26, 2012

About the header image: December 26, 2012

This week's header image is a little unusual. I couldn't decide on which image to use to bridge the week starting the day after Christmas and ending on New Year's Day. So I decided to use all of them. Every header that we used in 2012!


"But wait," you might say, "An Earth-standard year is fifty-two weeks long, and the image above, while impressive and all, contains (7x4)+(6x4)+2 = 28+24+2 = 54 images! How can this be?!" To which, of course, I would explain "Shut up, that's how." Sharp-eyed observers might note that an image in the second-from-last row on the right-hand side appears twice; this is because these pictures are taken from the NEPA Bloggers "Past Headers" photo album, and I initially posted this photo with an incorrect location description. By the time I got the correction, several comments had been posted to the first version. So, rather than delete it, and them, I kept both versions.

Sharp-witted observers will further note that the first image is actually our Christmas 2011 photo, which was posted on December 21, 2011 and ran until December 27, 2011.So it doesn't really belong here, but I liked it so much I wanted to include it. Also, excluding it would have required some effort on my part that I didn't feel like exerting.

This was actually the most difficult and time-consuming image of the year, mainly because of three arbitrary rules I set up long ago: each header image must be 920 pixels wide, "NEPA Blogs" must appear in 96-point Times New Roman Bold, and the descriptive text must appear in 18-point Akbar. This meant I had to wing it when creating the basic image with two blocks of photos captured by screen grabs, particularly the gap between them. After I had them assembled, cropped, and resized to 920 pixels across, I then tried to fit the logo and descriptive text between them. If the text didn't fit, I couldn't just move things; I had to throw it all away and start over, leaving a slightly larger gap...all while working in a graphics program I'm just learning to use.

I hope I got the names of everyone who contributed a photo this year. Some of the names on that list were responsible for numerous photos, especially Cheri Sundra, Trish Hartman, and Brent Pennington. Michelle Hryvnak Davies and I also provided a disproportionately large number, though my contributions were often the result of suddenly realizing we didn't have anything else lined up, or that the image we planned to use for a given week couldn't be used for some reason.

(All of these images can be viewed in full size by clicking on the thumbnails in this post.)

These pictures represent Northeastern Pennsylvania ans seen through the eyes and lenses of many excellent local photographers. I know there are many others out there who have their own unique views of the region. Please share them with everyone by submitting them to nepablogs@gmail.com!

A big thank you to everyone who contributed a photo in 2012! And thanks to all the bloggers and readers who continue to give us a reason to keep NEPA Blogs going!

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