Photo du Jour.

I was back in the butterfly collection of Central Stories, here in Alexandra, Central Otago, today.
Rows and rows of butterflies are always such a tempting subject, just about as bad as autumn leaves. For decades I've looked into displays like this and reached for my camera.

Today's photo is one of the more interesting for me. One reason is that I have a new camera which is more technologically advanced than ones that I have previously owned. It can gulp up photos of close-up objects. It has a very good image stabilisation system that takes the shake out of photos being made at slow speeds i.e. dim light.

It also has the function of face recognition. I've never used this before and next time I am in company I will experiment with it. Principle is that the software running the camera can by some miracle recognise that there is in the frame a human face and that it will then ensure that that face is perfectly in focus and perfectly exposed. The software can recognise and adjust for up to 9 faces in the frame. Remember the days when you took a snap of your two favourite friends only to find that they were both slightly out of focus but the wallpaper between their heads was sharp.

What really clinched it for me with this camera was a reviewer who tested it for face recognition on monkeys, and it worked. The reviewer also said that face recognition will be standard on all digital cameras very shortly just as image stabilisation has become.

Now I am going to surprise you. I suspect that this photo is not about butterflies at all. Someone described one of my themes as 'the aesthetics of dispersal'. I think that this is true. I seek out certain visual arrangements, they may appear in all sorts of subject matters, in some ways 'subjects' are merely the vehicle.