Thinking of you, Andrew!

[eadams Profile]

It has been a little over a year since Andrew Buchanan "retired" from creating SPE effects and sharing his artistic talent on his blog: http://andrewbuchanan.smartphotoeditor.com/

I still go back and watch his tutorials frequently, and I think of him often.

Andrew, I hope you are well and enjoying spending time with your family!

Eve

[New Beginning Profile]

How nice of you to remember me Eve - I did not know that it was over a year ago I 'retired' - how time passes. Glad you still find my archived blog useful - I know it was 'down' for a little while and I did see that you instigated its return which was lovely - so thank you. I have been blessed with five wonderful grandchildren (18 months - 6 years / 2 boys and 3 girls) and what a delight they have been. As you know I have a lot of medical & physical conditions that caused me to 'retire' - some of these are degenerative and as such I am worse now than when I gave up creating effects and writing my blog. However, I'm still in good heart and enjoying life. My days of going out on photo-shoots are virtually over as I had to give up driving and I find travelling arduous. I cannot walk for long nor climb hills, bend down...and so on - so the only photography I can do is from the same aspect, which is not very exciting for me. I have a huge archive of photographs that I can work from should I wish - and I have been having thoughts of creating some more effects for SPE - but the blog will remain as it is.

You'll notice that I've changed my user name to New Beginning - so anything I might submit in the future will be under that name and can be seen as a fresh start.

Although I have viewed the Forum from time-to-time, this is the first time I've responded to anything, but I felt I must thank you for your kindness. I do notice you are still a wonderful encourager of others - always one of the first to comment of new uploads.

It has been nice to see that a number of new effects creators have come on board and, as you know, that was my desire to see new authors submit effects to the SPE Gallery.

I do note however, that most of the effects have been built around existing effects and use existing textures and ideas - in a sense, I'm a little bit disappointed not to see a host of truly original effects and in fact the rate of effect submissions is way way down. This is not a criticism of any of the current effects creators, but when I was creating effects there seemed to be a great deal more participation and effects were critiqued and improved on or developed - one idea seemed to lead to another - this does not seem to be happening now - of late, I have not seen any WOW effects and hope for their return. I often think of my good friend Arwin and how he's doing - we used to work on collaborate process and jointly develop effects. Arwin was brilliant and often found new ways of doing things and taking them in new directions. So I wish him well.

Anyway for the time being I'm still in retired mode and time will tell if I'll ever create any more effects or make any more submission - so watch this space.

Thank you for all the correspondence we had together - it was always a real pleasure to hear from you - you were always willing to be honest and offer a proper critique which was invaluable to me.

I hope you are well my dear friend and finding much creativity in what you do.

Kindest regards Eve,

Andrew (New Beginning)

[eadams Profile]

I am so happy to hear from you again, Andrew! I have 4 grandsons aged 1-6 and my house is a huge playground, so I understand your delight in your grandchildren. I am heartbroken to hear about your declining health and pray that it will improve.

You are right about it having become quite here. On the one hand, it may be a sign of the maturity of the product - there are already so many effects available and the program works so well that there are few wishes open. I hope that is the case. I know I once said that I had ambitions to create effects of my own, but I still haven't got to the stage where I can have an idea and then go about creating an effect that embodies the idea. As a rule, I fail at the first step (having an idea). Mostly I've just played around with random things but never came up with anything that was of a quality worth sharing. I will review all your tutorials again and maybe - just maybe - I'll have an idea worth sharing.

Take care of yourself, my prayers go with you.

Kind regards,
Eve

[admin]

Hi Andrew,

Good to hear from you again, although I'm sorry to hear your health has declined. It's interesting watching the effects come in. Although there have been fewer of them recently, I have seen some really nice ones over the last few months. I think partly it is because as we get more and more effects it's more difficult to come up with something new. I've also seen that when you launch a new product, the first people you attract tend to be the ones who are most into it because they are actively looking for that kind of thing, the early adopters. Now it's more mature, it's a different kind of person we're attracting, perhaps less into making effects, but there are more and more of them, so the effects you guys are making are being seen and used by more and more people.

Best wishes to all,

Tony

[New Beginning Profile]

Nice to hear from you Tony,

Thanks for your kind words - I agree with you that products go through an adoption curve and what you say is probably true - glad I had the opportunity to be an 'early adopter' in this instance - although my natural inclination is to be a bit of a 'laggard' when it comes buying things. SPE caught my imagination right from the word go and I remember waiting with great anticipation for user contributions going live - it was an exciting time in my life and the development of SPE has given me a lot of pleasure over the years. I've really had about a year off photography and photo-art and hope to play a little in the future with SPE and perhaps contribute some new effects under my new name 'New Beginning' - that, at least, was the intention of my new user name - but we will have to wait and see if I can actually get back into creative photo art - I have an abundance of archived photographs to work from which is great as I really find it difficult to do photo-shoots these days!

Give my regards to all your colleagues who I knew including Gary and Andrew.

Thanks for all the creative opportunities that you afforded me in the past - I had a wonderful time and lot's of great memories.

Wishing you and your family all the very best!

Andrew

[Richard Briggs Profile]

I'd like to add my thanks you, Andrew, for all your submissions to the effects gallery. When I look back at my collection of 'artised' images I find the majority used effects by yourself. That's probably because you contributed a huge number but also because they are so diverse in nature from subtle to 'over the top' (the latter proving amazingly effective with specific types of images).

Richard

[New Beginning Profile]

Hi Richard,

Thanks for your kind words - glad you find some of my contributed effects useful, even the 'over-the-top' ones - I created these ones knowing that they might be difficult to use, but I also believed that creative artists might find a way of using them effectively in their own creations - I am always excited to see the 'way out' effects put to good use.

Hope you are well my dear friend and continuing to find the inspiration to be creative.

Kind regards,

Andrew

[eadams Profile]

Another year has gone by since I started this thread, but nothing has changed from my end. I still think of you every day, read your archived wonderful Artyfacts blog and refer to older posts of yours for ideas and inspiration.

I hope and pray that you are ok and able to enjoy your family and grandchildren. My own 4 grandsons are a constant joy, though I've got to the age where I can no longer keep up with them.

Anyway, if you read this, I want you to know that you are still in my thoughts.

[andrewb2012 Profile]

Hi Eve,

How uplifting to hear from you and that you still keep me in your thoughts. Glad your enjoying your grandsons - our five grandchildren are a delight and we see them lots.

Glad you are able to find inspiration from my archived blog (which I loved doing, but did not have the energy to continue with) - I have not done any processing for about two years now, but I have still taken images which I might process in the future - trouble is, I can't actually see the screen images on my camera in any detail - so all I do is 'point & shoot' - it's not really photography as in the past when I took control of settings, but, hey ho, maybe something will be worth keeping once I get them on to the computer. I have great difficulty bending and I'm getting worse at walking - so any shots I take are from a standing or sitting position - no longer do I lie on the ground, climb things or hang over things to get shots - just point and shoot. Today's cameras certainly allow you to do that with some success, but the fun has gone out of it for me.

I recently got a new computer and when I installed Smart Photo Editor I reverted to my old user name 'andrewn2012'.

I have been collecting & combining textures with a view to making new effects - so these might appear in the near future (not promising though).

I'm 70 in October and, unlike some of the really active 70 year olds, I'm feeling my age and am doing less and less active things. All the grandchildren recognize my deficiencies and accommodate me by altering their postures to enable me to lift them up on to my knee - quite delightful really!

I've lost a huge amount of dexterity when playing stringed instruments - but, by having a range of acoustic guitars, mandolins and ukuleles I can still have a bit of joy with music albeit at a much lower level of playing. One joy is that Myla (our eldest grandchild who is 7 years old) is now playing the ukulele and we can play together.

A friend has just arrived so I'll add to this later, but in the meantime thank you for your continued care and support.

Kind regards,

Andrew

ADDENDUM:

Friend now gone...so I'll continue.

I do look at the Forum from time-to-time and notice how encouraging you are to others (as you have always been) which is lovely. I don't think, however, that there is as much sharing of ideas as when I was active, but it is nice to see new members submitting new effects. I had many ideas that I was going to express through my blog but, sadly, these will not see the light of day now, although I might be able, as I suggested earlier, to submit more effects in the near future.

I am happy and surrounded with a great family and I have a wonderful wife - so I count myself very lucky despite not being as able as I once was and I was pleased to have been given the opportunity by the team at Anthropics to contribute to the success of Smart Photo Editor. It is interesting to see some of my 'extreme' effects being put to creative use and extensive use made of the 'more normal' effects, like watercolor effects. I had a blast and felt very fulfilled sharing my ideas.

Thanks again for your kind words Eve - have a wonderful year ahead.

Kind regards,

Andrew

[eadams Profile]

Thank you so much for the update, Andrew. It made me very happy to hear from you!

As you say, the community is not as active as it used to be. I haven't seen Arwin for a long time. I just searched on his name and the most recent post that the search found was from 2015. Since I joined the forum, you and Arwin were the only two people I can remember who were active in teaching others and encouraging creativity. I do miss those days. I am grateful to Anthropics for maintaining the old forum posts and your Artyfacts blog. Which reminds me - I really should cache the blog.

My thoughts are with you,
Eve