I have an excellent friend on twitter, @lau_merritt, who has been very supportive of my photography work since I can’t remember when, but certainly since not that long after I joined twitter. I’m sure she was among my first followers.

We keep in touch, re-tweet each other’s posts and I especially appreciate it when she reposts my blog articles… which I have a funny feeling she’ll do today.

Now the other day the subject of photoshopping came up. Lau, a keen amateur photographer, was struggling with some photos she’d taken on a recent trip. She was frustrated that she’d only just got the camera she took with her, hadn’t had time to get to grips with the controls, and had shot in jpeg mode where she’d meant to shoot in RAW.

It was when Lau came to edit the images that the Photoshop fun really started. I received some messages of frustration and Lau felt she was butchering her images. We joked about the slaughter, the sounds of pixels screaming,  red pixels sprayed up the walls – this kind of weird humour appeals to me.

The culmination of our conversation was a rather excellent sketch which Lau drew and which, with her permission, I’m featuring here. After the sketch came the blog article, which you can view by clicking on the photo. I’m hoping for the movie and the musical to be announced soon. The Photoshop Butcher, queue deep, growly voiceover, “In a world where pixels have no meaning, welcome to the slaughter…”

Lau’s Photo Butcher – click the photo to see her full article