The Shuffle function isn't just for iPods but photos too

One of the things I love about my iPod is the shuffle function. I often like to set it to play every single song I have stored on there in a totally random order. I make sure that I exclude audio books from the playlist and keep it at just music.

Of course it's all songs that I've put in so (hopefully) it's all stuff I like, but you know those times when you just don't know what kind of music you're in the mood for? That's when this function comes into it's own and I always feel a moment of trepidation just before the next song comes along, simply because I have no idea what it's going to be, but I know it's bound to be something I love.

And I often do the same with my photos. There's lots of advice out there about how if you're putting together a slideshow, or a portfolio, then you should stick to a theme, or an orientation (all verticals or horizontals) or at least have some central point of cohesion that the presentation hangs off.

But sometimes you just wanna have fun. You want to remember the pictures you've taken in the past but you don't exactly know which pictures you want to look at. Play a slideshow on random I say. Go back six months, a year, two years, further if you're brave enough. Pick your favourite cataloguing software of choice and just play every single picture randomly. You might be there for a while but I guarantee you'll have a blast!

It really is so much fun reminiscing about past photographic adventures whilst having no idea whatsoever what the next picture is going to be. And why this picture? It came up randomly when I was searching for an accompanying pic. This is inside the Roger Rabbit ride at Tokyo Disneyland. A look at the metadata tells me it was taken at 1/5 second at ISO 3200. I knew I probably wouldn't pull it off but wanted to see what would happen. Sometimes you've gotta let go of the controls and just put it in 'Random'.