Are shadows really there?

 Shadows are an example of something visual that our conscious mind normally ignores. Most often folk don't really see them or at least can't recall them.

Yet they can be wonderful aids to getting interesting compositions or even telling an intersting story.  Also on a sunny day they can help get the best exposure (even without a light meter)

So remember "Whats in the Shadows

Getting Superwide Handheld without the fuss

 

Stitching panoramas has become a lot simpler, but different programs did have different tolerance (or lack of) when stitching a handheld series of photos. Particular in three areas.

1) Near Perfect alignment woes, one photo out of alignment could sabotage the series.

2) Exposure varying from frame to frame, particularly in a clear sky for super wide views, could lead to obvious striping in the sky rather than a smooth blend.

3) Variable overlap, often tripped up the merging or just stop the merging.

I've been sending my updated ON1 Photo RAW 2022 many of these issues in hand held panorama sequences and I've been pleased that it is handling them well. Its also faster off the blocks (to preview) and much more efficient with time and space with the final render. You still have to export the propriety .onphoto file, which can be easily edited with any other tools in ON1 The export can now be a DNG file (ie.a RAW style format)

A Great Day in Jell's Park

Bye, Bye... ... Stora

My little Netgear Stora, has been serving me well for nearly two decades. Primarily for most of its life it was connected to my LAN as a NAS, backing up my work computers and laptops but mirroring my key working directory whenever those computers were connected to my LAN. It worked so well I only had to use it to recover files on two occasions (both either hard disk or computer update crash). Ok last year after a lot of trouble with windows updates on my studio computer and little portable spectra refused to connect to the Stora at start up. It became tedious to work out if things were running ok and I turned the Stora off and have experimented with file & folder synchronization software (still not sure whether automatic or manual synch suit me better, but it does in theory get me close to mirroring my working files.

During the Stora's life the disk space was expanded from a 250GB single drive up to two 1TB disks, mirrored internally. In the early days it also gave family members their own shared space (discontented because it was seldom used). Then was my photo backup area until I started taking RAW format photos and movies and I soon overflowed space available.

I'm actually choosing to go back to having a traditional files server, (locked away in my old comms room). I have a couple of candidate computers that windows 10 updates have killed, well as far as Microsoft is concerned. I want it to be on 24/7 but secure. I also want this computer to have a DVD reader, perhaps even tape or Zip drive (to allow different media backups and/or reading old technologies). Finally, the ability to have two or more external drives connected (ie be able to copy whole archive disks setup). The downside is this will take up a lot more space than the little black box

Despite having used Ubuntu for some time on my little air gapped archive computer, which I have only been using roughly at six-month intervals and thus I hadn't time to become friends with Ubuntu. I've moved to using Linux Mint (it seems a lot cleaner and simpler for the stuff I want ie. little or no learning curve).

So I'm probably going backwards in technology but I trust I will be keeping things simple and reliable in the old fashion dependable sense.

A Bit of Self Promotion

Whilst I cringed at the ongoing tidal wave of "look-at-me" self-promotion on today's social media, I will begin reusing facebook with a bit of self-promotion. Infact I'll also promote my next PhotoWalk, here and on Instagram as well.

Next PhotoWalk :: In Memories of Trees   Meet at Madeline's Cafe Jells Park on Saturday 23rd July at 10am. Register through mga (click on the photo to reach the link)

So sorry folks if you haven't heard from me in while, and now you are getting the same promotional stuff from three sources. Such is social media life!

Social Media when it isn't very social

 

People are prisoners of their phones,
that's why they are called cell phones.

I'm really not qualified to deliver this rant, because I hardly use social media anymore. I'd just like too. I'm totally over all the hassles I keep getting into.  Facebook has recently started showing that I am logged in all the time (and I'm not). Which made me suspect that I was being hacked. Simple I thought! I could change my password or at worst close the account. Trouble is I can't log into Facebook, it won't let me, especially from the forgot password option. Generally it just wanted me to download apps to my phone, from which I had deleted the Facebook app two years ago. I can see my Facebook stream on a browser and others can as well. I had set up the account using the convenient OAuth authentication protocol via my Gmail account. Perhaps I could fix the issue from there? No! Also there is big a catch 22 in my logic, if I can't log in I can't delete the account. Or can I perhaps email support at Facebook. Ok get real, that's pointless!!!!

The other strange thing is I get notifications to my gmail about status messages and posts of my "friends" (I don't recognize all of them). The more I looked the harder it is to believe. What is going on, is someone or something just teasing me?

About three weeks ago I was also not able to post to either of my instagram accounts, and my phone seemed to always be a day behind what it was showing when compared to accessing the same stream on a computer via a browser. I was able to log in and therefore changed my passwords, to no avail. I then went through my followers and saw a few with just one post and flagged as private accounts and not anyone I recognized, so I blocked and deleted them then, A day later I could post again. Were these two things related or is Instagram turning into an unreliable mess like its big sister? Who knows! 

At least I can post on Instagram if I want now.

Emboldened by this success I followed one of the notification links in my Gmail, ignored the request to download any app to my phone and got to my Facebook stream (but not logged in). I tried logging in (no Oath option, in fact nothing). But I felt my phone vibrate and there was a message that looked a lot like a two-factor authentication message with a code/ This is puzzling but when I looked at my browser, I had logged in. Amazing! So I immediately changed my password, no problems. I logged out and was able to log in again. Very strange. I also looked through my friend requests and messages (dozens & dozens). Sorry folks I haven't been ignoring you. There were about a dozen friend requests from people I don't recognize so I deleted them rather than confirm. All good but it still looked like I was still continually on-line even though I logged out. Perhaps someone is teasing me afterall.

An hour or so later I seem to be off line. Hopefully I can get back to using social media to keep in contact with my friends and groups.

PS The caption on my bitmojie cartoon at the top of the post came from a cartoon I saw on Facebook as I was wading through the issues above. However, when I went back to find it so I could acknowledge the source and I can't find it. Damn you Facebook!

Time for an update

I think I've mentioned before that I'm not a fan of the subscription model for software. In theory they deliver to you the most up-to-date versions of the software continuously. However, this really has not been the case in practise (at least so far), You just have to look at adobe who got into the very ..very ....very (there should be more very's but you'd probably stop reading) profitable subscription model a decade ago. Over the first 10 years if you paid the subscription for different bits of their software you would have paid twice to three times more than if you had just bought the software outright and three upgrades within that10 years. What's more they had not upgraded that much. 

Now however, Adobe are becoming more competitive in terms of new upgrades and modules because of the number of alternative products. Also the alternative products quickly learned to offer both purchase outright (with upgrade under 50% of the original purchase price) or subscription,

Anyway the idea of waiting three years, two or three upgrades, has worked well for me. Unless of course the new upgrade has feature(s) I really need. I also like the option that I can download the new version as a trial, with all the new features active to test out.

All this is a long way around saying I was happy to update from ON1 Photo RAW 2020 to ON1 Photo RAW 2022.5, not just for the new resize feature (which is great) but it makes a big difference for me and multi-image panorama. I also find the export a processed image nicer/

Not that the 2020 version was bad, it was slower, particularly on the export) and didn't do a such great job when the dynamic range across the whole panorama is large (The result from the 2022 version is shown above)

A puzzling cloud at Inverlock

 I made the ABC weather last night with a photo of an unusual cloud. It appeared to be a regular puffy cumulous rising high into the sky BUT it was chopped in a series of segments, perhaps strata might be a better term. I could not figure out what might cause this.? Hence sending it into the weather and perhaps an explanation (there was none)

Thanks to Steve Keyes aka Sandyfeet.Photography for the TV screen Capture

It wasn't till later as I was processing this ultra wide multi-image panorama taken shortly after the above photo that I realized I was tricked by the perspective. The puffy clouds were actually very flat, at the same height but different distances from me.

The morale(s) of the story are stay inquisitive, always be ready to take a photo (or two!) and don't forget to hashtag your photos on social media.