That Didn't Last Long

My Linux/Mint Fileserver has already died three times in the past few weeks, The last time terminally, well I'd already swapped out two hard discs, which both crashed, didn't fancy wasting a third. So the much-altered old HP, aka Obsidan, has been consigned to the hard waste collection. 

Graveyard of Hardware killed by Window10 Updates

Ok back to the Stora, but that's a hard luck story as well. It works but none of my current PCs, and other devices can run the software (incomnpatible drivers stop installation) or even access it via a browser, because Adobe flash is required, which even Adobe no longer support and have removed it from downloads. I had to use my Linux netbook to reconnect (it had old version of the stora software) and "recover" the data from the stora onto already overloaded external USB drives.

Rather than panic I'm going to limp along with a monthly backup based on two copies of data but an old fashion SON - FATHER - GRANDFATHER set of Archives of keepers (files & photos I believe are worth archiving. This involves serious CULLING.

Visiting the Night Cafe

Returning to the #handrawphoto project

This isn't hand drawn but was once a self-portrait photo, inspired by MC Escher. It is now however a construct using VQGAN+Clip Artifical Intelligence algorithm via the website Night Cafe. Rather than Building a random "white noise" Canvas, I started with my own photo, and using a cubitist style

Wandering into Midjourney on the way to Dall-E 2

I'm not sure how I managed to wander into the beta of Midjourney in a search to find Dall-E 2 (an AI based graphic tool that uses text to create an image, well so the claim goes!) I've registered an interest but not got into Dalle-E yet.

Ok what does midjourney make of the phrase "wandering in the light"?

These are just four alternatives  and I haven't, figured out how to refine one of them, yet. They do look like wandering, but out of the shadows rather than in the light. Amazing but still a little uncanny valley.

And here is a nice summary of how this form of AIart (text to Image) has been developing.

Will AIart replace artists any day soon? 

No I don't think so. 

Yet all the developments are occurring rapidly and amazing, and I'm guessing social media will soon be flooded with these unique-ish but not quiet original creations and like fake news how will we be able to tell the authentic,

Next Photowalk :: Birds in Flight

The theme of the next Photowlk in Jells Park is Birds in Flight (details and registration on Eventbrite)

Reluctantly replacing the sky

I'm definitely not a sky replacement guy, but there has been so much discussion and hype about it I figured I should at least try it. This is a photo I was looking to capture the "sparkle" on the lake with a low winter sun backlighting the scene. This is a challenging photo from the rigors of exposure given the Dynamic Range to be captured, Getting detail in the foreground shadows means the sky (which was the vivid Australian sky blue becomes a blown out grey/blue. Importantly I hadn't taken a bracketed set., to no real chance to recover the sky

Original Photo

My recent purchase (Update?) to Luminar Neo. With it big promotion of the ease of Sky Replacement meant I really should try it out, despite my reluctance to do such things. So here are three results, all achieve with one click to select a sky from Luminar Neo's library and a couple of tweaks for Sky Orientation (the positioning of the sun) and also the Scene Relighting.

Adding a blue sky (clouds)  & relighting

Making it Overcast

Moving to the Golden Hour?

Does it worry me that they all look uncannily real?

Yes a little.

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.

preDawn Warm & Cool

I'm up in FNQ (Far north Queensland) enjoyng it, So little time and no reason to blog (otherthan its overcast & raining). before I travelled north I wtshe some of the sessions on B&H's recent Optix conference, and Stop motion phtography caught my interest. There was a lngthy list of gear (its was B&H running it after all) and I though I've gott most of that, perhaps I need to read up a bit about the intervalometer, perhaps not.

I have a great view to the east out over the coral sea, So it was back to early morning getting up. At least its not cold. In case you've never tried it, a dark to light stop motion is a challenge, But I like a challenge.

The earlt starts can be rewarded in other ways. Even when They are just glimpses.

Don't Worry, Stay Happy Taking Photographs

 Go figure I'm a keen photographer, but not really into Stories or Reels, bit over all the ads popping up on YouTube and definitely not in into Facebook or Tik Tok. I set up this blog primarily to share what I was discovering about digital photography. So, what happened?

My suspicion is the rise of social media has gobbled up original content, and used it to keep you watching so they can charge advertisers (and they make squillions). The actual creatives get lost in the millions of copycat wanna-bees and if they receive anything it's a pittance. See my post about Danny Gregory's recent essay.

Really unfortunately we the viewers of social media gets suck into the black hole of the death scroll, picking up the photo to look at social media way too often, swiping and swipe again without really paying attention, not properly looking, swiping and swiping some more. At the end you don't feel refresh, you are more likely to feel frustrated or depressed. As Adam of Firstman Photography points out you are much better off spending the time actually out photographing, getting the benefit of exercise and being out in the real world, perhaps even nature.

It worth watching to the end because Adam gives some very heart-felt encouragement for those of us with a deep passion for and care about photography to stick in there

Well am I doing anything about it! YES

You can make the change too. It's easy to put down your phone and pick up your camera (or click on a different icon/app on your smartphone, phones can be good cameras too).

Ok what about sharing your photos? That will be an upcoming post (soon but not exactly sure when),

Getting a starburst effect

My attempt on the photowalk to demonstrate how to get a starburst effect really just showed I needed to clean my lens. BUT here is what I wanted to show. If your camera can stop down the lens to a small aperture (a high f number such as F22) do that. It is then a very small hole for the light to come through. Then find a place that the strong sun light (even though it was overcast) is peeking through (such as a gap in the branches of the silhouetted tree). It's that easy.

Remember to change the F stop back after taking the photo to avoid the diffraction (allowing you to get the starburst effect), causing problems in your normal photos.

What happens when you separately photograph White, Grey & Black Sheets

 

It's a simple question.

What happens if you take a white sheet A grey Sheet and a Black sheet and photograph them separately. 

Fill the veiwfinder with just a single colour.

If you have trouble focusing, you can move the center of the viewfinder to the edge and half press the shutter button. Don't push it all the way and move back into the center of the sheet and full press the shutter button.

Hmm, is this what you expected?

All the photos look a pretty similar grey! Is there something wrong with my camera? Well no.

So now put a small reference card in the middle of each sheet. This little card could be a photo, it just needs to contain a decent tonal range (eg from very dark to very light. Take the photos again.

These were all taken with the same camera. The only thing I did was push the shutter button once i has focussed on each sheet.

One hint is my camera is working exactly as it should. There is nothing wrong with it.

Try this out yourself. You can do it with just two sheets (eg black & white). 

If you want you can leave a polite comment explaining what's happening but I might leave my further discussion for a couple of weeks.

Have fun

Death Scrolling, Changes & Danny's Essays

 I do enjoy Danny Gregory's weekly essays (see also video below), but I am rapidly running out of patience with two things.

1) The inconsistency of the social media giants (watch for more post on that topic)

2) System upgrades that just happen when you turn on your computer or pickup the phone (I've already written a lot about my frustration with upgrades particularly window)

So where that that get me, Basically Nowhere

Which means it's time to forget them, pick up my camera or brush and listen with the occasional chuckle to Danny's take on the situation.

 

Photowalks Resuming (at last)

The lengthy covid-19 lockdowns and some personal health reasons, meant I stopped running Photowalks some time ago. I'm pleased to announce I am resuming them in conjunction with MGA (the Monash Gallery of Art). There will now be a small fee (to help cover the administration), and I encourage anyone with a camera (including phones) to come along.

Sunday June 12th. 1:00pm

Meet at Monash Gallery of Art

860 Ferntree Gully Road

Wheelers Hill, VIC 3150

Note registration is now via the mga eventbrite site or events on their web page,

The Connections Exhibition is OPEN

 

Wednesday Wanderer's Connnections Exhibition opens today at AGRA Gallery

22 artists (including me) are represented with 82 works. If you want to "Meet the Artists" you will have that opportunity on Saturday & Sunday 5/6th March; 1-4pm

Unfortunately, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi died last year. His wisdom from living through the second World War, his father being the Hungarian Ambassador in Rome at the time the communist takeover of Hungary in 1949. It is probably just my fantasy but it would have been great if he could have sat down for a quiet chat with Putin and explained the misery, tragedies, insecurities that are the toll of losing freedoms, jobs, homes, can impose on the innocent. His deep wisdom into the secret to happiness is still very relevant today. 

This is an important TED talk that Mihaly gave in back in 2008 covering the lead into how he started describing the flow experience. It is wonderful context told in a series of stories,

His book (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, will give you greats insight in the Flow State

Wednesday Wanderers and the Flow State

The wanderers began by happen-chance. Three of us started our own small plein air painting/sketching group out in the real world. Soon after Victoria began it first lock down and after a couple of rocky test, we started meeting on zoom on Wednesday at 10:00am. It was a welcome get together and we started painting a shared photo supplied by one of the participants since it was the free zoom meeting we only had 40 minutes for the session before we got cut off. Not a lot of time to carry out a watercolour painting of a scene you had not seen before.

The Watercolours Society of Victoria had purchased the Pro version of zoom and kindly allowed us to use their service so we were no longer bound by the 40 minute limit but kept the rough timing and format.

There is a Chinese proverb attributed to Lao Tzu

“If you are depressed you are living in the past.
If you are anxious you are living in the future.
If you are at peace you are living in the present.”

It is this being in the present when you are painting, that probably explains lot of the popularity of the Wanderers

Mihaly Explains [watercolour on Canvas by Norm Hanson]

I believe it has a lot to do with helping the participants slip into what the Psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi identified and calls the Flow State. In which the duration of time is altered, hours pass in minutes, minutes can stretch out to seem like hours.

After interviewing many successful people for his study of the Psychology of Optimal Experience, he concluded that there were seven common experiences shared by these people. He calls these the Elements of Enjoyment

1. Confronted by a task, with a chance of completing it.
2. Be able to concentrate on the task
3. Task has a clear goal
4. Immediate Feedback
5. Could participate with a deep but effortless involvement (remove from the constraints and frustration of every day life)
6. Be enjoyable (allowing people to exercise control over the actions)
7.  Concern for self disappears (yet paradoxically the feeling of self emerges stronger after the flow is over.

Mihaly liked to explain this in two dimensions, the challenge versus skills.

He believes you can most easily move into flow if you are aroused (but anxious) by the challenge and you take the opportunity to practise and improve your skills, or you are confident in your skill (but bored) until you get inspired by the challenge. Flow occurs when a task’s challenge is balanced with one’s skill.

A very important aspect of the Wanderers is the group dynamic. Mihaly studied and advised many sporting groups including the successful  Australian Women’s Hockey team, Australian Olympics cyclists and ice skaters. He lists these important characteristics for teams to Achieve Flow and thus improve their collective performance by achieving group flow.

1. Group empathy (including helping others to achieve their desired performance)
2. Activity has clear goal
3. Opportunity to be both autonomous and at the same time cooperating in the group.
4. Immediate feedback (both personally and shared with the team)
5. Skill required matches the difficulty of the task. Some individuals can focus on different skills 

Whilst we were not always in focused together, and seldom on all aspects. Those participating were generally focussed in the present challenge testing their skills and often reaching the flow state.  Mihaly says it is this flow that allows the enjoyment of experiencing that you are good at something while you are doing it. It didn’t matter so much if you had or had not finished or looked the same as others.

 Norm Hanson
Febraury 2022

Connecting What and Who are the Wednesday Wanderers?

 What were you doing during the lockdowns? (well assuming they are over) 

Here is something I did and we are having an exhibition, If you are in Melbourne or allowed into Victoria please come and have a look.

Wednesday Wanderers was born out of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Unable to meet or paint en plein air during strict lockdowns, three committee members from the Watercolour Society of Victoria were feeling isolated and fed up with their own four walls.  It’s easy to forget that before COVID, many people had never used or even heard of Zoom.  We used it to connect a diverse community of watercolourists interested in escaping from the pandemic blues once a week.  We adopted a quirky speed painting format that challenged our skills and fit in with the technology requirements. 

Immediately it became apparent that there was a need for something like this, as membership quickly grew.  It has enabled artists who could never have come to a real-world paint-out to spend time some enjoyable time painting together in a safe environment.  Time poor artists, artists who live far from Melbourne, housebound artists, and those caring for family members. 

 We continue to meet fortnightly now that lockdowns are presumably a thing of the past.  We now have Wanderers in many parts of Victoria, as well as New South Wales, Western Australia, and the United States.  We have become a warm, welcoming community that continues to grow.

,,, Jane Elliston

Another Sponge Tip for Watercolourists

Carting around water pods at the beach, if your sketching can be just one extra task too many. I decided to try out using a couple of pieces of foam/sponge. One to clean pigment off the brush to other to hole clean water to wet the brush.

The tropics come to Gwondanaland

  

Melbourne is famous for having 4 seasons in a day. However we seldom actually see a tropical style downpour. My Cretaceous garden has been suffer through some summer heat (and no rain) but today the rains came (about 26mm in a little over half an hour. Other parts of Melbourne had more.

Anyway my little garden, for a few moments took on the mantle of a true rainforest.

What is the Sponge for?

"CULL"ing the four letter world that photographers don't want to speak

I'm getting close to filling my 5TB disk on which I store my mastercopy of my photo library. There are almost half a millions files, a lot are jpeg & RAW pairs and there are movies as well. This actually only covers my 2010 to 2021, The 1999 to 2009 is on a differeent 1,5TB disk, Then there are 6 2TB off-site backup copies in 2 sets of 3 external usb harddrives, that I rotate every 2 months. Its becoming a bit of a production. Also i'm now faced with the isses to determine what is the most sensible way to get extra space.

1. Probably the most likley, is I'll take two of the external disks from my second offsite disks and add a third local photo library disks (I do have one USB port left) and make just one offsite set of 4 2TB disks. The surplus 2TB can become a rotating backup of the last 2 or 3 months. OK this will give me "some" headroom for at least the first part of next year.

2. Sit down and do some serious "CULLing" of things I am never likely to reconsider. This is that really scary thing a lot of photographers or even frantic smartphone snappers, will have to face at some time. 

Why has this come about because I have and use photo mechanic and (usually) spend a bit of time when I "ingest" (load the photos from the camera card onto the computer) my photos where I in theory on load the "keepers"? The out of focus, poor composition, unfortunate expression and straight bad images always get deleted straight away.

The problem is I have come to like and use techniques that have multipled the photos I take. Particularly with the fun features on my little olympus cameras (HDR & Focus bracketting, Panoramic stitching, Burst mode and PRO capture). Also the new favoutite and automated intervalometer for stop motion. Ok I blame them, but perhaps I have become a little less dilligent and skip through these sets as I import them, not being strict enough on what gets deleted.

OK could I find and use modern software (specifically AI based system) to help me re-tackle the horrible task of reviewing and further deleting my photos. Seems it could even be an economically attractive option as well if I could get ride of perhaps 40% of my files, that could translate into 3-4 years before I have to outlay on extra disk capacity. Not sure what say two 4-5TB external harddrive (or the equivalent cloud storage) might cost but lets estimate around $150 each or $300 now. If I could find something for $100 that looks economiclly attractive.

What started this was an "offer" for AfterShot at $9.99 ( and thats probably USD$) but in my mind that seemed perfectfor my budget and I download the "free trial". It did a few good things, like  sneak preview grouping that used AI to find those images most like the ones shared on instagram and like services and was very strict with focus, Howeer a lot of its features like eyeclosed andface detect stuff didn't help me a lot also I was getting almost as many possible duplicates as I had photos (ie jpeg & raw pairs were reporting as two duplicates) and in most cases it was flagging the jpeg as the file to keep. Then I realised that the $9.99 was just per month and the discount was jut for a year if you paid up front after that it was $14.99 per month. Buying the extra disk now would be a much better option. I can see a wedding or group photographer is likley to save a lot of time. However what I am looking for is a cheap space creator. 

I do own another programs called  Corel AfterShotPro, which is a light weight RAW Editor I still use it occasionally mainly on my little HP Spectre when away from home. So one aftershot is probably enough. It does allow me to label/keyword, rank, colour code, and flag as Pick or reject but manually not via and automatic AI assisted approach.

"Exploiting" (aka Faking) Banksy? as an NFT

Here is an interesting article from The BBC about a bansky work "warning sign" being "re-created" as an NFT by its current owner. The story contain a link to the you tube below, which appears to be a spoof of the film, "exit via the gift shop". superficially its all noble sounding, a proportion of the purchase going to charity. etc...

Looking deeper it appears a lot like a not so subtle attempt to ramp up dark memories of a terrible tragedy and opportunity to get publicity and probablu a lot of money from an asset propped in a lounge room. 

At the heart of the issue is can you believe social media and the NFT market (if DAOs or truly anything organized like that truly exists). Is it actually people scamming and exploiting others? Are NFT a real long term investment. What does ownership of something that is public and anyone can "look" on line (and potentially make decent exact reproduction). We do also know Bansky doesn't really like the art investment “establishment” and has gamed them previously. Who can we believe?

Former Christie's auctioneer Charles Allsopp said the concept of buying one [NFT] made "no sense" and "people who invest in it are slight mugs".

 I'm inclined to see this as a story, parts of which (may all) might be just to ramp up sales of something virtual. I would suggest Charles Allsopp advice is worth considering. However please read the details and make up your own mind.

Return to the Old Chestnut :: Scaning Versus Photography

I have looked at the issues of the best way to get a digital copy of your art work many times. I'm still open to finding the best way, but realise there might be different solutions for different media and how the image is to be used. With watercolour possible the most difficult to find a good solution, because much of it's magic lies in it's transparent colours.

 

Now it's your turn. The above images have been capture with webcam, phone, mirrorless camera and scanner (in no particular order).

Which best shows the watercolourness? 

Which looks best?

The story of the Magic Pen

 My Creativity bootcamp, has been interupted by life, and might be slow to start (but please keep an eye out).

In the meantime here is a nice story, from Danny Gregory of Sketchbook Skool)

Creativity Bootcamp & Finding your Dominant Eye

This is a new project for me, pulling together a series of art oriented warmup exercises and drills that help focus on seeing as well as practising a few skills. I’m starting by help you find your dominant eye.

What the? ... is going on at skylum!

I must admit I have read and watched the hype about Luminar NEO. I really can't believe it isn't backward compatible with either Luminar 4 or Luminar AI. Then there is also the constant hype to preorder it. Finally I don't see much in the way of features I would want to use, perhaps with the exception of layers (but they look more like selective filters to me. So I was committed to using Lumiar AI "as is" (ie no more updates)

Then there was a notification that Luminar AI had an update. Great they haven't forgotten their customers.

 Ok it doesn't do much (som extra camera compatibility, fix a big problem with Some Cannon R models and a sky replace feature update (I haven't used the sky replacement in anger yet) Ok not a lot to see. Wrong every time I start I get a pop-up nagged about buying into the Luminar NEO vapourware before its released.

 

You are going to annihilate a lot of your customers Skylum.

A wonderful end to the day

Yet Another Facebook Fail

 

I don't use facebook much at all. I was promped to use it when instagram continually cropped my lastest inktober post to square!

So I decised to post it to facebook. Well that didn't get far. Despit getting a code to my phone it wasn't recognised. 

Three codes, three times!

Is this really facebook? No matter facebook be gone. 

Artistic Spirit

 

I had some fun today creating a still life for my 365 Photo Project and a re;ated sketch for todays Inktense Topic Spirit.

The absente was drunk long ago, its lime juice in the glass to represent that milky green. The photo was run through Luminar Ai (with just a slight tweak to the right of the Enhance Accent slider) The background is a Corel Painter simple photo clone. The sketch on the right was made with Faber-Castell Connector Pens and Gel Pen. 

Having fun creating art is good therapy and great for your health. A lock down antidote.

The creeping cost of upgrades

I have notice with a sadness that the former champions of perpetual license (ie you buy the software) in the graphic/art/ photography areas, where doing well because they picked up a lot of extra buyers running away from Adobe’s Subscription model. Particular at the start up adobe did ot upgrade much. The champions were upgrading often and charging a smallish amount (20-30%) for the upgrade, and this also went down well with users.

Things have changed a lot of the last two years. Adobe have reduced subscription options (particularly for a single piece of software or group of complimentary tools) and increased subscription for the full creative ? to a ludicrous level (if you aren’t using it for a profitable business). This is clearly gouging a customer base. Not nice and another way or suggesting they are cutting of your nose to spite your face.

Unfortunately the price of upgrades are creeping up to 70-80% of the first license. If the software has been upgraded significantly that may be ok. A couple of suppliers prompting upgrades aren’t yet advertising an upgrade price, if one is even to be offered. Perhaps waiting 2-3 upgrade cycles is still ok. However it is rapidly reaching the case where if you are a loyal software user the amount you pay annually is not a lot different between perpetual licensee and subscriptions.  Both teams are gouging their user base. Possibly there is a little churning of software sold to the same number of users. In both cases we the users are the losers.

The case of Luminar Neo, is a particularly blantant attempt. It is probably a market driven ploy trying to prompt hype aboput all new, limit time/number pre-purchase seats, etc, etc but I personally just see something that isn’t legacy compatible and does not offer a  bigger step forward as is being over-hyped. I have Luminar AI and love it (not as my main photo editor that’s still ON1) but because some of the AI features are really useful and time saving. I feel I share a lot this think with Peter Forsgård . Until there is a trial version I can try I will not commit to spending anything on what is still vapourware.

Lowdown on Lockdown

 

The promised easing of lockdown conditions, didn't materialized (ok they are pshed forward a few days). It was however a great day to get out and have a picnic of one household and sepearted groups.It Jells park it wasn';t even possible to park so we (my wife & I) had to go a little further.

Everything is nice and green (alternative pring sun and rain) is doing wonders but the grass is getting tall. A great opportunity to get down low..

So why am I bothering?

I am so over this. Another nice day and I opened up in my studio to do some painting. I turned on the compuyer (only recently recovered from a lengthy period of "Death by UpGrade") to listen to some music.  I left the spunnerv run and did a bit of sketching.

Two hours later, it finally "recovered" but will not recognise Wifi. So I shifted the computer to my office, where I can make a direct ethernet onnection to my router. Another hour plus of repair, but I can access the internet.

Another day gone! You guessed it I moved it back to the studio and more waiting and no go.

Spring ?

 

Even more Interuptions

Social Media in general has become a obessed with interupting you amd keeping your attention (primarily so they can sell more "eyeballs" to advertisers). The time you spend can be worthwhile occassionally but not when you mindlessly have to scroll through hundereds of images, video or headlines. This is primarily a waste of your time yet the notification bell keeps tinging.Some phone let you change the tune but it does take a lot of self control not to pick up your phone or open a new browser window. It is made more complex when you have had enough and want to uninstall, it mostly has to be done individually by notification service by app or service, and it was easy to unsubcribe from say theei newsletter but the notifications where then defaulted back on. My current feeling is less than 1% of these notification actually need my attention so I now inore then all, and often missed phone calls!

Notificitaion * 99% => Interuptions

One respite was flickr it had a beautiful recent activity page which (automatically) curated a selection of your friends and those you followed and was the landing place when you logged in. There was no need for the endless scroll just to find something worthwhile to view and study for a while, not swipe up of down to get over it to the next 2 second glimpse in a length search.

Well that was until now ... ...

"Now that most of the Flickr community has had the chance to experience the new Notification Center, it's almost time to close the book on the Recent Activity page."

Flickr do offer a range of decent setting for notfications so it is worth visiting that page now and pruning back the default notification setting before they become to annoying.

A Cautionary Tale

Let us imagine a story where you have the opportunity to put a notice or a picture on your local community notice board.

There are a few rules that you have never heard of and are keep secret. There is a time limit of around 20 minutes. There is a view threshold of 20 clicks/views. If they haven’t meet these conditions your notice/picture is papered over from public view by ads and only shown to friend within a new 2 hour time window and only if they have recently viewed your stuff. After that it falls into the discard bin.

Well this story is not a lot different to the Instagram's and Facebook's secretive algorithms.

The result is “celebrity” wannabees and a bland sameness.

Where is you tube heading?

Well the YouTube studio blog update says they are going dark (that’s the option to use dark mode) but sadly this may be a good metaphor for the way the informational content of their offerings are heading.

Once upon a time (well a while ago now) YouTube was a great place to look up "how to" do stuff. Especially those fiddly little things about home maintenance and the things in the user manuals (does anyone other than me still read them?). A five to ten minute video that went through a process step by step was wonderful at allowing a lot to get done.

Things have changed! Viewng YouTubes now has more than likely incorporated ads which often interrupt the process (ok a good step for google to extract money from advertisers) but hopeless for our concentration (look up the dangers inherent in context switching - if you think these interuptions can be ignored). This smell of cash has unfortunately also attracted a lot of players seeking to game the situation with SEO and hacks to find and copy-cat popular video and repackage their message, but with flashy click-bait titles and less helpful information,. All to often they are unresearched and have misleading information presented in fashionable colours and well curated backgrounds. I can’t see any genuine attempts by google at fact checking. It is all about becoming a celebrity and “owning” the hashtag. Because this get more views and perhaps longer attention they become promoted in YouTube suggestions,

The true information gold is sinking to the bottom, and difficult to discover.

Why I am moderating all comments & deleting so many?

There are just so many bogus commenters around at the moment both here and on YouTube. Most of them are promoting software that I have mentioned and have links to “cracks" ways to download and run the software for free, but that always leaves the way open for different forms of malware. A few are pointless rants, leading to even more dubious places.

So I have turned on comment moderation here and on YouTube. I do read through and comments and definitely carefully visit sites linked in the comments. It is tedious for me but I don't want to leave you my readers venerable to any innocent looking  cyber-naughties.

I  would however really welcome genuine comments and recommendation of things you like or wish to draw my attention too. Just be patient it may take a week or two for me to keep.

Just a moment ... ...

 

If you have been wondering why my blog has fallen silent of late. There are two reasons, some health issues (I'm well on the mend now) and arghhh I've had enough of Windows upgrade! I'm and not looking forward to Windows 11!

I have been seriously battling against Windows 10 updates since October last year, even longer if you count my little toshiba netbook (now happily being an occassionally used Linux machine that has stepped up to replace others that have fallen). During this time three (and a half) computers have stubbornly refused to reboot after upgrades and I have wasted too many days trying to reload windows (using both thw offical windows  tools (which end up in deep loops of incomplete installs) and using Ventoy on a bootable standalone USB to install from various ISO files. Trying to install official Microsoft version of windows just lead back to stairng for hours at the Just a moment screen followed eventual with a blank screen and a computer which would boot.

I even tried out the available beta version of Windows 11, it ended quickly on all computer saying the computer was not suitable (no reason given) but I assume thay are in the too old category.

A real savioue was a version of Linux Lite (warning this site was pop up ads which I find annoying), a cut down version of Ubantu that can be run from the USB drive. Using it I discovered that all the computers had been repartiontioned to have a tiny inital partion (too small to load a viable version of windows onto. I then swap the haddrive on my main computer over to a resude harddrive that I had freshly reformated. That the half computer that died above. It look promising for a windows reinstall but soon arrived that the endless Just a moment loops. CHecking drive from the standalone linux lite USB It too was repartioned. Whate the?

Whilst there are hundereds of items showing up under the "failed windows upgrade"serach (you should be totally ashamed microsoft) I could not find any reliable dicussion of this repartioning on any forums. So I got brave and used the Partioning tool in Linuz light to investigate, sure enough I found windows.old and my user data in the second partion. Not so useful as I already had backs on external drives. Then I merged the first two partions and did a windows reset. My laptop had to run through a lot of installing and upgrading including more Just a moment times BUT eventually it was able to reboot itself. Some light at the end of the tunnel at last!

An updated Studio :: Painted & Decluttered

I'm still hobbling around a bit after a fall last month, nut these seemed the perfect time to repaint the bedroom I an using as my studio (its been accumulating junk for 25 years first as my office and them as a craft/junk room and eventually my studio)/ there was a lot to clean out (it was the council's hard rubbish collection) and the biggest ting I wanted to do was repaint, specifically to a neutral colour. I didn't mind the burgandy but it played havoc when trying to match colours and calibrate my computer screen.

I had decided on the Neutral Grey that photographers often call (18% grey card) to check colur cast and also exposure time. My theory is that this will help me with colour mixing. Very fortuiosly I visited Bunnings and got 4 litres of a nice neutral grey as close to the photographic refernce card as I could judge.

The clustered was both easier and harder to deal with. The guidig principal though is I only bring back the things I will be using and for which there is a defined place to store them. So that is dominately blank canvases, paper and sketch books. I also have watercolour and acrylic paints, brushes and accessories, pens, pencils and pastels. There are open book shelves, a slick stainless steel set of draws and a file cabent to hold all these tings. 

I also kept the old desk a a work area and place to "stack" my computer and I am intending to mount an old large flat screen tv on the wall as my main computer monitor. Still a bit of work to do here.