Friday, September 14, 2007

I spend about 20 hours a week in front of Photoshop. Really! I take 15,000 to 20,000 photos a year and I use it to “develop” them. I have a PC powerful enough to meet the needs of a small country and it puts out enough heat to heat the house in winter. 1,000 watts = about 1 1/3 horsepower … a one and a third horsepower PC? The mind boggles! But it makes Photoshop ... well, zippy ... especially when editing photos of horses!

Sorry for the digression. Anyway, I want them to look like what I “saw” when I tripped the shutter and I want to present them in their best light, to make the world beautiful, if I can.  Here’s an example using one of my own photos:

I remember very well taking this photo. I was in Italy. Nancy had returned home and I was alone and in a dark mood. But this sight made me feel better. I “saw” the second image because my eye is better than the sensor in my camera, and because my camera’s sensor has no emotion chip. I can make this similar to what I saw and felt!

I added nothing … but I did manipulate the image data captured by the camera. I think the original is “okay” but the edit is much much better.
So okay, if I use Photoshop to make a picture look like reality, I feel okay about that. How do you feel if an editor uses Photoshop to present an image that diverges from “reality?”

What is “reality” after all? Plato anyone?

This happens all-the-time. If you view a photo in a magazine, it’s been Photoshopped. Here are a few links showing before and after (Photoshop) images. This is fascinating to me. I think you will find it interesting. Click below:

And finally, another one of my photos. The original is of my son-in-law’s bike at Mt. St. Helens. In the edit I put it in a fictional Ducati Showroom.

Posted by Digital Quixote in • Technology
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Tuesday, September 11, 2007

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Throughout history, mankind has been taming wild places. A week ago I visited a good friend who is intentionally bucking the trend and making places more wild.

Awhile back he bought a house on a small river near Kelso Washington. Since then he has spent some of his own money and some grant money provided by the US Government to rehabilitate his stretch of the river. His goal is to stabilize the erosion caused by prior attempts to tame the river. In the process he is creating natural habitats for salmon, frogs, salamanders and such. His efforts are paying off. They are coming back and along with them, the entire food chain above them. While it’s a labor of love, it’s also hard labor!

He’s planted 2,000 trees. He’s brought in something like 500,000 pounds of rock. And he has “planted” dozens of dead and fallen trees (as in the photo above), each weighing several tons, which divert floodwater runoff, and create dark safe habitats. He’s had some help with the heavy stuff, but mostly he’s doing it by hand and with light equipment.

It’s personal.

I admire him for it!

Posted by Digital Quixote in • Out and About
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Monday, September 10, 2007

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I spent some time at the Seattle Center today. Here are some great pics which came from my visit. The photo above is of a “bot” at the Science Fiction Museum.

There are a number of neat sculptures on the gounds. Here, the Space Needle through a neat sculpture.

Posted by Digital Quixote in • Out and About
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Thursday, September 06, 2007

I took the Ducati on a Fall ride to Mt. Rainier today. It was a gorgeous, crisp, cool, clear day; ... the bespoke kind of day tailored for college football games, walks in golden woods, and riding a motorcycle. It was mid-week and after Labor Day so there was virtually no traffic. Mt. Rainier was gorgeous. The sun was bright but low in the sky giving good definition to everything. During a break near where the shot above was taken, I chatted with several other riders and we agreed “life was good and that we’d keep the shiny side up on the way home.”

Posted by Digital Quixote in • Motorcycles
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Sunday, September 02, 2007

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I went to the Concours d’Italia today with my son-in-law, Nick. It was full of current model Italian exotic automobiles, vintage exotics and hot Italian motorcycles. It was a small show, held at the Des Moines marina. The weather was fine; the crowd eclectic and appreciative. The exhibitors were an odd lot spending most of their time discussing the availability of this odd part, or that one, and polishing their treasures. Sometimes shows like this one will have what I have come to call “car show girls.” Not this time. But a good time was had by all anyway.

The photo below is of a 1936 Alpha Romeo.

And if you were in doubt, the bottom photo demonstrates the show was not without eye candy, a Ferrari 430 in this case.

Posted by Digital Quixote in • and Automobiles
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