“Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done, and why. Then do it.” Robert A. Heinlein
Right Action on the Path
Month: May 2018
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner
“Everything’s dead, but good, because it’s dead before coming alive, not dead after being alive. That’s how I look at it.” Alan Sillitoe
Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Flowers
“Black and white is abstract; color is not. Looking at a black and white photograph, you are already looking at a strange world.” Joel Sternfeld
Roleplay
To paraphrase John Hiatt: whether your glasses are off or on, you only see the world you make.
Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Words that end in “ock”
It’s a long way there, it’s a long way to where I’m going.
Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Words that end in “ock”
The Sound of Water
“They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.” Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Through a Window
“We have an inner window through which we can see the world, and though it gets cloudy in life, it’s our job to wipe it clean and see things as they really are.” Sebastian Koch
Men without Hats
After the work is done, while you’re still having fun, the king of beer is waiting for your call. When you say homemade root beer, you’ve said it all.
We’re All in the Same Boat
“We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.” Charles Bukowski
Photomatix Essentials Review
I was driving home after getting coffee this morning and saw an Amish farmer plowing his field. I almost always stop for horses so I decided to walk over to where he would end up and wait until he got close enough.
He seemed to be having some trouble and after about ten minutes ran into his barn to get something. After another ten minutes he ran back in again, this time coming back with a tractor. Since he was in the middle of a very large field I found an old milk crate and sat down to watch.
Finally I saw the horses heading towards me and told myself to wait until I could see the whites of their eyes, at the same time trying not to get the farmers face in the shot, some are OK with a photo and some are not.
Still sitting down with a perfect view I framed the shot and took about five. I felt I had at least one good one and got up to leave as the horses stopped to look at me. I didn’t know if they wanted to pose for more or were just confused, then I realized I was in their way.
The farmer smiled and said good morning then continued with what looked like a long day of work. The photos were all sharp but I couldn’t get the color right in Lightroom and black and white seemed like a cop out.
I have Photomatix Essentials that I got free from a photo magazine a while ago and uploaded just the one RAW file, then chose the default preset, saved it as a TIFF and imported it back into Lightroom. Usually you’ll want to upload several bracketed images but this was just an experiment.
It turned out surprisingly well and brought the blue back to what was a very gray sky. I don’t use this software much because the results are usually a little overdone but it was better than deleting a photo I spent almost 45 minutes to take.
