Proceed with Caution

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click image to see a larger version

I’ve been trying to get out from behind my computer and look for photos rather than relying on travel or accidentally stumbling on something that looks like it would make a great photo. I’ve also been trying to shoot at times I don’t normally shoot. What’s great about the winter is that you don’t have to get up at 5 AM to get dramatic shots.

This shot is taken on one of my favorite streets heading into Salt Lake City; Beck Street. A ton of texture and industry that stands in stark contrast to the neighborhoods the street turns into about a half mile from where this shot was taken.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about why I tweak my photos so hard. I decided that it gets down to this: the digital machines that capture images do so with a clinical, passionless precision. So I’m trying to inject some human into the image by jacking it all to hell. I also think this is why Instagram and Hipstamatic are so popular. The filters, at least as far as I’m concerned, are not about being hip, but about injecting a sense of human back into the images. Add to that the sharing of these images with other people and yeah. Done.

This image was tweaked in Lightroom pretty heavily and then pulled into Photoshop for some careful layer blending. It then made me cinnamon toast.

Lightroom 4 Public Beta is Available

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There is a pretty comprehensive review of Lightroom 4 Public Beta over at DP Review:

The Lightroom 4 beta introduces quite a list of features, including a completely new book-creation module, expanded support for video, soft proofing capability, and geo-tagging of still and video images via a Google Maps-powered module. Image editing tools have also been significantly updated, with a new process version (PV2012) that includes a reworking of the Basic panel controls and new localized editing options.

via Lightroom 4 Public Beta: What’s New: Digital Photography Review.

There are some tasty features that I’m itching to try, but I’m a little wary. I’m gonna wait until somebody else using Lightroom 3 installs this beta and gives it a going over. I’d hate to lose work because of a janky beta.

Painterly Tree

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click image to view larger version

Experiment done with an iPhone photo edited in Snapseed then exported to the camera roll. I saved out two versions of the original: one that was fairly straightforward that just had some tonal adjustments with no heavy filtering; I also saved out a version with a heavily stylized lack of saturation and some tiny bits of texture. Then I opened the stylized version in AutoPainter HD on the iPad and rendered several different versions. Once I got one that I was satisfied with, I saved it to the camera roll. I used the Photo Stream feature in iCloud to move the images around. E.g., I took the original image on the iPhone. When I opened Snapseed on the iPad, I was able to see the image in the Photo Stream and bring in the image from there. When I saved my work on the iPad, the Photo Stream was updated and I opened iPhoto on my Mac and used the Reveal in Finder menu to locate the 3 images. iPhoto has some crazy things that it does in regards to where it saves files and the folders they live in. It stores them inside the app package in an arcane series of folders. Just know that you’ll need to copy the files you want from the arcane locations when you move them to a real Finder location so you can open the images using Photoshop.

Once I had the three image files in a single folder, I opened the straightforward image as my base layer in Photoshop. I layered the heavily filtered version on top of that and the topmost layer was the AutoPainter HD file. Using layer blending modes and varying degrees of transparency I arrived at the image above. The process sounds fairly convoluted, but I think there is a fertile ground for using AutoPainter HD to generate textures to give a painterly feeling to photos.

GOP Fun House: The Desperation of Rick Perry

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PolitiFact is finally, at long last, calling Rick Perry out for being the liar that he is. From the debate in New Hampshire yesterday:

Asked if he agreed with Sen. John McCain that President Barack Obama “is a patriot,” Perry replied:

“I make a very proud statement and, in fact ,that we have a president that’s a socialist. I don’t think our founding fathers wanted America to be a socialist country. So I disagree with that premise that somehow or another that President Obama reflects our founding fathers. He doesn’t. He talks about having a more powerful, more centralized, more consuming and costly federal government.

The PolitiFact story is here.

This is from a O’Reilly factor transcript back in November of 2011:

O’REILLY: Do you think he’s a socialist? Do you think…

PERRY: Absolutely.

O’REILLY: You do — a hardcore socialist.

PERRY: Yes, sir I think Barack Obama is a socialist. I think he believes that — when you — when you talk about printing money and — and spending government money, and trying to spread it out as that conversation that he had with “Joe the Plumber,” you know, kind of redistribute the wealth.

via Rick Perry ‘Absolutely’ Believes Obama Is a Socialist – Interviews – The O’Reilly Factor – Fox News.

Perry isn’t alone. This has been a GOP meme since 10 minutes after Obama was sworn in. Okay. Maybe a month after Obama was sworn in? It’s this kind of lie that lowers the U.S. status in the world. Obama in 2012. I know, big surprise.

Sorry kids, long time readers knew this was coming. It’s only going to get better as the year progresses.