Just one shade of grey, it seems

Below you see the recommendations I got after searching for books about acrylic painting on Amazon. I'll take one guess which book is the big seller this year...

Enjoy being an owl

See how lovely little owls you can get if you don't over-water them.

Export looks to camera

RED has an interesting invention (video here), you film a little clip, take the memory card to your computer, and invent the "look" that you want, tones, colors and the like, then you save it and select it in the camera, and now the camera will film in that look! (It can be negated later, since it shoots Raw.)

I think it is cool. Not only does it save you from applying some settings to many clips later, but I'll bet it also helps the creative juices that you are getting the look you want right in the camera, whether it's dry, hot, desert tones, or dramatic film-noir high contrast, or softed romance tones, or whatnot. I'm sure it'll make it easier to get the feel for whether your film will work. And to judge how your visual look will do your work for you, so you can see how much more you need to do with the acting etc.

Facebook changes your email address

Facebook secretly changes your default email address to a .facebook.com address which you never asked for.
This is borderline criminal. Is there nothing this fluffing outfit can't get away with?

Photo Contest: Light from a low Sun

New photo contest:

"Light from a Low Sun" 

... Entry is now closed, sorry. 

I'm awarding three prizes of $200 each for what I judge to be the most interesting or pleasing photographs sent to me before the end (globally) of Sunday 15 July 2012.

• Each author may send one (1) picture.
• The picture may not previously have won prizes or have been published in a professional publication, on- or offline. 
• The author's name must be in the file name. (Example: joe-blow-13.jpg)
• No text added to the picture, please.
• Shortest edge at least 1200 pixels, longest edge less than 3000 pixels.
• JPG format, maximum file size: 2 megabytes.
• Photos may be color or B/W. 
• Judging is entirely subjective!

I acquire the rights to publish for free any entry here. Entrants keep all other rights.
I plan that in the last half of July, I will post several of the best entries, and the winners. I require a paypal address to pay to.

Send entries to my Gmail address, which is eolake. Or use the address here.
(I will give an email confirmation when I get your entry.)

I hope I will get at least as many photos looking at what the sun shines at when low in the sky as I get photos of sunsets and sunrises!    :-)  (Those are always pretty, but it's hard to do fresh work with them.)

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(Note: this contest does not have anything to do with my other site Domai.com, and is not intended for nudes.)

Teenagers Can't Seem to Have ANYTHING At All

Teenagers Can't Seem to Have ANYTHING At All, Susie Bright article.

Your son's school is one of the multitude of broken institutions that takes lively, precocious, brave kids and tries to turn them into sexless, toothless robots, infantilized idiots. No critical thinking, please! Thank god most of them fight back.

Gigapixel camera (updated)

Gigapixel camera. Up to fifty GP, actually. 50,000 megapixels.
It combines many small cameras, and is about the size of a PC.
You can read the article, but basically it states the amazing facts that the camera is Very Sharp, and that it will get Smaller In The Future.

Update:
A. tipped us off for much more detailed info.



(Not a hugely informative video, admittedly.)

Little Lennon (updated)

I'll bet his teachers were very gracious about being told that from a Liverpool working-class 7-year-old.

A said:

I don't believe that he actually said that anyway.
It's not a very good approach to life. In my grandparents' time, which is the generation that endured the Great Depression and WW2, there was the emphasis on what you had to do in life - getting a job, etc., etc. If you could be happy too, great - but it wasn't the focus. This focus on personal happiness as the ultimate goal in life is what's produced today's spoiled, self-centered bratty kids.

A2 said...
Our parents generation was never interested in keeping up standards. They wanted to be happy, but the last way to be happy is to make it your objective in life.

Those are very fair points.
How do you become Happy? The search for happiness will usually lead you to search outside yourself, where you won't find it.

On the other hand, the idea that "all that matters is that you're happy" may help to defuse a lot of false goals in life.
For example, somebody living a life on small means but doing something they really care about may be happy, but their parents may see it as terrible situation not to have Status and Security, and pressure them to become a doctor or lawyer. (Bruce Springsteen tells that his parents were still pressuring him to go to college well after he was a multi-millionaire.)

Overcome Your Fear of Shooting Street Photography

[Thanks to Imaging Resource]

Overcome Your Fear of Shooting Street Photography, free ebook.

I think that dealing successfully with strangers, whether in photographing them or in other contexts, a very important ingredient, well two really, is 1) knowing that you are doing nothing wrong, and showing it in your body language. 2) Being open and friendly. This of course ties in with the first one. People who have a bad conscience about what they are doing are usually acting defensively or antagonistically. If you are open and friendly, people will come into your space without automatic suspicion.

Also, be chatty. Start talking about some aspect about the subject or photos, or your camera. People probably won't be interested, but actually the more geeky your chat is, the better, people will get bored and will conclude that you are a harmless eccentric.

New ground in mobile photo apps

Bert found these very cool photo apps (see the videos). It seems they are not for sale right now, but should be soon. One use for example is a time picture of a person in a busy street. And after taking the picture you, right on the phone, freeze the person, and just click on each to remove the other people, because the phone camera captured the background behind each over the couple seconds you "filmed", and it blends a bunch of photos into one.

I still think Apple should have called it something else than iPhone, and thus laying the ground for people seeing "smartphones" as phones. They really have little to do with a phone, the phone app is just one amongst many, and not even the best one. It's a 21st century palm computer, and way more powerful than anybody imagined in the nineties.

Duskiness

(All are clickable. The middle one especially shows much better large.)

Olympus OM-D EM-5, Olympus 45mm 1.8 at full opening. About 400 ISO.

Photos with "bokeh", or soft background blur can't generally be produced with pocket cameras, one of the few downsides to them still*. The bigger the sensor, the easier you can get nice soft background blur. The new mirrorless cameras, like Micro Four Thirds for example, have smaller sensors than traditional film (half the size of a 35mm film frame ("full frame"), linearly, one quarter area-wise), but with the right lens you can still get this effect.

*Even here, progress is made. The Sony RX100 is pocket-sized but still manages to have a sensor large enough to get some background blur if you want.

Save the Troy Library "Adventures In Reverse Psychology"

[Thanks to Bert]

The city of Troy, Michigan was facing a budget shortfall, and was considering closing the Troy Public Library for lack of funds. Even though the necessary revenues could be raised through a miniscule tax increase, powerful anti-tax groups in the area were organized against it. A vote was scheduled amongst the city's residents, to shut the library or accept the tax increase, and Leo Burnett Detroit decided to support the library by creating a reverse psychology campaign. Yard signs began appearing that read: "Vote to Close Troy Library on August 2nd - Book Burning Party on August 5th." No one wants to be a part of a town that burns books, and the outraged citizens of Troy pushed back against the "idiotic book burners" and ultimately supported the tax increase, thus ensuring the library's survival.

Bril.