This is just a lovely composition.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Debate in France
Pascal informed:
France is having a national debate on whether to outlaw concealing one's face in public.
Interesting. I'll bet the only thing making it a debate is religious reasons.
While I may feel uncomfortable if somebody were to hide their face in public (I don't think I've met anybody, not since us kids in the hardest winters of my childhood), I don't believe it's right to outlaw it. Why not also outlawing curtains? After all, it would be much harder to manufacture bombs if everybody can look into your home 24/7, you can't argue against that.
France is having a national debate on whether to outlaw concealing one's face in public.
Interesting. I'll bet the only thing making it a debate is religious reasons.
While I may feel uncomfortable if somebody were to hide their face in public (I don't think I've met anybody, not since us kids in the hardest winters of my childhood), I don't believe it's right to outlaw it. Why not also outlawing curtains? After all, it would be much harder to manufacture bombs if everybody can look into your home 24/7, you can't argue against that.
Update: so far as I know, the reason for the suggested law is violent demonstrators who wear ski masks so the police can't identify them. If there was such a law, they can arrest them merely for wearing the masks.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Playground
Some say life is a playground, and some say life is a classroom. I suspect there's no classroom without a playground, and no playground without a classroom.
UK in snow
[Thanks to Neeraj]
I suspect this is a very unusual picture, I think it has been very rare in our lifetimes that the UK has just been covered.(No, I didn't take it.)
But Neeraj did take this photo:
Not a unique phenom, see here.
More night snow
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Canon 5D2, 1600 ISO, 35mm F:1.4.
Hardly any photoshopping at all, although two of them I have color-corrected away from the yellow street light. The top one, though, that lamp was so strongly yellow that it begain to look very odd when I tried to compensate.
Check-In Done Right
Check-In Done Right, Pogue post about one of those many, many small wonders/mysteries of this world.
... I was astonished when the check-in desk attendant said: “Good evening, Mr. Pogue. Here’s your key. Have a great stay.”
Do you see what happened there!? There was no tappy-tapping on the keyboard for five minutes. No “May I have your credit card for incidentals?”
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... I was astonished when the check-in desk attendant said: “Good evening, Mr. Pogue. Here’s your key. Have a great stay.”
Do you see what happened there!? There was no tappy-tapping on the keyboard for five minutes. No “May I have your credit card for incidentals?”
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Watching hot specimens
I just watched a brief scene in the very enjoyable Chuck series, in which the attractive female action-figure lead walks down a hotel corridor, and as she passes a nice-looking male staffer, she turns her head and admires him for a second. This made me like her even better.
Openly getting enjoyment from seeing beautiful members of one's preferred gender is often seen as suspicious or sleazy behavior. But I think that it's just a sign of being alive, like enjoying good food or the changing weather and other beautiful things and interesting sensations/perceptions.
I don't know, perhaps the act of looking openly is associated with being promiscuous? But I really think they are very different things. I'm sure there are people who don't enjoy looking very much, but are very promiscuous, and I know many people who enjoy looking very much, and who are highly responsible sexually. Of course most of them don't show it very much when they look, which tells us how widespread the social judgment is.
Openly getting enjoyment from seeing beautiful members of one's preferred gender is often seen as suspicious or sleazy behavior. But I think that it's just a sign of being alive, like enjoying good food or the changing weather and other beautiful things and interesting sensations/perceptions.
I don't know, perhaps the act of looking openly is associated with being promiscuous? But I really think they are very different things. I'm sure there are people who don't enjoy looking very much, but are very promiscuous, and I know many people who enjoy looking very much, and who are highly responsible sexually. Of course most of them don't show it very much when they look, which tells us how widespread the social judgment is.
Red Truck too
I've posted a vertical variant of this pic, but I like this one too, particularly after I changed the tone to much more blue-ish. It looks like a far-off place like Siberia or something, and there's something weird about the light, because the sky with snow-clouds is lit by the town, you can't really tell if it's day or night (it was an hour before sunrise).
It also illustrates how cameras even out light: the picture is lighter than the scene seemed at the time. To make it look like night, I'd have to tone it down:
... Which may be well worth doing if you want the picture to seem like things looked to you, but in this case I prefer the first one, at least aesthetically. Maybe.
BTW, I woudda thunk a BW version of this was pointless, given the lovely color of the truck, but then I used it for an experiment, and it's not bad actually:
It also illustrates how cameras even out light: the picture is lighter than the scene seemed at the time. To make it look like night, I'd have to tone it down:
... Which may be well worth doing if you want the picture to seem like things looked to you, but in this case I prefer the first one, at least aesthetically. Maybe.
BTW, I woudda thunk a BW version of this was pointless, given the lovely color of the truck, but then I used it for an experiment, and it's not bad actually:
Kodak CMO talks
[Thanks to tOP]
Jeffrey Hayzlett. This guy is fun.I love that he just thought: "screw the fine, we'll do it".
(Does anybody get who fined them, and why?)
BTW, I'm thinking, I'd rather be a new CEO coming in to a company which is suffering badly, than a company which is doing great. Because if you can't save it, nobody's going to blame you, but if you can, you're a huge hero. And if you come into a company which is doing great, the only way it can go is down, and it will be nearly impossible to do anything which makes it do visibly better than it already is.
Ilford Gold Fibre Silk
I am trying the famous Ilford Gold Fibre Silk (US link - UK link) paper for printing. Just made one print so far, the photo is the top one here, and it's promising. It has the depth-enhancing qualities of glossy paper, but it's a "silk" surface, so you don't get as much irritating reflections in the surface. It's a very pleasant surface too.
And interesting characteristic: you'll notice that the photo has some very dark areas, which I did not lift because I like the twilight atmosphere they give the photo, the impression of the sky is enhanced. And in my experience until now, prints have always had less detail in the shadows than seen on the screen (perhaps because the screen is back-lit). But apparently with this paper, the print has more shadow detail than is seen on the screen! Very strange, and it may be an advantage, we'll see with more experience.
Update: I made a comparison print on the Hahnemule matte paper, and it's equally nice. No easy choices in this world.
And interesting characteristic: you'll notice that the photo has some very dark areas, which I did not lift because I like the twilight atmosphere they give the photo, the impression of the sky is enhanced. And in my experience until now, prints have always had less detail in the shadows than seen on the screen (perhaps because the screen is back-lit). But apparently with this paper, the print has more shadow detail than is seen on the screen! Very strange, and it may be an advantage, we'll see with more experience.
Update: I made a comparison print on the Hahnemule matte paper, and it's equally nice. No easy choices in this world.
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