That is NOT my name @thatis-not-myname - Tumblr Blog

i still can't get over the sheer AUDACITY of iroh going to ba sing se. like did it work? yes. but ONLY because the dai li was too busy following around some bald kid looking for his dog to notice him

ironinkpen

like i cannot emphasize enough how fucking stupid this plan was. the siege of ba sing se ended 5 years ago. people know what iroh looks like, to the point where he once got recognized by a random army captain at a hot spring and almost got his hands broken about it. and yet he rolls up to a city that has a vested interest in recognizing him and secret police force with zuko. zuko. like i could buy that no normal citizen would look at their tea shop guy and assume he was secretly an evil general, okay. but it's one thing to just be Mushi from the Tea Shop With an Unfortunate Resemblance to General Iroh, and another fucking thing entirely when Lee the Tea Server Who Looks Weirdly Similar to Prince Zuko is standing right next to him literally twenty-four seven!! like at least get different jobs hello????

ironinkpen

every decision iroh makes is the decision of a man fully prepared to commit to the bit. will this succeed? who knows. but it will be very funny if i pull it off

rogers-carter

And no more despair.

REST IN PEACE BERNARD HILL (1944–2024)

wizard0rb

silent protagonist meetup

professionalchaoticdumbass

my beautiful wife ibuprofen

podcastwizard

the wedding will be quiet and dimly lit

jnyfmg

Something about having an universal translator, and learning to understand without it

sirfrogsworth

Remember this joke?

Well, I am going to do something similar only with photography. This is a photo someone took for an Amazon review of their Clinique products.

Honestly, it is not a terrible photo. They did some staging. They have an interesting background. All of the labels are legible. It is properly exposed. This would be a perfectly acceptable product photo for an Etsy page.

I've been taking these advanced photography courses in preparation for whenever I am able to create a new studio in the house. And my teacher is a photography badass. I just watched a 6 hour class on how to recreate a professional Clinique ad. And at first glance it looks deceptively simple. It's just some skin care products being splashed with a little water.

Which is why I wanted you to see an average person for reference.

This is what Karl Taylor came up with.

And I don't think I've learned so much about photography in one tutorial before.

Product photography is just loads and loads of problem solving. You have to light the chrome caps with a gradient. Which requires giant diffusion scrims.

Those big white panels are literally only there for the two chrome caps.

You need a pure white background, but you can't let light spill all over the studio, so you put up giant black light blockers.

And you have to add another light just for the orange bottle on the right.

Oh, and if you want the bottles to glow, well, you have to hide a silver reflector behind them.

But you still want the edges of the bottles to be darker so they have some contrast. So you add some black tape to the sides.

And in order for the reflective labels to have bold black lettering, you have to reflect black cards into them.

Ack! Karl's beautiful bald head is showing up in the chrome caps! He must put on the naughty blanket.

And once you get every aspect of every bottle perfectly lit, you finally get to yeet some water at it all.

I don't love product photography because I have a weird obsession to help greedy corporations make their wares look more beautiful. I love it because it is a complicated and challenging new puzzle every time. Every product is a different shape and requires a different technique to make it look its best.

I don't know if I will be able to live up to Karl's standards.

This is about the level I was at in 2017 before I quit photography.

I have so much more knowledge in my brain now. I'm really hoping I can surpass that.

sirfrogsworth

A few people mentioned they thought those product images were created in photoshop and not actually photographed. CG renders are becoming a bigger aspect of commercial advertising. It can be more versatile. There are a lot more CG artists than high end product photographers. It's cheaper. A lot of car advertising uses CG.

However, there are some big brands that insist on the real thing. Apple, Clinique, and Rolex, for instance. And there are things that CG is not as good at representing. Organic shapes and textures can be hard to represent photorealistically. So food, clothing, and anything that requires a human in the picture still need photography.

And I'd like to think there is an ineffable aspect photography can sometimes deliver that CG tends to struggle with. In the end, it is usually up to the art direction on whether an image is successful.

Karl actually did a comparison of his photography against CG. Feel free to guess which image is a render and which was photographed. I'm curious to know if you can spot the difference.

Fancy Watch.

1.

2.

Orange Cologne.

3.

4.

Blue Cologne.

5.

6.

Apple Watches.

7.

8.

Answers below the cut.

thefrogman

This has been generating a lot of interest so I thought I'd post it here as well.

If you are interested in photography and are a beginner, I recommend this free online course.

And if you are at an intermediate to advanced level and want to learn how to sculpt artificial light using flash or strobes, I highly recommend Karl Taylor's Visual Education platform. Yes, there is a monthly fee, but there are nearly 1000 classes spanning all genres. I think it would surpass just about any university level photography education. Karl personally replies to every comment on the platform and answers any questions you may have.

And once I get my home studio up and running in a few months I plan to restart my own photography education over on my @frogmanslightschool Tumblr.

I'm going to be focusing on photography for non-photographers.

How to use your smartphone or a cheap DSLR to get decent photos of important life events without having to learn every aspect of photography. I want to develop simple recipes for common situations like celebrations, ceremonies, pets, kids, sports, etc. Feel free to follow me there and ask any photography related questions you have. Just know the educational content won't start for a while.

notallmensheviks

turns out the creator of gandalf big naturals made the images while recovering from anesthesia for top surgery. this implies that the big naturals in question are, in fact, the artist's, and somehow migrated onto gandalf. this has major consequences.

marlinspirkhall

(waking up from top surgery) where's gandalf?

Nurse, tears in her eyes: Who do you think took your big naturals?

oncorhynchus-nerka

VERY IMPORTANT a dam in the Netherlands, the weerdsluis lock, is directly on a migratory path for spawning fish. They have a worker stationed there to open the door for the fish, but they can take a while to open it. So to keep the fish from getting preyed on by birds they installed a doorbell. Only, the fish don't have hands to ring the doorbell. If you go to their website, they have a LIVE CAMERA AND A DOORBELL that YOU RING FOR THE FISH when they're waiting, and then the dam worker opens the door for them! I can't express how obsessed I am with this. look at this shit. oh my god.

Please check on the fish doorbell once in a while :)

alex51324

I just looked, and there are 170 other people on there, also checking to see if there are fish waiting.

Please remember, if ever you are tempted to make a sweeping statement about human nature, that on this night in March, 2024, while war rages, there are 171 of us looking to see if a fish needs us to ring a doorbell.

Plenty else is going on, but also that.

(PS, the site says that the busiest times for fish are sunrise and sunset, which for now are at about 6:30, AM and PM, local time. Local time in Utrecht is 1 hour ahead of GMT, 5 hours ahead of EST, if that helps. I'm going to try to remember to check back again around 2 AM my time, when it will be morning for the fish!)

rongzhi

(context: the person in the video is in the midst of making pilgrimage to Lhasa. The tradition is called kechangtou/磕长头 (ཕྱག་འཚལ/chak tsal; "head ceremony") Tibetan Buddhists will travel on foot from wherever they live to Lhasa, prostrating every three steps along the way. To aid in this, people making the pilgrimage will wear wooden blocks on their hands and (often leather) aprons over their clothes, which they will change or mend when the items get worn out. The person in the video is traveling with a friend. According to his account, he started his journey near the end of November 2023 and is nearly 90 days in.)

English added by me :)

radicarian

it is past time we jettisoned the useless false dichotomy of introversion vs. extroversion and just accepted that everybody has a minimum amount of social interaction, failing which, they get really weird. and everybody has a maximum amount of social interaction, exceeding which, they get really weird. these levels are different for everyone, for a variety of reasons, and have no moral dimension. and that is all.

mjalti

why would you come to this club and just shoot Myers & Briggs like this

masaotheheckindog

they deserved it

cat-cosplay

How to "Wash" your cat

marinella-ela

child0fcain

oh so it’s okay for you to kiss your friends?? but when i, judas iscariot,

gingerhaze

Some character designs with some…atypical color choices? I guess. I don’t know what’s going on in that area.

This is Nimona and her supervillain friend (He doesn’t have a name yet, I’m working on that). Nimona is his sidekick/squire, they’re like the Batman and Robin of slightly Medieval villains, but she’s actually way more evil than him. He does what he does to make a point, and he doesn’t really want anyone get hurt - Nimona just gets a kick out of destroying stuff.

I’m going to attempt to make a two page comic with them? We’ll see how this goes.