So a few days ago I noticed a fox friend running through my yard. I was able to snap this photo.
I called him Milo.
I thought he was a lone wolf who chose my neighborhood as his domain.
But Milo is not alone.
Milo is a papa.
He and his lady fox have three little foxes!
I went from never having seen a fox to FIVE foxes playing in my backyard.
The three kiddos were wrestling. Their opening move is to do this cat-like superjump and then dive bomb into their sibling. Then they roll around. And then a high speed chase ensues.
One of the little foxes came near the house and I got a few closer photos.
I love the little black socks.
I'm going to need to figure out a lot more fox names.
Scrolling the timeline on Mother's Day can be hard for me so last year I decided to turn my grief into something positive.
This year, I decided to make it a tradition.
I noticed people were posting a lot of old, degraded photos of their parents. So I try to pick a few good candidates to restore.
I spent a couple of years learning how to do this. I am very good at it. And I really enjoy it. But I learned it isn't very lucrative and most people are fine with what AI can do now.
It makes me a bit sad, but I actually think restoring people's precious memories is not the worst use of AI. Plus, I use several AI tools in my workflow. When there is extensive damage, generative fill is a lifesaver. The remove tool makes quick work of stubborn accumulated dust. And AI upscaling makes the photos printable, often at many times their original size.
My restorations are still much better than the free AI ones. I edit them with a precision and fidelity that can hold up to 400% magnification. I take special care to preserve likenesses and often work with reference photos to make sure people's loved ones still look like who they are after upscaling. I also do colorizing by hand (though I will sometimes make initial color maps with AI). I color grade using film stock color references so the photos still look like film, and I add texture and grain selectively to keep people from looking like smooth rubber.
But that kind of quality takes so much time. One photo is probably several hundred dollars of labor. And no one is willing to pay that so I have to charge below minimum wage.
I will probably just do pro bono restorations from here on out. Focus on fixing photos that AI isn't very good at restoring. Plus I have a ton of family photos that I want to restore for my niece. At some point, years from now, she'll be old enough to talk to me without my brother's permission. And she'll probably want to know who her grandparents were. I hope to be ready with photos and stories by that time.
In any case, it felt nice to do this on a hard day. And it helped clarify to myself how I should use this skill I've developed going forward.
Ok but do you or do you know anyone who does commissions for this kind of thing? I’ve been really missing my great grandmother recently and I’d love to have a few photos of her restored a bit and although I don’t know when that would be in my budget I’d love to know where to go once I’ve got funds
I'm not opposed to doing commissions, but due to health reasons I am being a bit selective about what I take on. If the job is too complex, it might be months before I can tackle it. If you need it sooner, I can recommend a different restorationist who I feel will do a good job.
If anyone wants a free assessment, just send in example images of what you want restored and I can advise you from there.
Scrolling the timeline on Mother's Day can be hard for me so last year I decided to turn my grief into something positive.
This year, I decided to make it a tradition.
I noticed people were posting a lot of old, degraded photos of their parents. So I try to pick a few good candidates to restore.
I spent a couple of years learning how to do this. I am very good at it. And I really enjoy it. But I learned it isn't very lucrative and most people are fine with what AI can do now.
It makes me a bit sad, but I actually think restoring people's precious memories is not the worst use of AI. Plus, I use several AI tools in my workflow. When there is extensive damage, generative fill is a lifesaver. The remove tool makes quick work of stubborn accumulated dust. And AI upscaling makes the photos printable, often at many times their original size.
My restorations are still much better than the free AI ones. I edit them with a precision and fidelity that can hold up to 400% magnification. I take special care to preserve likenesses and often work with reference photos to make sure people's loved ones still look like who they are after upscaling. I also do colorizing by hand (though I will sometimes make initial color maps with AI). I color grade using film stock color references so the photos still look like film, and I add texture and grain selectively to keep people from looking like smooth rubber.
But that kind of quality takes so much time. One photo is probably several hundred dollars of labor. And no one is willing to pay that so I have to charge below minimum wage.
I will probably just do pro bono restorations from here on out. Focus on fixing photos that AI isn't very good at restoring. Plus I have a ton of family photos that I want to restore for my niece. At some point, years from now, she'll be old enough to talk to me without my brother's permission. And she'll probably want to know who her grandparents were. I hope to be ready with photos and stories by that time.
In any case, it felt nice to do this on a hard day. And it helped clarify to myself how I should use this skill I've developed going forward.
Some of the most difficult restorations I've done...
I've had to deal with intense color casts before, but never a green one. Thankfully, the original color was still in the data, but figuring out how to filter out the bad green and keep the good green required a lot of problem-solving.
The original was actually in really good shape and had a lot of detail. But there were just so many people in the photo and they all needed individual exposure correction on their faces. And I colored everything manually. I think this ended up being over 400 layers by the end.
For this one, the car was completely blown out and had no data. But I posted it in a bunch of vintage car forums and was able to identify the make and model. I replaced the blown out car with a better photo of the exact same model from the same year. Then I researched what paint color options were available and matched that as well.
This is one where folks might assume I used AI, but aside from my upscaling tool, I actually did this with traditional compositing techniques. It is probably one of the most damaged photos I've been able to save.
Her facial likeness was completely destroyed.
However, I restored this other photo of her.
And I was able to use it as a reference to restore her likeness in the lake photo.
It doesn't hold up as well as I'd like at this magnification, but considering how damaged it was, I am pretty happy with the result. And I think I was able to make it look like her again.
One might think photo restoration is only about saving really old photos, but I have fixed modern wedding photos that were taken in bad light and I regularly use these skills to fix smartphone photos.
My phone is getting old and is in bad shape. The back fell off and I keep it together with a case. And the lenses are unprotected and hard to clean. So all of my photos look a bit hazy now. But sometimes it is all I have to capture a moment. So I take photos and hope my editing magic can fix them.
I took this out my front window on a foggy morning.
I actually got a court summons for having that chair in my front yard.
It's a long story.
And I just had a visit from a foxy friend the other day.
My neighbor says he sees this fella all the time. So I feel like he needs a name. Otis's favorite toy was a stuffed red fox, so I'm thinking maybe I'll call him Milo.
I am going through a very long and difficult health recovery. And I have this heart thing that makes me very weak if I exert myself too much. I was trying to take this old red chair to the end of my driveway for trash pickup, but my heart started beating way too fast, and I only dragged it halfway.
So I just left the chair in my yard.
It rained soon after and I realized this pleather chair was waterproof. It shrugged off the rain and was perfectly fine. I then sat in the chair and it was a comfortable place to sit outside and relax.
So I left the chair where it was.
I can't leave the house much, so I have to find photographic opportunities close by. I eventually started incorporating the chair into my photography.
This thing was nigh invulnerable. No season was able to damage it.
And I did a fun Halloween bit with it.
It was in my yard for over a year, bothering no one.
But then I got a warning letter in the mail. The county inspector claimed I had "rubbish" in my yard and I had to remove it. I'm suspicious that a neighbor tattled on me.
I am making a lot of progress with my health. But I am at a stage where I have to get worse to get better. So I am currently bed bound most days. I have very few good days where I could move a big red chair.
It took me a few weeks, but as soon as I had a good day, I dragged the chair back into my garage and out of sight.
But it was not soon enough.
The inspector referred me to the court and I got a summons for not complying.
So now I have to appear before a judge and explain why I had a chair in my front yard.
I'm hoping they will accommodate my disability and let me do it over a zoom call. This all feels like a silly waste of time. I have neighbors with old cars on their lawn. I keep my lawn maintained and others let it grow two feet high.
But I got dinged for having a comfy chair in my yard.
Scrolling the timeline on Mother's Day can be hard for me so last year I decided to turn my grief into something positive.
This year, I decided to make it a tradition.
I noticed people were posting a lot of old, degraded photos of their parents. So I try to pick a few good candidates to restore.
I spent a couple of years learning how to do this. I am very good at it. And I really enjoy it. But I learned it isn't very lucrative and most people are fine with what AI can do now.
It makes me a bit sad, but I actually think restoring people's precious memories is not the worst use of AI. Plus, I use several AI tools in my workflow. When there is extensive damage, generative fill is a lifesaver. The remove tool makes quick work of stubborn accumulated dust. And AI upscaling makes the photos printable, often at many times their original size.
My restorations are still much better than the free AI ones. I edit them with a precision and fidelity that can hold up to 400% magnification. I take special care to preserve likenesses and often work with reference photos to make sure people's loved ones still look like who they are after upscaling. I also do colorizing by hand (though I will sometimes make initial color maps with AI). I color grade using film stock color references so the photos still look like film, and I add texture and grain selectively to keep people from looking like smooth rubber.
But that kind of quality takes so much time. One photo is probably several hundred dollars of labor. And no one is willing to pay that so I have to charge below minimum wage.
I will probably just do pro bono restorations from here on out. Focus on fixing photos that AI isn't very good at restoring. Plus I have a ton of family photos that I want to restore for my niece. At some point, years from now, she'll be old enough to talk to me without my brother's permission. And she'll probably want to know who her grandparents were. I hope to be ready with photos and stories by that time.
In any case, it felt nice to do this on a hard day. And it helped clarify to myself how I should use this skill I've developed going forward.
Some of the most difficult restorations I've done...
I've had to deal with intense color casts before, but never a green one. Thankfully, the original color was still in the data, but figuring out how to filter out the bad green and keep the good green required a lot of problem-solving.
The original was actually in really good shape and had a lot of detail. But there were just so many people in the photo and they all needed individual exposure correction on their faces. And I colored everything manually. I think this ended up being over 400 layers by the end.
For this one, the car was completely blown out and had no data. But I posted it in a bunch of vintage car forums and was able to identify the make and model. I replaced the blown out car with a better photo of the exact same model from the same year. Then I researched what paint color options were available and matched that as well.
This is one where folks might assume I used AI, but aside from my upscaling tool, I actually did this with traditional compositing techniques. It is probably one of the most damaged photos I've been able to save.
Her facial likeness was completely destroyed.
However, I restored this other photo of her.
And I was able to use it as a reference to restore her likeness in the lake photo.
It doesn't hold up as well as I'd like at this magnification, but considering how damaged it was, I am pretty happy with the result. And I think I was able to make it look like her again.
One might think photo restoration is only about saving really old photos, but I have fixed modern wedding photos that were taken in bad light and I regularly use these skills to fix smartphone photos.
My phone is getting old and is in bad shape. The back fell off and I keep it together with a case. And the lenses are unprotected and hard to clean. So all of my photos look a bit hazy now. But sometimes it is all I have to capture a moment. So I take photos and hope my editing magic can fix them.
I took this out my front window on a foggy morning.
I actually got a court summons for having that chair in my front yard.
It's a long story.
And I just had a visit from a foxy friend the other day.
My neighbor says he sees this fella all the time. So I feel like he needs a name. Otis's favorite toy was a stuffed red fox, so I'm thinking maybe I'll call him Milo.
It's time for the color indigo to get "Pluto'd" from the rainbow.
ROY-G-BIV.
You were taught it in grade school. You accepted it. You didn't really understand what indigo was, but it was an easy mnemonic and Crayola was nice enough to create a crayon for it.
But then they realized it was just blue and they gave up on it.
Isaac Newton was one of the first people to figure out the visible spectrum. He was trying to differentiate colors. He had 6 candidates. But he had a religious obsession with the number 7, so he decided there would be blue and also blue but called something else.
When you look at an actual prism, the blue end of the rainbow gets a little murky.
You may notice it sort of ends at blue, but that could just be the angle of the light or the camera had trouble capturing it. Spectral violet is not easy to represent on screens. Almost all LEDs are unable to emit in the violet range. In fact, you may not have seen true violet indoors for years and not enough people seem upset about that. We're just accepting purple as a substitute. Purple is like Kool-Aid and violet is grape juice.
Sorry, I digress.
But to the human eye, when viewing an IRL spectrum, violet is pretty distinct. It's often a little easier to spot than blue in actual rainbows.
Indigo, not so much.
In fact, there is a much more distinct color visible that got completely left out of the rainbow. Do you see it next the green band?
Cyan!
When you look at a spectrum chart organized by wavelengths cyan stands out much more than indigo.
Indigo... needs to indi-GO.
It's time.
I propose we give it a proper sendoff, though.
We will find a team of the world's best painters, send them to Pluto, and have them cover every inch of the not-quite-a-planet with indigo.
You may ask, why wouldn't we just teach astronauts to paint?
Because it will annoy Ben Affleck.
Indigo will be referred to as a dwarf color.
Pluto and indigo will be merged into Plutigo.
And they will commiserate together in the cosmos in their demoted states.
One problem yet to solve... creating a new mnemonic.
ROY-G-CBV just won't do.
The Committee to Demote Indigo will be entertaining suggestions in the replies. I look forward to your creativity.
One thing I should clarify, I don't want to banish indigo as a color.
This is a pedagogy issue.
The visual spectrum is technically infinite. But infinity is a difficult concept to teach to children. So we introduce them to the rainbow. And we try to separate the spectral bands to help them understand a few of the more distinct colors.
The problem is... teaching indigo as part of the rainbow is a bit like this...
It's a tiny sliver between blue and violet and it leaves out the much broader and more distinct cyan band.
I did a little more research, and it seems Newton was trying to match up the spectrum to the Dorian musical scale. He thought light and sound were connected and had a lot of superstition about cosmic numerology and the harmony of seven. He originally divided colors into red, yellow, green, blue, and violet. To get to seven "notes" of color he added orange and split cyan and blue into blue and indigo.
Cyan was represented, but the meaning of color names drifted over time. So his blue was cyan and his indigo was blue.
Which I think strengthens my case that indigo, as a rainbow teaching tool, needs to go live with Pluto.
Otis vs. Chicken
(Remastered in Super Duper High Definition)
I am thankful that I am far enough along in my grief that these Facebook reminders don't upset me anymore. I miss Otis a lot, but his photos still bring me joy.
People are roasting this person for asking a dumb question. But I think this is a valid query and the answer is actually pretty cool.
Unfortunately, you usually get a response like this.
This is accurate. But not very explanatory. "It's how light works" just feels a bit condescending.
We need to Bill Nye this shit.
The first thing you need to know is that light competes with light. And the brightest light is always the victor.
And this phenomenon is not specific to cameras. Our eyeballs also play in the light vs light competition.
Every person with a mobile phone has already seen this effect. What happens when you look at your phone on a really sunny day?
You can't see shit.
The sun is so overwhelmingly bright that it is reflecting light off the screen that is much brighter than the light being emitted from the phone.
However, newer phones are starting to have screens that are extremely bright. Up to 3000 nits in some cases. They are able to emit light brighter than the sun's reflection.
What happens to our eyes when we go outside on a sunny day?
Our pupils get as small as they possibly can. Smaller pupils let in a lot less light. And when they are that contracted, we can only register really really bright things.
But if we are in the dark, our pupils get super big. They allow in a bunch more light. And after we adjust to the dark, we can see really really dim things.
If our pupils stayed contracted and we looked at a starry sky, it would be as blank as the phone screen on a sunny day. You can even test this with an eye patch. Go into a very bright room and keep one eye covered for about 20 minutes. Then go outside and look at the sky with each eye. One eye will see stars and the other will not.
And this should give you a clue as to how light pollution works. Light bounces off stuff in the atmosphere. And when a city shoots a bunch of light upward, that light reflects back down and is much brighter than the stars.
The brightest light always wins.
Most stars are just incredibly dim. You need to be in a very dark environment in order to see them shine. You need them bigass pupils fully activated. And cameras need either a very large aperture (lens pupils), or a very long time interval to see them.
The sun is so so soooo bright. Many thousands of times brighter than distant stars. And the moon is also very bright. Especially if you are on or near the surface. The properties of moon dust, the regolith, are a near perfect diffuse reflector. Which is why astronauts struggled to see and photograph stars during their moon excursions.
If they opened up their camera apertures and did a long exposure, they'd just get a blank white frame.
There are dozens of photos in which that exact thing happened.
This is exactly what happens if you accidentally shine a flashlight directly into your eyes.
But if we ever have a moon mission during lunar night, those astronauts are in for a starry treat. They won't have any atmosphere to absorb starlight. So they'll be able to see the Milky Way, in all its glory, with just their naked eyes.
also, apparently, when you are at the bottom of a deep well during daytime, and the sun is NOT directly in line-of-sight over it, you CAN see the Stars.
I really hope this doesn't come off as embarrassing, but this is actually a myth.
But it is a really cool ancient myth from one of Aristotle's essays written 2400 years ago.
And I think it is kind of neat that intellectuals from back then were trying to understand and figure out how light works. And it is impressive that a myth has lasted this long.
The problem is that the sky is a giant light source. A pretty bright one, in fact. People often forget that the sky is a giant hemisphere of scattered light because the sun is so overwhelming in comparison. It's just so much dimmer than the sun, it gets outshone on sunny days.
But you can see the sky being a light source on snowy days. If you look at photos of snow, you'll notice all the shadows are tinted blue.
That's the sky getting into the nooks and crannies where the sun don't shine.
So if you were deep in a well, you'd just see the blue sky.
HOWEVER, if you were to create a deep hole on the moon during lunar daytime, you could totally see stars. You'd be in a dark environment, your pupils would open up, there is no atmosphere to scatter light from the sun, and the glare of the surface wouldn't compete with the starlight.
Aristotle was on to something, he just chose the wrong celestial body.
Naomi is an anti-vaxx dipshit and not a great person.
But I think this question was asked in good faith and is also a perfectly valid query.
Moon nomenclature can be a bit confusing. People will reference the far side of the Moon and the dark side of the Moon and conflate the two.
From our perspective, there is a near side and a far side. The "near side" is always facing Earth. And people sometimes think the side facing away from us is also the "dark" side of the Moon.
But the far side is not always in darkness. Only when we see a full moon is it dark.
Astronomers have tried to update the terminology to lunar day and lunar night, but that hasn't really caught on as popular vernacular. It's hard to undo Pink Floyd's influence.
All of this is to say, it is easy for people to get confused about the far side of the Moon being illuminated by the Sun. It's quite common to imagine it as in perpetual darkness.
But lunar night is not completely in a void of darkness. The light from the universe does very dimly illuminate the lunar backside. And while traditional optics aren't easily able to see the Moon's butt, NASA does have a special UV camera that surveys the lunar night.
It's called the "Lyman-Alpha Mapping Project."
They love their clever acronyms.
I've seen people also confused about the lighting in this photo.
The Sun is directly behind the Moon, yet the left side seems to have light wrapping around to the lunar night side.
And the reason for this makes my light-loving heart full. Because light is light and it works the same way in space as it does in my studio.
This phenomenon is called "Da Vinci glow" or earthshine. The Sun is bouncing light off the Earth, and it is reflecting onto the side of the Moon. And even though it is usually too dim to see without a very long exposure, this eclipse was able to reveal it.
Here is what earthshine looks like to human eyes adjusted for darkness.
And here is a brightened, long exposure example.
It's literally just this on a cosmic scale...
There is also moonshine, which is more than just a legally dubious beverage.
You may have already seen an example.
The left is exposed as our eyeballs would see it. And the right is brightened with long exposure and a high gain setting.
The Sun is behind the Earth, but it is shining light off the Moon and giving very dim illumination to the night side.
The Moon is a big retroreflector. You have seen a different form of retroreflection when you are driving at night and the highway signs light up as you pass. Your headlights are shining directly back at you.
The special properties of Moon dust give it a near-perfect diffuse matte reflection. And when the Sun is in the right position, it acts similarly to our car headlights and the light shines back in our direction.
A studio reflector needs to be angled just right to shine the light exactly where you want it. The angle of the light is like a bumper shot in billiards.
The Moon scatters light in all directions like a typical matte surface.
However, a non-retroreflective matte reflection on a sphere typically has a bright center and then graduates into darkness around the edges. But the Moon's super matte retroreflection maintains brightness across almost the entire surface area.
So even though the Moon is quite small compared to the Earth, its regolith creates a powerful reflection of the Sun's light. You'd think a full moon would be twice as bright as a half moon, but this retroreflective surge makes the Moon roughly 10 times brighter.
If the Moon weren't such a dusty bitch, moonlight would be dimmer and that nighttime photo of the Earth may not have been possible.
Corksniffing losers have to sully an awesome new space photo just to erroneously claim film is inherently superior.
I think this version is the original color processed version, which is still not as saturated or contrasty.
That's still an amazing result just from darkroom processing, but the deep blue version in the tweet definitely needed some help from Photoshop. And, personally, I think they overdid it.
The new photo was actually taken in darkness. It is a moonlit photo taken at extremely high gain (ISO 52,000). They did a long exposure to make it appear as if it were as bright as day. But without significant editing, that is going to make the colors less saturated and reduce the contrast.
The same thing would happen with film.
This is another version they did with a more accurate-to-eyeballs exposure.
Most astronauts are fighter pilots. And there are only a few who are genuine photographers. You can train a fighter pilot to competently use a camera, but becoming a good photographer during the days of film usually took years of practice.
During the Apollo days they would send them up there with the best camera available. Usually a 70mm Hasselblad medium format. But the astronauts proved that the only way to get amazing photos without being a photographer was mostly down to luck.
We see the best photos they took, but those only amount to a handful. And as you saw above, NASA often had to do a lot of darkroom magic to make them aesthetically pleasing.
If you look at the Apollo archives, you can find hundreds of photos like this.
I'm fond of this one.
There was no instant feedback. They didn't have any instincts for settings or focus or composition. Most of the time they were just collecting visual data.
But every once in a while the stars aligned and they took absolute bangers.
That flag one is amazingly composed. But it took them a few tries.
Digital cameras give you a better baseline of quality. They can focus for you. They can meter for you. And they have high ISO gain that film could never touch.
They are... fighter pilot friendly.
With digital, they can look at the back screen and see if they bungled the exposure.
If they take a photo like this...
They get instant feedback and can be like, "Houston, where is exposure compensation?"
There is an undeniable ineffable quality that film sometimes delivers. But the medium is far less important than the skill of the person taking the photo.
Don Pettit is my favorite astronaut photographer. A true artist.
He really makes you forget about whether film is better than digital. He makes one remember that the person taking the photo is the paramount variable.
There is a great interview from Smarter Every Day where Don talks about how he captures amazing photos from space.
And as I have been tracking my weight, I noticed that my progress did not correlate to my bowel movements.
And for some reason, I just always assumed that was how the "weight" exited my body.
No one told me this. I was not taught this in school. It just made logical sense to me. If you lose weight, you poop it out. Right?
So I decided to look it up.
Not only was I shocked that weight loss had nothing to do with dropping buddies off at the pool—the actual mechanism is just... bonkers.
If you don't know already, I'd like you to take a guess.
Feel free to leave a reply before reading further.
You breathe it out!
When your body burns fat, it turns into CO2 and you exhale your way to that bikini bod.
I have contributed 6 extra pounds of CO2 to the atmosphere that was derived from fat inside my body.
80% of weight loss is just breathing. The rest is a mixture of sweat and pee. Weight loss from pooping is mostly water weight and temporary (which is why those Kardashian flat tummy laxative teas are a scam).
How did I never learn this?
How have I avoided learning this fact?
I know almost all the facts! I am an insufferable know-it-all!
I am 44 and I feel like I should have known this long ago.
Katrina had no idea either. So maybe it is not common knowledge. I'm curious to see how many of you all knew this already. Or how many assumed it was a poop-based operation like me.
I felt silly for not knowing this, but it seems I am not alone. So perhaps you might find it as cool as I did.
Also, I won diabetes.
This graph shows how long my glucose levels are within acceptable parameters. I needed to hit 70% and I overshot by a little bit.
My A1C is very close to being in the non-diabetic range.
5.7% and below is typically where blood sugar normies are.
And, as mentioned, I'm down about 6 pounds.
I have a long way to go, but I'm happy to be heading in the right direction.
I promised my dad before he passed that I would improve my health. I had to make a lot of health sacrifices to care for him and he wasn't pleased about that.
My weight has become a mobility issue. It's so hard to move. I am always out of breath. I am not flexible. Taking a shower feels like running a marathon.
Losing weight won't cure my CFS or narcolepsy. But moving around less of me should use up less energy.
I know I won't ever feel great, but maybe I can feel not terrible at some point.
Are you on bluesky? We're trying to migrate sites, and rebuilding a follow list in an UI we aren't familiar with is kind of a pain
I have reserved my profile and I hope to explore it more thoroughly at some point, but I have not had the energy to figure out who to follow and what I'd like to post there.
I'm probably going to stick mainly to Tumblr until it implodes or the heat death of the universe. Whichever comes first.
But you can follow me and I'm sure I will start posting there eventually.
I did comedy for a while and became kinda/sorta popular. Now I do photography and it is much less popular.
My difficult health recovery has prevented me from doing any real photography since last April. But this damned red chair that I couldn't drag all the way to the trash pickup has been a weird muse. It is now a sort of mascot for my front yard and a frequent guest in my photos.
I took this picture out of a dirty window with my 6 year old smartphone, but with a tiny bit of Photoshop magic, I was able to make it seem like I used my big boy camera.
Most smartphones have a RAW mode these days. And I suspect people don't use this mode because the files look boring and flat initially. But you need to think of it as capturing data rather than a finished photo. Interchangeable lens cameras have entire color science departments dedicated to making the RAW files look good. They could just output the flat, low contrast result like video cameras do, but I think that might be discouraging to beginners.
This is what "raw" professional video footage looks like without any grading.
But RAW files from stills cameras look almost fully cooked from the beginning. I'm guessing they give you a head start to save time and figure you can undo their initial grade in editing.
All that is to say, smartphone RAW photos are often ugly. They are meant to be. Apple and Google are much more invested in doing all of the editing work for you. With RAW, you have to visualize what you can do with the data and process them in something like Lightroom. However, if you put in the effort, you can often get better results than letting the phone do its computational magic.
I've trained in photo editing and manipulation for longer than I've been a photographer. Over two decades now. I started on Photoshop 5.0 which was released in 1998.
Like every skill, I kinda sucked at first. I made some embarrassing things.
I would practice by Photoshopping my friend's MySpace photos.
I started getting into Photoshop comedy. That involved a lot of cats and memes.
And my skills started getting better.
This parody of 300 with squirrels was the first time I thought, "I might be good at this."
No one noticed that I turned the zeros into acorns in the logo, but I was proud of that.
I created a popular meme "Babies with Laser Eyes."
And then I had my first mega viral Photoshop creation.
Eventually photography came into the picture and I was able to combine my skills. I learned professional retouching.
And then the ultimate test of all my skills was learning photo restoration. It is constant problem solving, R&D, hand coloring, and hours and hours of removing specks of dust from 50 year old photos.
I love photography and editing equally. And photo editing is nice because I can do it lying down in my bed if I need to. So if I am not physically able to do proper photography, I still have a related creative outlet. I've enjoyed doing photo restoration work a great deal. I get to restore people's cherished memories and that feels very nice.
That said, I've felt more anxious about posting my more edit-heavy art. People are quick to make accusations of AI. And a lot of photographers see editing as a cheat. If you don't capture the image "in camera," it is seen as less authentic. This is despite the fact that my image editing workflow is much more complicated, required much more training, and takes much longer than practical photography.
I don't claim my images aren't edited. Every professional-level photographer does some editing on every photo. Though some of my least edited photos get accused of being photoshopped, or now, AI.
I don't understand the shame and stigma that some people attach to photo editing. To me, it is as valid an art form as painting or drawing. And in most cases, I do actually have the photography skills to achieve a similar result using practical methods, but I have to choose which approach will use the least amount of energy due to my CFS.
I got up the other morning and saw a spooky fog. The sun was barely awake and the light was still quite dim. When I looked out my front window, it looked very much like what the photo depicted.
My first instinct was to grab my proper camera and head outside to take photos. But I am at a very physically taxing stage of my recovery and I have trouble standing for more than a few minutes at a time. I gave up on the idea and returned to my sedentary state.
But then I remembered the smartphone photo I took when it snowed.
People really liked this photo and didn't seem to care that it was taken through my window with a phone. So I figured I'd capture the foggy version and it would be a cool sequel.
Unfortunately, 30 minutes had passed and the dim blue light had become much brighter. But I figured I could recreate what I saw earlier with my editing skills.
And I think it was successful.
If I had the energy, I'm confident I could have captured an equally cool image "in camera." But sometimes it is cathartic to flex my editing muscles when practical methods are not possible.
The Red Chair Collection keeps growing.
(The blue alien Froggie was from Halloween.)
I am working very hard to get better. And I have made tremendous progress over the past year. But the finish line still eludes me. It is closer than ever but still seems out of reach.
I am an artist through-and-through, and it is difficult to have limited creative output. I miss photography very much. But I am glad I still have photo editing when my concentration is cooperating.
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LAGO DI TESERO, Italy — A local dog made a bid for Olympic glory Wednesday morning, breaking out of his doghouse and onto the homestretch of the cross-country ski course in the middle of a race.
Two-year-old Nazgul was quickly collared by race officials and returned unharmed to his home at a nearby bed-and-breakfast, but not before his genial presence lit up television sets and social media channels around the world — even if he perplexed some of the athletes who encountered him.
"I was like, 'Am I hallucinating?" said Tena Hadzic, a 21-year-old Croatian skier who encountered the dog on her trip down the homestretch.
But his owners connected with NPR for a brief interview while they were driving to watch an Olympic biathlon race at another venue.
"He was crying this morning more than normal because he was seeing us leaving — and I think he just wanted to follow us," said the owner, "He always looks for people."
Nazgul is a "stubborn, but very sweet" Czechoslovakian wolfdog, the owner said.
Race organizers did not make Nazgul available for questions after his capture.
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My favorite part was showing the Omega photo finish.
I've been following your blog for... oh god maybe a decade now? It's been so cool to see your photography grow. I'd like to try my hand at doing miniature and diorama photography. Your posts about photography are always so insightful, I was wondering if you had any advice for someone just getting started. I have a lightbox from Amazon, a phone stand, and my phone. Is there anything big I should know about taking photos of very small things? What mistakes do people usually make when they're taking pictures of very small things? Any advice would be absolutely amazing.
(Also thank you for your advice on ring lights and naughty photos -- it definitely helped my self-esteem to know it was the lighting that was weird and unseemingly, not my bits)
There are generally three ways people go about photographing miniatures and dioramas.
Documentary, professional product photos, and cinematic storytelling.
So if you are just trying to get high quality documentation of your miniature stuff, then something like a light box would be fine. You just want to make sure you get soft, even light and good coverage of your subject. Think Amazon product photos.
I wrote a post about how to document 3D museum objects that covers the basics.
And the last style is a more cinematic approach where you photograph your subjects like an actual miniature scene in a movie.
My favorite cinematic toy photographer is Sgt. Bananas (Johnny Wu).
This style of toy photography requires smaller and more precise lighting. You have to remember that a small light for a human is a big light for a toy. And dramatic falloff is determined by distance.
So if you want to get these moody noir shots with gradient falloff, you need to get your lighting very close.
Sgt. Bananas has some videos he did with Tested where he shows off some of his lighting techniques.
He uses small LED lights to create his cinematic style.
If I were putting together a kit I would get a couple of these cube lights.
Amazon.com : SmallRig RM01 Mini LED Video Light Waterproof Portable Lighting Kit with 8 Color Filters, Dimmable Fill Photography Light 5600K
They sell a 3 pack kit with a bunch of helpful accessories.
I would also get an RGB pocket video light.
This is like a softbox for toy sized stuff. The light can stand up on its side so you can get very creative with where you place it. You can make it a window light or a backlight. And it does colors so you can create fun effects with that.
And then I'd probably get one of these LED panel lights so I can get really soft light but still move it in very close to the subjects. This can even work as a background.
Amazon.com : RALENO 19.5W LED Video Soft Light Panel, 650Lux/m Camera Panel Light Built-in 8000mAh Battery, CRI>95 2500-6500K Photography St
And you could put a shoot-through white umbrella in front of it if you want extra super duper soft light.
Again, these are representative examples. I am not saying you need to get the exact items. Always look for deals, read reviews, and do your research.
Additional tips for photographing small things...
Work in a very dark space. Small lights are not very powerful and they do not compete well with ambient light. You will also need to take longer exposures, which will intensify any ambient light. So block out the windows, close the door, and turn off any lights that aren't contributing to your photo.
You said you have a phone stand, which is good. If it doesn't let you play with angles and heights, you might want to get a cheap tripod with a ball head. You need to make sure your phone doesn't move when taking photos. If you notice your images are a bit blurry, you may need to set a timer so you don't shake the phone.
If your phone allows, lock your ISO to its lowest setting for cleaner photos. Since you are on a stand, you can use a long shutter speed without any issues. If it takes 5 seconds to take a photo, so be it. Keeping that ISO low will help your phone photos look like they were taken with a big camera.
Since you are using your phone and it has a smaller sensor, you will have decent depth of field. But even so, close-up photos of small things are going to shrink your depth of field considerably. Background blur can be a good thing, but if you have a deeper diorama, you may struggle to get everything in focus. For an interchangeable lens camera, I'd normally suggest learning how to focus stack. This is where you take the same picture with multiple focus points. So you could do a close focus, medium focus, and deep focus and then combine them in Photoshop. However, there are smartphone apps that allow you to bracket your focus as well. There is one called Open Camera. That is something to look into. I have not tried it myself, but if you search for "smartphone focus stack" you will probably find guides to help you. I wouldn't worry about this initially, but if you run into this issue in the future, this is how you'd address it.
Put some thought into your background. Do you just want it bright white? Dark gray? Black? Do you want a gradient ball like in my photos? One popular method is to actually put a screen behind your scene and use an image of a sky or cityscape. Putting effort into the background is often ignored and one of the best ways to get better photos.
One of the most powerful creative tools you can use on miniature photography is perspective. If you get your camera super close, you can exaggerate the size of your toys. If you use a farther perspective and zoom in, you can enlarge background elements.
I wrote a big post about perspective. All of the examples are of big stuff, but the same principles apply.
💬 7 🔁 140 ❤️ 364 · Some additional perspectives on perspective... · My health has not been great and so I was working on this post since O
All of that holds true, but on a much smaller scale. 5 inches might be a close perspective and 2 feet might be a far one.
And my last tip, look at other photos. Find people who do miniature photography and figure out what you like. Don't just start taking photos. Plan them. Find references and do sketches and figure out how you want things to look. You may not be able to duplicate what you've imagined perfectly, but having a well thought out concept will always get you better results.
Hopefully this was helpful. I wish you luck on your miniature endeavors.
