View allAll Photos Tagged OpenSourceSoftware
On my way out to the car I came upon this truck. It's forsale. It reminded me of my father's truck when I was growing up.
When I discovered a technique that expressed what I felt about steam locomotives, I was excited. The original work is published in what I feel is the finest photographic arts publication in the world, LensWork Magazine.
Over time I have worked to refine the technique and process further. Each step takes me deeper and deeper into the kinds of art I have been hoping to create for over 40 years. This is so THRILLING to me! This kind of subject matter just shouts at my and tickles my silly-bone to absolutely no end!!
The air has been bright and warm the moment the sun peeks up over Mt. Hood. The air has also been quite smoky from fires and the grass field burning that farmers do down valley. Despite the reduced air quality, its been a joy to ride out in the morning. The Fall crispness is just on the edge of sensation. As I say, its a great joy.
This computer was originally a Windows computer until a friend of mine installed it with Linux Mint. He also installed a variety of Open Source applications so this older computer is usuable.
During the winter, and a very very cold and windy day, we met my wife's son and girlfriend for a wee hike up a hill. At the top was an amazing stone structure.
I did my best with the tools at hand to quickly capture the solid, rugged feel of the place.
So... I thought I'd try my hand at several different renditions of the same original images.
These were mostly single exposure images, processed two ways through Qtpfsgui (Fattal, Drago), split toned and curve corrected in the Gimp, and cropped as required for display here.
After visiting my brother, we headed over to see my wife's daughter in Petaluma. The rail station there has been completely renovated. However, the old rail lines sit out back in an open field largely ignored. On this latest trip I noticed how a large construction company has put up a fence along the south side of the property. This made photography rather difficult of the old engine.
I have worked these with Qtpfsgui and the GIMP. Still, I wanted to include the Qtpfsgui parameters. They are only a vague starting point for where this image ended up.
Qtpfsgui 1.8.12 tonemapping parameters:
Operator: Mantiuk
Parameters:
Contrast Mapping factor: 0.001
Saturation Factor: 0.8
------
PreGamma: 1
Original photographs from the era are seldom this distressed and faded. Yet, from the perspective of my eye in current times, it wouldn't surprise me to someday find images in worse shape than this. Its the feeling and expectation of age that drove me to make the images in this manner. I hope it "works".
As I round the final bend and enter the home stretch I found an interested technique. What I like about this approach is the layered black and white tones with textures that remind me of aging etchings.
The work was done in support of Bogville's Sub Lunar Servitude show that's coming up soon.
This series of images has several inspirations. I like the wood cut or engraved feel of these. We see these kinds of images around so many of the Paris flea markets. Alas, I can't afford them and all too often they're not of a subject I'm interested in.
My many thanks to the G'Mic developer, David Tschumperle and to David Patrick for providing a kewl new tool and for sharing what's possible.
A few years ago we were hiking out by Tonto Creek I think its called, and this butterfly came flapping by in heavy wind gusts, I was tracking it with my camera when all the sudden a Figeater beetle(june bug) collided with it in mid air.
They then sort of flew in circles around each other for what seemed like something over a minute, then the beetle flew off and the Monach rested on a branch not far from me.
It clung there while shot image after image of it with the wind blowing the branch back and forth over and over no end.
This is the shot that came out sharp.
When I left it was still resting and the wind still gusting.
Original size you can actually see the scales on the wings.
I would like to thank all the Bogvillians who were able to make the photoshoot. I want to thank them for their time and fun preparation. Their efforts helped make the photoshoot a success (well, at least from this perspective).
All the recent work posted here was done in support of Bogville's Sub Lunar Servitude show that's coming up soon.
[Strobist Info: AB800 with shoot-thru umbrella close high camera left, AB1600 with reflected large umbrella level with camera far right, white cloth backdrop, wee-bit-o-processing to taste.]
I chose what happened to be one of the wettest days in November to head out to a local cemetery to snag a few photos. It was so wet that I sloshed and slipped, slid and mucked throughout the graveyard.
I was hoping to continue the image theme that I started with the steamlocomotives. Alas, the graveyard images became their own theme. Dreamy. Erie. Beautifully strange.
Canon 40D, 10-22 EF-S, Gimp, Sepia, etc...
The Holiday Season brings out the lights. Businesses along Division in near-in SE are brightly lit.
I wanted to see what happened when I compared the output of a couple different tools using several different parameters. To my eye, these are the more pleasing results. I like the slightly desaturated effect along with the extreme contrast control and micro-contrast effects.
I took a table-top tripod and found suitable resting places. Then I used aperture preferred controls, set the A640 to f/2.8, then took three images, one each at +2, 0, and -2EV. These were then stacked and processed as a HDR tiff, followed by tone mapping.
A barechested man with a beer in hand sways to the sounds of Ice Water Steel Ensemble. Carnival Monday, Park Street, Port of Spain. 27th February, 2017. (Shaun Rambaran / Forge Business Imagery)
Education of the People Ensures the Preservation of Their Liberties Imagine that. Could someone please drill this into the Toy Emperor's head? I know, he's had too much coke in his life and drinks far to much, but something needs to get through that thick skull of his!
Driving home from Oaks Park I parked in front of a High School. The converging lines and "earthy" look about the place interested me. It seemed that I was still running on the artists energy that I worked up while at the amusement park.
Heritage is a difficult thing to reclaim. This, particularly after culture is decimated in a giant whirling blender of US trans-national corporate inculturation.
This lad descends from Campbell through the Thompson line. He is kilted in neo-modern Utilikilt. Silver snaps where a Sporran used to go. Pockets where tailored kilts could hide them. Completely useful and comfortable to wear.
Using texture layers, masks, and a whole lot of manipulation in the Gimp, I felt the need to reinterpret some of the images from my failed lighting shoot.
If it's open source, how can they afford a booth at Annual? Answer: it's not really open source. To get it to work properly for your instantiation, you have to pay them to configure it. Talk about a wolf in sheep's clothing!
Bogville - Lady Rhinebone Leveaux ov thee Quagmire Depths
Its been very interesting to work through the sequence of images for the Bogvillians. They have the "look" that I have been dying to photograph and work with artistically. Alas, it takes more than just good subject matter to express the kinds of things I am after. Watching from a third person position, I see that I need to take the technology, learn it, understand it, and apply it. However, its so easy to get stuck there thinking that technology will "save" an image. It doesn't work that way for me. I find that I also need to let the mind's worrying and fretting over technology find another place to "be" while I'm actually working an image. I see that I must also work to allow my whole being to participate. I can't really explain it, except that I feel more "open" and connected on more levels when I work to stay in the body and to share "space" with my mind. Oh, and I find I get the best results when I let the mind "do its thing", but not to let it take over the process.
As I round the final bend and enter the home stretch I found an interested technique. What I like about this approach is the layered black and white tones with textures that remind me of aging etchings.
The work was done in support of Bogville's Sub Lunar Servitude show that's coming up soon.
If you click the map location link the placement is from where I took the image, not over Agathla itself.
Agathla is just off 163 and this image is taken well south of there off of road 160 just before entering the comb ridge heading towards Utah and the Four Corners region.
This series of images has several inspirations. I like the wood cut or engraved feel of these. We see these kinds of images around so many of the Paris flea markets. Alas, I can't afford them and all too often they're not of a subject I'm interested in.
My many thanks to the G'Mic developer, David Tschumperle and to David Patrick for providing a kewl new tool and for sharing what's possible.
Visiting with Desmo_Dave was great. My wife and I hadn't seen him since he made the trek to Paris a couple years back when we were there.
Vancouver is reportedly the highest density city along the West Coast. Still, there was plenty of room to move about and the traffic was better than anything I've ever experienced in Seattle or San Francisco. Oh, and the people there tend to be slim, trim and fit. Very unlike in the US where 60%+ of the population is overweight.
In New Mexico there is a pueblo constructed of sandstone and limestone. The red rock cliffs surrounding this pueblo make it worth a visit.
Visiting Eureka, California, my wife and I wandered around the old downtown area. It appears to be under serious rennovation.
This building is a private club. Men only, I hear. It looks wicked. And the HDR tone-map treatment adds something from my perspective.
This was made of three images, stacked. Then passed through Qtpfsgui in two different filters (Fattal and Drago), then layered into the Gimp. The levels were fiddled with until I got what I was looking for. The final images were blended and then a bit of vignette was thrown in for good measure.
The Mt Tabor Adult Soapbox Derby competition pits men and women again science and cheap risk it all low ball designs.
There is a timeless feel about how little value is placed on human life after a few beers. Mad-folk rushing downhill at a great rate of knots slamming pell-mell into the final turn as they whisk their conveyances toward the hay bales that mark the finish line and the lack of brakes.
Its been very interesting to work through the sequence of images for the Bogvillians. They have the "look" that I have been dying to photograph and work with artistically. Alas, it takes more than just good subject matter to express the kinds of things I am after. Watching from a third person position, I see that I need to take the technology, learn it, understand it, and apply it. However, its so easy to get stuck there thinking that technology will "save" an image. It doesn't work that way for me. I find that I also need to let the mind's worrying and fretting over technology find another place to "be" while I'm actually working an image. I see that I must also work to allow my whole being to participate. I can't really explain it, except that I feel more "open" and connected on more levels when I work to stay in the body and to share "space" with my mind. Oh, and I find I get the best results when I let the mind "do its thing", but not to let it take over the process.
My wife and I were wandering around Eureka earlier in the day when I spied a whole collection of GP9's sitting a ways down the tracks. After a few pints and dinner later, we drove down to see them. The sun was setting and the lighting was going to be tricky.
This was processed using my increasingly favored HDR tone-mapping techniques. Three images stacked at +/-2EV and 0EV and processed. I further processed this to get the contrast fine tuned, cropped, and ready to print. All this from a handheld Canon G7 10mpixel point and shoot. Whee...
Qtpfsgui 1.8.12 tonemapping parameters:
Operator: Mantiuk
Parameters:
Contrast Mapping factor: 0.001
Saturation Factor: 2
------
PreGamma: 2.5
Working in a new (for me) direction. 21mpixel camera. 28mm perspective control lens. Pre-dawn light. Low ISO. RAW files. Light sharpening. Conversion to jpeg. Stacked and tone mapped.
The final file is just AWESOME! The resolution is beyond anything I've yet shot with digital. Just stunning knock your eyes out kind of impact.
I love it!
I keep searching for new ways to express the themes of Steampunk, Tribalism, Noir Victorian Goth. The Multiverse appears to have room for a wide variety of photonic creations. Images that pass across the "Seam" is un-predictable.
I enjoy wandering the local cemeteries. I seem to uncover or finally "see" something new to me every trip I make.
The Gothic iron and stone work really attracted me the last time I was there.
... and so it begins. The Conductor will start us off.
I have several renditions of this, so if this one doesn't "work", let me know and I'll post other version.
Please see the Bogville Creature Show.
The air has been bright and warm the moment the sun peeks up over Mt. Hood. The air has also been quite smoky from fires and the grass field burning that farmers do down valley. Despite the reduced air quality, its been a joy to ride out in the morning. The Fall crispness is just on the edge of sensation. As I say, its a great joy.
I have been thinking about why I like these kinds of images more than the "straight" photographic versions of these. Perhaps it goes to something that the academics have pointed out, and that is that humans love a representation of a thing more than the actual thing itself.
If this is the case, I would have to agree. When I look at the "straight" images, they look exactly how the eye remembered the scene. When I look at the tone-mapped/selective colorized/heavily manipulated versions of the images, I see what I felt.
A colleague of mine put it this way: Would you rather have an apple, or an apple pie? A raw apply, while potentially tasty, might lack the depth and feeling one gets from eating an apple pie.
It's an interesting notion and one that feels like it's close to hitting the mark for me.
My wife and I were wandering around Eureka earlier in the day when I spied a whole collection of GP9's sitting a ways down the tracks. After a few pints and dinner later, we drove down to see them. The sun was setting and the lighting was going to be tricky.
This was processed using my increasingly favored HDR tone-mapping techniques. Three images stacked at +/-2EV and 0EV and processed. For this image I needed to tone-map and save as a jpg file two halves of the locomotive. I used stitching software to join the images and to smooth the joint. Then I further processed this to get the contrast fine tuned, cropped, and ready to print. The native file is over 5000 pixels wide. I can't wait to see a large print of this, the resolution should be stunning. All this from a handheld Canon G7 10mpixel point and shoot. Whee...
I have to smile. A friend who I ran into at the Antique Powerland Steamup said the light was too bright and there were no photos to be taken. At the time I felt that maybe something good could still come from the event, bright sunshine and all.
After applying the ever evolving processes to the original images, I remain stunned! This stuff is so much fun to me. Its whimsy and innocence and art and raw beauty all rolled into the kinds of images that thrill me.
Whenever I travel I find many things that attract my "eye". On this trip I realized that there must be just as many interesting things in my home town. If only I looked with a different "eye". I noticed how much my "story" of where and how I live narrows my participation of a place. Seems to me that maybe I need to be more curious and open to the world around me so that I can experience things like I do when I travel.
I find I am very much enjoying making images in the style and idea we have of old photographs.
This series leans heavily on my own ideas of photographic history. Early images are typically much more stable than what I am presenting here. Yet, hand tinted, stressed and distressed photos are easy to find in antique shops around the country.
It is with this that I pay homage to all those wonderful photographers who helped capture images in the past. I hope to do them and our ideas of history justice.
I am still learning the parameters of the tool. From what I've seen thus far, I'm in LOVE with what this can do.
Truth in advertising: Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I worked in a couple traditional photo-labs. One in Hollywierd. Another in Irvine. I worked with the color guys to make masks and to manipulate the h*ll out of stock photos that I took. My subject at the time was motorcycles. The point being, it took me a 40 hour week to produce a fraction of what you see here, and I had ready access to tools and materials!
The tool is amazing! Now, if only it would process 3800x2400point images a little more quickly... :-)
Stay tuned, I'll have a wide variety of expressions to share over the next several days.
Not very good with my camera back when this was tatken, was on auto and the flash fired. Blew out most of the skies which were grey for the most part with a snow storm moving in.
As we left this place for Colorado the snow started coming down heavy. By the time we arrived in Cortez Colorado there was a full blanket of snow and it was still snowing for the first time all winter long and this in the first half of March.
Story behind this shot told here
involves precarious heights and a nervous photographer blowing the chance to shoot one of the best and largest specimens of Tarantula Hawks I have ever seen.
Interesting film clip on this creature www.desertusa.com/video_pages/thawk1.html
When a morning finally dawned clear and sunny, I knew I had an opportunity to explore a little HDR tone-mapped panorama work.
This image consists of two exposures. I left the fractured image of the bike rider as I think it's rather interesting to look at. The two exposures were stitched using Hugin. The resulting tif was processed through Qtpfsgui using Fattal and Drago. Gimp was then used to adjust the contrast/saturation and then combine the two images.
As I was taking photos, I heard someone walk up behind me a say "That'll be $5." When I turned to face the elderly gent, I smiled. It was his car and he was very proud of it. So we chatted a bit before he and his wife climbed in and motored away.
It was a lovely day.
These old pipes were found outside an old building in downtown. I liked the shapes and textures. Again, using some heavy tone-mapping, I was able to bring out how it felt to me when I looked at the scene.
The processing is nearly magic to me. I really love the way the micro-contrast is enhanced and how an entire image can be made into something that's felt more than looked at. I'm not saying it the right way. But perhaps you get my meaning.
Qtpfsgui 1.8.12 tonemapping parameters:
Operator: Fattal
Parameters:
Alpha: 1.5
Beta: 0.8
Color Saturation: 1
Noise Reduction: 0.03
------
PreGamma: 1
During the winter, and a very very cold and windy day, we met my wife's son and girlfriend for a wee hike up a hill. At the top was an amazing stone structure.
I did my best with the tools at hand to quickly capture the solid, rugged feel of the place.
So... I thought I'd try my hand at several different renditions of the same original images.
These were mostly single exposure images, processed two ways through Qtpfsgui (Fattal, Drago), split toned and curve corrected in the Gimp, and cropped as required for display here.