Collages on a Whim

Just sitting in my chair this morning and deciding to play with a new-to-me program on my tablet. Select photos in your camera roll and it will generate collages. I am also uploading to Blogger directly from my iPad. While, I have done the occasional written post from the tablet, I haven’t previously uploaded photos directly from my Apple camera roll. I wasn’t even sure that I could do it  

I do understand that this is of no interest to anyone but me, but it is all that I have this morning.

From PJ’s visit  

Just a few with me and the kids (mostly)., some going back a few years. 

Since I am mostly a computer and not a phone guy, I don’t have too many to choose from straight from my camera roll, but being full of hubris, I do have a few of me. 🤓😎

I have a feeling that I may be doing more with this program. 

Grinding my Gears

Awhile ago, a friend indicated  that either a local photo contest or some local agency was looking for some town photos — but not photoshopped! I don't know what that means, and I doubt whether the organizer knew what it means. I must confess that the lack of knowledge and clarity about photography and photoshop causes me to grind my gears.

What was not photoshopped supposed to have meant?

Did it mean SOOC (straight out of the camera) with no editing at all? Or maybe it meant no adding or subtracting of objects? It's not clear.

What people fail to understand, is that every image is processed. Most people don't edit their photos in post, but that doesn't mean that they're not developed. What it does mean is that they have chosen to let the software in the camera process their images. The camera will make decisions about light balance, colour, saturation, and sharpness. It isn't reality; it is the camera's subjective interpretation of the subject.

If you shoot with a phone, you are often getting a highly processed version of reality. For example, compare my photo of a cadet at the Remembrance Vigil with the version from Sue's phone.

I worked hard both in camera and in edit to get this photo. It is a fair approximation of the dark ambience.

This is how Sue's phone interpreted the scene. It lightened the photo well beyond the conditions as they were, for it was really a pretty dark scene.

It is an splendid result for sure, but it isn't what we saw. In this case, SOOC really augmented reality. I am impressed with the phone's software capabilities. It is truly remarkable. But it exemplifies how much processing a phone can and will do, all on its own. In point of fact, it is a lot more impressive than my version, but it doesn't reflect the reality of the situation. My photo, which was photoshopped (by that I mean edited) is truer to reality.

Phones are most definitively impressive. I recently showed this photo.

It took me quite a lot of work to get that photo. I had to take three images on a tripod to capture the full range of light. Then, I had to blend them together in Photoshop, after which there were a few additional adjustments to be made.

Meanwhile, Sue was able to handhold her phone for a length of time that would have cause my camera to produce a blurry photo, but hers is sharp. The phone took a single photo, saw that there was a huge tonal range and processed the scene accordingly. It is really pretty amazing.

Both version rely on software and computing power. Mine took a lot more steps, but the phone's software is so powerful, that it did it all effortlessly and arguably produced a cleaner image even though it was handheld.

As I have already written, it is very impressive. But nobody had better @ me about photoshop, and mustn't presume that a supposedly unedited SOOC photo is necessarily true to reality.

Addendum; Just to clarify, I have Photoshop, but I don't always use it much. Of course, I do edit photos, but mostly in Photoshop's companion program, Lightroom. In general conversation, as in much of this post, I'll use the word photoshop, just to mean editing.

The Mysteries of Auotcorrect

We have all seen posts about  hilarious autocorrects, and I have even posted one or two entries in the past. 

They can be funny. One friend was trying to type boredom in a text to his wife. She was totally confused to read bone donkey. We laughed, but try as he might, he could not replicate it. 

I am such a bad typist that I get a lot of weird replacements, but I don’t keep track of them. I did get radiation this morning when I was trying for tradition, but that wasn’t a big deal.

Lately, however, I have been noticing words that I might reasonably expect to be corrected, but they haven’t been. 

For example: why aren’t apostrophe’s inserted for both cant and dont? And why isn’t a single i capitalized? Also, when would I ever want to type youre and not you’re?

I have typed both canada and christmas, not wanting to bother with the shift key and expecting both to be automatically corrected, but they haven’t been. 

Too often when I capitalize a a word, I often mistakenly include the second letter. I have recently ended up having to manually change JOhn, WHich (at the beginning of a sentence), and SUnday. Why?

I have deliberately tried to use the abbreviation re.  but I haven’t wanted  the next word to be capitalized. If I try to override the capital, autocorrect objects strenuously. I end up tricking it by not using a period before typing the next word. Once I have done that, I can go back and insert the period. Of course, this is a good reason to not even bother with the period after the re.

Then, just before writing this entry, I was commenting on a post. I wanted to name the artist, Emily carr and typed it wrong (as above), but autocorrect  knew enough to correct carr to Carr. But it will not correct wont or canada or christmas? Go figure.

I have to admit that it does give me a list of alternatives at the bottom of the screen, but when I am typing along, I don’t notice it, and I cannot think of times when either Christmas or Canada would not be properly capitalized.

i simply cant fathom or explain the mysterious ways of af croefect, er autocorrect.  

The Agony of Meetings

In my first few years of teaching, my department head would hold what seemed to me to be interminable meetings. They were mostly pointless, and after a day of teaching, I would find myself heading home late with a pounding headache.

In due course, I became a department head, but remembering those meetings early in my career, I can confess that I may have strayed too far in the other direction by holding vey brief meetings. Partly, it was also because we were in a bused rural school and many teachers carpooled, and I didn't like to keep other teachers waiting.

And then there were the department heads meetings. Thank the almighty that they were held during lunch hour under time constraints. The free lunch was also a bit of a sop.

But they were still an ordeal, held because it was expected by the principals' bosses. The material could have easily been covered by a one page memo, for they were never about gathering input from the staff but just about disseminating whatever the principals wanted to say or do.

And, of course, as I have shared many times, I am an introvert. I don't mean to bang on about it, but when FB showed me this link, 12 Things That Annoy Introverts, of course I had to click. Of the twelve points in the post, it was the one about meetings that jumped out at me and caused me to recall some of my experiences. In point of fact, I seldom experienced a good or worthwhile meeting. Unless maybe I ran it.

Meetings annoy introverts, especially when the meetings would be better off as an email or a group message. When meetings seem to have no purpose, they are even more annoying. If you’re working with introverts on your team at work, do your best to utilize digital communication before setting up endless meetings.

The problem is often compounded if the meeting is a last-minute or unexpected meeting. Introverts often look at their schedules for the day to determine when they’ll have time to get their work done alone. If their four-hour block of time is suddenly broken up by a one-hour meeting, they’re prone to getting annoyed.

Well, that is one take and true enough, but I can't really be sure that my dislike of meetings has much to do with introversion but rather with some bad experiences of tedious, low-quality events. I did not so much dislike the concept of meetings as I didn't appreciate the useless, time-wasting aspect of so many that I was forced to endure. By all means, call a meeting if there is a need, and if one has to be held just for form's sake because it is expected, then make it as efficient and worthwhile as possible.

One of Us is Sleeping

I generally go to bed ~10:30-11:00. I am up pretty early, so that time works for me.

Last night my hockey team was playing out west, so the game started 2 hours later than usual. I did not intend to watch it all, but it was a pretty good game, so I did. It was midnight or very close to it when I turned in.

I got up to pay my respects to the porcelain bowl around 3:30-4:00.

As I snuggled back in, I thought that I should have closed the bedroom door.

Sure enough, I was found by the cat, and she climbed aboard.

There was a time when she would leave shortly if I didn’t acknowledge her, but those days have passed.

Now, she gets on board and stays. Sometimes, I begin to drift off regardless, but then she moves and jars me back to unfortunate reality  

So yeah, I was up before 5:00 after less than 5 hours of sleep. It was a night in which my body was ready to get another hour or so, but it was not to be.

Now, guess who is up and guess who is off sleeping somewhere. 

Take Two

Yesterday's image.

Once I realized that I could turn on the box's lights, I figured that I probably should go ahead and do that little thing. I added wine glasses as well. This was Sue's idea. I do riff on some of her ideas because she is more creative than I. She also knows what objects are in this house whereas I have no clue, so if I see an appealing idea, I am tempted to 'go me and do likewise.'

Due to the extreme contrast in lighting lighting, this was a very difficult shot. I had to do an HDR, which means that I took three photos ranging from dark, to keep the bright lights under control, to bright, to lift the dimly lit wine glasses.

I am thinking of sticking a Merry Christmas on it and using it for a Christmas card. So you may see it again in due course.

A New Decoration

I don't have much today, which is probably a big relief to you. However, I do have this photo.

It's a new decoration to us but is really a hand-me-up from Shaunna. One has to change some Christmas decorations every now and then if every year is not going to look the same. She's changed hers a bit, so that has enabled us do the same. In turn, we can now pass some decorations along to others. I am not sure when we actually last purchased new ornaments. A few years ago we scored from a friend of Sha's who was clearing out her office. Now we have some of Sha's ornaments.

I should have put some other decorations with it for the photo, but I didn't. I may still do that, but I am still not totally adept with our little studio setup down in the basement because I haven't used it much. It is more or less Sue's baby.

Addendum: Now Sue tells me that you can plug this thing in and it lights up.