Aging Rock Star…

Posted on October 27, 2023 by Guthlac

One of the many signs that age is catching up on you is when you visit a statue that memorialise something or someone from your formative period and you appear to be the only one who notices. Yesterday we visited Huddersfield to view the Contemporary British Painting Prize 2003 and whilst there I wanted to visit the Harold Wilson statue. It was a damp day which added to the cragy splendor of the statue and yet we were the only people paying any attention to a statue to one of the greats of 20th century British politics. The people walking by didn’t care and I suspect for many of them he meant nothing.

I won’t dwell on the exhibition we came to see at the Temporary Contemporary Gallery because my travelling companion David Manley will be more eloquent and informed in his review on his blog.

There was another small exhibition, well at least I think it was but I forgot to take a photo of the introduction so I can’t say for definite. I have tried to find out the name of the artist from the gallery website and well the site, such as it is, appalling with little or no information. This is such a shame but there we are.

Huddersfield town centre is really quite small but packed with excellent Victorian or Edwardian architecture. Unfortunately, it is a town that appears to have seen better times and whilst the local council is really trying its best the place does have sense of decline. It is no wonder that many of the so called ‘Red Wall‘ parliamentary constituencies are scattered around the area – central government has over the years slowly disemboweled local government and given them little or no chance of trying to make things better. Hopefully, things might improve should we get a change of government next year.

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All So Autumnal…

Posted on October 25, 2023 by Guthlac

So autumn is starting to catch up. The storms of the past few days appear to have blown the last embers of summer out and we are slowly cooling off, but not as quickly as we probably should do.

A nice afternoon found me meandering around the byways of Gartree once more. This is third of these projects I have undertaken and this one is the first where I have deployed the data I have at hand, the mapping facility in Lightroom, to try and map out where to go next. David, my erstwhile partner in crime, has also started to map out his canvases that will one day be the paintings inspired by our travels.

We humble photographers, in contrast, have to put in the hard physical miles to capture our images compared to painters inspirational travels – hence solo trips. (I know – what a hardship!)

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A VERY Smelly Ram…

Posted on October 24, 2023 by Guthlac

I guess at one level a Ram’s life is a very easy one. Eat, Breath and F**K. That would seem to be their lot. Most of the time they hang around with other rams being, well, rams. I came across this motty crew this afternoon whilst out and about. There clearly was only one leader and boy oh boy did he let everyone know. When I arrived at the gate he was some way off but as soon as he saw me he ran to the gate. However, his presence could be detected across the field… he stink!

Looking at the images now the Marvin comes into my mind. I have no idea where that came from but I have decided that this was Marvin, the stinky ram. Not sure anyone is going to write a children’s book about him.

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Last Post about AI Generated Content…for now

Posted on October 22, 2023 by Guthlac

I’ve now spent a day or so playing around with Adobe’s Generate Fill option and I think I have got a reasonable first impression on it what it can and cannot do. The first thing that I have discovered is that it is really good at generating content to fill an area (the name really gives that away!). The examples from the last two posts show how useful that can be.

The second lesson is that there are some clear ethical as well as copyright rules in what it will and will not generate. This is how it should be but I suspect there are AI generation software out there which has few if any of these rules written into their programming.

The third lesson is that once you start to push software away from ‘fill’ it can very quickly get itself into a mess or the results are worse than some basic cloning of a second image on.top of another. In the above image I asked it change the colour of the hat which it has made a reasonable stab at. It is far from perfect but with a bit of further work in Photoshop I’m sure I could make it look a lot better. However, the next three examples show the limits of the software. I asked for a Woolen hat, Baseball cap and a Fur Hat.

The best thing that can be said about the Baseball Cap generation is that it is period sensitive. Other than that it is not really that good.

So perhaps my concerns about fake photos causing problems by using the Adobe version of AI was, thankfully, a overblown. But I suspect the second or third iteration may well be significantly better at generating content. Also Adobe is a huge corporation so they will be very cautious about how they implement their AI generative software. This being said my YouTube feed is already getting videos on how to hack aspects of Generative Fill so now this software is out their how the software will develop is anyone’s guess.

For me I have no interest in changing the colour of some garment or change a jacket for a t shirt, yes it will do that. Instead I will continue to use the software for what I believe it is really good at, adding slices of background as and where I need it, to make the photo look a lot better as here.

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Fake Photo…or is it?

Posted on October 21, 2023 by Guthlac

The more I use the content generation in Adobe software the more it is blowing my wind. The above image is perfectly normal captured with perhaps a wide or super wide lens. Nothing to see here you might think. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Firstly the image is made from the following images:

I then merged them using the the photomerge in Adobe Lightroom.

This was the first dollop of AI generated content as the two images didn’t exactly line up. But this is not too bad as it all it was doing was saving me a lot of fiddling about trying to get the images to merge by hand – a pain of a job but it can be done and if you were very skilled (I never was that skilled) made to look just about as seamless. The obvious problem is that the image is a very odd shape. Next step – move over to Photoshop an apply some Generate Fill and you have, drum roll please…

This has three Generate Fills applied to it: top, bottom and on the left hand side. I’ve then edited and cropped the image. Now here is the interesting question. Is this a fake image? I’m really not sure I have an answer to this as all I have done is merged two images captured within a 10 seconds of one another. Yes I have added part of the sky and the trees on the left, the generative fill on the bottom was cut out by the crop. The actual action, the male swan chasing off the other swans, did happen and his family following did happen but captured on two images, albeit 10 seconds apart. If you had stood there and just watched this rather capturing the images this is what you would’ve seen. Yet the photograph did not exist before the application of a not insignificant amount of AI generated fill.

I have no answers to this questions other than to say, ‘…fix it in post…‘ has never been so poignant.

One final point my new MacStudio absolutely smashed these processes without even breaking into the slightest sweet (I know computers don’t sweat but you know what I mean). This is even more incredible when you consider the final image is over 16000 pixels wide by 8500 pixels tall which equated to a 1.1 GB file in photoshop. Still it took less than 30 second for each fill to be compiled. We really are through the looking glass when it comes to performance.

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The Things That You Do…

Posted on October 20, 2023 by Guthlac

So with Storm Babat is dropping a month’s rain in a day outside what is a man to do? Well it seems revisit old photos with a good dollop of the latest software to see what can be pulled out of the mists, in digital photography terms, time – 2008. I have to say it is very rewarding to be able work on these images with the latest tools. I’m able to pull out details that I either didn’t have the skills to do 15 years ago. They new AI tools help as well. The image above has some AI generated content and you wouldn’t know unless you’ve walked on the beach below Bamburgh Castle and even then I’m not sure. The ethical questions are vast and I certainly don’t know where this will end. So why did I use the AI generator? To balance the image up. If you want to know the AI generated content it is the very right hand side of the image.

The only AI I used here was the masking selection which really saves an awful lot of time.

Again just the masking assistance.

So what have I learnt using generated AI content? It helps but ultimately it is down to the individual photographer to select the image they want to create. Of course the unscrupulous will palm off wholey AI generated images as the real thing but I suspect they will soon be found out and their reputation, such as it might be, will be shredded.

The real problem with AI is not in the benign area of actual photography but rather fake news. This week has seen the first full information war from the Israel v Hamas conflict over who launched the missile that killed so many people next to the hospital. I’m sure there are hundreds of fake images floating out there showing one side or another do something really bad. With such possibilities it is beholden on respectable news outlets to try and verify the facts as best as they can before pronouncing. I fear in this world of instant comment the pressures will be too great for even the most respected to hold the line.

Worrying times.

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Have a Nice Day…

Posted on October 17, 2023 by Guthlac

I know we all know this but I think it is an important fact to restate: The iPhone camera, whichever version, is not as good as a ‘proper’ camera. What Apple are really good at is the software that handles the data from the image or images. However, what they really are good at is being the best camera at hand if you are travelling light – then with a little tweaking they can produce some very acceptable images.

Of course in this world of encroaching AI the line between a computational iPhone image and a computational Adobe image from a Sony is blurred more and more as each version of the latest software from Adobe is issued. I find myself using the AI assistance more and more and it actually helps me make the images I want to make. I’m not talking about content creation but rather things that in the old days were the domain of dodge or burn and other dark room tricks I never really mastered. Oh thank goodness for modern digital image production.

So after lunch we ended up in Canary Wharf. We took the Liz Line out of central London and spent a while walking through the foreign land of gleaming towers. It seems that we can make infrastructure work in this country so long as it is in London – the Liz Line is a wonderful way to get about and it is very busy. It was also overdue and way over budget yet here we are and London is better for it. Enough grumbing!

Canary Wharf is the antithesis to central London and the Liz Line station is just the latest example of this. The station was created in one of the old docks and is now a five storey office block/shopping mall. Everything is shiny and brand new – very much in keeping with keeping everything else on this man made temple to high finance and greed. It is Gordon Gekko on the banks of the Thames in a way that the City of London just isn’t.

Canary Wharf was made for the super wide on an iPhone (I’m sure Android phones have just as wider or perhaps wider lenses but I’ve never owned one so I couldn’t say). Very tall buildings on a very bright day. Of course I could have used my Zeiss super wide on my Sony but I didn’t have it with me as I was travelling light. The best set up I have found for this is a 40 mm on my Sony and then the iPhone covers the wider end. It is light and useable provided you ensure that the iPhone isn’t pushed too hard. Also I have noticed that people usually ignore someone snapping with their smartphone whilst they sometimes look at you gone out when you use a ‘conventional’ camera or is that just me?

Posted in autumn, Photography, Street Photography | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Don’t you wanta…

Posted on October 16, 2023 by Guthlac

Part 2 of the Rain Stopped Play was to have a day in London and do a bit of tourism. London really is another world, well actually it is the rest of the world. Take a walk along the streets of central Westminster and you are much more likely to hear an accent from anywhere but Britain let alone London. IS this a bad thing? Not at all as this is what gives the place such a buzz.

So as you can see I have ticked another item off of my Bucket List. I have finally encountered the Laughing Cavalier at a major exhibition of its creators work Frans Hals. I always find that when I encounter any well known work it is usually underwhelming, not because the work isn’t exceptional, but rather they are never quite what you think they should be. Fortunately the Hals exhibition is everything it should be and more and well worth the entrance fee.

TBC

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Rain Stopped Play…

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Guthlac

Best laid plans…we’ve all made them and they fall to pieces. This week was supposed to be a north Wales week. Unfortunately, it is going to bucket down so the plan had to be cancelled. So instead we found ourselves at Hardwick Hall instead on a glorious autumn afternoon. As second choices go not bad at all.

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Found this Old App…

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Guthlac

Now I am sure there are far better word art apps out there but I don’t own them. However, I do own WordFoto. It has been sitting on my iPad unused and uninstalled for years. To my great surprise it actually worked as it must be several years or more since I last opened up the app especially when you go to WordFoto website, yes it still exists, you find this disclaimer:

WordFoto has been discontinued

Thank you for your support of WordFoto. We have decided to discontinue this app. We appreciate your understanding.

The copyright tells its own story: Copyright © 2011-2017

So it is at least 6 years since I last used this app but in truth it has been much longer since I used it in anger and yet it still works on iPad OS 17. It really must be a very simple app indeed. Of course getting the images out of the app is another matter. But I managed it. Will I use it? Not at all sure but it is just nice to have an app that runs even when it has been discontinued.

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