Month: May 2007

My quest as it may be to find a shot for the contest expressing what purple means to me or my interpretation of the color the theme purple continues.  Tonight I played around with the blue and red gels and a cd disc. I was trying to get the two clear cloths pins on either side blue and red while reflecting the blue and red on the cd. I was hoping to get the mid point – the all illusive in this case – purple to reflect in the center of the two on the disc. Emm… when the lights are set so that the red and blue are separated on the disc the mid intersection point remains void of purple. When I get the colors to merge the the enough to get the color purple the whole disc shows the spectrum with purple here and there. I guess the way the light refracts on the disc is the problem – DUH.  Anyway I never did get red purple blue.

I have so many different shots with the lights placed everywhere I thought possible and still now purple? The way our eyes see purple it really is the absence of green. Maybe I should be trying to get rid of the green as the human eye is most sensitive to the color.

One of the local based Flickr Photography groups I belong to has a contest this month – the theme Purple. Now that sounds easy at first really. Duh, take a picture of something purple. First off I came to realize that there really are not that many natural occurring color purple subjects. There are the obvious flowers, birds, and rainbows but really when you really think about it around Sacramento there are not that many.

Of course there are houses, cars, fences, neon lights, the list goes on – of painted subjects. I finally decided that a group of wildflowers I had seen might be my subject. Somehow it seemed too easy, too obvious. I decided to try taking shots of a blacklight bulb with the macro lens. I then heard on the grapevine that someone else was going to shoot neon bulbs – so that idea apparently was not very original or ground breaking LOL. Someone else has already posted a nice purple flower so . … emmmm.

This led to reading up on the color purple. I knew that when you mix red and blue you get purple but I really had know idea how many variations by definition there were of “purple”. So, a decided to go with the scientific approach and define purple as the middle – right were blue and red meet. It is really amazing that two opposite colors in the spectrum can make such a beautiful color – the color purple.

So I started my quest for an idea by taking out my sb200 speedlights and putting blue and red gels on them. I took the lights and camera to my high tech photo booth – know as my white bath tub with white tile surrounding it – :). I played a bit and ended up with a photo with red on the left, blue on the right, and yes, purple in the middle. You might say O how exciting with a bored tone in your voice but really, it takes a bit of arranging to get it. I then moved outside and took a few quick pictures without tripod of the Harley. Umm, the lights outside interfered with it but I did get some purple effect.

I took of few different shots and it became obvious that with the two small lights it would be real hard to shoot the whole bike at once without having reflection problems. Short of riding out into the country on a dark night.

Moving along, tonight I decided to try and get the red and blue to merge on a circle. I took off my towel holder and went about moving the little speedlights around trying to get the purple merge in the center of the ring. I thought the idea of two opposites meeting in a circle was an interesting interpretation – they came full circle, the circle has no end, that kind of thing.

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If nothing else I  am having fun with this and learning a lot about lighting.

All ideas for a purple photo idea are welcome!

I have several post filed under personal that are what best can be described as rants against flickr. I never did post them cause I really have not been in the mood to stir anyones pot let alone the flickr pot. Besides, some of them could be taken as sour grapes I suppose.

I typed for myself when yahoo and flickr became one – augh!! I complained to myself when photos reaching the front pages of interestingness were – well – photo shopped crap or the obvious (to me) unfairness that allowed the lesser of the cream of the crop to make explore- using the scratch my back I will scratch yours with favs etc. method. I admit that my photos are probably not worthy of making explore but they sure the heck were better than some that did!

After Yahoo stepped in on the deal the fun seemed to no longer be fun. Groups I had joined started getting ugly, spammers and trolls moved in and some of the regulars responses became down right rude. I mean why berate someone for asking a question in a group discussion because the answer can be found in the manual for that particular camera? I imagine that the person asking either had no manual or did not understand the gooblety goop techno explanation in the manual. And, even if the question annoyed me I would not respond RTFM.

After Yahoo stepped in more and more people were complaining of their photos being misused or used without permission all over the net. My dog Catfish is proud that his picture was used to illustrate a gourmet dish on a cooking site LOL.

While catching up on my blog reading tonight I came across Karoli’s post “Flickr’s Community Is Doomed“. It made me feel better in some respects and sad in others. At least I was not the only one who thought things were going downhill but the newest announcement already had me wondering if the end of the fun had come. Yahoo’s announcement that they were closing down Yahoo’s Photos and send them all to other services including Flickr was followed shortly by an announcement in my mail box that they are now going to attach ads to my emails LOL.

I have never liked the sneaky stuff that Yahoo does. I only have ties to them because the available DSL service in my area merged with them. It seemed ok at first but then the notices of TOS changes kept coming. Web Beacons – big brother Yahoo is tracking you -were announced. Want to fire ATT opps they changed to SBC Global – opps they are now AT&T/Yahoo but my web space is still … no it changed to Geocities – well you get the idea. Who knows who owns what anymore. But I had DSL and that was better than dial-up. Now we do have an alternative Comcast Cable Net but my experiences with Comcast are worse than those with att/sbc/yahoo/prodigy or whatever they call themselves today. At least if I stay with DSL when the cable goes down my internet still works.

So, I have not decided what I am going to do. I still have not figured out how ads attached to my emails are going to be useful to me – and if they are just going to annoy me when a send and relieve mail or are they actually going to be attached to my mail?

“ Additionally, within the next few weeks you will begin seeing graphical advertisements in your AT&T Yahoo! Mail service. These advertisements will be integrated into the AT&T Yahoo! Mail experience, and we hope you will find the advertisements useful. Advertising such as this allows us to continue delivering new and innovative elements to our service and helps us keep prices competitive, while we continue to provide the high level of service that you have come to know and trust. “

Now I have already purchased web space from another host. Their mail service sucks with long retrieval and delivery times not to mention many other services refuse the mail because the host is used by spammers.

So do I revolt and ditch yahoo for good? Transfer (read more money) my blogs domain name to my Bluehost, delete all pictures I had in Yahoo Photos, find another mail service and complain when they give all Flickr members more photosharing space after I had to pay for the privilege?

After the latest attacks on other bloggers and the current debates going on about anonymity on the net these latest Yahoo announcements remind me : Resistance is Futile . … Resistance is Futile . …

The fun is fading on all fronts. Comcast’s guide now has ads at the bottom taking up room where useful info used to be – you know – the show listings? AUGH

Oh yeah, I dug out my old school speakers, the ones with the big ass bass, midrange, and tweeters in em. Yep we had battle of the loud music here the other afternoon – the neighbors and I – I took the dogs out to the truck so as to not hurt their ears, put my aircraft style ear protectors on and started sharing my favorites with them. At 1/3 volume I could no longer hear their boom boom coming through the walls. The cranked it up – I cranked it up – they cranked it up – At about 1/2 volume I exited my townhouse and walked across the street only going back in with ear protection on to increase the volume at the end of each track. I recieved many thumbs up from other neighbors who were as sick of the noise these people subjected us to day and night. long story shortened – at a little under three quarter of max volume – they had no more sound to give me LOL LOL as they turned theirs down and came outside – stunned looks on their faces. Dang I had not even plugged in the 15 inch high power sub woofer yet – I was waiting for Phantom of the Opera for that . …

“The day will come when man will have to fight noise as inexorably as cholera and the plague.”
— Robert Koch, 19th-century German bacteriologist who won Nobel Prize for medicine in 1905

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