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Andre Denis
{K:66407} 12/9/2007
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The brain is amazing indeed :)
Thanks Nick.
Andre
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Nick Karagiaouroglou
{K:127263} 12/6/2007
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Another good example, Andre! It seems that that thingie we all carry in our heads is a real champion in adapting to all possible wierd situations. Indeed, I noticed that on myself after a long wavy ship travel. When I went to land again and it was the land that was waving for some hours. I thought I must be insane, until that kind of disorientation vanished.
As I worked for IT for a long time, I am always amazed about the way our brain "calculates" the world for us, since such things are almost impossible to implement on computers. The best available software still can't compete the brain. I assume also that this is the reason why I could talk endlessly about this subject (and send people messages of at least 3MB about that :-D)
Nick
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Andre Denis
{K:66407} 12/6/2007
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Hi Nick,
Thanks for the further explanation on the way our eyes and brain work together. I didn't know that about our eyes only being able to capture an image every tenth of a second and our brains blending it all together smoothly for us. It does make sense. I do also recall something about that binocular experiment too.
We could go on about many other wierd things the brain does to compensate. How about if you are on a boat for a long time and get used to the waves. Then when you get back on land you feel disoriented?
Andre
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Nick Karagiaouroglou
{K:127263} 12/5/2007
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Exactly Andre! Such experiments were made with binoculars that invert the world. After some days the probands started seeing things normal. After that, when they were told to put the binoculars off, they *again* saw the world inverted, until some days later the brain got it right.
Actually it is not our eyes that play tricks. It is our brain and its miraculous speed in such things. Our eyes actually *do* invert the word as any biconvex lens does. It is only the effortless re-storing of reality that our brain does, as it also at the same time considers all the flood of data because of the other senses - like for example haptic or the feeling of gravity. Now imagine what a machine that is, that steadily evaluates all that unimaginable amount of data and tells us where we are, and what our orientation is.
Another example: Our eyes are only capable of capturing one picture about every 1/10 of a second. The rest of the world between these tenths of seconds was never input to our brain by our eyes. Nonetheless, you move your hand and the brain does the intrapolation of the motion "inbetween" seemlessly in real time! You see your hand smoothly moving. What an aparatus! Any computer would fall on its knees if fed with such a task! ;-)
Talking about computers and software my mind goes back to Photoshop. Indeed a great piece of software of which I believe that it deserves much more dedication and appetite for exploration than the typical "accidental effects", as I call it ;-). I think that it brought an additional and very valuable view to photography, which I have the impression remains undiscovered by many too many people. It gives the possibility for the first time to make, I mean really to construct, photorealistic images that are completely impossible otherwise. I have seen some really astonishing works that made me understood that this tool is not for just "playing around". It needs knowledge and experience that one can only achieve by having the appropriate interest. So, when else could one say in front of such work, than to admit the own stadium of beginning? Especially when I see the "artistic results" of incapability and "playing around" with no real vision, I must wonder how self-convinced one has to be, in order to believe that he/she reached some level of "great experience" with that software.
As you've already said, a poorly taken image can't be helped by photoshop either ;-) So let me learn how to shoot first ;-)
Cheers,
Nick
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Andre Denis
{K:66407} 12/4/2007
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Hi Nick,
I think Photoshop is an extremely powerful tool that most of us only scratch the surface of. I like your attitude of accepting being a beginner. I think it is a sign of maturity in people when they can admit they have so much more to learn. We meet too many people in life that think they know it all :)
Andre
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Andre Denis
{K:66407} 12/4/2007
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Hi Nick,
I finally went to that site for those explanations for the blue tints in snow. I think we suspected most of them before we went to the site. :) I have heard that explanation before about the human eye fooling itself so that we register what we believe to be the "real" colour of snow. Very interesting.. The eye and brain can play some funny tricks sometimes. In any case, as we know, there are quite a number of ways to manipulate the hues and tones so that we can have whatever colour snow we want. :)
I've heard that if you stand on your head long enough, your eyes will begin to see things right side up. I don't know if that is true, but I wouldn't be surprised.
Andre
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Nick Karagiaouroglou
{K:127263} 12/3/2007
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I was also astonished to see how easy it can be done, Andre. I consider myself as a less than beginner with PS, since I think of it as a tool for construction, or composition of images out of several parts. I wonder though if such things could be applied in multiple parts of the image, in order to simulate many degrees of selective focus.
Anyway, it's a long way to go and I have first to learn to master the camera itself. ;-)
Cheers,
Nick
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Andre Denis
{K:66407} 12/2/2007
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Hi Nick,
It seems you had some great success with the selective blur! It came out very nice. I will have to be more consious of that from now on. It gives a whole other dimension that I knew could be done, but have not really taken advantage of. This image it seems was a perfect candidate for the job!
Well done Nick.
I will have to visit those sites now for more information.
Andre
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Nick Karagiaouroglou
{K:127263} 12/1/2007
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Hi Andre!
Yes that, was it! Thanks a lot for the hint! I discovered at least one way to do that "feathering" of the border, You just select what you want - it doesnt even have to be a very exact selection, and then you use the option "soft selection border" from the menu "Selection". (I don't know if these are the right names, because I have the german version.) Then you can input the width of the feathered border, and after that the intensity of anything you apply to the selection will be weaker and weaker as we proceed from the inside of the selection towards the outside.
I attach an alteration just for demonstrating that better, though its way not perfect, but you get the idea. I used a soft border of 30 pixels and then a gauss softening with a radius of 3 pixels. Of course other combinations and a better selection at the start will produce better results.
I also don't know about the reason for the blue tint. The thing is, I have many images where I know that the snow in the shadows was not at all blueish, but on the image it is blueish. The color of the sky may play a role, as you can also read at http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=007AvD . The idea is that the eye (well actually the brain!) corrects the blue tins to white because we know that the snow is white. Though there are many similar phenomena, where the brain re-composes the correct picture for us, here I have my problems with this explanation. If the brain knows that it is snow and it has to be white, then the same would also happen when looking at the image of the snow, since then we also know that it is snow.
I start suspecting something else too. Snow reflects all possible frequencies of visible light. The lower intensity of the reflected light from darker regions (shadows etc) means a lower number of photons that hit the film or CCD. Now, the ones with a wavelength near the blue region of the visible light are perhaps as few as the other ones, but they carry the higher energy. So, perhaps they are the first to tresspass the minimum amount of exposure, and so the film CCD turnds blueish in these regions? I observed the same also with other things than snow in the darker regions, like for example http://www.usefilm.com/Image.asp?ID=1331684 orhttp://www.usefilm.com/Image.asp?ID=1326551 . I used underexposure for both of them. Perhaps this contributes too?
As about filters, I think you are right. They must be using them all the time.
Nick
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Selective blur of the tree at the left |
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Andre Denis
{K:66407} 11/30/2007
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Hi Nick,
I don't know any more about using the selective blur in Photoshop than you do :) I have tried it on occasion by doing exactly as you said. Select the area and set the type of blur and intensity that you want. I think a subtle blur is much more effective and not as false looking. I do recall reading somewhere that you can "feather" the border to blend the blurred and none blurred areas to help take away the false look. Now I will have to try it for sure, just to learn it myself :) Not today though. To tell you the truth I was only guessing at the reason for a bluish tint appearing in snow sometimes. I assumed it was the sort of thing that happens to water on a lake. You know how the surface colour of the water changes depending on the sky colour.?
I think some people use a lot of filters to get those bright whites and blues together?
Andre
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Nick Karagiaouroglou
{K:127263} 11/29/2007
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Hi Andre!
I'd be glad to see the result of the selective blur because of being interested for your photography, and because... I don't know how to do that myself! ;-) I can select some region and blur it, but how do I avoid then the rather sudden change of bluriness near the edges/contours of the selected region? :-/
About snow, now, so you mean that it gets blueish sometimes because of the sky color? I din't think of that because I often see images of a stunning white of snow under a very blue sky. Do you think they are all manipulated with PS?
Nick
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Andre Denis
{K:66407} 11/28/2007
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Hi Nick,
Yes, it would have been nice to have the foreground tree a little blurred. Maybe I will try a little selective blur in photoshop and see how it turns out.
The blue tint that snow sometimes gives off can be quite a problem sometimes. I didn't have to do any special adjustments in photoshop to take care of the snow in any of the shots that day. I think this was most likely because although the surroundings were very bright, the sky was not exactly bright blue. Sometimes I will take the blue tint out of snowy images with selective desaturation.
Andre
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Nick Karagiaouroglou
{K:127263} 11/27/2007
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The car on the turn is quite fantastic here, Andre. But shouldn't that tree in the foreground be more out of focus? Anyway, I think you got the snow very well here too. It is most of the time "blueish" of photographed under shadow, but yours is quite white.
Cheers,
Nick
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Andre Denis
{K:66407} 11/26/2007
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Hi Andrzej,
Yes, I was quite surprised. I knew there would be some snow, but I didn't think there would be that much. I was just up at the cottage a couple of weeks ago and there was no snow yet, so this was a bit of a surprise. Luckily we had no problems driving there. My brother and I just went up for the day.
Andre
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Andrzej Pradzynski
{K:22541} 11/26/2007
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Andre, seems like it's serious winter up there. NJ
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Andre Denis
{K:66407} 11/25/2007
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Thanks again Dave,
This area was not the greatest for watching a lot of the action, but I knew if I timed the shot right, it would probably make a pretty interesting image.
Andre
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Dave Stacey
{K:150877} 11/25/2007
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Nice composition of the environment of the rally, Andre, as well as capturing the action.
Dave.
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