HyperBob's blog/

Self portrait #2

Sometimes you want to do some post processing on a photo so that it looks a bit different. For example put some good old tobacco stains on your moustache.

The easy way to do this is by using textures and on Ipernity there are a few people who have graciously made their textures available in the Textures Group

For the portrait on the left  I have used a couple of textures

1) Noise and dust through the viewfinder polaroid

2) A steamy window I shot on a midnight bus ride home which is responsible for the little neon flickers on the shirt.

Self portrait #1

 

I have been impressed by the camera obscura work by Marja Pirilä  She uses a camera obscura to generate images on the walls of rooms and then she takes a normal photo of people in the rooms. Some of of her photographs are gorgeous, and it is well worth a look at her site to see more of her style.

So I tried to achieve that effect with the photo on the left using  this photo  as the texture. The obvious mistake is that I have not inverted the photo, since all camera obscura images are upside down. All of the work was done with GIMP

 

spikey fish

Apon entering the Sealife aquarium at Linnamaki there is a notice that you can not use flash to take any pictures of the fish.

I expect if flashes were continually going off then the fish would become rather neurotic. The other problem is that some of the fish are very fast swimmers and they would just go by in a blur.

So how do you oversome poor lighting conditions and fast swimming fish? Well the two things that I did was first of all set the ASA to 800 and this helped with lighting problem.

rainbow fish

I also adjusted the EV to +2 and that had the efect of increasing the shutter speed so that I did not need to worry about blurred photos due to quick moving fish or camera shake.

Regardless of making these settings the ASA 800 produced lots of noise on the photos so they had to me manipulated by a noise reduction programme called NEAT IMAGE which does a great job of removing noise from photographs and giving them a certain smoothness.

yellowbelly fish

 

 

Then if the quality is still not good enough you can use a old polaroid texture overlay to give the impression that the photos were taken by some old and ancient equipment, and even though there are lots of imprefections most people will wonder how you were able to take such colourful photos with such antiquated equipment.

The feel of a photo is sometimes more important than the photo itself.

 

Leafy head

I saw a photo of a famous Finnish artist from the 60's in Iso Omena library. He had a big rhubarb leaf  stuck behind his head. Yeah I could do that, but I could not find a leaf that was big as his. I only found a moderate sized leaf which if it had been red might just have looked like a flame shooting out the back of my head.

I tried to spice the photo up by adding a couple of rhubarb leaves on either side of my head, but they were too reminicent of elephant ears, so I droped that idea and went with the smaller  more moderate leaf, and positioned it by shoving the stalk down the back of my T-shirt. It would not stay in place and it would slip from side to  side, so I sellotaped the stalk to the back of my neck.

fountain texture

Now I needed a texture and I came across a photo of a fountain at Linnamäki. The fountain looked like a big dandelion head that has gone to seed, It is composed of many pipes which sprays out water in a fine mist. I thought it would give a fine halo effect, if I put it into the background, The photo would be a saintly one with a tongue of green fire coming out the back of my head, and surrounded by these golden rods like the radiating rays of the sun. But I the photo did not look quite right. The eyes were obliterated and the image was too sickly sweet.

Then I overlaid the fountain image on top of the face and immediately the texture made for a more dramatic photo  since the heads of the fountain became more like nails rather than the rays of the sun.

fountainhead

The sheen on the rhubarb leaf was the reflection of the sunlight on the water that was being sprayed from the fountain and it gives the impression that the face had been painted on a wall and then varnished over. Finally I overlaid a Polaroid black edged frame, and the job was done.

It did not turn out the way that I wanted, but it was disturbing enough to save and keep. You may have an idea and when you try to acheive it you may find out that either it is impossible to acheive or the results you get are unsatisfactory. It is only by experimentation and modification that you finaly arrive with some image that you like or disturbs you in some sort of way.

Things are never what they seem to be,

Learning to fly (take-off)

I have always wanted to fly, and taking the advice of Ignatius C. Reilly, considered that the endevour could easily be accomplished by the proper application of theology and geometry.

You will never fly unless you believe you can fly. That is where the theology comes in, but more than that you need a bloody big rock, an isolated rock in the forest somewhere to launch yourself into the stratosphere.

Isolation is essential because if you have got your theology wrong then nobody will be about to see you go arse over tit.

Ignatius hit the nail on the head when he said that bad theology leads to bad

learning to fly (air traffic c…

lives, but that is another story.

The next thing to think about is geometry. You will never be able to fly if you don't have the correct geometry. Euclid, had his Elements, Pythagorus had his theorem, and Da Vinci, well he just flew didn't he. How do you think he got up there to paint the roof of the cistine chapel. By flying of course.

So the wings I made were more artistic than functional, more mystical than aerodynamic. They were made out to rowan. I left the leaves on cos they looked prettier that way.

 

Learning to fly (landing)

Forgeting about the hollowness of bird's bones, the curvature of the prefect wing, ignoring wingspan to weight ratios, I launched myself off the rock in the forest and to my utter surprise I was soaring above the Baltic. I did not want to come down. The exotic blend of theology and geometry had enabled me to soar. Then far below me I saw an air traffic controller waving me to come down to a platform. For a momment in the tradition of all great flyers I wondered what it would be like to crap from a great height, but the moment passed and I made a magnificent landing on the Soukka jetty. You just can't make up stuff like that.

Theology and geometry will take you there.

 

bangsy

The cival war in Spain drew lots of artists, writers and photographers to the cause of fighting against Franco, and it is a little known fact that Banksy (AKA Bangsy) was there working his subversive art.

Yeah I know you will tell me that Banksy is a young man and could not have taken part in the Spanish civil war, but I ask you this, does Banksy give interviews, has anybody seen the man, do we really know how old he is. 

Anyhoo Bangsy was kicking around with Gerda Taro, some say they were lovers. However they had this tremendous bust up over the political commitment of Eric Arthur Blair (AKA George Orwell) and since she told Bangsy that she was on the verge of selling her battlefront fashion photograhy to Vouge magazine, this caused the final acrimonious split-up between her and Bangsy.

As an act of revenge, Bangsy did a quick stencil of one of Taro's most famous photos and modified it so it looked like when the high heeled fashion-model shot the gun, a black flag with a white rat on it  popped out the muzzle. The bottom of the flag was signed Bangsy.

This was the very first anti-fashion/anti-war stencil that Banksy produced.

Up against the wall

 I have recently been adding little snips of music in the description field underneath my photos, cos I think that music compliments the image.

The image alone may have a certain feel to it but when music is added then that feel becomes reinforced, It is strange that your perception of a photo may change, the longer you take to look at it. Indeed the words from the music may direct your attention to detail in the photo that you might otherwise have missed

With other people photos I am guilty of doing a fast forward, jumping from one to the next. It is like flicking through the pages of coffee-table book by some well known photographer.

We turn the pages, we click on the next photostream, and rarely do we stop to take a long hard look at a photograph. We don't even pause to examine our own photos in depth. The expresion of the eyes, the curve of the lips. the hair, the highlights, the shadows, and the textures. Nothing to see here kindly move along please.

I would challenge everybody to spend more time looking at photos that are meaningfull for them, and thinking about why they are attracted to a particular photo.

I would suggest that you look at a photo for the length of an average pop song.

Just how long do you look at a photo?

 

Frankie never went to hollywoo…

While going down town to Helsinki I saw a sign on a grassy knoll saying HOLLYWOO. At first I thought it might have been put up by a dyslexic Chinese artist who could not get the pronounciation correct.

You know the type of thing "Artist of the world untie". But no the "D" had fallen over. It was such a lovely idea that someone have gone to the trouble of making this minature sign and putting it up near the WestWay motorway at Lauttasarri that I had to go and rescue the fallen D and put it in its place.

While I was putting it up, the movie Spinal Tap came to my mind, when the 2 foot high Stonehenge was lowered onto the stage, and I wondered if something similar had happened with this Hollywood sign.

Perhaps it was ment to be gigantic, and used as a backdrop for a kick-ass rock video. However when the group saw how insignificant it was, they didn't wait to have a finale. They smashed their guitars, and kicked their drum kit down the hill, in a fit of rage. They smashed their instruments without playing a single note. Then they stomped off in disgust, knocking down the "D", and leaving the Chinese backdrop artist to spread his arms to the heavens and lament in a loud voice "Hollywoo Hollywoo"

 

fish

Mr Brown says that the biggest threat to world peace is not terrorism, but famine. In Italy they are rioting because of increased  pasta prices. Governments are being overthrown because of rice shortages.

In passing he mentioned that the amount of grain that is used to produce 1 gallon of bio-feul is enough to feed one person for a year, and he condemned bio-fuel production as a false economy.

I have never seen a day of hunger in my life and I enjoy food. I like to eat it and I like to perpare it. Sometimes it is good to eat out in a resturant, but usually it  is less expensive to eat at home if you prepare the food yourself

paprika

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Preparing food is a therapy.

Anyhoo cuisine is regarded as small portions at big prices, and French cuisine is exactly the same except that you get insulted by the waiter while he serves you, and are made to feel inadequate and insignicifant..

There is nothing finer than to combine good food with  good friends. It is the only way to survive the dark days of the Finnish winter. And sharing food may be the only way to survive in the future. Shortages will come and prices will rise.

Recently I was talking to a chef who remarked that the most difficult task in the world is to convice people that cuisine is all about the "three mouthful principle" It is not so much about satisfying your appetite as tasting small portions of different flavours. The Japanese go completely overboard and presentation is even more important than how the food tastes. If it looks good then it must taste good. Will there ever come a time when we will look back and long for a slice of rye bread spead with real butter.

cheesecake

If  people are paying alot of money, then what they want is a lot of food on their plates. They are somehow insulted by small portions, and feel cheated In the future if Brussels and the EU has its will then it will be small portions and big prices for everybody..

If you have a bottle of wine to go along with a meal then it will cost 5 times as much in a resturant than if you bought it from a supermarket.

There are occasions when you want to celebrate and be waited on hand and foot, but going out to eat is fraught with other hazards, such as what to wear and which knives and forks to use first.

lakka

If you cook at home you can dress as you like and dispense with knives and forks all together and eat with your hands. I had a muslim friend who expalined to me that when you touch your food with your fingers then you can gauge how hot it is, and decide if you can risk puting it in your mouth.

If you pick up a roast potato on a fork and pop it straight into your mouth more often than not you scald your tongue, and either have to spit, it out or as a desperate measure swallow the red hot potato and have it stick in your gullet.

So my advice is to cook at home with good ingredients. Take things easy and relax. or as Solomon said "A man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and be merry"

Cook a meal for somebody today. You know it makes sense. In the future it might not be possible.