BRAINS!!!

I had to have an MRI done due to some inner ear problems. I asked the Tech to give me a copy on CD, so just to prove to those that would doubt, I do have a brain.

And here it is.

Here it is again Labeled.

Oprah is Dead!

Oprah is Dead

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Canceled Crestock

I canceled my Crestock account and had them delete my images. I site their severly inconsistent reviewers, and lack of return on images sold.

While they maintain that they "only accept images of the highest quality" I have found that they reject images that were accepted by dreamstime, and accepted images that were rejected by dreamstime (they did not know I have images on dreamstime). They accepted some of my (really bad) first attempts at Stock Photography. Then there is the paultry return on a sold image. Most images I sold returned only $0.25 and on very rare occasions I would get $1.00.

I am not the only one who has had the same problems. Their forums are full of similar complaints. With some "professional Photographers" having had whole batches of submissions rejected (200 to 400 images) because one or two pictures in the batch did not meet their standards.

Maybe some day I will try using them again, but not until they get their act together.

They did not remit my $7.50 for the images they sold.

Bacon Tasting Part VIII

Today I tried Nueske's Applewood Smoked Bacon.

I wasn't sure I would get to try this bacon as it is very pricey, between $19.00 and $22.00 per pound in some cases. I happened to be at AJ's fine foods and stumbled on it. It is $8.95 for a 12 oz. package, that's $11.94 a pound.

Here is the review from an MSNBC article:

"Despite the company’s claims of using particularly lean hogs, our tasters found this bacon “very fatty” with “hardly any meat,” and many complained of its “overwhelming smoke flavor,” which was akin to eating a “wood-burning stove,” or “ashtray.”"

When I opened the package I thought I would be disappointed. Usually bacon's with a smokey reputation smell like smoke as soon as you open them. This bacon did not. I cooked up 3 slices and within a few seconds of hitting the pan the bacon began giving up it's smokey goodness. This bacon is not as smokey as Newsom's. The tasters at MSNBC must have gotten a different batch, or are not used to heavily smoked meats. I would say this batch was a medium smokey bacon. Just the right amount of smoke for someone who may not be used to it. The bacon had a perfect amount of salt, just the right amount of sweetness, no overwhelming ham taste, and in my case almost a 50/50 meat to fat ratio. This bacon barely curled, but did have a little more water in it than I would like. The smokey after taste lingered for a good 30 minutes after eating it.

This is a gentleman's bacon.

Photography Road Trip II

Generally I would write up a long post about something we did, but since Chris & Mike did such a good job, I don't have much to write about. Check out their blogs by Clicking on their names. Here are some of the pics I took:

Chris & Mike having a snowball fight.

A Bigfoot Sighting!

Three Bro's

Some HDR Pics:

Are you a Photographer?

The most ridiculous collection of Bike's, motorcycles, snow mobiles, lawnmowers, and other crap you will ever see at "All Bikes" in Rye, Arizona.
On another note, someone forgot to load up my heavy coats so I was stuck wearing 2 light jackets. Here is my home surveillance video of the culprit loading the van. Note in the upper right hand corner of the screen that he puts my coats in the back of my truck, loads some of the stuff into the van then walks right by them.

Later I called Kathi and here she is taking them out from the back of my truck.

Poor Mans HDR

This technique is good for fixing up an image if you do not have software that can do single frame high dynamic range processing. As an example here is a picture I took outside of Payson, AZ:
I took this picture on a tripod with the flash set to rear sync. The picture is not particularly bad, the sunset is nice but a little bright. The background behind us is almost completely black.

Step one - in Photoshop press Control J to create a duplicate image.
Step two - on the menu bar select Image/adjustments/desaturate.
you should now have 2 layers, one that looks like the picture above and the other that looks like this:
Step three - with the desaturated layer selected on the menu bar select image/adjustments/invert.
Step four - with the second layer selected change the blending mode to soft light.
Your image will now look like this:
The image is "technically" perfectly exposed but doesn't look quite right.

Step five - with the second layer selected from the menu bar choose Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur. Move the slider all the way to the right. Click OK.

Your Second layer will look sorta like this:
Your completed picture would then look like this:
Notice that the Sunset has been slightly darkened and the dark background has been brought out. My wife and I have also been ever so slightly darkened as well.

You can now Merge the layers down, convert to 8 bit, and save as a jpeg if you want.

This technique works best on 8 bit jpeg's. It works ok on some 16 bit pictures.

To automate this process you can create an "Action" and assign it a function key, on my computer I have f2 set to do this. Consult your Photoshop help on how to create an Action.

Photography Road Trip

Yesterday Chris, Mike, and I went on a road trip early in the morning. We left at 06:00 in the general direction of US60 east. We went through Superior, and Stopped off the side of the road a couple of miles east of the Queen Creek Tunnel.
The temperature outside was 30 degrees. We took some pictures of the Brush and a fence covered in frost.
None of these pictures I took are sellable as they are not completely in focus. We froze our asses off, and went back to the tunnel to take some more pics. I tried to do some light trail pictures but it was too bright for that. I did take a picture of an old water generating plant near the tunnel.
We then drove on to globe, sight seeing along the way for anything worth taking a picture of. We found an old Diner by the side of the road and took some pics of it.
Some where between Claypool and Globe I took some pics of a train.
I had to remove the road name before I could upload them to Dreamstime. The road name was Toledo, Peoria, & Western.

While in Globe we found a restaurant called "Chalo's Casa De Reynoso".
We got there just as the doors were opened. The Chips were crispy but not tough. The Salsa was very flavorful, nice and spicy. The hot sauce strangely was as spicy as the salsa but had not much flavor. Chris and Mike ordered 3 cheese enchiladas and a cheese crisp each. I ordered a Cheese enchilada, Beef enchilada, and a Taco. The portions were large for the price we paid. The cheese enchilada was excellent. The cheese was completely melted and the enchilada sauce was very flavourful. The beef enchilada was filled with what I would call red chili burro filling. Good but little spice. The taco was excellent the tortilla was perfectly crisp and the filing was very finely shredded beef, with just the right amount of spice. The service was cheerful and friendly. The bill not including tip was $32.00 and change. While waiting to pay the bill another person in line told us that the owners had another restaurant at 3138 S. Mill, in Tempe. We will have to check that out later.

After that we headed back to town. We stopped at the Bullion Plaza Museum. Admission is free. There is a reason for this. It looked like a yard sale inside. We saw the entire museum in about 10 minutes. Before leaving Mike engaged the two older ladies in conversation and because of this it took us another 20 minutes to leave.

We did a little bit more site seeing and went home.