A godless world...

When people ask me how I learn(ed) photography I never say that I'm self-taught. Because it's bullshit. I've learned from the greats like David Hobby, Chris Orwig, Matthew Jordan Smith or Amy Dresser. Do they know who I am? Of course not (actually Matthew does). I've never had the pleasure of meeting them, but I have learned volumes from their writing, videos, and tutorials. I'm eternally grateful to the various "teachers" I've had on this journey.

Color profile issues: Blogger

Okay. Here goes:

I uploaded this image below to blogger:

Notice the sRGB color profile.

When it finishes uploading to blogger it looks like this (with a reddish tint).

I say WTF then download the exact same image I just uploaded. The info on the file looks like this:


Notice the missing color profile information.

So how did I get my actual version with the proper color profile to upload to blogger? I took a screenshot of the picture when it was open in Photoshop. Before it uploaded it had info that looked like this:


Yet oddly immediately after it uploads it's fine. It retains the "correct color". When I download the file and examine the info the color profile is again stripped:


Also I'm noticing a difference in Alpha Channel: Yes/No

I'm not sure what explains this discrepancy. Or why blogger is showing a different version of my jpegs than what I see before uploading.

Amy dreams

Amy. H3DII-31/HC-80mm. 1/90th f/2.8 ISO200.

*In the comments section can you please tell me if the above two images have different color casts? i.e. do they look at all different or pretty much identical except for the crop? I'm looking for color profile issue/differences. Thanks!

In testing out the SanDisk 32GB CompactFlash, I snapped a few pics of Amy. I noticed in Photoshop that her eyes reflected a sliver of our backyard. I wonder what she dreams when she's falling asleep...

100% crop of her eyeball.

The Replacement: SanDisk Extreme 32GB CompactFlash

Mikey likes it! :) Yup, the H3D takes it just fine and doesn't spit back "No CF card" or other error messages.

Goodbye Lexar... we tried.

Perhaps the Lexar price adjustment was in response to the pricing of the SanDisk cards? I'm guessing there's a supply issue at heart though...

Prices of Lexar 32GB 300x CompactFlash cards...

I bought my Lexar 32GB 300x CompactFlash on 8/30/2010 for $124.95 from Adorama with free shipping. It doesn't work in my Hasselblad H3D so I have to sell it.

Here's the invoice:


But I noticed today that the price of this CompactFlash is selling for $169.95 at Adorama.

What happened???

Modeling: More dangerous than...

Being a model is more dangerous than letting Stevie Wonder take you on a walking tour of The Grand Canyon. Seriously. Modeling is an extremely dangerous profession. I don't think there's a more dangerous profession out there...

If I were an insurance agent, I would not insure models for anything. Not life insurance, not personal liability insurance, and definitely not auto insurance. From my own personal experience models have car problems 50% of the time. 50%! That's a coin toss! I'd just ride my bike everywhere if I knew my chances of breakdown, accident, flat tire, etc. were 50%! They must spend a lot of money on auto repair, AAA, insurance (if anyone is willing to even insure them), GPS systems (though these usually don't work for models), hospital bills (personal injury), etc. And from what've heard, their cars get broken into all the time, and you know what the thieves steal? Clothes! It's always another model or a cross-dressing transvestite with good taste that's breaking into models' cars. Nothing else gets stolen. Just the clothes. What are the odds of that?!? Amazing!

No I did not liquify... and about the box...

Margaux Elite Model Management. H3DII-31/HC-80. 1/500th f/9.5 ISO100 @80mm.

Yes, those legs are real. No, I did not liquify. Look at the other ones of her. That's just how her legs are.

Yes, she's really thin. No, she's not anorexic. I watched her scarf down 2 slices of pizza... although she did disappear into the bathroom for a long time afterwards. By the way, that's a joke. The girl eats just fine.

I originally made this pic in monochrome. Interestingly, it looks better in color. I don't know why. But it does. Fortunately I didn't lock myself into black and white. Sometimes I do. This time I didn't.

I actually think that we'll see some return to color. I've been at "the drawing board" really looking at black and white tonality, traditional film's tonal responses to light, and taking a hard look at my own B&W conversions. Needless to say, I'm in need of a little change. The last 4 out of 5 pictures uploaded to flickr have been in color. The previous 10 before that were B&W. But this isn't the end of the learning process, it's just the beginning of the plateau during which I exercise what I've learned and see if I can apply these techniques to acquire consistent results. We'll see how that goes :)

I will take this opportunity to talk a little about the box. I think the initial results were acceptable. LOL. Who uses words like "acceptable" outside of white-collared-shirt-and-tie situations to describe results? Most of you have probably already seen this but I'll use this image as an example:


Margaux Elite Model Management. H3DII-31/HC-80. 1/500th f/8.0 ISO100 @80mm.


So let's talk challenges. I'm used to moving around. But you can't move around with a geometric object without distorting the perspectives on said geometric object. Lines get bent, distortion happens. It *will* ruin the symmetry of the object. It *can* ruin the purpose of the object.

I made the box because I like lines, symmetry, structure, and geometry. I also like white. That's why it's a white box. I'm guessing I'll have to tripod the H3D. The only problem is the H3D has 1 focus point... and it's in the middle. How will I focus-recompose? I can't. I'll have to set the focus to where I think the model should be and set a long depth of field. We'll see.

Oh and it was supposed to be a cube. But I failed at that. Which brings to mind the second challenge. It's not 1:1 aspect ratio (6x6 if you're a MF film shooter). Which means when I crop, I can't crop square. What I've found is that it crops better 6x7 HOWEVER this will either shorten the sides (which means the model can't stretch width-wise all the way like touch both sides of the box at the same time), or leave too much head room. The box is permanently "non-square". The stripped screws and lack of carpentry skills ensure that no future modifications to this box will be possible. So I'll have to figure an alternative solution to cropping the box pics. At this point, I'm thinking a custom crop might be the only solution... dunno yet though.

But do I ever know anything for certain. Rarely :)