New Testingstan

Today's been a shitty day. Literally and figuratively.

(Had to clean up the backseat of my mum's car because our dog had a bit of a situation on the way home from work. My youngest nephew also decided to not stay with us for the next few days because he didn't want to deal with staying in the same house as his father, whom he hasn't seen in years and has no desire to see at the present time. I don't think that bombshell has been given to my brother yet. He was told about a week ago that he was now living with us, and he was initially ok with coming down anyway. But he changed his mind last night. It's disappointing, but I don't really blame him for not wanting to reconnect with his dad.)

That sucks for him. Set him up with a PC and get him into STO.

Losonti Tokash wrote:Whiteclay has been an atrocity ever since 1940 when it was established for the explicit purpose of selling alcohol to the Sioux. It's blindingly obvious that the state is complicit in its operation, considering the absurd ratio of liquor licenses to population and armed escort of beer delivery trucks.

Wouldn't getting rid of that be treating the symptoms instead of the problem? Clearly something is driving them to drink.

Don't get me wrong, the governor is being a massive chode and refusing to even acknowledge his part in the problem.

The problems are abject and systemic poverty, racism, and what might be genetic differences in how natives metabolize alcohol making it more addictive. All of which contribute to a rate of alcoholism four times that of other Americans and to the fact that 12% of all native deaths are alcohol related.

There's no will to address the poverty or racism, and the reservation just has no money to expand treatment centers with. Like I said, they have a capacity of seven beds at the one treatment center, serving a population of 28,000.

You can, however, have a pretty big impact on things like alcoholism or suicide just by making them inconvenient. Switching Tylenol bottles from pouring loose pills to packaging them in blister packs made suicide by overdose way less common almost immediately.

Blech. What an unmitigated disaster it all is, really.

We just found a new way to genocide them, really. Why kill them when we can let them slowly kill themselves and profit in the meantime?

Also, while it may only be a symptom, unless something is done to address the problems with alcoholism, it's going to be really hard to do anything about the poverty and racism, regardless of whether or not there is a will to fix those problems.

Sometimes you do need to treat the symptoms first.

I have such an absurd headache today...

Typical Spartan Traffic Rant...

I have absolutely nothing to do today and no places to be. Of course I wake up at 5AM.

Upside: I don't have to feel guilty about doing stuff in my pajamas for four hours since it's still only 9AM.

After a grueling 85 hour photography week, I am now able to sit back enjoy my work, head home, and rest.

You mean you're actually making a living out of photography now, Knub ?

Oxymoron wrote:You mean you're actually making a living out of photography now, Knub ?

No. That's very hard to do. I was just given an opportunity to shoot foster kids at a summer camp.

if you're interested in the portfolio I'm building for that job, go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jltucker/s ... 516686803/

Unfortunately, a lot of my shots couldn't be uploaded due to the fact that most of the kids are wards of the state.

Edit: A lot of my shots can't be uploaded.

That's okay, no worry.

Question : do you apply filters or do any kind of post-production, or are all the shots "fresh from the camera" ?

Oxymoron wrote:That's okay, no worry.

Question : do you apply filters or do any kind of post-production, or are all the shots "fresh from the camera" ?

99% of the time the only post-processing I do is to make the colors pop and make the histogram more presentable. So, I'll fiddle with highlights, whites, shadows, blacks, contrast, saturation, and vibrance. When I was shooting models, I'd actually go into PS and remove pimples and stuff. I hate shooting models. It's too easy and very, very boring.

The blurred effect you see in many of those shots is from using a higher aperture to get a shallower depth of field.

However, I actually deepened the blacks in the sunset photos to get a silhouette.

Yeah, I asked because I thought the colors were verry "poppy" (like you say) on a lot of these photos.

Not that it's a bad thing, but I've rarely seen such vivid colors on "natural" pictures (unmodified) so I was curious to know if you used a special technique to take the shots.

Everyone post processes these days. It's not a big deal. The problem is when some try to get instagram bullshit and washed out colors after taking a photo with a DSLR. I also detest how overused B&W is. I love B&W, but people tend to use grey and not black and white. It's hard to do, though.

For someone who doesn't do anything but snap shots (more or less) what's the difference?

The difference between what?

Black and white and grey.

Every black and white photo I've ever seen has grey in it as well, so I'm not understanding the difference.

I'm guessing it's something to do with the difference between using black and white to highlight the contrast in shading vs just taking a picture and turning it greyscale so the composition that was built around colour contrast turns into a sea of greys. That's the issue I have with a lot of people trying out greyscale pictures when they try to be artistic.

Would you happen to have a picture or something, maybe? I'm having a hard time visualizing this but I'm interested to know the difference.

My photography is strictly thru my iPhone 5, and I do use quite a number of filters, but I use them in place of film, I would say. I have options for black and white, but I don't know what an actual photographer would call them.

Three of the films make very different effects--one will show red as a light gray, another will show it as black, etc.

Look at many Flickr photo stream until you see the one with the old man. There's black and there's white. Look at the photo of the cabin thing. It's black and grey. The old man photo is miles ahead in quality.