The Quote

"Photography is the last hope of the talentless." I can't remember where I read it and I can't seem to find it with the google. But it sure is funny.

Photoshop Disasters

Culling the <a href="http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/">worst retouching mistakes</a> on the internet. Oh my god. I love this site.

Lanczos resampling

"Lanczos resampling is a multivariate interpolation method used to compute new values for any digitally sampled data. It is often used to resize digital images, but could be used for any other digital signal. In the case of digital image resizing, the Lanczos function indicates which pixels in the original image, and in what proportion, make up each pixel of the final image. Lanczos filtering gives very high quality results compared to more commonly used but faster techniques such as linear or cubic interpolation because it more closely approximates the optimal resampling filter, the sinc function. While the sinc function is infinite, making it very computationally intensive, the Lanczos function defines an approximation over a given range (the "window"), allowing the implementor the ability to improve the approximation by increasing the size of the window."

Just in case you were wondering.

The Gimp

Looks like The Gimp has been updated to run on 10.5. For those of you who do not know, The Gimp is a open source free version image editor like photoshop. Only free.

Has a healing brush now!

Interesting

Last post on Anon, but I found their logo and it's shockingly close to this piece I made about a month ago. Here is the logo: Interesting

Here is my piece I posted on 1-18, which means I most likely did it a month prior because I am slow like that with posting... lol!

mine

Interesting.....

hollywood in the clouds

It sure has been rainy here in LA as of late.

Took this in the morning, quite nice. Froze my feet waiting for the clouds to break like that. At some point soon I am going to have to post all the hollywood sign pics I have as a series. Soon is probably mid summer..... lol!

Busted

"n appeal court in Paris has ruled that a photograph used in a high profile advertising campaign for the French National Tourist Office Federation (FNOTSI) was a deliberate copy of a Getty Images stock photograph." "The photograph used in the FNOTSI campaign had been commissioned specifically by advertising agency Prisme, and was taken by Laurence Frappa. Unlike Sanderson’s image, the blurred background was taken separately and digitally added in later.

“In court, Getty’s lawyers went over the [Frappa] picture bit by bit” Sanderson told EPUK. “That it was made from two separate images indicated that it was obviously constructed to match something. They said it was shot to match a drawing, which they produced in court, which turned out to be identical to my photograph.”

"Getty Images had originally sought €40,000 in damages – five times the cost of the appropriate licence. The final award of damages and costs is believed to be below that amount, but still substantially in excess of what it would have cost the design agency to use Sanderson’s original photograph.

The Getty Images price calculator states that a license to use Ian Sanderson’s image for a two year campaign across print, web and billboards would have cost around €8,000. But according to one source, Frappa charged Prisme just €1750 for the photography, expenses, and licensing."

Hmm... interesting.

Tea time has gone horribly wrong

Just posted a new piece today Tea Time Has Gone Horribly Wrong on Pixelrust. Really happy with how it came out. Took a whole bunch of different shots and tricks to make it all happen. Looks really strong as a print as well. Makes me want a large format printer even more. Hopefully the tax man will be good to me and not rape me up the ass this year so I could afford one.54 layers. Not too bad.

The fire was the most fun. Think more images are inbound that have fire. I was thinking the water would be a lot more fun. But since it does not throw off any light, it was not as fun as I hoped. Still need to explore some more water based pics though. Ice maybe?

For Sale = One Large Stock Photo Agency

If you have not heard, Getty Images is going up for sale. Pretty serious stuff and it effects my biz in a funny way. But the best break down of it I have found so far is the following:

"But, it is not because a company is for sale that one, it will find buyers, two, it will disappear. This is not the end of Getty images, so those that rejoice, or those that predict the apocalypse of this industry should tone down and listen. At $850 million a year, Getty Image has proven that this industry has a huge potential. And for a company that started with $30 million, $1,5 Billion is not that bad. In other words, I fail to see where is the failure."

Interesting take.

New image

Sometimes my ideas get the better of me Made this in about 3 days. My house still has a lingering smell of cigar smoke. It's going to be used as a new promo mailer for the retouching biz.

Alberto Seveso

Alberto Seveso has really come a long way with his style. His new work is stunning. Wish I could link to it better. Here is his home page for those who want to know more.

The designer side of me want to get a hold of his collections of vectors!

Thomas Gauck

Interesting... Kinda of like the Starn Twins, but digital. I like this one the most I think. It's a hard line to ride with digital compositions between cheesy and art. Good ideas here though.

Kim Keever

Yeah, here is another one I like Kim Keever. 

I really dig the people who set up these make believe worlds but don't use any photoshop trickery. I think the back story is that this Photog sets upa 500 gallon fish tank, builds these landscapes with plaster and stuff. Then squirts in different inks and liquids to create the clouds. All 4x5. I THINK!

Don't hold me to that. I can't remember or find where I found that info. And my memory is shite.

Jeff Bark

Stumbled upon this guy the other day on a web site that scrapes content. Direct links too.

"How very rude!"

Yes, yes, I thought the same.

Had the guy had a damn water mark I would not have spent 20 minutes staring at blogger code to figure out which direct link was his. That was the only thing that allowed me to track him down.

How many other people would do that? Not many.

WATERMARK your shitz please!

Anyways, his name is Jeff Bark and he is fucking amazing.

This series is amazing.

I love his tones. Very dutch painter.

ARNO RAFAEL MINKKINEN

Man I have always liked this guys stuff.

Here is a link to one image that is amazing.

The main gallery window is here, no direct linking to his work for some reason...

I like how he takes straight process photography and yet makes it surreal as all hell. Very creative this gent is.

A call for watermarking

This is a call out in favor of watermarking. I know all you purists get your panties in a bunch when people do it. But god dammint, people put their images on the web to be seen right? The internet is the world biggest library right herein my hermit cave / studio. And. I can run ape shit crazy with sissors. 
When I go looking for inspiration and to see what others are doing, I copy that shit to the desktop. Oh, you flash guys? i just screen shot. Get over worrying about people stealing your shit. 
But back on topic, when I go back to these folders and say, "Wow, that one is still cool.... who the fuck was it?" I would god damn well know if it was watermarked.
That's all.

"If you need to visualize the soul, think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon, and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It's a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not a mystery, mind you, the Mystery. The one that can never be solved. To one degree or another, everybody is connected to the Mystery, and everybody secretly yearns to expand the connection. That requires expanding the soul.These things can enlarge the soul: laughter, danger, imagination, meditation, wild nature, passion, compassion, psychedelics, beauty, iconoclasm, and driving around in the rain with the top down. These things can diminish it: fear, bitterness, blandness, trendiness, egotism, violence, corruption, ignorance, grasping, shining, and eating ketchup on cottage cheese. Data in our psychic program is often nonlinear, nonhierarchical, archaic, alive, and teeming with paradox. Simply booting up is a challenge, if not for no other reason than that most of us find acknowledging the unknowable and monitoring its intrusions upon the familiar and mundane more than a little embarrassing. But say you've inflated your soul to the size of a beach ball and it's soaking into the Mystery like wine into a mattress. What have you accomplished? Well, long term, you may have prepared yourself for a successful metamorphosis, an almost inconceivable transformation to be precipitated by your death or by some great worldwide eschatological whoopjamboreehoo. You may have. No one can say for sure. More immediately, by waxing soulful you will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what the ancients considered a divinely animated universe. And on a day to day basis, folks, it doesn't get any better than that."


- Tom Robbins VIA the always amazing Whiskey River.

So I have not been posting lately because my comment spam software went haywire and was blocking my own IP for some odd reason. So not wanting to tinker around I let the site go into dry rot for awhile. But work permitting I'll be back on more often.
Also, I have a showing tonight for my new series, "Tip Well You Bastards" (Yeah, I changed the name). Gonna go out in the rare L.A. rain and get good and drunk at my own show! I like to think it's raining just for me as I am the only person here who enjoys the rain. L.A. is kinda like Portland rain, more misty then anything else. Having grown up in the midwest where rain means thunderstorms and torrents of rain it is actually quite pleasant to walk around in.
Don't drive in it though. Good god man, it will boggle your mind to see how people drive out here when it rains. You can see the series if you are patient and can use the gallery function Pixelrust or you can just go to my Photosite, danielkopton.com


Uh, about the photosite, it's buggy still and not all there.... but hey, it's a start.

ink jet papers

Hmm... interesting read about some new ink jet papers that are based on the old ways of making B&W photo paper. Luminous Landscape has the write up on it here. "Prints made on Harman Gloss, when viewed in most types of light, display the best characteristics of gelatin silver prints. At a workshop, students and instructors inspected dozens of gelatin silver prints as a baseline for comparison– including ones by Ansel Adams and Imogen Cunningham. We then viewed prints made on Harman gloss –– looking at image tone, surface, reflectance and black values. Everyone who observed the Harman’s gloss prints agreed that this paper has a truly outstanding surface. It’s gloss and sheen are very similar to traditional prints. Other gloss papers, like Innova F-Type FibaPrint Gloss Ultra Smooth, look like poor imitations of traditional prints. Photographers have been asking for a surface similar to traditional gelatin silver prints, and Harman has delivered. One digital photographer remarked, “This looks like the best silver print I have ever seen.”

It's called Harman Gloss FB AL and is about 210 bucks for 50 sheets. I was printing on the Epson Luster paper for a bit, but then I switched to Moab Entrada Rag Natural 300 becuase even though it is a matt paper, everything looks amazing printed on it. Really smooth tones and poppy whites. I may have to try out some of this Harman paper though. If it looks and feels like a classic Black and White paper, that could really be something there.