Foto Fun w/AI

 

Software Solution(s)

FWIW, after much soul searching and deep rooted meditation, I've decided to stick to the original gameplan... That is, having now reacquainted myself, I will continue with the latest juvenile reincarnation of PSE for the remainder of my F/T employment (till end of year), it's latest formulation runs $100 for 3 yrs- yes, even that is now by subscription. Then, when I actually have the time and peace of mind, I will test the waters of both LR and C1; I actually look forward to trying both out in a relaxed manner, and then proceed from there- right now, waaay too many fish to fry before that eventful time. This is a pretty stressful period in life with: financial, health, parental and housing concerns all clashing for top billing, while still attending to my F/T occupation. So, I'm really quite anxious for the time when things are (hopefully) settled enough for me to indulge myself in both the above. It'll be interesting to discover which of the two I settle on after serious testing- or, if I'll continue to avoid 'adult responsibility!'

Addendum: And I still haven't properly(?) calibrated my monitor- so I just further fine tune it after the fact to the point where it mimics what I had previous. I have to assume it was OK before since I did get a coupla commercially made prints made, and they mirrored my results...

Make It Stop!

This thing keeps uhhhh... popping up on all sorts of web pages. I'm pretty sure I know what it's for, the thing is- does it go inside, outside, alongside? And which sex claims the actual physical accommodation? I'm really not getting the ergonomics here...

But here's the thing- I don't wanna know! So don't be telling me how the thing is inserted, utilized or activated. I'm sure it works just fine doing what it does however it does it- I'm just tired of it following me around the internet is all...

Sometimes...

Photo: © S. Banos

You just adapt to the camera- actually, you always adapt to the camera. Guess what I'm really trying to say is that sometimes you not only change how you shoot to accommodate yourself to your new camera's quirks and advantages, sometimes you actually change what you're shooting because of it. I've rather unknowingly found myself taking advantage of the Q's FF sensor to shoot images featuring increased expanses of more dimly lit areas. The improved shadow detail is rendered in a richer, more pleasing manner that facilitates more nuanced lighting scenarios that previously went either without consideration or appreciation. 

That said, I was damn lucky to get these- right place, right time, nothing but coincidence. To think I could just walk about residential San Francisco (forgot just how beautiful so many parts of this city still are) and continue to find interesting sites kissed with just the right balance of light and shadow is far from realistic. But, at the very least, this has opened up both a new way and new time of seeing- and that is something to draw on for the remainder,,,

Photo: © S. Banos

Photo: © S. Banos

Photo: © S. Banos

Here We Go...

Photo: © Stan Banos   (Click to embiggen).

This Tuesday, America votes; and (as previously stated) many a MAGA extremist, election denier has now been legally ensconced to positions of oversight in the most crucial aspects of the voting process in key swing states throughout our country (and yet more to come with anticipated Republican victories). All this, while America reels from the gaping wound of having 40% of it's populace no longer bound by the common earthly realms of: science, history or any remotely verifiable fact... All the doing of one man, and one man alone- The Greatest Con Man Of The 21st Century! A man who does not have to prove one single thing he says for others to revere as dogma, and who is totally above question or consequence even as he openly denies and defies an ever increasing cavalcade of grievous criminalities. An unhinged, narcissist elite who has single-handedly galvanized a nationwide community of those even more unhinged (and formally recognized as such). He has not faded into the shadows as many had hoped, nor has his followers who he continues to incite- many well armed, and vowing to outdo the other to make an impression. 

Brought To Life!

I'm usually for respecting original work as is (ie- letting well enough alone). But then, songs get redone and reinterpreted all the time, and sometimes (sometimes), they even come out all the better for it. 

All I'm saying here is that this was rather tastefully done, and does offer an experience and insight that is both revelatory and worthwhile...

2 Phones

I have two phones now, and not because I need them, or because my life is all that complicated. I was simply bequeathed one from work; it's a smart phone, unlike my personal phone, the one I now officially call my "spam phone," which is exactly what it excels at. Lately, the calls have progressed from Medicare benefit inquiries to those of the funeral service variety. Since I never quite persevere long enough (if at all) to avail myself of what exactly they're offering, it's still endearing to know they constantly have my best interests in mind...

I'm just sorta worried about them is all, they've kinda painted themselves into a corner. I mean what's possibly left after my funeral concerns? Maybe something to do with... wills!? I can't seem to think of anything else- perhaps I should pass that on to them! 

Wait, I'm getting a call...

Pure... Coincidence?

 Who can best retrieve erased texts? The very people who erased them!

The Year In Review

 

It is What it is... Photo: © Stan Banos

What's that? Too early? Yeah, suppose so, nevertheless... Last year round this time, I was all frettin' and a fussin' that I couldn't possibly survive another year of empty streets, no travel, etc etc and that the year had to change for the better- no matter what! I was tired of making lemonade outta lemons and had pretty much depleted my emergency bag of photo taking alternatives. In other words, like everyone else- I just wanted a return to normalcy or some small modicum of semblance thereof. And just when we thought that maybe, just maybe, we were finally...

Well, here we are in 2022, right back where we were in 2021- except we gotta vaccine, but not everyone's taken it (voluntarily here at home, involuntarily word wide where they still can't get it). Those who haven't gotten it can die, and even if ya got it, you're not really immune. And while I'm all for "following the science," taking your mask off only to eat and drink while indoors in public is nothing but a mockery of said science! We were also steered into getting a booster for Omicron, and they're soon coming out with a separate vaccine just for Omicron- which I'm sure we'll also be encouraged to take... And this is how people's trust can break down, in a reasonable kinda way- not a Q Conspiracy Whacko kinda way.  No, I'm not an anti-vaxxer/anti-masker by any means- but I do kinda sense a wee tad of mission creep, if not outright greed starting to rear its ugly head. But lord knows Big Pharma would never do anything just for money. And who'd ever thought one could miss a sweaty, crowded, city street in August?

Rockwell Automation Overload!!!

Well it's too late to order one of these smooth operators to coordinate all your basic household needs in time for this Christmas. But while you contemplate ordering one of these little multi-syllabic humdingers for next holiday season- you can certainly make the best use of your remaining time by ordering a can of WD-40 to gently quiet its myriad of hatches...

Gets hardcore at 0:50 (with the opening of the first latch).

Reality Check

Shadows can be pretty funny critters with all their particular peculiarities, and yet we see and experience them each and every day. Advancements in computer software has certainly helped suss things out these days. And while it's hard enough to make sense of the things we actually can see, that won't stop certain people from pontificating on what they can't- oh, things like... viruses.

 

Giving Credit, Where Credit Due...

 

Photo: © Stan Banos

I've always admired photos with written text on the margins, or even on the pictures themselves. There's an incredible book* on Holocaust survivors (whose name sadly escapes me), and of course, there's Jim Golberg's iconic Rich and Poor- amongst others... Again, in the midst of a lull in picture taking in the time of plague, the light bulb finally went off concerning one photo that has always nagged me- a photo of the AT&T building here in SF. While composed as best as I can get it- it's still not a photo that can stand on it's own- there's no real there, there; too much bland, empty space that doesn't accomplish anything. So... text to the rescue!

Now, I ain't claiming it's all that, but... it's better than it was- one can now 'see' behind that uniform, fortress like, metallic exterior without having to ensure the caption somehow, some way accompanies the image itself! Certainly not novel by today's standards (technically or aesthetically), but I'm relatively pleased with my rather primitive** result- and who knows, it may lead to some further project somewhere down the road, particularly one involving unseen history...

BTW, ya shoulda seen my first rendition where I hand wrote (scrawled) said caption- not a pretty sight! But it did remind me that if I had any balls- I would have tagged said building (just 3 blocks from where I now live) with said caption in real life for all to see...

* since donated to Bronx Documentary Center
**would be interesting to see how the text would look running along the lines and receding perspective of the building panels- but don't have the tech chops for that (even though shouldn't be all that difficult)...

Say it AIn't so...

Is it honest? Hell no! Is it any better or worse than Eugene's slight of hand? Hhmmm... I just don't understand why they didn't just say that they used AI on three different instances and provide transcripts of those instances at the end. Problem solved, if ya ask me- not that...

Oliver Chanarin @ SFMOMA

SFO is probably the coolest international airport in the world. I say that because I've seen some of the coolest exhibits there- ones on: typewriters, ouija boards, you name it- as opposed to... SFMOMA.

 

Pretty cool!                 Photo: ©  Stan Banos

Remember when you'd take a few bites of your mom's least liked dinner, then spread it around to make like you ate a good deal and just can't take eat anymore? Yeah, that's SFMOMA since it reopened after their expansion a coupla years back- they simply don't have the goods to fill the space. And at $25 a pop! I mean c'mon- I've seen much better, more interesting, more challenging shit at PS1 in NY on a much more regular basis...

Anyway, went there on a free day- at least those are back after a hiatus of several years (having erroneously declared their free days were funded... "in perpetuity"), and was looking forward to seeing Dawoud Bey's portraits. Long story short, took the elevator to the seventh floor and was making my way down in record time until I got to the second (third?) floor and noticed that Bey was no longer there! Fortunately, there was one exhibit worth notice- Oliver Chanarin's portraits. Well... the portraits (of his wife) themselves are pretty damn pedestrian, to say the least. It was their actual installation that was pretty damn clever, gimmick that it was.

 

N'est pas?     Photo: ©  Stan Banos

Each of the four walls in his exhibit had a sliding techno arm with a suction cup that ran the entire length of each wall and removed, returned and then replaced framed photos from a pile of three stacks in each corner of the room. Now, technically it was, indeed, a small marvel to behold! Initially, I didn't think it possible, but the truth was, it functioned quite flawlessly (least while I was there)- even if only one arm out of four was operating. I could imagine a rather predictable disaster had this been attempted in the '70s with the tech then available.

It made me reflect on the editing process all photographers engage in (to one degree of success or another), the more mechanical editing process some photo editors employ, not to mention the increased impermanence of the photographic image itself in these digital, tech driven, Instagram days. Like I said, a lot more interesting than the images themselves... The exhibit also states that the pictures are supposed to be gradually arranged according to the preferences of the live viewing audience. Now, I have no idea whatsoever how that's supposed to be done- not so much because I didn't detect any overt technology recording that information (and the arm just took the photos on top), but because everyone was at a distance watching/enjoying the magic arm do its thing of retrieve and deploy- forget the photos. Perhaps, Mr. Chanarin just added that suggestion for good measure, just like Amazon* states that its high tech innovations also help create a very happy work force.

*the enclosed link states the tech was somehow modeled upon Amazon's.

Non-Instagrammed

 

Photo: ©  Stan Banos

I would sometimes rationalize that my work wasn't better known since I'm not on Instagram- let alone FB, Twitter, etc, etc... It was one thing (the only thing?) holding me back! At first, I couldn't join, even if I really wanted, since I didn't have a smart phone. Now that work supplied one, that was no longer a valid excuse. So I went to The Font of All Knowledge (aka- YouTube) to uhh... bone up on the ins and outs of said platform.

And the first thing, the very first thing mentioned on the road to potential Instagram immortality was to make sure that your photos weren't in landscape format since it was primarily a vertical, portrait platform. Translation: I'd simply be wasting my time posting 98% of my work. 

All of which got me severely depressed, right? Well, considering how lukewarm at best I was about the whole damn thing, I was quite relieved- giddy, actually, from all the unnecessary, extraneous work I was now eternally freed from! Particularly, when I saw that if you wanted to have any real chance of being noticed, you also had to post: personal and how-to videos, "story lines" and a whole shit load of other yada-yada extraneous bull shit... No-thank-you! 

I can now fully dispense this malformed fantasy with no regret... whatsoever.

Fuck Apple!

Photo: ©  Stan Banos  

Why shouldn’t I trust  Apple’s  new security  assurances? Or Google’s or FB’s? Maybe... their history? Recently, anti-mask/vaxxers have been in a tizzy about vaccine tracking aps- they're gonna get access to our personal info and medical histories! Lawdy-Lawdy... You seriously think they don't already have access to whatever personal info they want of our tawdry little lives?!? Puh-lease!!!  

We gave up any semblance of privacy a long, long time ago with our ever present smart devices and social media...

VICE Fucks Up!

As I've said on more than one occasion, the portraits taken in The Killing Fields of Cambodia are some of the most powerful in the history of photography. Full Stop. The fact that they also succeed as portraits that can be labeled "art" is an irony writ large that will, at best, help succeed in keeping those pictured, and the reign of evil that extinguished their lives, forever in the minds of public discourse worldwide for generations to come.

At first, I thought the technician in question, who colorized and then (Why, Lord?) further manipulated and defaced the portraits by pasting smiles upon their faces, was some pathetically out of touch 'do gooder' (for lack of a better term) operating under the very dubious assumption that he wanted humanity to remember these people as they existed in happier, more humane times. Thoroughly misguided, but... at least, (somewhat) plausible. Then we learn that the Vice interviewer(s) had no idea that the original portraits were, in fact, unsmiling and replete with terror. And then, the ultimate perverter of history goes on to reveal his true colors by actually discussing and analyzing his theory as to why... they were smiling when photographed! Beyond excusable, beyond despicable.

This was followed by the most shallow of mea culpas from VICE:

The story did not meet the editorial standards of VICE and has been removed. We regret the error and will investigate how this failure of the editorial process occurred.

Sounds like they got someone's name or date of birth wrong. No apologies to descendants, no official condemnation of the manipulator's lies and deception, no reference to the vile reality behind the abhorrent alterations...

Seriously, VICE- What The Fuck! 

Who Knew?

 

Back in the early/mid Seventies, the height of Kung Fu fighting, I briefly contemplated joining an Aikido dojo- not from any desire to go about kicking shit outta people (an unlikely scenario no matter how well trained), but as a street wise, keep my ass in one piece, self defense shield. Aikido seemed just the ticket- kinda like the intellectual's martial art where smarts and quick, unforeseen moves overpowered and neutralized the over blown, over grown bullies that life inevitably throws one way...

I never did make the move, primarily because I full well realized that to get half way decent at it, you'd have to commit, practice and dedicate oneself as with anything else worthwhile- college, photography and a P/T job left little time, save for the requisite, age appropriate partying. Still, I've wondered to this day- would it have actually been worth it? Would I have been able to effectively neutralize the brute before me, or someone with a different martial art, skill set?

Seems sheer laziness can pay off! This guy was a certified, bona fide Aikido master, knew all the moves- in fact, he taught them at his very own dojo! And yet, he had nagging self doubts about his own real world confidence- not a good place to be as a martial arts sensei. And so, being true to oneself, he decided to find out; and long story short- his doubt was well placed. Even an intermediate MMA student could kick his ass in a NY minute! No Contest! Over a decade of hard core dedication and commitment, only to discover you were little more than a self delusioned fraud... Your religion was little more than a scam, a fraud, a cult!

But give the guy his props. Undaunted, he picked himself up, dusted himself off and started his journey anew...

A True Hero

And ya just don't get many like these- willing to risk the prestigious job, rep and ALL the perks, just for
the possibility of... saving lives!

Love That Harry!

Lovely little tribute to the late, great Ray Harryhausen...