ABOUT ME

I live in a camper van with a West Highland Terrier for company.
My passion is creating images but it is a work in progress.
I am always willing to share what knowledge I have and can be contacted through the comments on this post or e-mail ADRIAN
ALL IMAGES WILL ENLARGE WITH A LEFT CLICK

Tuesday 2 September 2014

BLUE. (02/09/14)

_MG_3422    Dawn looking east up Loch Ness.

_MG_3447    I think this is a Violet….It’s leaves don't look the right shape. Whatever it is a pretty violet flower and near enough blue.

_MG_3448     Scabious…..I’m not going to hazard a guess as to which particular Scabious it is. It is blue, that will do.

poprainb       The full spectrum. Please don’t look too closely at this. It wasn’t a very good rainbow and I haven’t improved it. I was just trying to compete with the iPad Splash Apps.

_MG_3444       Back to blue. I did ask this German girl to pose but she ran away. I win some and I lose some. I saw them in the shop later and her partner said she wanted to pose for a picture. I said too late I’m afraid but I used their camera for one of them together. He was an ugly sod. I judge folks visual appeal from the reflection I see whilst brushing my teeth. Why I look in the mirror to clean my teeth I don’t know. It’s not a pretty sight. I hope Andy Murray doesn’t have to use a mirror. Poor lad, more teeth than a Point-to-Point field he has.

_MG_3438        Just a bit of a blue tint.

I have had a real monkey on my back this last week. I’m coming round again now.

I have a bit of time lapse of clouds and a tiny bit of Ursa Major tracking across the sky. I am trying to work it up into a four minute video with some other bits I’ve taken. It may be sometime as I’ve stopped using LightWorks and am using the sequential editor in Blender. I’ll correct that: I’m trying to use the sequential editor in Blender. When I can remember what I’m doing it is fine and supports many more Codecs and formats than Lightworks. I always have to complicate things. I end up with five or six video tracks and three audio. The beauty of Blender is that I can save out as MPEG in an H264 box with sound as AAC which is near enough what YouTube uses. I can also import PNG so I can still edit as I go along. CS6 is easier for editing individual tracks but it is easy to do that bit there and then just import them.

I do get in a muddle though as I name things with names that seem sensible at the time but then the following day I think what the hell did I call it? I also have three hard drives. Now were I sensible I’d create a new folder in any drive that didn’t have programme files in and pop the project in there. The trouble is that Windows puts any downloads into my ‘C’ Drive which is where my software lurks. I use music downloads and the odd image from NASA. It also puts photographs there and that is where Bridge looks. I’m going to have to give it a good talking to. I could, if I could remember how, shift the downloads to another drive.

I am confused. I plug a card reader in so the laptop calls that drive ‘F’ then I plug my Kindle in and it is drive ‘summat’. Fair enough but a few weeks ago I had an old Western Digital drive that died. It’s the second one to do it. I managed to recover the pictures on it as the drive fits in the old Toshiba laptop that Alf jumped on and half a dozen letters flew out of the keyboard bit. There was nothing wrong with the drive itself. I’ll stop rambling but what I can’t understand is why the new Transcend drive has got to the letter ‘K’. I have never had a computer yet with an ‘A’ or ‘B’ drive.

This is two of the first run back to back. I wanted a white background and though it has big bits because of a fifty sample render it has no really nasty artefacts.

 

This is case in point. I called it revdiss. Took me ages to find it. Revdiss stands for reverse dissolve. I would have saved myself a good half hour had I just called it that. I have re-done this so many times and now have banding like big moiré patterns on the white bit. I have rendered ever higher but if it won’t behave at 500 samples something is wrong. I have something silly in the floor bit and world materials. I hope I have the determination and wit to find out what.

I’m getting back to normal insanity now so will have another go. I’m well over halfway with the spinning globe title so this could well be redundant before it is perfected.

I’ll be back again before the weekend.

Have fun.

32 comments:

  1. I think the second photo is a mountain pansy rather than a violet -- excellent picture either way!

    As for drive letters... A and B are reserved for floppy drives (why that is still the case I don't know) and I think each new drive (i.e. by actual hardware ID) gets a new drive letter. You can change these in the disk setting of the management console, but goodness knows how you get to that these days given I haven't used Windows in a while.

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    1. Mark, even better. I bet Mountain Pansies are rare.

      I must have seen'A' & 'B' then. Yes you are correct. They don't follow in alphabetical order at all. Most have an expand arrow to tell me what's there so it isn't a problem.

      t would save me no-end of tidying up time if all downloads went to otherwise almost empty drives. It never used to matter but I took some video 4K files of the RED camera earlier in the year and they are massive. Processing them isn't a problem yet but popping them somewhere temporarily whilst I rough correct and then convert to TIFF or PNG is. I then delete the RAW files. I think there is another problem about to rear it's head which is a Logarithmic format. I hope it is just a matter of getting a plug in to convert them and I hope they are much smaller files. A vain hope I expect but it is exciting that even I have the equipment to produce broadcast quality movies. I just have to learn how. It's difficult on your own as even a little recording crew seems to consist of five bodies. Plus lord knows how many in editing. I learn't something obvious the other day. The directoress clapped her hands, she didn't have a clapper board. The sound man scribbles on a bit of white board what scene it is but the clap is just so they can sync sound fast later. I have had trouble with that.

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  2. iPad App? Did you cross to the dark side of computing Adrian?

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    1. Hi Carol, no but I have heard of them. Midmarsh John has fun with his and at £400.00 he gets his monies worth. Bet a pound to a shilling they can't do rainbows.
      iPads are for Hooray Henri's and others. Folk like me that can't use Linux and shareware just have to struggle on with Windows 7.
      I'll be down in iPad country in a week or two. I have always thought they were overpriced bling but will have a proper go with one. They do look smart they act okay but are very limited. I'll stick in the dark ages and when I change again it will be to Umbutu or whatever Linux calls it'self today. Mac do lovely big computers but the price is ridiculous. iPads make good video view finders. But!

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  3. The logo looks nice. If you have After Affects you can try to use Element 3D from VideoCopilot. I have it and it works magic. It is on the pricey side, though. I really love the image from the Loch Ness Lake.

    Mersad
    Mersad Donko Photography

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    1. Mersad, no I don't have After Effects and I'm not hiring it from CC.
      The CS6 video editor is okay but will not do low res. renders so it is hard to visulise what is going on.

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  4. I'm happy that you are back to lochness! It's a magic place and now looks more sunny or?
    The logos imagine are great Adrian you are a profi, I could never do somethings like that

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    1. Thanks Laura,
      They are far from perfect but I'll get there in the end. It is hard to visualise the finished job as a quick render is okay for basic lighting and colour but is not so good for reflections and shadows.
      I think it is just a matter of keeping on doing it but for each bit there are so many variables.

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  5. Adrian I think, for once, it will be me who has a mini rant. Someone should say this so it I've decided that I will. People can't help how they were born and, unless the ugliness arises from their own neglect or some self-inflicted situation, whether they appear to some to be ugly. If you wish to call yourself ugly that's your prerogative and it's your blog so you can, I suppose, call other people ugly too if you so wish. You can call them anything you want. However I'm sure that your audience would be much happier if you concentrated on your many talents and stopped resorting to the sort of school-child and descriptions which, if they were to be used by school children would be condemned as bullying.

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    1. Okay Graham, I'll try to keep people happy.
      Seem to be spending my life apologising at the moment so I must be bad.

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  6. That's so brilliant Adrian, the video I mean.

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    1. Thanks Bob, I have a long way to go. I may not ever get there. It is very complicated.

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  7. I like the top image. I love looking at clouds and the various shades and formation and even more fascinated with such a beautiful landscape. The mountain pansy/Violet is good to see, looks vibrant

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    1. Douglas, There are only two mountain pansies here that I've found. Grand little things.

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  8. I'm not sure what the blue business was at the beginning? A theme? A project? An assignment? a feeling? or just some fine blue photos.

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    1. Red, it started as a feeling but turned into a theme.

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  9. There is a way to change drive designations in Windows, but darned if I can remember it right now.

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    1. John. I have done it before. I'll look on the internet.

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  10. I hope for all our sakes that a spinning globe never becomes redundant.

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    1. Bob, I haven' got a constant spin speed on my virtual earth yet.
      If the real one stops spinning then it would solve my problem but it's a rather drastic solution.

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  11. Fantastic... I really do wish I had the time to do what you do.
    Maybe one day... sigh!

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    1. Andrew, I could do with more time. You will have plenty of time when you retire in forty years time.

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  12. I think that top flower is a viola, Adrian. Too late in the year for a violet?

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    1. Frances, thanks the leaves look a bit more like the viola on the internet. They are quite thin and don't look like a playing card spade.

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  13. Haven't taken a Rainbow piccy for quite a while but I'll definitely give it an iPad going over when I do catch one. ;)

    I am impressed with the title rendering. Don't think I could puzzle out that sort of thing.
    I really like the blue boats picture.

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    1. John, the colour picker in CS6 couldn't manage a rainbow so I just duplicated the layer turned the bottom layer to B&W then masked all but the rainbow in the top layer.
      I do enjoy 3D playing as long as I'm in the mood.

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  14. El color del cielo y del mar!!!
    Muy chulo lo de las imagenes. Como lo has hecho ??
    Un abrazo.

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    1. Sí Laura, el color se calienta un poco. Fue un día muy azul. Nunca publicar directamente desde la cámara, pero yo no hice el dibujo del azul lago. Lago is loch in Scotland.

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  15. The rainbow experiment is definitely interesting!

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    1. Maria, It is a bit silly and time has proved that an App can't do it.

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  16. Interesting variety post, popping, video, nature. Never really experimented with blue before, must have a dabble with it.

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    1. Jay, I was bored. Popping...I'm reliably informed it's now called Splashing. No worries.

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