March 10, 2004
music update
once again, i didn't get around to shooting anything yesterday, so here's another backlog photo. saturday afternoon at lang and charity's house i noticed this interesting silhouette while yelling up to lang on the porch. its pretty similar to one i did a few days ago, but i like the juxtaposition of the organic tree shapes and the more rectilinear man-made lines of the aerial and the chimney.
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from the now-playing department: i don't think i've mentioned it on here before, but i gave up buying music for lent this year. typically that wouldn't have meant too much of a change for me, but lately i've been on a bit of a CD shopping binge - sometimes buying a couple albums a week. anyhow, i figured it might be time to take a break and try to enjoy a few of the discs i'd accumulated. however, between friends loaning me new music, and the iTunes store giving away free songs i haven't exactly been successful, but, i have discovered some great music:
Franz Ferdinand - Darts of Pleasure (actually, heard this guy on KEXP months ago -- thanks to beck for importing the CD)
The Starlight Mints (another recommendation from beck)
ELO - Mr. Blue Sky (watch this trailer)
Mint Royale - Shake Me
Bonnie Prince Billy - Werner's Last Blues to Blokbuster (an old favorite with a new freebie MP3)
I've been wondering for a while: how much, if any, photoshopping do you do to your pics?
Posted by: bobw at March 10, 2004 10:17 AMif you are using free itunes pepsi caps - may i suugest the song "hip-shakin mama". this used to be the "all the waitresses get on the tables and dance" song at a divey little cajun restaurant where i used to work. it is one of the finest new orleans jazz numbers ever recorded, in my very humble opinion. after all, it takes a rocking chair to rock....
Posted by: amy at March 10, 2004 09:02 PMThat's a great idea Andy. I think I'm gonna give up not buying music for lent. Thanks for inspiration.
Posted by: john totten at March 11, 2004 04:40 PMFor the record, here is the Photoshopping process that each photo goes through:
1. Images are resized to 320x240 pixels with a 30px white border and signature.
2. Almost always, levels are adjusted via the 'Auto Levels' command, to compensate for my 4-year-old digicam's poor image quality.
3. Every now and then the image is cropped to cut out unwanted elements.
4. Sometimes a sharpen filter is run at this point to make up for the crispness lost in the resize, or for the slow shutter speed used in many low light settings.
5. Very occasionally the brightness or saturation levels are adjusted to help the photo "pop", making it brighter and richer.
For the most part, it's taken me a long time to feel okay about doing so much digital photography, so I do my best to keep the post-production manipulation to a minimum... but thanks for asking.
Posted by: andy at March 11, 2004 11:15 PMYou can't go wrong with Will Oldham (aka Bonnie Prince Billy). He's been my favorite for years now. Utterly amazing stuff (with Palace and on his own).
Posted by: Baus at March 14, 2004 06:58 PMOmg thats right! Please come see me and my friends! ;)
Posted by: watch moi at March 18, 2005 02:41 PM