Andrey Pavlov is a
Russian ant-whisperer and photographer. Each summer he moves to a cottage in
the countryside to fabricate little scenes and photograph ants at work. He
watches how the ants work each day, what lines they take and patterns they use,
and then he adds small props he makes or finds into those lines and patterns to
see what they do. The scenes are staged, but the reactions of the ants are
authentic. He says ants are naturally curious creatures, which greatly helps
his work. Pavlov was inspired to photograph ants at work when he started
reading his young children fairy tales, which is something he never did as a
child. For more of Pavlov's amazing images, look here.
I know
I’ve been slacking on quotes. I have many written down, I just keep forgetting
that I need to type them up. Unless otherwise noted, the quote is from Rob. So
here goes:
“You
just gotta be a skeptical viewer.” This
is entirely true. A skeptical view of not only the media but everything is key.
A good amount of questioning is healthy—to not question is to make yourself
ignorant. Unfortunately, people today do not do this enough. We don’t have
enough skeptics in the world, thus many people believe things at face value and
are grossly mislead.
“If
you fast forward through commercials, the products are still advertised and
commercials will still make sense.” I’ve
never thought about this before, but it is true. Advertising agents know that
with TiVo and DVR recording systems, people will not watch commercials if they
do not have to, so they place product shots and text at key points so the
viewer will still be inundated with messages to buy the product. Its genius, really.
“If
you ever get in a bind, submit a paper online of jarbled code or no text—it’ll
buy you a few days until the professor notices.” Thank
you, Rob, for encouraging the mass procrastination of your students. We all
know procrastination and college go hand in hand, and this allows for even
more. I doubt I’ll ever need to use this, but I’ll make sure to remember it,
just in case.
“Squirrels
are just tiny bears.” –Graham McCullough True,
only squirrels are far more adorable, and therefore better than bears. They’re
small, twitchy, and attack people, and that makes them just plain awesome. And
bears don’t have bushy tails.
Firefly was a TV show
aired on Fox and created by Joss Whedon in 2002 for only one season. Fourteen
episodes were made, but only eleven were originally aired, most of the time out
of intended order. The three unaired episodes were finally aired six months
after the others. A box set of the show was released on DVD in late 2003 and
features all fourteen episodes in intended order. It has been said that Fox
sabotaged the show by airing it out of order and not giving enough promotion
because the characters (and the actors who played them) were nobodies.
The show follows the crew
of Serenity, a Firefly-class transport spaceship, in the year 2517. By this
time, humans had decimated Earth and moved to another solar system with many
more planets and moons which had been made habitable through the process of
terraforming. Two factions arose in the new solar system—the Alliance and the
Independents. The Alliance wanted to unite all the planets and moons under one
central government and the Independents wanted each planet to be able to rule
itself. A war ensued and the Alliance won. Malcom "Mal" Reynolds, a Sergeant
for the Independents, bought a transport ship named Serenity to keep as far away from Alliance control as possible. The
crew includes Wash, the pilot; Zoe, the first mate; Jayne, “public relations”
(he carries the big guns); Kaylee, the mechanic; Inara, a companion (high-class
prostitute); Sheppard Book, a holy man; Simon, the doctor; and River, Simon’s
crazy, psychic sister.
In 1516, Thomas Moore
wrote Utopia about an ideal island. The
term utopia came to mean a community where everything is ideal—a perfect
society. Conversely, dystopia is where a utopia is attempted, but something
goes terribly wrong. Many writers choose dystopian fiction for social
commentary—they take one aspect of current society and twist, distort, and
exaggerate it until they get a new disparaging, disheartening future. This
genera, if done well, can be far stronger and more influential than a mere
essay on the problem. There are two basic stances dystopian writers can take:
everything sucks but we have the potential to make it better, or everything
sucks and it’s all our fault and it will only get worse. Some of the best
dystopian novels include George Orwell’s 1984,
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451,
Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale,
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and Anthony
Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. Go here
for a full list of dystopian literature.
Rammstein is a German
metal band known for their crazy pyrotechnics. Lead singer Till Lindemann said,
“You have to understand that 99 per cent of the people don't understand the
lyrics, so you have to come up with something to keep the drama in the show.” It
is a common occurrence for fans to be carried out of shows suffering from heat
exhaustion from the heat of the fire and crowd. Lindemann became licensed in pyrotechnics after an accident in 1996
killed some fans. In addition to their pyrotechnics, the members of Rammstein
have an affinity for odd or outlandish costumes on stage. They make sure the
crowd has a great time at the show, especially because tickets are so expensive—floor
tickets for their current US tour run upwards of $100.
The band’s six members
started playing together in 1994 and released their first album, Herzeleid, the next year. They now have
six studio albums and have sold 22 million albums worldwide. Despite their
ages they keep drawing in crowds of all ages (except children)—members' ages range from
41 to 49. Some have said they are like the German Marilyn Manson for their
sometimes questionable onstage antics, which can include nudity, obscenity, self-harm, and setting themselves or other band members on fire.
A quickly done removal using Content-Aware Fill. The Healing Brush and Clone Stamp are usually necessary additions to Content-Aware Fill to touch up little things like the shadows seen in the right photo
Content-Aware is a
feature added to the newest edition of Photoshop (CS5). It allows users to
manipulate pixels similar to the healing brush but with less work for the user.
You simply use your favorite selection tool to select an
area of the photo you don’t want there. Then you go to Edit, Fill and a
dialogue box comes up. As you see in the tutorial below, Content-Aware Fill
should be selected in the drop down menu. Hit okay, and Photoshop analyzes the
photo to determine how to best replace the selected area. It is always
astounding how accurately and quickly Photoshop is able to remove objects—it performs
work in mere seconds that would take hours for someone to do by hand. The
Healing Brush and Clone Stamp are usually a good follow-up to Content-Aware
Fill just to clean up any artifacts left.
The clone stamp and
healing brush are two very similar tools. They both manipulate pixels to
correct for imperfections in an image such as blemishes, stray hairs, and dust.
Small things are easily taken care of with either of these; larger or more complicated
things must be removed with the clone stamp.
With the healing brush,
all that you need to do is click on what you want “healed” and the program does
it for you. The clone stamp allows you to select where you want the replacement
pixels to come from so you get more control over the changes. Using the clone
stamp can get pretty tedious and is easily messed up, however, it can look very
good if done right.
Left is an edited photo without any clone stamping; right is with clone stamping and a different sky added in.
Andrey Pavlov is a
Russian ant-whisperer and photographer. Each summer he moves to a cottage in
the countryside to fabricate little scenes and photograph ants at work. He
watches how the ants work each day, what lines they take and patterns they use,
and then he adds small props he makes or finds into those lines and patterns to
see what they do. The scenes are staged, but the reactions of the ants are
authentic. He says ants are naturally curious creatures, which greatly helps
his work. Pavlov was inspired to photograph ants at work when he started
reading his young children fairy tales, which is something he never did as a
child. For more of Pavlov's amazing images, look here.
