Tuesday, September 27, 2016

debate, camera, draw a picture.

From my point of view the debate was a blowout. I wanted to see Trump prevail by smashing Hillary's face in. I wanted to see her eyes roll again. I wanted to see her slip into another coughing fit. I wanted to see her nearly pass out. I wanted to see her lose another shoe again. I wanted to hear Trump call her a straight up liar every time she lied. Again.  I wanted to hear him tell her that she's pulling figures out of her ass. That she is 100% corrupted such that she corrupts everything she touches. That she is flatly not to be believed on anything. I wanted to hear him say everybody around her is corrupted merely by propinquity to her by way of survival. That her private server was much more than a mistake, it was in fact criminal with upwards to 33,000 felony counts, and that Obama was in on it and he lied about it to the American people too. I wanted to hear Trump tell Hillary Clinton that she takes the American public for idiots easily misled because that's the type she surrounds herself with. But none of that happened and so I was disappointed.

And that caused me to draw a picture instead of listening.

This is the back cover of Arizona Highways October 2016 issue. The one with the birds in it. I already drew the cranes. But this photo looks like a painting because the wind is blowing the water's surface and blurring the reflection. It's real arts. The blurb says:
A breeze creates shimmering reflections of aspen leaves in a small pool at Lockett Meadow. Gerry Groeber. 
Then technical camera numbers.  Nikon D7100 1/150  sec  F13 Iso 160 125mm lens

That there is camera code.

Wow. You can get a Nikon D7100 for $700.00 on Amazon. You should buy me one. It's a savings from $1,200.00. Oh, it's a DX format. That means it's 3/4 of full frame, or 3/4 the size of old time 35mm film. But that doesn't matter so much anymore. Except a lot of lenses are not used to their full glorious capacity. Full frame digital cameras are a matter of prestige. They're for pros. I want one. It has very good attributes.

The 1/150  means the shutter blinks not so terribly fast. 1/150th of a second. But they can blink much faster than that, 1/4000th of a second.

F13 means the aperture is like a squinting eyeball. As if an eyeball pupil is constricted almost by half. The higher the number the tighter the hole. The aperture can squeeze to hole so tiny as f32.

To give you an idea, the indoor photos with the kitchen lit up all the way with every ordinary artificial light available, the track lighting, the Aerogarden light, the stove hood, and another 80w fluorescent, a horrible mixture of lighting, I will use shutter speed of 100 and fstop of of about 4. A rather slow blink and wide open pupil. Then I tell the camera numerically what temperature to make the light. Since it's a jumble. That is, I tell what white balance to be numerically. And if it comes out funny, like too blue or too orange then I can correct it in Photoshop with an eye dropper tool. Or numerically.

ISO 160 refers to the sensitivity level of the sensor, the array of sensors actually. It is set to be near the lowest sensitivity. It means there is a lot of light available outside. Usually photographers will set at 200 for lowest. In film terms that would be larger grain film. In film terms finer grain film has the advantage of collecting more light but because the grains are so small then light bleeds through to neighboring grains. The same is true with the sensor array. The higher you go then then more sensitive to light the array is set. That way you can take photos in dark places without using the dreaded on camera flash. But the photos appear more grainy because light is bleeding across to neighboring sensors in the array.

Nikon 125 lens is macro, their term micro. This one. It's an old lens and no longer available. That means you'll have to buy it for me used. It'll run you about $2,300 on eBay. Here.

So the photograph looks like a painting, all scritchy-scratchy, and you'll be wondering, "All that for just that?" And the answer is, "Yes. Do you think arts just happens?" The last frame is is my camera's photograph of Gerry Groeber's photograph.


And since Trump failed to tear Hillary a new one, drawing this in Photoshop was a lot more satisfying than watching the debate. 

19 comments:

MamaM said...

I went to the store and bought some Ancient Grains English Muffins, toasted one and wrote a letter.

Thanks for letting us know the final pic was the camera photo of the photo, cuz otherwise I wouldn't have known the difference.

"All that for just that?" sums up the day for me. But the muffin was good and writing the letter felt good too.

MamaM said...

What else did I do? I followed Insty's recommendation today and ordered up a book by Andrew Kalvan called, The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ, in which an Edgar Award-winner and internationally bestselling novelist tells of his improbable conversion from agnostic Jewish-intellectual to baptized Christian and of the books that led him there.

I needed something memorable and nourishing besides the muffin. And that's going some, because it's the first time I've eaten a muffin with wheat in it since going gluten-free two years ago. So far nothing amiss has transpired.

With the world going nuts, I'm open to hearing someone with a gift of writing tell me something improbable. Which is probably why I enjoy Chip Ahoy's screeds.

Special thanks for the first paragraph of this post. It captures essence even though I didn't watch the debate and allows me the opening to say AMEN and AMEN which is a fitting ending to "all that". And there's satisfaction in that too.

The Dude said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
The Dude said...

I, too, skipped the debate. It's easy when you don't have television reception and zero desire to allow those malignant characters into one's psyche.

So I worked. Worked on a new fixture to hold raw materials on my CNC, worked on setting up a couple of stores and after a few hours of sleep I am doing a load of laundry. At this rate, who knows, maybe by election time I will have mopped the kitchen floor or something. It could happen.

Looking at various sites I see that the debate was a draw. That is actually kind of sickening. Time to do more work, I suppose. Can't fret about what I can't change and all of that.

rcommal said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_jWHffIx5E

rcommal said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQj--Kjn0z8

edutcher said...

The Washington Times, no fan of Trump, thought it was a draw. So did Fox, from what I could gather.

A lot of people who wanted to see Trump do what Chip wanted thought Frumpty won. So, I don't doubt, did the NeverTrumpers. Drudgizens thought Trump did.

If Trump came across as a reasonable human being (I've said this the last few days), he won. If Frumpty was likable (I've also said this), she won.

Nobody remembers the statement that prompted, "There you go again", only that Reagan said it, so a scorecard may be irrelevant. If all people remember is Trump saying he'd release his taxes when she releases her emails, the night may well have been his.

The object, from the Trump camp, was let her run her mouth because of the Second Law of Hillary: The more people see of her, the less they like her. That may be the measure of the thing.

William said...

People keep hoping for a Perry Mason moment where Hillary will break down and exclaim "I did it. I'm guilty." And Trump, more in sadness than anger, says to the bailiff "Cuff her and tak her away.".....It will never happen and all these perfect rejoinders demonstrate that if you ponder something for a few hours, you can say something more clever than is said as the event unfolds.......Trump did ok. Apparently what he was crying to prove was that he would not fly off the handle if needled by Hillary. Calm temperament....... The debates are a three act play. In this act, the sheriff is goaded and demonstrates his peaceable ways and reluctance to draw his gun. There will be other acts in the drama.

ricpic said...

"....maybe by election time I will have mopped the kitchen floor or something. It could happen."

Mopping the kitchen floor is tantamount to surrender! Don't do it!!

There, I've finally found a way to sneak tantamount into a comment. Victory is mine!

Chip Ahoy said...

I want blood. Guts. Broken bones. I want it made clear her despicable party. I want it known to the world what her party has done and continues to do to American society. I want their lies exposed. I want their perversion of government departments splayed in vivid vivisection. And Hillary's part in that along with Obama's displayed graphically. I want' the obstructions of justice not just mentioned I want them dissected forensically. I want viewers to see and to understand and ultimately reject this rotten party's wild success in their ambitions. I want the entire class of self-serving uncivil servants sucking the life out of this nation destroyed. I want a clear comparison made between Democrat party and one-party governments such as Russia and China and Cuba and Venezuela and the misery they all bring. I want their assaults on freedom and liberty understood. I want them shown as the same thing in effect if not form. I want all people viewing to ask themselves, "Is that what I am supporting all along? Shit. I've been such an ignorant divisive mean-spirited asshole this whole time, lying to myself first and to everyone else secondly."

Is that too much to ask?

I think not.

Dad Bones said...

I'd like to think that his reluctance to pounce on her was by design. In the second debate he'll turn the heat up enough to worry her and in the third he'll come at her so hard we'll get to see her drop out of sight behind her podium in a faint.

Or he could get his ass kicked. It would all be funny if it wasn't so dead serious.

The Dude said...

Scout. Or perhaps Paint. That is Tonto's mount.

edutcher said...

William and Dad nail it IMHO, especially the Perry Mason thing - very apt.

What's interesting is that the online polls went to Trump, including the ones where you'd think the Lefties would have flooded them - Time, CNBC, ABC all had Trump up by varying margins. Granted, it could be just enthusiasm, but even that counts.

One thing that intrigued me in Surber's review (he thinks Trump won, but so does (are you ready?) Michael Moore) is he showed a lot of the featured one-liners, all of them tweeted by anti-Trump media, so I'm wondering if that impressed the Lefties as much as it did me.

If William's opinion is the one that grabbed most of the fence-sitters, then it was Trump's night.

Amartel said...

Debates only count if you win.* Neither of them won. Partisans see points their candidate made, the brief moments when they shone. But really it was just two campaign ads playing simultaneously, with that dolt Holt interjecting commentary and questions clearly designed to favor Clinton. If anything, the clear partisanship of the "moderator" may have moved sympathy to Trump.

*And are a Democrat. Mitt Romney beat the shit out of Obama in the first debate in 2012. Romney was obviously better, at speaking, at debating, at having ideas that make sense, at owning and operating a brain, in a way that could not be denied. Also, Sarah Palin beat Joe Biden when they debated. It made no difference.

edutcher said...

Nice point. I've always called them gang press conferences.

Along those lines, the Demos say, "I don't think we should expect a big shift".

rcommal said...

... Nobody remembers the statement that prompted, "There you go again", ...

Wrong. There are a lot of people who remember that statement. I am one of them. From that day to this, I have kept that in mind. You insist that the likes of me don't remember that. You are wrong. 100 percent wrong.

rcommal said...

Ronald Reagan rightly called out Jimmy Carter's bullshit spin.

And I am rightly calling out yours, edutcher:

"There. You. Go. Again."



rcommal said...

I am appreciative of this exchange because, at last, I've finally figured what the hell about you has so much always rubbed me the wrong way, edutcher. I don't give either two shits or a damn whether you or anyone else here believes that I've spent some time on this (believe it or not, I don't actually like myself when I'm being a bitch, and so I actually do spend some time attacking myself in asking, in shorthand, "WTF, r,l?").

This is what has been rubbing me the wrong way about you, edutcher:

You are Jimmy Carter smug. You are smug in the same way that he was, way back then. (For example, you talk about The Blonde, as a point of reference, in the same that Jimmy did, as a point of reference, about Rosalynn.)bI'm not accusing you of being of his politics or holding his positions. You are not and you do not, and I know that, for sure.

That said, Jimmy Carter, way back then, so rubbed me the wrong the way in terms of his smugness that it made a permanent imprint in terms of my life, going forward from that point in time and unto this very day.

rcommal said...

[Jimmy Carter's smugness in 1976, when I was just 15, taught me something, and I learned stuff on account of that, in real time, way back then.]