Clan x86

Are people allowed to swim in that pool?  Or is it only for show?

the moment? which moment?

pretty pics.

Quote from: while1 on May 15, 2012, 06:32:39 AM
Are people allowed to swim in that pool?  Or is it only for show?

They herd you like sheep when you visit Shangri La. There are probably two dozen Doris Duke foundation employees that make sure you're not doing anything they don't like.

They host events there (usually art related). I've been twice: once for some lecture on the history of Shangri La, and another time for a screening of a documentary about Rumi. Both events were sinfully boring, but the venue is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been.

In short: definitely not. I think they should host pool parties for fancy people there, though -- they could probably get away with charging >= $1K general admission just for the pool area.

There is, however, a public saltwater pool below the house (it's right below the rock wall you see in the picture). You can swim to it from the beach across the way. Each time I've been, there are a bunch of locals hanging out down there.

Quote from: CrAz3D on May 15, 2012, 10:50:35 AM
the moment? which moment?

pretty pics.

sorry, meant 'at the moment'. updated it :)

An immature picture from a few years ago.

Took this one two days ago:
(https://i.minus.com/ibgVZHTToBcSB9.jpg)

It's an abandoned incinerator in Montreal.

That's really cool looking!

For the record - the [img] tag takes a width=<# of pixels> parameter.

iago, maybe because it's been scaled down in size from such a high resolution... but the photo's colors and just overall look almost looks like it's fake, like it's a computer generated/ animated scene from a video game... probably has to do with the way the lighting from the weather.  I concur, it's a really cool, surreal looking photo.

Quote from: Sidoh on May 15, 2012, 11:24:43 PM
That's really cool looking!

For the record - the [img] tag takes a width=<# of pixels> parameter.

Ahh, cool. I was having trouble with imgur, too, nothing was working!

Quote from: while1 on May 16, 2012, 06:04:28 AM
iago, maybe because it's been scaled down in size from such a high resolution... but the photo's colors and just overall look almost looks like it's fake, like it's a computer generated/ animated scene from a video game... probably has to do with the way the lighting from the weather.  I concur, it's a really cool, surreal looking photo.

That's intentional - it's high saturation and high contrast. I like the fake video game look. :)

Here's a less overdone picture of the incinerator - I can't get completely realistic, the lighting just wasn't there:
(http://i.imgur.com/tTyr7.jpg) (http://imgur.com/tTyr7)

And here's a picture of downtown Montreal from a trail I was walking down:
(http://i.imgur.com/TlxxB.jpg) (http://imgur.com/TlxxB)

Last one for now.. you happened to post this thread while I was on vacation with my new camera. :)

(http://i.imgur.com/reqw9.jpg) (http://imgur.com/reqw9)

I took that one two or three days ago. My friends were exploring a sewer, and I didn't have hip waders so I hung out by the river (see the picture from the previous post). I got bored and started throwing rocks at towards pigeons to make them fly, and taking pictures of the flight. This one turned out exceptionally well.

Awesome! Thanks for sharing.

What camera are you using for these? Are the lovely colors a setting on the camera, or is it a post-processing step that makes them look like that?

Quote from: Sidoh on May 17, 2012, 05:46:18 PM
Awesome! Thanks for sharing.

What camera are you using for these? Are the lovely colors a setting on the camera, or is it a post-processing step that makes them look like that?

That's a Canon 7d with a 15-85 lens. I get the colours by shooting in Raw format then turning up the saturation. The bird and the bridge have minimal post-processing (just saturation + contrast + cropping), but the incinerator has more (the sky is separate, I shifted the colours towards red, and I forget what else).

For reference, here's the original .jpg off the camera, totally unmodified (this is exactly how the camera saved them):
http://www.javaop.com/~ron/tmp/img_7d_1457.JPG
http://www.javaop.com/~ron/tmp/img_7d_1599.JPG
http://www.javaop.com/~ron/tmp/img_7d_1531.JPG

No offense to your post processing but I like the originals a lot more. I've never been a fan of oversaturated colors.

I have a few pics but nowhere to put them.. just stuff from a trip I took last year on what is, to date, the most scenic coastline I've been on.

Quote from: deadly7 on May 17, 2012, 08:29:43 PM
No offense to your post processing but I like the originals a lot more. I've never been a fan of oversaturated colors.

I had a feeling somebody would say that. :)

Personally, I love oversaturated colours. Even when I paint (https://secure.flickr.com/photos/iagox86/6480257237/in/set-72157628341196853/lightbox/), everything tends to be bright colours and high contrast.

And incidentally, I lied a bit in my previous post. They aren't unmodified off the camera, I resized them before I uploaded. I was connecting through cellular tethering and only have so much bandwidth each month. :)

I like the modified pictures quite a bit more than the originals.

hah! I forgot iago has file uploading enabled.

All these were taken on Little Corn Island in Nicaragua. While there, I stayed at the Little Corn Beach & Bungalow. The parrot (pic 1) lives there. They let it out when it's daylight, otherwise he's caged.

Pic 2: The houses are elevated (it's an island, this makes sense) and surrounded by plants.

Pic 3: Walked down the beach a ways and took that picture overlooking the entire shoreline.

the pics were taken on what is now probably a 10 year old P&S so they're pretty crummy, but eh.

Quote from: Sidoh on May 17, 2012, 09:10:47 PM
I like the modified pictures quite a bit more than the originals.

Thanks!

Quote from: deadly7 on May 17, 2012, 09:12:40 PM
hah! I forgot iago has file uploading enabled.

All these were taken on Little Corn Island in Nicaragua. While there, I stayed at the Little Corn Beach & Bungalow. The parrot (pic 1) lives there. They let it out when it's daylight, otherwise he's caged.

Pic 2: The houses are elevated (it's an island, this makes sense) and surrounded by plants.

Pic 3: Walked down the beach a ways and took that picture overlooking the entire shoreline.

the pics were taken on what is now probably a 10 year old P&S so they're pretty crummy, but eh.

They'd look better with higher saturation, especially the last one (http://i.imgur.com/MzNCs.jpg). ;)

love it!

Agreeing with Sidoh, the over-saturation gives it a pretty cinematic feel.

Quote from: iago on May 18, 2012, 08:19:02 PM
hey'd look better with higher saturation, especially the last one (http://i.imgur.com/MzNCs.jpg). ;)

My problem with that is that I feel like it looks a little too fake. The greens were definitely green, but not like THAT. Admittedly it is better than the original, but that usually happens after post-processing on a pic taken by an old and crappy camera.

"Fake" is, at least for me, not a very good reason to dislike a photo. :)

I have mixed feelings, I agree it looks better... but it's the same reason I have mixed feelings about women with boob jobs.

Quote from: Sidoh on May 19, 2012, 11:23:29 AM
"Fake" is, at least for me, not a very good reason to dislike a photo. :)

It's the juxtaposition of a realistic canvas with a high contrast color palette. To take it to the extreme to illustrate my point, if iago had also manipulated it so that G--->Pink and B--->Red, would you still find it a good photo? I think there's a level of post processing that's "just right" and if you are friends with me on FB, my profile pic was enhanced just a little, but it would be very hard to tell.

A camera is never going to capture what your eyes see, because it can't adjust as finely. Take this picture for example:
(http://i.imgur.com/GOSLQl.jpg) (http://imgur.com/GOSLQ)

That image is actually two combined - the background and the foreground are separate. It's not an HDR, exactly, since I did it manually using gradients and the fuzzy paintbrush tool.

The human eye can adjust and see a blue sky and brown bridge and grafittied building just fine at the same time. But a camera can't, either the sky is white or the building is black. A camera just can't replicate real life that well.

Same goes for colour saturation - to a point. I generally like to turn up sliders too far - I'm a fan of bright colours and contrast - but a standard camera (or even a good camera) can't get the colours exactly as they are supposed to be. Sometimes it doesn't properly determine which colour white is, sometimes it doesn't get the brightness right, stuff like that.

There are a lot of people who argue against post-processing in any way, but in my opinion it is, at least in part, a useful tool to make a picture real.

Keeping in mind that I like mine surreal, to a point. Although the example in this post isn't so bad. :)

(http://i.imgur.com/UQ7OAl.jpg) (http://imgur.com/UQ7OA)

I'll singlehandedly keep this thread alive if I have to! :)

(https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8007/7258972468_c18df6cf40_z.jpg) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/uewinnipeg/7258972468/)
img_7d_1613 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/uewinnipeg/7258972468/) by uewinnipeg (http://www.flickr.com/people/uewinnipeg/), on Flickr

What does the original version of that photo look like

The colors look too vibrant- like it was just freshly spray painted.

Quote from: Blaze on May 24, 2012, 11:09:07 AM
What does the original version of that photo look like

I don't have the original JPG anymore, so I couldn't say. I do have the original CR2, but it makes no adjustments by default.
Found the JPG on my laptop!

Original:
(http://i.imgur.com/3M18nl.jpg)

Modified:
(https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8007/7258972468_c18df6cf40_z.jpg) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/uewinnipeg/7258972468/)

Yep, edited is way cooler.

Check this out:
http://mi.eng.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/Query/

They create an artificial photograph by labeling the elements and their approximate position on paper with text.

But actually, there was a really cool site I came across like 3-4 years ago where they were drawing scenes on paper and then some smart software would dig through an image database and seamlessly stitch elements of photographs together to create an artificial photograph of the drawn scene.

The example I recall was a stick figure playing frisbee (crudely drawn oval) with a stick figure dog and I think the background was arbitrarily chosen. You couldn't tell the photo was fake without studying the background a bit. There was a house that had extra windows and it looked silly.

Here it is:
http://kottke.org/09/10/from-sketch-to-photo-instantly-this-is-insanely-awesome

EDIT: More official site: http://cg.cs.tsinghua.edu.cn/montage/main.htm
EDIT: Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW1Epl2LdFM

Not sure that was the site, but it has the video with the same sketched scene I remember.