The Hummer Thread Vol.2!!!

[Patrick Cooper]

Unbelievable. I went through some of my CDs last night and found a scan of an awesome lightning storm that was done from a 35mm slide a number of years ago. Multiple branches of fork lightning. And I thought - "Great! Submit it as stock."

Though just now when I zoomed in 100% with Photoshop, I can see lots and lots of vertical lines running all the way down in the scan. The whole image is like this. What the heck?? Must have been a side effect from the ancient scanner that the photo lab used back then. I'm now undecided whether I should submit it or not. I have no idea where the original slide is so for the time being, this flawed scan is the only copy I have of the image. 

I do recall in the past, having a large print made from this image quite a few years ago for an exhibition. Not sure if that was from this particular scan though. I'm pretty sure I couldn't see any lines in the print

[Patrick Cooper]

There's another odd thing. On that same CD is another scan from a 35mm slide. So I'm assuming that both scans were likely done by the same lab around the same time. Though there are no vertical lines on this second image. 

[Sheila Fitzgerald]

I'm still researching, but anyone know what kind of duck this is? It's a male because the female was almost all brown similar to a female mallard. This is just a quick screen shot of one of my video clips earlier today.

 

 

[Wendy Townrow]

Patrick it is possible the lines were on the slide from the developing process, they dont necessarily show up in the print process but the sensitivity of scanning shows them all too well ... try using noise removing on it. In Photoshop that can be found at Filters > Noise > Dust and Scratches

No clue on the duck Sheila

[Patrick Cooper]

Wendy, interesting points. The slide was developed by a professional lab so they would have had pretty high quality standards applied. I'll try the Photoshop dust and scratch removal tip. I admit the resolution of this scan is only 2845 x 2198 pixels, 6.06MB so not exactly great resolution. Wish I could find the original slide. The other scan on the same CD is of a landscape image which I submitted to some stock agencies last night. Looks like these scans were done in 2005 (unless they're copies of older files.)

[Sheila Fitzgerald]

Thanks. I have a few friends on Facebook who are birders, so I’ll probably ask there later. Still haven’t found it. I only have one clip that’s usable anyway so no rush to submit it. The birds were pretty flighty so I had trouble tracking the focus on them.

 

On an up note, I just had two SOD’s on editorial images for $77 each. That was a nice boost to the month and with the video sale and the few ODD I got today, it makes today’s income over $200. I think that might be my BDE so far. Here’s to more days like this.

[Patrick Cooper]

Sheila wow Ive never had those kinds of dollar figures on a photo sale through stock. My highest here was about $30 or thereabouts. Sounds like an amazing day in terms of sales.

[Jeffrey B. Banke]

4 minutes ago, Patrick Cooper said:

Sheila wow Ive never had those kinds of dollar figures on a photo sale through stock. My highest here was about $30 or thereabouts. Sounds like an amazing day in terms of sales.

Highest here was less than $100 back when we git paid rather than prostituted ourselves, but on Alamy I had a single sale of $500 for a grizzly bear shot

[Patrick Cooper]

Just now, Jeffrey B. Banke said:

Highest here was less than $100 back when we git paid rather than prostituted ourselves, but on Alamy I had a single sale of $500 for a grizzly bear shot

Woah! Those kinds of figures are amazing. Yea Ive never had anything like that myself in stock.

Back in 2008, I had a large print from a medium format film transparency which won Second Prize in an art exhibition - netting me $200. That photo also sold at the same exhibition for $230. I also sold another photo at that exhibition for $100. Though the organisers of the exhibition took commissions on the sales so I received less but still my share was a much greater percentage than what we get with stock commissions. I got most of it. 

 

 

[Jeffrey B. Banke]

49 minutes ago, Patrick Cooper said:

Woah! Those kinds of figures are amazing. Yea Ive never had anything like that myself in stock.

Back in 2008, I had a large print from a medium format film transparency which won Second Prize in an art exhibition - netting me $200. That photo also sold at the same exhibition for $230. I also sold another photo at that exhibition for $100. Though the organisers of the exhibition took commissions on the sales so I received less but still my share was a much greater percentage than what we get with stock commissions. I got most of it. 

 

 

Yes it was great at the time, but I have only had $50 sales since then on Alamy, and not that frequent

[Tawrat Ferdousi Branding]

Yahoo

[Patrick Cooper]

Hmmm.....I'm currently setting up a desktop lamp for a video shoot indoors. Lamp will be illuminating the main subject and the background will be lit by overcast light coming in through a large window. Not 100% sure but I believe the lamp has a daylight bulb. I'm going to place a paper towel in front of the lamp to diffuse the light. With the WB set to Cloudy on the camera, a white sheet of paper looks white through the EVF while being illuminated by the lamp. So I guess it's a decent match in terms of colour temperature. However, when I shine the lamp on the main subject, it looks noticeably warm and a bit orange through the EVF. Odd. Perhaps it's not a match after all. I wonder if I can get hold of some blue cellophane to put over the lamp to cool the light down. I'll try the Sunny WB setting as well and see how that looks. 

[Wendy Townrow]

Nice sums Sheila and Jeff

Patrick that was probably a high resolution scan back in 2005

Try other WB rather than cloudy, try daylight or even tungsten  ... one of them might get close to what you need,

Other than that, shoot RAW and adjust WB in post!

[Patrick Cooper]

Wendy, I'm trying to balance the colour of the desktop lamp with the sunlight coming through the window and hitting the background so that they both match. Plus I'm shooting video and my cameras don't offer the equivalent of Raw in video mode (I think I'd need a very high end professional video camera for that.) So Ive got to get the WB right in camera. 

To clarify, it's a mixed lighting environment. Even if I did achieve neutral colour from the desktop lamp with the camera's Tungsten WB setting, this would result in the background appearing blue due to the sunlight coming in from the window. The solution would be to place blue cellophane in front of the lamp or replace the bulb with a true daylight bulb. 

Good point about high res scans in 2005!

[Patrick Cooper]

Unfortunately, the Dust and Scratches option in Photoshop wasn't successful on the storm photo. I hope I can find the slide again one day. 

[Sheila Fitzgerald]

Patrick, I’ve actually had higher sales here than that, but it’s not very often to be sure. Usually the bigger sales are video. 

 

We have a power outage today. Very inconvenient. I was in the middle of cooking breakfast in the convection oven. Needless to say, that won’t be very good if it’s a long power outage. Ran out to get fast food instead. Have to use the WiFi from my phone to even get online since the home router is, of course, off. Gotta love the rolling black outs. We haven’t had those since I was a kid in California. Back then, it was just TV time that we lost out on. No big deal. I’d have shut down my computer properly though had I known it was scheduled. They were supposed to do it yesterday but apparently they changed it to today but I didn’t get notice of the change

[Sheila Fitzgerald]

Oh, and I haven’t been checking Alamy much lately. I logged in yesterday and my last two sales there were for a whopping $1 each. I guess they have a new plan for their customers to attract more customers as well. Not so great for the contributors. Although Ive been getting a payout there more often this year. This month will be my third payout from them for the year. The funds don’t always clear in a timely manner so it takes forever to actually get a payout even when one does make the larger sales

[Sheila Fitzgerald]

And apparently Alamy is having some technical difficulties today. The site was totally down for me earlier, and now it's only giving me one page. Won't let me go to my contributor page. Fun times (not). I only upload there a couple times/month so I'm doing larger batches at a time so I don't log in there every day.

[Wendy Townrow]

Not on Alamy

Patrick I do understand, mixed lighting is hard to try and get right

[Sheila Fitzgerald]

California is starting to burn again, and during a heat wave. The smoke and ash is starting to cool temps down a bit but the air quality sucks. Have to wear a mask inside when I'm downstairs because the smoke is all blowing into the house. If I close the windows, it's too hot to stand being inside so basically a no win situation   We had more than 10,800 lightning strikes over the last 72 hrs with the thunder storms that started 367 fires. Some have combined so they're now calling them what ever name they are and then complex fire after the name. It's crazy. one big fire about an hour south of us and another one an hour north of us.

[Jeffrey B. Banke]

1 hour ago, Sheila Fitzgerald said:

California is starting to burn again, and during a heat wave. The smoke and ash is starting to cool temps down a bit but the air quality sucks. Have to wear a mask inside when I'm downstairs because the smoke is all blowing into the house. If I close the windows, it's too hot to stand being inside so basically a no win situation   We had more than 10,800 lightning strikes over the last 72 hrs with the thunder storms that started 367 fires. Some have combined so they're now calling them what ever name they are and then complex fire after the name. It's crazy. one big fire about an hour south of us and another one an hour north of us.

California isn't the only place on fire!

I was called out to a fire 6:30 Sunday evening, and got home 4:00AM Monday, only to be called out again at *:00AM and was there until 3:00PM, then was called out to a car accident where both cars burned, and one lady died, got home at 4:30 Tuesday morning, and then our power went out at 10:00AM, so I went to see why the generator didn't start, only to get stung by a couple of wasps. Normally not a big deal, but I am allergic to them and with no medicine will go into anaphylactic shock. So popped a couple of benedril quickly, then stabbed myself with a epinephrine doze, and the wife took me to ER. They took the normal vitals, gave me an intravenous doze of steroids, and monitored me for 2 hours. I got home only to see a fire truck rushing down one of the roads to Green Bluff, and said to Susan that cannot be good. We were not in the house ten minutes when afire helicopter was level with our living room window and very close to the house. We got really concerned then, because my pager went off and I was going to another fire, but it was literally 1/4 mile below us, it is about 2 miles by road. I was doing traffic control again, this time watching a fire moving up the hill directly towards my home, with nothing but forest between, so it was more than a bit concerning, having lost one house to a fire. Fortunately the BLM forest fire team, and the DNR fore team and of course the local fire dept were all there, and got it under control. This fire apparently caused by the guy who bought the property 1 month ago, decided to try some 4 wheeling on his property and the catalytic convertor or the muffler was hot enough to start a fire in the grass around his vehicle, so naturally it burned up as well.

So if y'all think you are having a busy 3 days, think on my last 3 days!

Naturally I called dispatch and said I am taking a couple of days off LOL!

[Sheila Fitzgerald]

Wow Jeff! Glad you're ok! I hope they keep the flames away from your house. I'm sure you worked on defensible space around the property so that'll hopefully help if you were able to get that done. One of the reasons I'm not sure about retiring to a remote area. That and the fact that my husband would prefer a big city. He loves the nightlife scene.

[Wendy Townrow]

Wow Jeff .... fires are so devastating. Hope you get some rest. Do you guys have fire bunkers? They have been talking about those for here in fire zones. Though realistically that is the whole of Australia, We discovered in the last couple of years that even rainforest can burn. Take care of yourself ok. I am glad your home is ok.

Sheila I think people either love rural or love city. I dont cope with city ... it is too peopley! Take care in that smoke,

 

[Charles Lewis]

Jeff

 

Sounds like you had a really intense time. Hopefully, you are getting to rest and the fire danger has receded. We border National Forest here in Arizona so fires are always a concern. We are grateful for responders like you who fight them.

[Patrick Cooper]

Jeff, what you experienced sounds incredibly intense. I hope those fires are brought under control.

I managed to get some blue cellophane to cool down the colour of the light from the desktop lamp a little. My subject for the video shoot was a caterpillar. When I first came across it in the backyard, it was bounding with energy. It was very quick. Probably the most energetic caterpillar Ive ever seen. Unfortunately, when it came time to do the video shoot, it got very sluggish. Though it's energy levels increased a little bit later on. I released it in the afternoon.

I came across this Rowan Atkinson interview which is quite funny. He discusses the negative aspects of being a celebrity when out and about in public.