pierces

More thoughts on AI. Darling Granddaughter came by today and we had a nice talk about photo editing. She is actually a fairly accomplished photographer and shoots with an actual camera (A6700) rather that the ubiquitous phone so many in her age group use. She does some minor paid shooting and wanted my input on what to do about her expanding need for editing. I shared my somewhat high opinion of the Adobe Photographer's Plan, which gives you Photoshop and Lightroom along with a small amount (20GB) of online storage for $20/mo. After showing her what Neural Filters and Camera RAW could do in Photoshop even when used on a JPEG and a brief foray into Topaz AI, she will be signing up in a couple of weeks with the advent of a regular income (starting her new job at a major auto manufacturer's California HQ on Monday). The AI tools in Topaz AI and Adobe products are increasingly useful as the tools learn to be a little less ham-handed about corrections. Her "problem image" of a random DJ was tagged with auto white balance sampled from the "white" t-shirt in Camera RAW, then I used the Neural Filters to colorize the resulting greyish-red mess. I then went back to Camera RAW and touched up the saturation and such. After that, I opened it in Topaz AI and applied the AI Face Recovery, Denoise and subject sharpening. Total time: just over 3 minutes after first opening it. I have been with the Photographer's Plan long enough to be grandfathered in at $10/mo. but even at $20/mo., the time saved using good tools is worth it if you do more than occasional editing. I know a lot of people hate subscriptions, but I find it far easier to manage than shelling out $400-$500 for the full version of PS and $150 for Lightroom upgrades every few years. My opinion. YMMV. Dave

Well, it's been a bit over a month since I received my new Pixel 9 Pro XL. Spare time has been elusive, but I have used it fairly often for day-to-day shooting. I've done some pixel-peeping to see if the longer zoom or faster ultra-wide made a lot of difference and while they are a little better, it's not night and day. That's not to say they are in any way disappointing. They are what I would call a modest upgrade over the Pixel 8 Pro's modules which were already quite spectacular. The screen was well worth the upgrade. It is very bright and visible in the sunlight with superb colors and resolution. The new G4 processor is quite perky. Any operation I have performed has been near-instantaneous. The Wifi 7 is quite a difference. The Pixel 8 Pro supported Wifi 7 in a limited fashion but not really any better than 6E. On the new phone, Wifi 6e registers 94Mb/s down and 241Mb/s up while Wifi 7 does 336Mb/s down and 922Mb/s up on our Frontier fiber connection. It has double the storage at 256GB (never came close at 128GB) and the 16GB of RAM removes the need to police my open apps as often (I still do, but not as obsessively 🙂) Was it worth the upgrade? Yes, with caveats. The camera is fantastic, but as I said, so was the Pixel 8 Pro and if that was the only difference, I would have regrets. The brilliant screen is a huge plus and the excellent connectivity over Wifi or 5G is another one. A solid thumbs up short of actual cartwheels, but only because the Pixel 8 was already pretty fantastic. If I had waited and went from the 6 Pro to the 9, there would be cartwheels. Oh! It makes and receives phone calls too! Dave

Back in the good ol' days before the Covid Dark Age, we used to visit our favorite source of authentic Mexican food almost weekly. The two of us could have our favorite meal and one of their unmatched house margaritas for around $30. When the hammer came down and restaurants were declared anathema by “Science”, the management reacted quickly and switched to an all-takeout model almost overnight. Their handling of the distancing rules when you picked up your order was epic with a “beer fort” made of stacked cases of Corona in front of the counter. Unlike many, they made it through the lockdown and have been thriving. Sadly, the frequency of our visits has taken a hit with the price our usual meal more than doubling. Still our favorite, though. A Rarer Treat Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, September 30 and Sunday, October 6. A brand-new month! 2024 is down to a quarter tank. Amaze or amuse your fellow forum dwellers with your photos! Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

After 5+ decades of being a photographer, I tend to see things somewhat differently than someone who hasn’t spent innumerable hours looking through a viewfinder. Years ago one Picture-A-Week photo was of a plastic fork I came across in a parking lot. It was stepped on with three of the four tines broken off. The fork with the remaining tine resembled a hand displaying the gesture sometimes referred to as “the bird”. The story was a question asking whether it was just an amusing happenstance or if God was subtly expressing disappointment in me. Here it is again. Is this God pranking me by pointing the wrong way to our car, or just someone angry after not reading the product dimensions more carefully before ordering a “Team Support Foam Finger” from Temu? Signs Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, September 23 and Sunday, September 29. Last week of September. Based on my personal perception, September will be 13 days long this year. Finish off the month with some photos of the first week of Fall! Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

I would almost guarantee that someone has: • Lost an expensive drone flying it while at sea and complained. • Crashed one in a pool area and others complained. • As peety3 said, flew one past an un-curtained cabin window, triggering a complaint. • Had their drone confiscated for flying a drone in a no-fly zone in a port. • Was arrested for same. Easier to just say no. Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, September 16 and Sunday, September 22. I can't nag all of you for not posting more pictures. Life gets busy and if it wasn't for the hockey game last week, I would have nothing. I am going to honestly try to take some time this week to relax and take some shots just for the sake of taking some shots. I invite you to do the same. Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

After a brief break from ice-related activities, the hockey season officially began last week. Instead of driving forty miles northeast to attend church, we drove 40 miles southwest to attend hockey. It was colder and the seats weren’t as comfortable but there was a lot more action during the service. The games are getting pretty exciting with a lot more obvious strategy and the players are getting faster. Matthew has developed a significant working knowledge of the game and plays well and aggressively (without being a PITA about it). The hockey season involves some significant travel for away games since there aren’t a lot of ice rinks in Southern California, but we have developed a fondness for sitting in the cold and cheering for Matthew. Shawiiinggg! Dave

I voted for Arty and sophisticated but really wanted to vote for Nautical and classic as well. We are Royal and Celebrity loyalists, and their ships have always felt like what we thought cruise ships should feel like with Celebrity tossing a bit more whimsy into the mix. The trip we took on the Apex recently has spoiled us some more. We thought we would see how other lines have progressed and went on a short Carnival weekender with friends that had a free-ish cruise. While we weren't horrified (much nicer than our first Carnival trip 30 years ago), we'll be sticking with the RCL family for sure. We are due to take a trip on the Icon early next year and can't wait to see what Royal did with a $2B budget. Dave

Our cactus is a Peruvian Apple Cactus. I know this because Google Lens used a picture of it to search the web and identify it. It is not an uncommon cactus, but it has become a sort of family heirloom. The in-laws planted it in the early ‘00s. It fourished and we took a cutting and started a new chapter in its life as a travelling cactus. Its story and blossoms have been the subject of previous Picture-A-Week photos. The short-lived flowers it produces are lovely and are very shy of the sun, opening after sunset and closing up the next morning. If a flower is lucky enough to be pollinated, it will grow into the fruit pictured here. We get very few in a given year, so they are a rare treat. Tough and weathered on the outside, soft and sweet inside. I can relate. Cactus Apple Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, September 9 and Sunday, September 15. Do you remember those shots from September Of beautiful flowers or trees? A picture is worth 1,000 words (ok, 610 words in 2024), so post a picture to finish the poem. Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

And yes, that has been my actual ringtone for years. Sure turns heads when it goes off in a store or restaurant. Dave

It all boils down to what you're used to. Both ecosystems have their quirks, but basically do much the same things. As I said, I don't dislike Apple products, but I tend to do some pretty heavy editing chores and the bang-for-the-buck with a PC-based machine is a no-brainer for me. Same with phones. My first real smartphone was a Motorola Droid with its somewhat clunky skin on top of Android OS but way less $s than the contemporary iPhone. Next was a Nokia Icon running the ill-fated Windows Phone OS. Really an awesome piece of hardware with a great camera and Windows OS was actually pretty good. After that path swerved off a cliff, I went straight to a Pixel XL with its pure Android OS and have never gone with anything else since. Inexplicably, all three of my kids use iPhones. Like you, I'm definitely an iSL student (iOS as a Second Language) when they run into an issue. Dave

Tom, How do you like the M3? Oddly enough I am the exception in my wider family with most of them using Apple. Dave

Nostalgia? Not really. But every time my phone rings, I am transported back the Bronze Age of 56K modems and AOL CD-ROMs in the mail. dial-up-modem-02.mp3 Dave

Do you mean the Tandy Trash-80? 😮 I can see why you didn't follow that lead. I went down a different road since I was doing IT support and some use-specific application development in my early computer years. Apple just wasn't a thing in offices and larger businesses. They owned the graphics arts world up until Photoshop 4 or so, but the lack of a viable network solution in the early years (AppleTalk didn't "talk" well) pushed businesses to Windows. Naturally I followed. Home hardware? The Commodore 64 was our first "computer" (mostly as a toy bought for the kids), but my first actual computer was a 386-SX 16 PC with a 40MB hard drive and 4MB...count 'em, 4MB of RAM! It came with Windows 3.0 and a super fancy 15" COLOR monitor (that weighed more than my current 42" LED unit). Cutting edge! At least for the time. My current smart watch's CPU runs at 1000x the speed (1.7GHz vs. 16MHz), it has 500,000x the amount of RAM (2GB vs 4MB) and 800x the storage (32GB vs. 40MB). Let's not mention phones... Things have changed a bit since then, but I stuck with Windows and have avoided all things Apple since, including phones and tablets. I don't hate Apple and don't disparage their hardware, it's just that their ecosystem and pricing are just not for me. Almost time to start planning the next PC! 😉 Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, September 2 and Sunday, September 8. September. From Septem, the seventh month of the Roman calendar. Needless to say, they've added a couple since then. In honor of the former seventh month, let's see if we can crank out at least seven responses to Week 36! Go team! Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

I may have misspoken about my choice of subject matter for this week's Picture-A-Week entry. I know I said I would avoid ice-related subjects, and I really meant it. But another week of final processing on the 862 ice show images selected from the 7,000 or so originals ate my spare time like a newbie cruiser at the welcome-aboard buffet. It was also an exercise in self-analysis when I found that I struggle with objective journalism when covering a skating event that Jackie is a part of. While I didn’t approach the 60%+ Jackie to Others ratio of the photos taken by her mother, it was well into the double digits. Do I feel bad about it? Don’t be silly! Look at this week’s photo and tell me that any other skater on the ice could possibly be that cute! A Tip 'O the Hat Dave

Celebrity Infinity leaving Santorini at sunset. Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, August 26 and Sunday, September 1. The second third of the year ends this week. Time flies whether you're having fun or not, so choose to have some fun with your camera and post a photo or two. Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

Actually, Grok has some pretty severe restraints against explicit output and like any tool, it's good/evil status is determined by the user. A camera can be used for blackmail as easily as for landscapes. I tend to follow the path that my son the pastor would approve of. 😉 Dave

It's that time again. Granddaughter Jackie has her skating venue's summer show fundraiser coming up and her mother "volunteered" me to take the photos for the second year in a row. This isn’t Jackie’s group, but I used this shot for this week’s photo to illustrate my nod to what AI has brought to photography. My Photoshop skills were helped by AI object selection to eliminate the tragic background (not perfect yet, but a great first step) and the inserted image of the Emerald City was made from a typed request presented to the Grok AI. It only took about eight seconds to generate a finished image ready for download. It was still work to stack it all together, but hours were saved and it will only get better as time passes. Welcome to the future. Before & After Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, August 19 and Sunday, August 25. So, there's this... Ignore the fact that World Photography Week has 14 days in it. Days were added to accommodate all the phones. Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

Our luck has been pretty good. Last year, we even got a half hour watching a group of Humpbacks bubble-netting For whale tail images, I typed Tracy Arm (pptphoto.com) into the Edge search bar and copied these from my Alaska 2013 page. 🙂 I may have to try Midjourney. I have played with Grok, but I think it is less optimized for image creation than pure searching. It did pretty well on "laptop guy" above but complex requests look a bit too cartoonish. A really good cartoon, but not completely photorealistic. Thanks for the information. Dave