I was challenged on Facebook to post seven black and white photos over seven days. The easiest (and I am told best) way to do that is to take a color photo and convert it to B&W digitally. So that’s what I did.
I also got some advice from a friend on Facebook to move the unused cat tree nearer a window. It was heavily used for a while, but the cats have been ignoring it. It is now nearer a window, and Zooey has claimed the top perch, from which he looks winningly at me, asking for pets. Here are the color photo and the B&W. Which do you like better?
What has gone well for you lately? People who did a good thing that you’d like to give a shout-out to? No shitty people in this open thread.
schrodingers_cat
Sweet kitteh!
WereBear
Peeopl were asking for cat pics downstairs! What a sweet face.
I think your original needs more contrast for that to work.
For those in need:
Tristan kneads his favorite person
Steve in the ATL
Fine, but it’s going to be a dull thread without any lawyers!
O. Felix Culpa
Kitty looks deep in thought. I prefer the color photo, FWIW.
zhena gogolia
I like the color because pink nosie.
raven
Here’s a nice article from the hated NYT about music and the Nam.
I Served in Vietnam. Here’s My Soundtrack.
JPL
@Steve in the ATL: lol Truth me know we are all shitty people at one time or another.
Yutsano
@schrodingers_cat: This thread demands we all be graced with the faire presence of His Lord and Master Tikka. Someone get Levenson on the horn.
But Steve will work too.
Josie
The color photo is nice, but Zooey’s eyes really leap out at you in the black and white one.
Mnemosyne
I just discovered the EmergenSea Otter twitter account.
I think everyone except zoos and museums should be banned from Twitter forthwith. And Rate My Dog. They can stay, too.
frosty fred
I don’t think one readily gets the quality of B/W image from a color original, expected from B/W film photography. I’m sure it’s possible, but it isn’t easy.
Roger Moore
The color is definitely better, because you composed it in color and a lot of the contrast in the original is hue contrast rather than tonal contrast. That’s why the B&W conversion looks flat compared to the color picture. You could probably do a better conversion if you used a virtual color filter. A green or blue filter would lower the value of the orange in the background and of the cat tree while leaving the cat’s fur mostly unchanged. That would enhance the contrast between the subject and the surroundings.
zhena gogolia
@WereBear:
That is good.
We are a catless household at the moment, and we are feeling it.
David Evans
When I had that challenge I let the software convert to B&W and then played with the sliders to make the whites a little whiter and the blacks a little blacker. I find B&W often needs a little more contrast to compensate for the lack of color.
The software was Google’s Picasa. Alas, no longer supported by Google, but I’ve kept my install files. It’s much better for editing than Google Photos which they want us to use instead.
PS I prefer the cat in color.
Mnemosyne
Also, I just got a call that my pretty new glasses are ready for pickup. Yay!
realbtl
OK here goes. My maiden aunt lived in the same house in El Paso from 1952 until her passing in 2009 and I watched the interior become darker and darker. The daughter of the Hispanic family across the street befriended my aunt many years ago and I sold the house to her on my aunt’s passing. I just got a bunch of pix and the house is again filled with light. Little things are important.
O. Felix Culpa
@Steve in the ATL:
LOL. Then maybe we should look for the helpers (h/t Mr. Rogers) and the people who do good. I am increasingly impressed with the stalwart young folks from Parkland. That is to say, I was impressed from the outset and grow even more so as they deftly handle the rightwing BS flung their way. I just hope they give themselves a break now and then, to rest and recuperate. And 11-year-old Naomi Wadler’s grace, poise, and on point message make me so proud, even as a distant witness. It’s been said before, but I love these kids!
Roger Moore
@frosty fred:
It isn’t easy to get quality B&W photography from B&W film, either. You have to do all kinds of tricks, like using color filters to play with the contrast and choosing the right paper to get things to turn out right. You can do all the same kinds of things in Photoshop/Lightroom/etc.
Mnemosyne
@zhena gogolia:
One of my friends at work lost their two elderly cats in quick succession, and they were devastated.
A few weeks later, she opened up the back door of their house to find three kittens on the doorstep like, “We hear you haz a cat vacancy and would like to apply.”
They kept all three, of course.
Patricia Kayden
No sh*tty people but what about sh*tty cats? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoUEQYjYgf4
That cat always give me a good chuckle.
LAO
@Steve in the ATL: ?. Too true. I’m going exit stage right.
Lapassionara
@raven: those songs bring back memories.
ThresherK
The color I prefer as it looks real. The b+w doesn’t look like it was taken in b+w. Others here mentioned tech stuff beyond me, but I’ll try to remember.
Gelfling 545
Posted this below just as the thread went moribund. A reminder of a good person. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/watch-joan-baez-honor-obama-in-the-president-sang-amazing-grace-w518460?utm_source=rsnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=032718_16
daize
@Roger Moore: Roger, thank you for the info on filters and paper. I think I saw on an earlier thread that you’re a photographer? Do you have a studio and darkroom at home? Would love to try B&W darkroom again, just a little daunted in this digital age!
raven
I’ve found 8 guys from my outfit in Korea and we have a FB page. One guy has posted a ton of B&W pictures he took 50 years ago and this is my favorite.
“This picture is how we got along, at least in our outfit”.
Roger Moore
@David Evans:
If you want a serious photo editor but don’t want to pay what Adobe charges, you could consider one of the Free Software alternatives like The GIMP or Krita.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
True fact: Black and white cartoons were actually painted in black and white (technically, shades of gray) because they photographed true and you didn’t have to wonder how the black and white film stock would “interpret” colors.
raven
@Lapassionara: I guess since it came out in 73 Mayflield’s “Back in the World” never made it into the canon.
daize
@raven: Oh, wow. So poignant. It belongs in a collection in a museum. (Thinking Eugene Smith.)
schrodingers_cat
My lol just made the first page on ICHC/lolcats, Victory Dance!
Ruckus
@Patricia Kayden:
That was funny. It wouldn’t have been were it my cat. But it isn’t so……
raven
@daize: Yea, this dude is something. About 8 years ago I learned that he taught at the American School in Singapore where my tenant lived with his parents and attended. His flickr page has a huge number of photos from all over the world.
Eric S.
Every morning at work I have to send out a status email. “N,nnn work items canceled.”
Ice taken to embellishing it with historical facts. Today would habe been Margaret K. Butler’s 94th birthday. Who? I had never heard of her but thanks to the wonders of the wiki I learned of her. She was a pioneer in the computer science world working at Argonne National Laboratory.
Roger Moore
@Patricia Kayden:
If the people really don’t want their cat knocking stuff off the table, they should put down the damn phone and do something about it.
CarolPW
@Patricia Kayden: One of my kitties (Hek, who looks very much like Zooey) helpfully cleans off my desk, end table, kitchen counters etc. Nighttime is regularly punctuated with thuds as he tidies up. He’s from Baghdad and has peculiar manners.
Ruckus
@raven:
That could hang in any number of places as a great picture. I can think of a few off the top of my head. A poignant message if there ever was on.
O. Felix Culpa
@Gelfling 545: Beautiful. Thank you. Damn onions in my living room!
MomSense
Work was super shitty today and I didn’t have a moment to check the news. When I got home I found that a woman who owns a fiber studio in Portland has set up a gofundme for The Cashmere People yarn collective. She is the distributor of their yarn and is trying to help them raise money to expand their business. They are about 70 Tajik and Afghan women who hand spin and hand dye gorgeous cashmere and cashgora yarn. They source the fiber from small, local flocks.
My only connection to this is that I bought some skeins spun by Jonomo (who is wearing black and white in the video at the link). Casey Ryder is such a wonderful human being. She is PortFiber on Instagram and you will adore her if you check out her feed.
Here is the link. You will be so glad to help these women. For many this collective is their only source of income.
Empowering Women in Tajikistan
I posted this in a dead thread below and I hope you will be patient with me if I post this a few more times.
different-church-lady
I got nothin’.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
I looked at The GIMP a long time ago and was not all that impressed. But it’s still around so I’d bet it’s gotten a lot better. At that time I was fortunate enough to have access to both Photoshop/Illustrator, which worked just fine for my needs. I’d bet they’ve gotten a lot better as well but then they also cost a small fortune.
dmsilev
Another entry from the crank email file. The actual crank science is kind of boring (“relativity is wrong”), but the paranoia is special:
Move aside Deep State, Deep Science is here…
raven
@MomSense: I sent it to my knitter friends.
Roger Moore
@daize:
I am a photographer, but I’m only ever done digital at all seriously. I have decent book knowledge of film stuff from reading a lot of how-to photo books, including Ansel Adams’s excellent series, The Camera, The Negative, and The Print. A surprising amount of what he talks about can be applied to digital photography, though the exposure rules are backward*. Even the stuff he says about color filters when shooting in B&W can be applied to B&W conversions of digital files. FWIW, if you still like photographing with film, you can use a hybrid workflow, where you scan your negatives, process them in Photoshop, and print digitally.
*When using negative film, you have to be careful not to underexpose, or the shadows will wind up being pure white in the negative and you’ll never get any detail in them. With digital photography (and slide film) you have to be careful not to overexpose, or the highlights will burn out and you’ll never get any detail in them.
WereBear
@zhena gogolia: Aw. So sorry.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne: The cat gods can be generous.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
I have no trouble believing that. I know that for quite a while the Oscars had separate awards for B&W and Color movies in several categories like production design and costuming. A lot of the sets and costumes were done in unexpected colors because they looked good on film. ISTR that a lot of things that had worked well in B&W (e.g. using syrup as fake blood) had to be reinvented for Color.
Gin & Tonic
@daize: I haven’t spent time in a darkroom since the 1970’s, and I swear I can still smell that smell.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore: It depends, if you underexpose too much the image becomes too noisy.
WereBear
@schrodingers_cat: Congrats.
SiubhanDuinne
@Gelfling 545:
Thank you so much for posting this! I heard the song on some NPR program a few weeks ago; meant to follow up and acquire the new album but got distracted and forgot. (Huge Joan Baez fan since her first album — 1961? ’62? I damn near wore it out through repeated playings.)
Obama singing “Amazing Grace” at that memorial service is something I’ll never forget. The entire eulogy was about grace. We were so blessed to have that man and his family represent the United States for eight years. I hope the rest of the world also remembers, and reminds itself what we’re capable of.
rikyrah
Love the color photo??
MomSense
@Gelfling 545:
That made my cry- mascara smudges and everything.
MomSense
@zhena gogolia:
I’m so sorry. That happened to us several years ago. Lost our dog and two cats within a few months. It was horrible.
Duane
I’ll be back when the shitty people can comment. Without us this shitty thread will die soon enough. Oops, that was shitty of me.
Dog Mom
For anyone interested, who did not see the Rochester Meet up thread below:
Details
EBT
@Roger Moore:
IIRC superman’s costume for the black and white run was brown in real life.
MomSense
@raven:
Thank you!
schrodingers_cat
@WereBear: Thanks, there are more FP lols here
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Gin & Tonic: Yup same here.
Roger Moore
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
It’s true that you can’t underexpose too much, but it’s still easier to deal with noisy shadows than blown out highlights. If you can’t find an exposure that gives you minimal blown out highlights and still has acceptable noise in the shadows, your problem is that the scene has too much contrast for your sensor and you need to think about some kind of multi-shot blending HDR trick.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@raven: That’s really beautiful.
@Mnemosyne: There’s a museum near us dedicated to Andrew Wyeth and his lineage (both family and artistic), because it’s pretty much around the corner from his home and everything he painted.
One of my favorite exhibits there is the collection of illustrations by Wyeth’s father, N.C. Wyeth, and N.C.’s teacher, Howard Pyle. Both of them were famous illustrators. And the illustrations intended for black-and-white reproduction were, as you say, drawn and shaded in black-and-white.
Schlemazel
@raven:
My high school buddy told me when he got off the plane all he could think of was the Doors “People Are Strange”
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
That is one fan-fucking-tastic picture. Seriously — museum, award-winning quality. I love it and have saved it.
daize
@Roger Moore: Ah, thank you so much for responding to my question and for the suggestion about digitally converting the negs.
efgoldman
@LAO:
Did you apply for the Craigslist job yet?
MomSense
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
N.C. was a friend of my gr.gr. Aunt. He visited just about every week in the summer.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@zhena gogolia: Our black long-hair is 17 in a few days and apparently indestructible. Oldest pet we have ever had. She can’t make some of the leaps she used to, but otherwise she seems completely ageless. Still, I know from past experience that when they go downhill, they go downhill fast, so I’ve been pretty much psychologically prepared for that time for over a year now.
She’s the only pet we have, last survivor of what was at one time 3 cats and a labrador. I’d love to have a dog in the house again, but I didn’t think it was fair to introduce that kind of chaos to a contented elderly cat.
Unfortunately she’s looking kind of alarming right now, as she had a severe matting problem a couple weeks ago that ended up with the vet shaving much of her midsection. We can’t wait for her sleek black coat to come back in. But for some reason it doesn’t seem to bother her, not even going out in 30-degree weather. She just doesn’t want to be touched there.
daize
@Gin & Tonic: Isn’t that the truth?! I just loved it though. I can’t draw or paint my way out of a paper bag, but I felt like I was part of a creative community during those times I shared (multi cube) darkroom with a bunch of folks.
efgoldman
@dmsilev:
Are these yobbos actually expecting to earn advanced degrees?
LAO
@efgoldman: Even I have standards. They’re very low, but still standards.
zhena gogolia
@Patricia Kayden:
The shittiest cat is a million times cuter than even a nice human.
debbie
@MomSense:
N.C. Wyeth is one of my heroes. He’s the father of American Illustration. His paintings for Charles Scribner’s Illustrated Classics (Treasure Island, Kidnapped, just to name a few) are classics. I worked for the publisher and used to get a limited edition copy of each book as it was published. I think he may not have always been the nicest of human beings, but damn, he could paint!
zhena gogolia
@Gelfling 545:
That is beautiful! I like her voice better now than when she was in her prime. And I liked it a lot then.
Aleta
@SiubhanDuinne: For some reason I copied this quote a few weeks ago, from Baez about recording the song:
I found that it was written by Zoe Mulford, singing it here. She said:
Now she’ll continue to receive checks from sales of Baez’s album or if Baez’s recording is ever used on TV or a movie.
zhena gogolia
@raven:
That’s fantastic.
efgoldman
@zhena gogolia:
You’ve never met my granddaughter.
zhena gogolia
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I love that suede-like texture they have after they’ve been shaved. They hate it!
zhena gogolia
@debbie:
Did you ever see Ramona? I used to check it out of the library just to look at the pictures. Damn, if I were still using EBay I’d go see if I could get it.
zhena gogolia
@efgoldman:
Okay, I meant grownup humans.
zhena gogolia
@zhena gogolia:
Which reminds me of a story. In church on Palm Sunday there was a mother and her daughter, the cutest little girl, who’d never been there before. They sat in the next-to-last pew, and we are the perpetual ushers, so we were sitting at the very back of the church. Toward the end of the (too long) service, the little girl came back to us with her bulletin, which she had colored all over, and she said, “I made this for God.”
Okay, shitty people are forbidden to go to town and ruin that little memory of mine!
Brachiator
@raven: Wow. That is a great photo. Thanks very much for posting it.
dmsilev
@efgoldman: This one wants funding.
Miss Bianca
@dmsilev: i really, really think these emails ought to be in a book collection somewhere. Or would you then be subject to crank lawsuits?
efgoldman
@dmsilev:
Likely to get it? On the taxpayer’s dime? I think not. And I agree with @Miss Bianca: Some of this stuff is up there with the best of the late SEK.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
Great story!
Miss Bianca
Speaking of no shitty people, just a shout-out to the jackals who commiserated me and offered advice when i was bitching about my upcoming house sale being stalled. Just heard back from my realtor and it looks like we may have a contract after all. Thanks so much to raven and ruckus and Ohio Mom et al.! You helped me stay sane yesterday.
zhena gogolia
@debbie:
Thank you. I appreciate being able to mention church and not immediately get jumped on.
Amir Khalid
@Aleta:
I clicked on your link, and YouTube told me: “This video is not available.” Pout.
Gravenstone
@dmsilev: Forward it to Levenson. He can probably use the chuckle.
WhatsMyNym
The color shot is great. I dropped it into IrfanView (free) and used the Auto-adjust Colors, and it looks even better.
I started out with B&W film photography. It’s a whole science by itself to get the best print.
Aleta
@Amir Khalid: That’s too bad. Works for me, but maybe not for you because it was put up by cd baby? I’ll look for another decent version.
Gelfling 545
@O. Felix Culpa: Yeah. I cried all over myself when I heard it. I put it on my FB page & it’s collecting a lot of ?.
mampdx
I prefer the color one, since it shows his cute pink ears and noses.
Uncle Cosmo
Open thread? OK. Let me start with too much background:
When I bought the present abode >30 yrs ago there was a European style outlet (2 pins instead of prongs, plus ground [“earth” in UK]) in the kitchen. Previous owners had it installed when they returned from post-doc’ing in Germany with a taste for fresh-ground coffee & a very macho Braun coffee grinder, which they gave me for a housewarming present (it at that time being cheaper to buy a good 110v grinder than to install another circuit in their new home). In the process of redoing the kitchen some years back the outlet got broken; we sealed off the wires, flipped off the breakers to them, & left the conduit on the wall behind the fridge
A couple of years ago I was in the outskirts of Prague, browsing in a home renovation store called Obi (seems to be Czech for “Home Depot”) & I found & bought a 2-receptacle replacement outlet (along with a power strip) intending to replace the outlet & bring the Braun grinder back into use. We were about to install it – but my handyman is a bit leery – & although we can find instructions for how to wire a single-receptacle outlet on the Net we have had no luck in finding a guide to wiring the double outlet.
So – has anyone had any experience in wiring one of those things? Contact a FPer & ask for my e-mail & e-mail me & I will send you a photo of the guts of the outlet if you can tell me where to connect the white, the black, & the ground wires. In return I will bump you to the head of the line for pet services when my remaining nephew (the late lamented Skyler’s li’l bro) graduates from vet school in 4 years or so (he has been accepted to 2 schools & we’re just working out the finances).
Thanky kindly!
Gravenstone
@Aleta: Probably region limited. A downside tie Amir being in Indonesia.
Mnemosyne
@Gravenstone:
Ahem. Malaysia.
Ruckus
@LAO:
I used to say “I have standards, you can’t see them or find them, but I have them damn it.”
Jay Noble
Some interesting B&W things to look into are Frankenstein’s monster and the Addams Family TV series. Both came through quite well in B&W but had some tweaks to actual colors of make up and props to show up better.
Aleta
@Amir Khalid: If other youtubes work for you, this is a live version sung acapella. (The other version from her CD has simple piano chords underneath, which I like best.)
In this one, at the end she continues on and segues into ‘amazing grace’ itself. The audience then sings along beautifully.
If youtube doesn’t work, the same acapella version is here at a site called antiwar songs dot org.
For your guitar, I also found a site that gives the chords under the lyrics. I don’t know anything about the site. (I inserted spaces that you’d have to remove if you try the link below.)
https: // tabs. ultimate-guitar. com/tab/ zoe_mulford/ the_president_sang_amazing_grace_chords_2328647
Shana
@realbtl: Same thing happened when we sold my late father’s house. It isn’t actually lighter since the whole back side of the house is floor to ceiling windows, but they brightened up the interior, and did some lovely remodeling and it looks terrific. Went back this past summer for my high school reunion, 2 years after the sale, and it looks great.
J R in WV
@Roger Moore:
My newer camera (Panasonic Lumix FZ1000) has a setting that brackets every exposure with 3 total shots, one stop brighter and one stop darker than the sensor/automatic exposure calls for, as well as the one on that exposure. When shooting with RAW as well, you need a big chip to keep up with the data demand!
So I got a high-speed 64 GB data chip, and didn’t fill it up on a week long photo shoot. Actually I unloaded chips every evening to a hard drive and the laptop, but I didn’t really need to. I didn’t do much movie shooting, tho, that really burns the memory fast!
I’m sending Alain 4 or 5 sets of photos from the trip, whales, sea lions, regular scenic photos… Bucket list nailed! Quite an experience! Hope you all enjoy sharing it!!
Shana
@Uncle Cosmo: No idea, but mazel tov on the nephew’s acceptances.
Uncle Cosmo
@Shana: Thanky kindly again. Ill let yinz know which school he ends up at. (Farther down the line, I’ve already warned him away from joining or opening a practice within driving distance of a crazy old coot named Cole…but the rest of the Juicetariat will be invited to queue right on up with their furballs once the day draws nigh…)
kattails
@Jay Noble: For anyone still awake, check out the film “I Know Where I’m Going”, Wendy Hiller, 1945, amazingly atmospheric black and white filmed in the Hebrides. Damned good story. Thanks for reminding me of it… it’s still available & there are a couple of clips on Youtube.
David Evans
@Roger Moore: Thank you for that. I tried The Gimp long ago and found the learning curve too steep (I know! Sometimes you have to persevere). Krita looks very interesting, I’ll give it a try.
Sis
I like the color version better because you can see Zooey’s pretty green peepers.