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All posts for the month April, 2014

Having been in the graphic business for over two decades, I look at things differently than your average guy would, I guess.
And I’ve seen quite a few weird and bad Photoshop jobs pass my desk.
Sometimes you wonder “but… but… HOW??? WHAT were they thinking??” Also sometimes you look at something and you simply KNOW there’s something odd, but you can’t really put your finger on it, because it’s not all THAT clear from the start.

Yesterday I was flying from Denpasar to Manila, a 4 hour flight. Cebu Pacific (excellent company, I’ve flown with them many many times!) has their own in-flight magazine, as many carriers do, and of course there’s plenty of advertising in it. I finished my book, so I had plenty of time to scrupulously go through the whole magazine. And really, when you look at things closely, there’s a surprising amount of really shitty Photoshop work out there.

There was one with a swimming pool, where people and chairs were copy-pasted in, with reflections and shadows in every which (wrong) way, dwarfs and giants living harmoniously together, there were really REALLY bad masking jobs, and so on.
I picked out one of many for you that caught my eye specifically.

This one, supposedly a very upscale real estate company, hired one of Philippines’ most famous models to pose in their imagery. Look how she’s holding on tight with one hand on the railing of the speed boat and with the other hand on the glass of wine.
Oh, but hang on…

Real estate advertisement

Real estate advertisement, copyright belongs to the respective owners.
Snapshot of the advertisement page in Cebu Pacific Air’s in-flight magazine.

Details of the real estate advertisement

Details of the real estate advertisement

So basically every element in this adverts is copy-pasted to make this composite of images. And it’s done badly.

I kept on snickering when I paged through the magazine. The people sitting next to me probably thought I was pretty weird 😀

We had the luck to be on Bali during Nyepi, Silence Day.
I have some images of the parade, not the spectacle in the end, because health got in the way, but some pictures I have. They’re in the edit queue.

But what I didn’t want to keep from you was this:

Milky Way

D800, ISO3200, 15 sec @ f/2.8, Nikkor 14mm

The parade is the night before Silence Day, and on Silence Day everyone is… silent. Yes. No one is allowed to work, no one is really even allowed to leave the house. No lights are allowed to be on, save for maybe some small candles (I’ll tell a bit more about Nyepi in the other post with the parade pictures).
And that makes this kind of photography fantastic. Absolutely no light pollution and the Universe at your feet. There are SO many stars visible, it’s hard to fathom. And the Milky Way is right there, at the tip of your fingers.

It’s breath-taking, it’s beyond words. To enjoy this in silence, to enjoy the silence of this.
Marvelous!

I’m doing my IDC at the moment, the PADI dive instructor course. It’s an awesome experience. We’re two weeks into the program and it’s so much fun! 🙂
I didn’t count with many opportunities to bring the camera down, but we had some dives before the course started on which I could take the camera.

And really: I just can’t stop saying that it’s the most beautiful thing down there.
I never get enough of what I see. And I’m a macro fetishist, I guess.

Baby shrimp

D800 in Ikelight housing, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, Tamron 90mm macro, Ikelight DS-161 + Ikelite DS-51

Goat fish

D800 in Ikelight housing, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, Tamron 90mm macro, Ikelight DS-161 + Ikelite DS-51

Ribbon moray eel

D800 in Ikelight housing, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, Tamron 90mm macro, Ikelight DS-161 + Ikelite DS-51

Nudibranch

D800 in Ikelight housing, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, Tamron 90mm macro, Ikelight DS-161 + Ikelite DS-51

Peacock Mantis Shrimp

D800 in Ikelight housing, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, Tamron 90mm macro, Ikelight DS-161 + Ikelite DS-51

Frogfish

D800 in Ikelight housing, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, Tamron 90mm macro, Ikelight DS-161 + Ikelite DS-51

Nudibranch

D800 in Ikelight housing, ISO100, 1/250 sec @ f/5.6, Tamron 90mm macro, Ikelight DS-161 + Ikelite DS-51

Beauty in all its colorfulness 🙂