paste

All posts tagged paste

A guy’s fight in the cat’s world of awareness, Day 70

Posted by Arno on November 26, 2010
Posted in: color, macro, pets, photography. Tagged: , , , , . 5 comments

I’m sure you’ve all read (or at least the animal-people among you) the “How to feed a cat a pill” manual…
It’s that time again. It’s not a pill this time, though, but some paste. 3 days they have to get it. And 3 days they WILL get it, if it’s the last thing I do. Every year it’s a day of getting used to. For me (or the Better Half) to give it, but also for the cats to realize that really I AM the boss and they WILL eat what’s shoved down their throat.
Yesterday was that day of getting used to. No problem whatsoever with Cassandra. She remembers who’s the boss and she just wants to get it over with. But Ramses, Mr Peabrain with his non-existent (any term) memory always has to be reminded that there’s no winning this fight for him. I gave him the paste and he started smacking and then he shook his head and most of the paste was on the kitchen drawers, on the fridge, on the floor and on me.

But I’m persistent, more so than he, so I gave him a new shot and held him. And he smacked some more, but I didn’t let him shake his head. And all was fine.
It all comes down to authority, I guess *grins*
Today it was all smooth like a feather. Even Ramses’s (any term) memory must’ve replayed yesterday’s events, because he didn’t even struggle.
(maybe we’re just lucky with our cats, like I’m lucky with my in-laws, because that also seems to be out of the ordinary 😀 )

Flubenol seringe

D700, ISO200, 2 sec @ f/11, Tamron 90mm macro

Riiiiiight… You were expecting a self portrait of me in the kitchen covered in that paste, right?
Sorry to disappoint you. I’m making a fool out of myself already enough 😉

Esquire continued

Posted by Arno on January 9, 2009
Posted in: Photoshop. Tagged: , , . Leave a Comment

Whoa! I didn’t expect this whole thing to stir up so much emotions.

I appreciate all the feedback, and would like to tell everyone that I DO read also.
I read that the guys on the outside are wearing masks. But the whole angle on the left picture is totally off.

Head from the left page on the left, head from the right page on the right

Head from the left page on the left, head from the right page on the right

If you check the image, you can clearly see the outlines of the mask on the left side (it must be a cardboard mask including hair).
On the right page the mask sits naturally and believably, but on the left page the model must be sitting, crouched, in a seriously uncomfortable way in order to be able to hide behind the mask like that.

Well, anyway… Think of it what you like… I will do the same.

Esquire goes over the top, too

Posted by Arno on December 25, 2008
Posted in: Photoshop. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . 36 comments

I figured I wouldn’t be writing anymore this year, but I just couldn’t let this go by unnoticed.

Being a graphic artist and a photographer I read (or page) through a lot of magazines and photographs (hence my interest in the National Geographic contest, and e.g. (little) projects in Photoshop and Lightroom).

So… The past days in between all the courses of food during the christmas holidays I was reading through the Esquire (American edition). Great magazine, for most part.
When I came to the end of the January issue I ran into this spread:

Esquire, January 2009 issue

Esquire, January 2009 issue

For those of you who don’t know what a spread is: it’s a left and right page in a magazine. So whenever you open a magazine, whatever you have in front of you is a spread.
Don’t mind the quality of the scan (the guy looking like a freak isn’t due to the bad scan, he really looks like a freak 😉 ).

Now, I always thought that a quality magazine has quality graphics, quality editors and people who are able to produce graphically pleasing and responsible images. And usually this is the case in Esquire. However, this time… I don’t know if it was the stress to get everything out and mailed before Christmas or what, but what you see here is a plain awful butcher job. A very poorly executed example of copy-paste-rotate.
And they even took the head from the same spread. If anything in the graphic editing land is a big no-no, it’s that.
I’m sure the photographer shot 1000 pictures on this shoot and sure, that particular head on the left version of Adam Rapp  may have looked a bit funny, but the mask could’ve been at least turned so that it looks as believable as on the right page.
And the person who did that, and the poor masking / cutting / pasting job, should get a boot up his behind.

Oh, and happy holidays once again!