Curative Design

Walker Evans, I browsed through his photos on Photography Now and came off with the impression that he captures the industrial, and the real gritty reality of life and the people working in these urban conditions.

I read a bit more about him in wikipedia, most of his iconic images were of families and people in rural areas during the great depression, so I’m abit off in my simple analysis but hey, I found this building that looked similar during our walk to Balmain, and I went for it.

Walker Evans

Mine

On a side note, Check out that “Ford” logo. Looks the same all these years!

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I’m taking in the beauty of Ansel Adams work, and the high contrast black and white nature and landscapes.

His

Courtesy of Photography Now

My copy, the doubtful sound in New Zealand

This is really fun!

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This is a fun project I brought onto myself.
Check out the masters of both contemporary and classic photography and “mimic” or “be inspired by” the styles in both photoshop and in actual digital shooting.

Today’s muse is Eugene Atget

Courtesy of Photography Now

My take

The amateur that I am, I haven’t quite grasped the exposures. This was taken midday with harsh lights, if I were to be a proper Eugene, I’d probably shoot early morning and most likely at a wider approach and would most likely throw in a vignette at the top and crop it in correct ratio!

But hey I’m excited about these masters of past century, so I’ll be keeping an eye out for more of this!

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Just popping my head up to say how much I love the Canon EF-S 10-22mm Lens.

Took it out for a little whirl around the Sydney Maritime Meseum along with the Hoya Pro 1 Digital Polarize filter which made for some beautiful deep blue skies.

I like this lens producing a slight fish-eye look yet keeping everything crisp to the edges.

If you’re looking for a great wide Lens for a canon EOS camera, I’m recommending this one

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Ghetto lighting - Like this group’s admin suggests:
“If you use desklamps, your window, candles, whatever else I have not mentioned, then you my friend, use ghetto lighting.”

Digital Photography School had another ghetto lighting assignment this week, and though I’ve had a sort of dry spell with little free time and anti-camera sentiments (It happens ), I’ve dusted off the canon to take this photo, only because my cat - Volki - looked too wise and the force seemed very strong with him today

As the name suggests, Volki was lit up or “back lit up” by my monitor, something I’ve been regularly searing my eyeballs with and which has suddenly been given a whole new purpose (to light up my cat’s whiskers for a photo shoot!)

See what you can do with your lamps, disco balls (I know you have one!), or random contraptions that omit light.

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On work:
To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.

Don’t know a great deal about Buddhism (infact..close to nothing. While visiting the temple where the word dharma kept showing up, all my husband and I could think of was “lost”!! Silly shallow people) however, all that I do know is respect and admiration for a religion of peace and self respect, dedication and wholesomeness.

Not sure how it all relates to Business, but I think for life as a whole, to integrate even a few of Buddhas teaching could be a better start to life.
And of course there’s the beauty of zen gardens… ;)…

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Not much happening on the Curative Design front as I find myself swamped with my other full time job. This poor site is being sadly neglected. I’ll still be adding random posts from time to time such as this image for Digital Photography School for the assignment “vivid”.

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Something I’ve found difficult to locate online is information regarding Paypal, billing and subscriptions. They do have a pretty extensive help center and developer center…but it’s the little details such as information regarding ECHECKS!

Assuming you are a seller using paypal’s “Payments standard”.
Your product is a service such as hosting - clients pay via a monthly subscription/recurring payments.

Did you know…
When a buyer starts up a new subscription it needs to be paid via
1. A credit card or
2. An account with a credit card attached or
3. Via an echeck or instant bank transfer.

It does not take payments from an existing balance in paypal. Even if the buyer has $1000 dollars in his/her paypal balance, it’s untouchable. This was interesting to me. Theoretically it only applies with the FIRST payment. Once the subscription starts off, as a buyer you can then choose to pay from your paypal balance directly.

Another interesting thing about echecks while on a subscription/recurring payments:
Say as a buyer, you’re paying for hosting/or other webservice, and you’ve paid with paypal on March 1st and started up a subscription. April 1st rolls around and you don’t have enough funds in your account, paypal initiates an echeck (after trying out your credit card) which is drawing cash directly from your attached bank. Echecks regularly take 4-12 business days to clear.

Apparently, and I say this with vague memory of what I’ve discovered a couple months ago, apparently as you pay with an echeck, even though your funds haven’t cleared, your subscription stays on the same billing course, which is roughly every 30 days or 1st of each month. If your funds take 2 weeks to clear (which is maximum) and your service has shut down within the pending stages, you’ll notice your webservice will kick in once the echeck clears (March 12th) and you get a lovely 18 days of use until your bank gets charged once again, and your web service shuts off until your echeck clears again…and the cycle continues till you’ve wondered why the web service you’re paying top dollar to seems insanely intermittent.

Moral of the story:
As an online buyer on a recurring plan: Keep your paypal balance padded, or an active credit card attached. Keep an eye on your subscriptions and prepare to change the source of payment (instant bank balance, paypal balance, creditcard, or echeck)
Realize that echecks can be nasty things that take up to 2 weeks to clear which means your online service can be stopped while it’s pending.

As a seller: Keep an eye on users who buy with echecks on recurring payments. If you’ve setup your product to activate upon payment, it may activate the service/product before the echeck clears or possibly bounces. Although one thing to note: The bank with the bounced echeck may charge the buyer with an overage fee on their end which can protect this from happening often.

Happy online buying and selling with paypal!

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I’ve stumbled on an effect which makes one raw file look HDR without all the HDR messing around.

In Adobe Camera Raw, slide exposure down towards the black, “Fill light” towards the white, and further play with contrasts and black levels. The 3d pops out and creates an interesting visual effect. Note this is done on a RAW file, I haven’t tried it with Jpeg.
The image above is taken at Watson’s Bay, Sydney.

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We wake up too darn early to be considered human, I feel like a crow..
6:30 but recently sometimes even 5:30, after a particularly exciting work week we would get up around 5:00, now I’m settled back to 6:30/7 but it still feels wrong.

The only redeeming factor is I get to watch the sun rise. It rises extraordinarily fast, and the church spires as silhouettes look amazing.

Tip for canon users - (and other dslr peeps) When shooting a bright ball called the sun, obviously don’t do it if it’s mid day, and even sunrise/sunset make it fast, make sure the shutter speed is lightning, iso is low and dial down the exposure. I’ve learnt how to do this and ever since been able to capture bright things like lights and such without having big blur in the screen..

Turn the dial to AV mode. Which I think is aperture priorty..Find the Av plus/minus button. press that while at the same time turning the little dial next to the shutter button. You’ll see the little black square in the screen rise and fall up and down the scale. Try shooting out a window on the different scales and see how it effects the brightness and exposure. This is a really handy thing when for most of your shot you want dark but you want that one little bit of brightness in focus or visa versa. That way the camera doesn’t self adjust by brightening the whole thing.

If you’re shooting in raw (which is a good idea) you can also later bump down exposure so the ball of sun really does stand out.

And that’s it for this morning…I need my tea!

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