Althouse: In the arb.

May 28, 2008

In the arb.

10 comments:

rhhardin said...: Try setting sharpness to whatever the minimal value is in the camera, and you may avoid the halo'd silhouette artifact. You can put sharpness back in the photo editor if wanted.

A high contrast edge, particularly one not perfectly in focus, is the nastiest.

Digital cameras deliberately fuzz the image in hardware to avoid moire patterns that otherwise would turn up all over against chain link fences and stuff, and then in software resharpen edges. That resharpening has side effects.

The avoided effect is called aliasing, and it comes from having much fewer photodetectors than film has grains on the job.; 5/28/08, 8:56 PM
Trooper York said...: The first picture looks like an early Van Morrison album cover, Asrtal Weeks or Tupelo Honey or something like that. Or Buffalo Airplane or Jefferson Springfield or one of those them there things.; 5/28/08, 9:39 PM
reader_iam said...: Did you gather at the caf, aft?; 5/28/08, 11:55 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Me and the shadowy figures?; 5/29/08, 6:41 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Thanks, rh, but I'm not into fixing things like that.; 5/29/08, 6:42 AM
Ann Althouse said...: (That is, I like distortions.); 5/29/08, 6:43 AM
Bissage said...: Those are some mighty impressive looking mulch rings.; 5/29/08, 6:56 AM
KCFleming said...: DISGRACELAND
by Mary Karr

Before my first communion at 40, I clung
to doubt as Satan spider-like stalked
the orb of dark surrounding Eden
for a wormhole into paradise.

God had first formed me in the womb
small as a bite of burger.
Once my lungs were done
He sailed a soul like a lit arrow

to inflame me. Maybe that piercing
made me howl at birth,
or the masked creatures
whose scalpel cut a lightning bolt to free me—

I was hoisted by the heels and swatted, fed
and hauled through rooms. Time-lapse photos show
my fingers grew past crayon outlines,
my feet came to fill spike heels.

Eventually, I lurched out to kiss the wrong mouths,
get stewed, and sulk around. Christ always stood
to one side with a glass of water.
I swatted the sap away.

When my thirst got great enough
to ask, a stream welled up inside;
some jade wave buoyed me forward;
and I found myself upright

in the instant, with a garden
inside my own ribs aflourish. There, the arbor leafs.
The vines push out plump grapes.
You are loved, someone said. Take that

and eat it.; 5/29/08, 7:17 AM
rhhardin said...: That is, I like distortions

It's an annoying effect if you have a Doberman, like here, where the left front paw looks like it's photoshopped in. High contrast happens everywhere with black dogs.

Were the paw focussed enough to provide actual detail, you'd not notice it. But the software sharpens it beyond the information available to it, and makes it look like a photoshop job.

This is with the sharpness in the camera at the lowest level to minimize it. (Set to ``program'' and then selected in a Sony.); 5/29/08, 7:34 AM
MadisonMan said...: A benefit of the nice cool May we've had is that the blooms are really lingering. I hate those extra hot days in May that blast the lilac and crabapple blooms.; 5/29/08, 7:38 AM