The Sky is Burning

[Tin Can]

After I loaded focus stacking in my minds eye

I was directed to PS 21 Sky Replacement

https://youtu.be/cdjsUlOxvrU

Which will be a handy shortcut for Digi Neg Makers

Old tricks for new folks

[Old_Dick]

This one works.

[Tin Can]

Yes, I know

The other may be blocked

When I get time...

Thanks for trying!


This one works.

[Drew Wiley]

Disgusting. But why bother? The sky is burning over much of the northern hemisphere already. No need to fake the shot.

[pjd]

Disgusting. But why bother? The sky is burning over much of the northern hemisphere already. No need to fake the shot.

Total agreement here. I skipped into the middle of that video, the "sky replacement" looked disgusting (best word for it) and pointless.

[Tin Can]

Analog sky replacement is very old

[pjd]

Analog sky replacement is very old

So is syphilis, it's still best avoided.

[Tin Can]

I suppose nobody touches up anymore...LOL

Actually I seldom do, it is more 'authentic' to show our warts...

btw, I posted in Digi processing, which is HERE (https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/forumdisplay.php?21-Digital-Processing)

Dr Drew goes on and on about masks and claims to be an expert

even the Dr, now admits Digi copy camera, including an editing computer, pure as the driven snow

Eadweard Muybridge’s Secret Cloud Collection (https://placesjournal.org/article/eadweard-muybridges-secret-cloud-collection/?cn-reloaded=1)

[Tin Can]

so far so good


So is syphilis, it's still best avoided.

[Drew Wiley]

I have an optional digital camera for use on a copy stand in order to make reasonably faithful catalog copies of extant prints themselves - not to alter their look. Get that part straight. If I even wanted to dub clouds in the sky or alter the hue of the sky in a color image, I'd do it the old fashioned way in the darkroom - that's easy enough. And if you understand what I just stated, masking is a darkroom operation, and I don't try to replace it digitally. A digital catalog or web presentation is just a stand-in, a general reference potentially useful to my heirs or my own print sales later in life. I'm not trying to re-invent images that way. I don't even go near any of the optional "fun" or "creative" apps. It's used just like my film Nikon on the copystand, but just doesn't need an intermediate scan to get the image into cataloging storage.

But what I find so disappointing is that I've actually got a couple of 8x10 shots of true apricot-violet skies from back in the Mt Pinatubo volcanic eruption year. Nobody would probably even notice that today, and just crow that they could do an even more dramatic job in a split second using Photoshop. But what they can't do is actually experience that with their own eyes. Might as well have faux eyeballs too.

Old timers from the blue-sensitive film days like Muybridge often routinely kept underexposed cloud negatives for dub-in purposes. That's no secret. But if you want to see something really egregious, but more seamlessly done than anyone can do in Photoshop, look at Fatali's huge immaculate Cibachromes with a brilliant sunset replete with crescent moon adjacent to a lowering sun in the same scene. Astronomically impossible, exposure-wise utterly unrealistic, and where else have we seen that same crescent moon in the exactly the same position in the sky? - well, over there on that print, or over there on another, and yet another. But stacking three different 8X10 negatives all registered together in a carrier along with appropriate masks beats PS any day of the week in terms of sheer detail simulation. I just wish the magician didn't try to hide his hand using brilliant violet and pink smoke and mirrors - but that what the tourists who pay his bills apparently want.

[Tin Can]

I have an optional digital camera for use on a copy stand...

. ...But what they can't do is actually experience that with their own eyes. Might as well have faux eyeballs too.

I will be a few years late for Bionic faux eyes, but wish I had them now. I just bought the latest NIKON to aid my vision, that will have to do.

Dr Drew,

Why are you so angry and insulting to us lesser creatures?

I bow out walking backwards...

[ic-racer]

"_____ don't kill people, people kill people..."

Likewise, Photoshop didn't kill photography, people killed photography...

[trog]

Disgusting. But why bother? The sky is burning over much of the northern hemisphere already. No need to fake the shot.

Took this shot two weeks ago when we were surrounded by forest fires....fortunately we received some heavy rains recently that cleared things up.

219130

[Drew Wiley]

Tin Can - I'm aware you are having advanced eye issues. Nothing I stated was in any manner intended to be insensitive to your personal health issue, and I apologize if what I said came across that way. I was just making another sarcastic remark of yet another of seemingly endless digital camera apps.

[Tin Can]

Definition of sarcasm
1: a sharp and often satirical or ironic utterance designed to cut or give pain
2a: a mode of satirical wit depending for its effect on bitter, caustic, and often ironic language that is usually directed against an individual
b: the use or language of sarcasm

none intended by me

[pjd]

219181

If people want to achieve that look that a digital camera will have simpler workflow and even a smartphone camera will do very well without the hassles of LF + scanning. Something similar can be achieved with smartphone applications.

Having recently noticed a tastefully lit portrait posted by Tin Can it interested me that he'd suggest a video with what I consider heavy handed manipulation. Drew's broader point about the actual state of the skies is something I'm very worried about.

Saying that because something is old it's good or acceptable doesn't quite convince me. I know that early photographers printed in clouds from other negatives. Early photographers printed in clouds because their emulsions couldn't capture clouds and landscape in one exposure, I think.

I agree that sarcasm is futile, there's too much of it on these boards. I don't think there was any in this thread, just honesty.

[fotopfw]

I'm on a Dutch forum that has a member that replaces skies in every shot she posts, and if there's water, it shows always a perfect reflection of the landscape.
Most viewers see now it's a manipulation, and ask for the original. I even spotted a deep blue sky, left and right of the rising sun. It's neither creative, nor realistic in that case.

[Drew Wiley]

I admittedly poke fun at the current obsession of new just for sake of new, whether its about consumer electronics or related kitchy and ephemeral gadget-generated art trends. It's not aimed at specific persons here. The point I make is, that with such remarkable phenomena already in nature to begin with, and how the beauty of the sky constantly changes on its own, and in a manner far more subtle and beautiful than anything we can concoct, people are really cheating themselves when they try to fake it. A bit of balancing of hue and proportion and contrast etc is inherent to fine-tuning any photographic composition. But when it's done in a vulgar way, just trying to mimic some predictable postcard look or achieve some sudden gotcha effect like an advertisement, well, that's another matter. There is use of tools, and there's abuse of tools. At a certain point, it's not photography at all, but just another lazy way to make an inferior painting. Spend two weeks futzing around in PS and every app imaginable, and you still have less control fine-tuning hues that an ordinary skilled watercolorist can do in two minutes mixing his own pigments. But it's trendy and cool and keeps bread on the table of software writers and electronics engineers, so there you have it.

[LabRat]

Well, don't be too outraged, as a month or two ago, some big internet "influencer" (Kardashian???) took flak as their posted "selfie" was spotted with a new dropped-in sky and Twitter went ablaze... So others notice too...

In the pre-ortho 19th century, day skies would go solid white, so common for masters to drop in skies...

Steve K

[Tin Can]

Cibachrome, Chromes, B&W are perfect representations of our formally glorious planet, warts and all?

Photography is an infant in the vast Art scheme of time

Abuse of tools, hardly. Use every tool possible till it 'dies' in pursuit of our goal. Even hammers wear

Perhaps I expire, as I will never regain the glorious journeys of my youth, when I so brashly decided to NOT photograph, to remember my witness better

nay, the struggle is life and art is any way we want or able








I admittedly poke fun at the current obsession of new just for sake of new, whether its about consumer electronics or related kitchy and ephemeral gadget-generated art trends. It's not aimed at specific persons here. The point I make is, that with such remarkable phenomena already in nature to begin with, and how the beauty of the sky constantly changes on its own, and in a manner far more subtle and beautiful than anything we can concoct, people are really cheating themselves when they try to fake it. A bit of balancing of hue and proportion and contrast etc is inherent to fine-tuning any photographic composition. But when it's done in a vulgar way, just trying to mimic some predictable postcard look or achieve some sudden gotcha effect like an advertisement, well, that's another matter. There is use of tools, and there's abuse of tools. At a certain point, it's not photography at all, but just another lazy way to make an inferior painting. Spend two weeks futzing around in PS and every app imaginable, and you still have less control fine-tuning hues that an ordinary skilled watercolorist can do in two minutes mixing his own pigments. But it's trendy and cool and keeps bread on the table of software writers and electronics engineers, so there you have it.

[Drew Wiley]

Well, some of those blue sensitive masters learned to do wonderful compositions taking advantage of blank skies. Where would any of that be if they had today's options. John Wesley Powell would have sat at a desk exploring the Colorado on Google Earth, while O' Sullivan would have been creating sellable canyon scenes with marvelous clouds at the click of a mouse sitting on his butt too. Faux light, faux scenes, faux adventures, faux experience. It's already getting worse than Soylent Green where everything you eat is recycled, and the only stimulating images are in a final indoor theater experience. ...
Now let me get back to spotting an image I deliberately inverted in the carrier.

[Tin Can]

I am not keeping you from anything

I think of you as the big discourager

btw Rich people have motorhome drivers and a lot of them monsters are $500k to $2000K



I am always low rent


Well, some of those blue sensitive masters learned to do wonderful compositions taking advantage of blank skies. Where would any of that be if they had today's options. John Wesley Powell would have sat at a desk exploring the Colorado on Google Earth, while O' Sullivan would have been creating sellable canyon scenes with marvelous clouds at the click of a mouse sitting on his butt too. Faux light, faux scenes, faux adventures, faux experience. It's already getting worse than Soylent Green where everything you eat is recycled, and the only stimulating images are in a final indoor theater experience. ...
Now let me get back to spotting an image I deliberately inverted in the carrier.

[Drew Wiley]

I've never met a motorhome chauffeur. Yes, there are people who professionally deliver them. My brother worked his way thru the photo academy as a RR chauffeur for an exceptionally wealthy older couple. They didn't need motorhomes - had giant mansions 12 different locations in the country. I don't classify motorhomes as a camping option. My mantra is that there are two kinds of things that significantly affect your movement through the mountains: motorhomes drastically slow you down, while mosquitoes speed you up. I don't like encountering either, much less the idea of driving something resembling an apartment on wheels. Yeah, I'd love to discourage every one of em in existence. Portable suburban sprawl as far as I'm concerned. Why bother leaving the city if one if just going to take it with them? Nowadays there are numerous more practical options with less of a selfish roadhog footprint. The big ones never seem to pull over for anyone, no matter how many convenient turnouts there are; goes with the mentality it seems.

But I do get the lifestyle choice where people are forced to sell their home in order to be live on a limited retirement income, and take that option, and find some relatively comfortable seasonal location to park for awhile. But in that case, it's not going to be anything ostentatious. Nor can they afford to constantly burn fuel. More a modernization of the Grapes of Wrath theme: take everything with you, and hope you don't get chased away. Motorhomes and homelessness are almost synonymous around here; and the specific locations tend to be filthy, hazardous, and crime-ridden. One of the main reasons these makeshift camps under freeways and so forth get broken up is because they do in fact routinely cause serious urban fires.

It's a different story across the Bay in Silicon Valley, where high paid young techies sometimes opt to live in small street-parked motorhomes or even vans in order to save up money. Home prices are obscene over there, and commuting is a drag. So they do that, commute to a firm a short distance away on a bicycle instead, take showers in the company gym and eat in the cafeteria, then walk away a millionaire in ten years later instead of endlessly struggling just to make payments on a tiny local house.