MONTHLY CHALLENGES
This month’s and all past Challenge images can be seen at Amersham Beyond Group on Flickr.
For APS Members only, the images are also available for viewing and commenting on Facebook here and a video of the meeting is here
The current Challenges are;
#39 CHALLENGE YOURSELF
#40 SURREALISM
… and the latest Challenge,
#41 PHOTO HAIKU
The Photo Haiku’s were divided into three groups; firstly where the words came first and an image was found, or taken, to illustrate them. Secondly (particularly espoused by Bob) where an existing image, that hitherto had no purpose, was identified and given a new life with a poem. Thirdly, Martin found Haiku poems on signs in the wild, hijacking his walks with syllable-counting.
We purposely did not count syllables in the meeting as this would drain the fun from it and anyway it can be argued that the 5,7,5, syllable rule makes less sense in English than in Japanese. A short poem was the only criterion.
There was some concern about being too soppy or cringey or maudlin with the subject matter but everyone took the plunge. Judge for yourself.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Last month Chris tasked Chat GPT to come up with some photography projects that had never before been attempted. The results were ludicrously ambitious but it struck me that they certainly could be tackled in the guise of a Haiku with any vaguely relevant image. One is already underway. Does anyone fancy the following for next month?
- Microscopic Worlds
- Time Travel Portraits
- Nanobot Photography
- Photography from Space
- Underwater Cave Photography
- Worlds Invisible to the Human Eye
- Photography in Zero Gravity
- Mars Simulation
- Interdimensional Photography/Parallel Universes
- Bioluminescence
- Quantum Physics
The next Challenge will be;
#42 FILM NOIR
To create an image inspired by the cinematic look of classic 1940’s and 50’s crime dramas; high contrast lighting, urban environments, low key, oppressive, dramatic, threatening, mysterious, atmospheric, sometimes surreal. Film Noir is typically but not exclusively black & white.
The idea for this Challenge was tiggered by the superb Apple TV+ series Slow Horses. This is contemporary but has elements of film noir, most especially in the opening credits. You can get a feel for this yourself from the following;
Here are the film noir-inspired opening credits
Here is the full title song video Strange Game by Mick Jagger with further film noir elements.
Obviously these are set in the current day and original film noir is much older. There are many examples and interpretations of the style online.
NEXT MEETING
The next meeting will be on Thursday 4th January 2024 in the LARGE BARN HALL (NOTE THE VENUE), Amersham Community Centre
BACK OF BEYOND DIARIES
Losing Photoshop Work
Adobe have implemented some measures in Photoshop to make it harder to lose your work. But it’s obviously not idiot proof and I managed to do it!
Edit>Preferences>File Handling>Automatically Save Recovery Information Every X Minutes should be switched on and set to some short time such as 10 mins. It is really only intended for crash-recovery and if you see a recovered version flagged-up after a crash you must re-save it immediately. It is erased when Photoshop is next closed.
I periodically re-name and save multiple versions of complex images but when I accidentally flattened and over-wrote a Photoshop Image file none of the aforementioned was any help. All the layers were lost. But I hear you say – “you have a solid backup don’t you?” Yes indeed and it saves every incremental version of a file, but only every 24 hours so I had lost a day’s work. Doh!
NB my backup software is Ashampoo Backup Pro 17 which is pretty good and cheap and saves incrementally to my NAS.
Photoshop Beta
If you like to play with the latest features of Photoshop you can download the Beta version which includes experimental and early versions of new features. It is free and can sit happily alongside the regular version. In theory it is less stable but in fact I have discovered that it fixes annoying bugs more quickly and also new AI tools have been appearing here first in recent months.
Receiving Apple TV+
OK yes, guilty as charged. I downloaded the three months free trial of Apple TV+ that came with my iPhone 14 Pro Max and a year later I am still paying for it! However we are finding that it contains much more grown-up content that we enjoy, than Netflix which leans towards the American juvenile market. In particular Ted Lasso and Slow Horses were Top Ten Best Ever for us and we are finding much more good stuff. See above for the Slow Horses Film Noir connection. Apple TV+ is also cheaper despite a recent price increase to £8.99 per month (1 week free trial).
However there is a problem. Apple TV+ is not transmitted off-air with Freeview and it can only be watched via an app on a streaming device such as a smart TV, laptop, computer or Apple device. It was not supported by my smart TV or YouView box. Apps for my laptop, iPad or iPhone were fiddly to get onto the TV screen, so I opted for the Apple TV 4K streaming box (£150) which (surprise, surprise) has proved to be smooth and problem-free.
Cheers, Steve