After some twenty searches with zero results, I tried a Jack Antenna Ball, something from the last couple months I knew was all over the internet. First attempt on left with my photo was zero results. A Google Image search, right, led to this image on the internet, again zero results on TinEye. For me its still Google Image Search for locating images.

Part of my work includes searching for images on the internet. Besides the usual wire and newspaper web sites, I use Google Image search. But recently I checked out TinEye - a reverse image search engine.

TinEye is an internet search engine that uses the image pixels themselves for searches. Great idea, if only it would work. I tried about twenty searches over the last week with zero results. TinEye is not ready for prime time yet. The biggest problem is that TinEye has only indexed a tiny portion of the world wide web.

A good Reverse Image Search will be a boon to many photographers. It will be a great tool for finding copyright infringement - creating a cottage industry of para-legals crawling the internet and offering to split copyright lawsuit settlements with you. Actually the more I think of this concept, the more I hope TinEye will someday work. I will check back with them in a year.

Meanwhile back to Google Image search.

TineEye Web site

Jack at midnight working as a secret shopper at a Los Angeles Jack-In-The-Box drive through.

Photoshop World Boston occurred last week. While reports confirm it was a success, there hasn't been much press on the event. Attendance was about 3,000. Here is one photo gallery.

The biggest news article looks like Macworld's article "What Photoshop World can teach other trade shows." Of course, they were using Photoshop World as an example of how future Macworld Expos would be a success now that Apple has pulled out.

Wrong. The National Association of Photoshop Professionals is a strong and large organization, but if Adobe pulled out, Photoshop World would be a much smaller event.

With Apple gone, future Macworld Expos are going to be much smaller events. Period.

NAPP's one opps leading up to Photoshop World, was getting their event logo posted on Photoshop Disasters web site. The XVII logo did not extend to edge of image. Also the thumb seems to be melting. Great way to get publicity for Photoshop World. The comments are great.

Well the next Photoshop World in Oct. 1-3 in Las Vegas. See you there. Only 180 days. Photoshop World web site.

Jack spotted reading the Los Angeles Times web site.

Its a question we all face at one time or another. How do we save those old photos?

With prints, negs and slides, its fairly easy. Just store in a drawer.

But what about media that needs hardware to play back? Then its gets complicated. Old 8 and 16 mm home movie footage needs a working projector. Old audio tape needs compatible tape player.

NASA had a similar problem. The original 1960s Lunar Orbiter negs were smashed onto the moon and the only copies existed on 2 inch tapes that needed a $330,000 tape drive.

The story of NASA'a Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project is reported today by John Johnson Jr. in the Los Angels Times. On the left is the first image recovered. It was mankind's first view of earth from the moon, shot before the Apollo missions. Only low-quality copies had survived, now NASA has a high-quality original. Download it here.

The lesson from this story, is in addition to saving the media, save the playback hardware. For example, if you have old VHS tapes of kids birthday parties, save a VHS tape deck.

Better yet is to transfer the old media to newer formats like DVD. But to convert to newer media, the original playback hardware is still needed.

Check out the story. Its fascinating to see how a couple key people kept history from becoming trash landfill.

Hey OctuMom, I have the perfect camera for you. Line up all eight kids in two neat rows and with one click you've got an photo of each! The camera is the Lomo Oktomat. Perfect for all those OctuMoms out there - I think there are two. Talk about a nitch market.


The Oktomat UnBoxing!

Since new camera gear looks very unlikely in this deep recession, I went retro. I emptied my piggy bank of $40 in coins and purchased a Oktomat film camera on Amazon. I took pictures of the unboxing and shot a roll of film of my two biggest kids - the dogs. Its been years since I walked into a film lab and requested develop only. The clerk still asked what size prints I wanted. No I don't want prints, I want develop only.

I got develop only.

Funny, I quickly remembered why I love digital. I had to dig around and find an Agfa 8x Lupe. Then examine each 35 mm frame with the loop. Then pick a few frames to scan. Then scan. Then finally get into photoshop. Yea.


The camera has eight small plastic lenses that fire off over a two second span. I used a role of 200 ASA film. Of course there is some differences in exposures by the eight lenses. In this frame I was able to shoot four frames of Woody, top, and four of Sam.

Actually this whole experience was great fun. I am looking forward to using my new red camera, if only I can get it back from my son who is taking a high school photography class.

In the meantime, Bob Lachman, has a gallery of his Oktomat images over at www.photographyandthemac.com. He was the one that put me onto this camera.


Of course, I had to run one frame through Topaz Simplify.

The Newbury Park High School photography program is looking for donations of darkroom equipment and SLR 35 mm film cameras. If you have stuff, I can put you in touch with the high school and you could get a tax write-off.

All three of my kids have taken photography classes at the high school. The darkroom has been in operation for some 30 years and, despite newer digital/photoshop classes, many students still love the old fashion make-it-in-a-tray magic.

To keep the darkroom going, the school is asking if anyone has old darkroom equipment, but they especially need Beseler 23 C or similar enlargers to replace worrn out enlargers. In addition they need working 35 mm SLR cameras and lenses.

So if you have anything, send me an email, and I will be happy to get someone from the high school to contact you.

A year ago I signed up for Flickr but was informed that "harrysonpics" was taken. I chose "harrysonpics32," signed up and posted some images. But frankly, I was way too busy to keep up a good Flickr presence - lost interest.

But recently I was given a pleasant surprise. While checking out postings at Dan Margulis yahoo group colortheory@yahoo.com, I opened a page to Flickr. Instead of asking for my signon, the Flickr page said welcome harrysonpics!

Huh? What??

Turns out I had harrysonpics on Flickr. Yahoo owns Flickr and I had been harrysonpics on the yahoo message group for years.

So a couple weeks ago, I grabbed two Lightroom plug-ins from the Adobe Lightroom Exchange and started a quick workflow to upload images to Flickr.


This photo of nearly completed Los Angeles Police Administration Building I just uploaded to my Flickr photostream. Using LR/Mogrify I added an inner 2 pixel gray inner border and 15 pixel outer border. The watermark is the default Lightroom one.

The first decision was size of image. Just as with any wide open photo site open to search engines, online Image quality and presentation needs to be balanced with the reality of unauthorized use of images.

The best advice is to add copyright watermarks and keep image size to about 5 by 7 inches at 72 dpi. This limits the possible reuse of the image, but gives to good size image for web viewing. I settled on 500 pixels for my large width.

At the Adobe Lightroom Exchange I downloaded the plugins: Export-to-Flickr and LR/Mogrify.

The Export-to-Flickr Plugin allows me to directly export from Lightroom to my FlickR photostream. It includes additional features like direct upload to any photoset and making copies to local hard drive.

LR/Mogrify adds additional features to your export. My interest was in its ability to add borders and custom watermarks.

Export-to-Flickr has worked flawlessly. So has the border feature of LR/Mogrify, but I ran into error messages when trying to add the custom watermark I made in a previous post. I could add the watermark, but all attempts to resize the watermark would crash my export.

The watermark crash looks like a bug that needs a fix. I tried different file formats and other tricks, my nothing worked. Online, I found other users have had the same problem. So for now, my work around is to use the default Lightroom watermark.

Both plugins are donationware. LR/Mogrify has a limit of ten images per upload till a paypal donation is made.

Links: Export-to-Flickr LR/Mogrify

Hey check out my Flickr images - Harrysonpics!

Thanks

In Thousand Oaks the only beverage container recycle locations I can find are owned by Tomra Corp. Up until this month I have put up with the long waits, getting turned away by locations being full and shortened hours.

On Sunday I found out that all Tomra locations around Thousand Oaks are closed on Sundays and Mondays. Don't believe me - go to Tomra web site, type in my zip code 91230 and up pops 7 locations within 10 miles. All had hours for Tuesday through Saturday. On Sunday I had actually gone to 4 locations and confirmed this.

Since Sundays and Mondays are my normal days off, its time to switch.

Today I loaded up two months of cans and plastic bottles and went over the hill to Camarillo Recycling at 532 S. Dawson Drive #2. I was in and out in seven minutes and had the same amount of cash afterwards. AND I HAD THREE EMPLOYEES EMPTY MY CAR AND WEIGH THE CONTAINERS FOR ME!



Better hours and better service wins every time.

Well, there is one detail that is a negative for Camarillo Recycling - you need to separate items before going. It took me 15 minutes on Sunday to do that. Well worth the time.

So here is Camarillo Recycling Inc. Web site. Don't forget to print out a coupon for Aluminum Cans.

Boring images, like this Denny's photo, left, can often make great source material for running through Topaz Simplify, I came up with the above image in just ten minutes of playing around. I export the image from Lightroom, into Photoshop, apply Topaz Simplify, and save as a copy back into Lightroom. My original image stays untouched.




Robert Lachman over at www.photographyandthemac.com recently put me on to Topaz Simplify. I downloaded the 30-day trial and after two weeks, call me Simplify Fanboy.

Topaz Simplify is a photoshop filter plugin that applies cool artistic effects to images. The problem with Topaz Simplify is its ease of use - install and bam, you are spending hours playing with effects.

Topaz Simplify appears to use two basic algorithms, one for removing detail from images, and a second to find edges. It's the combination of the two, with all the additional possible variables, that makes this software so much fun.

The learning curve is easy. Go to the Topaz Simplify website and watch the video. Additional great sources of information is the Flickr Topaz Simplify Group and the review at www.photographyandthemac.com. I put all the links at the bottom of this blog. Have fun! After a 30-day free trial, Topaz Simplify is $39.99.

But first, a few more images run through Topaz Simplify.










Links: Topaz Simplify; Topaz Simplify video; Flickr Topaz Simplify group; Review at www.photographyandthemac.com

Late Saturday I found out it was National Pi Day. Remember that symbol from math ∏ (on mac its shift + option + P). The event was celebrated with its own web site http://www.piday.org/. Of course the site has Pi T-Shirts and other stuff for sale.


According to the site:i "Pi, Greek letter (pi), is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi = 3.1415926535... Pi Day is celebrated by math enthusiasts around the world on March 14th."

I only remember 3.1416 from high school.

Well blogger Bob Lachman went a step further. At www.photographyandthemac.com, he marked national Pi day with a YouTube video of the Three Stooges having a pie fight. I love a great pun.

At www.hangintherejack.com, Jack has left a blog post "My Post Coma Plans." Jack is fine, back in control and planning a new web site launch on March 16th. I will, of course,l continue to post photos of Jack when inspired, or have nothing else to post.

At left is a photo from 1999 of Jack on Route 66 in Kingman, Arizona.

Today I came across a very good think piece video on the New York Times web site. "Sex, Lies and Photoshop" takes a great look at the extent that reality is retouched into fantasy by the media. "Perfect beauty can only be expressed by airbrush."

The question then becomes: Since these images are fantasy, are they art? And shouldn't the retoucher also be credited?

"Sex, Lies and Photoshop" Link.

Last week on the This Week in Photography web site I checked out a video by Scott Bourne and Nicole Young on making and adding a copyright notice to your images in photoshop. Link to Video, Link to TWIPPhoto.com.

White following the instructions, I was able to make this basic watermark symbol and add it two photos from last weekend in San Diego.

The key is making a vector graphic that is very flexible. In photoshop, I simply drag the watermark layers onto an image and then can resize, change blend modes and change opacity. For example, if the color of my watermark conflicts with the image, I can change the blend-mode to Luminosity which will allow the colors of the original image to be used.


After resizing the watermark, I changed to blend-mode to luminosity so the blue color would not distract from the image.

Monday I was in San Diego, so I visited the Bob Hope Tribute next to the USS Midway. This 16-piece life size memorial features Bob Hope entertaining the troops overseas. The troops are represented by 15 bronze figures in military uniforms from World War 2, Korea, Vietnam, Cold War and the first Gulf War.

I wanted to take some images to share with co-worker Bob Lachman who has been posting original Bob Hope images on his blog www.photographyandthemac.com. Lachman's father had traveled with Bob Hope on some of these trips to entertain the troops.

While dragging my tripod around, I could hear Bob Hope singing "Thanks for the Memories." Of course, Jack, also had to say hello.

Monday's episode of Hang in their Jack. had Jack coming out of his coma. The plot line had Phil taking over, changing the company name to Phil In The Box. But that move woke Jack up very quickly.

Actually Phil In The Box is kind of catchy, after 40 years of Jack In The Box, it was getting old. But I suspect Phil would ruin the menu and restrict breakfast hours to 6 am - 11 am.

Here are two more used antenna balls from my small collection.


Jack has continued to look around at other professions. He recently tried baseball, but left batted and bruised - players thought he was the baseball.

Over the weekend, Jack was spotted outside of Los Angeles City Hall. There is an election Tuesday for mayor. Vote for Jack!

Since Jack may not be wanted by Jack in the Box, I thought a fun photo project would be explore employment options for Jack. I have a small collection of old Jack antenna balls, so during the next couple weeks expect additional Jack Signtings.