We’re going to learn another new, weird word, today. It isn’t latin, and it isn’t any other foreign language. The word is Nanowrimo. In the spirit of all things internet, it’s an abbreviation of a phrase.
National Novel Writing Month.
In the month of November, 1st through 30th, interested parties will devote themselves to creating a 50,000 word novel. That word count is actually pretty low, considering the size of most novels these days, and a novella is only 40,000. Novels you might have heard of, ranking in at about 50k, are Brave New World, and The Great Gatsby. 50k is not the upper limit, but the lower limit. Entrants can write as much more than that as they like, even completing two novels if they want.
The idea of the event is to encourage writing, plain and simple. In fact, a book written by the originator of the event, is titled “No Plot? No Problem!” and is designed to aid newcomers in feeling comfortable with, and understanding the concept behind, Nanowrimo.
I’m introducing you to this event to not only encourage fledgling authors out there to give it a go for themselves, but also to warn you about the upcoming deluge of words. Through the month of November, it is very likely that this blog will see few picture tutorials. I intend to write, on average, about 1,667 words a day. It is, without a doubt, a marathon, and I am inviting you to spectate. Cheer me on, laugh, or just watch to see if I can actually accomplish this feat – it’s up to you.
The rules of the contest state that you can not use pre-written material, so I won’t be able to tap into any of the stories I’m currently in the midst of. I would, however, be interested in seeing if I can pull the two facets of this blog together and ‘illustrate’ the 50k words with photography. It would help keep me motivated, possibly inspire a section, and may even keep people from avoiding this page for a full month if massive quantities of text is not their style.
Wish me luck. One month until November, and Nanowrimo.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Make them Smile
Last week we skipped the pictures to talk about a different part of the palette. Prior to that, I promised we would go over smiles.
Smiles are very important in an image. They're not always necessary, but always important. Maybe I should say that people's expressions are always important. The presence, or absence, of a smile can tell a lot about a situation. Sometimes a smile would seem horribly out of place - or even horrific. Other times, the absence of a smile makes the image look bland, or dull, just as you would feel if you were in that situation with the subjects and no smiles were to be found.
Photographers, in order to get the right smile from their subject, often have to resort to tactics used by other professions that thrive on smiles. A photographer can suddenly morph into a clown, or a comedian, or a suave politician trying to talk someone into reluctantly smiling despite themselves. Sometimes, though, this transformation is not an option. In candid images, for example, you don't want the people's attention on you. Also, in crowds, it may simply not be possible to get everyone in the frame to smile.
Nevertheless, if you're showing a portrait of people at an event, you'd like to capture a moment where they are having fun.
Here is an example of some people watching a parade. You have a few different expressions, here. The man in the foreground seems to be smiling almost reluctantly. He's having fun, almost like something has unexpectedly amused him despite the frown lines and wrinkles that may belie a somewhat dour attitude. The woman beside him has the tight-lipped smile of someone uncomfortable with the expression. Maybe she's self-conscious about her teeth, or maybe she just really hates the photographer. Behind them are more grins of people watching the parade, and even the fellow walking by seems to be chuckling to himself. The picture is full of life, and of different stories, but the sum of the parts is that people are having fun. This is a place you would want to be, and it is an even that can make anyone grin.
This is the portrait you would like to hand the event organizer, or someone possibly interested in hosting a similar event. The image could be what convinces them that a parade is just the thing they need to bring some life to their town. It is good advertising,and it tells a good story.
Like most advertising, this image is a lie. I used the same techniques we've been talking about: blur, smudge clone-stamp, and even some copy-pasting. I took more time, about 20 minutes, and worked in closer detail. It is my hope that you cannot immediately tell what artwork I did to the image. Comparing a before-and-after, though, would show what things required my attention.
Here is the original photograph of these people as they watch the parade.
A photographer, a comedian, and even a politician can convince people to smile.
Me? I can make them smile.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
In Media Res - In the Middle of Things
No pictures, this week. Instead, we’re going to talk about another aspect of the palette of pixels. Words themselves paint a picture, and while some would say it takes a thousand words to make a picture, I would beg to differ. You just have to know how to use the different tools.
One tool used by the word-artist is something called “In media res”. It’s a term from Horace’s “The Poetic Arts”, and it’s part of his description of an ideal poet.
“Nor does he begin the Trojan War from the double egg,
But always he hurries to the action, and snatches the listener into the middle of things…”
(Double egg being a reference to the egg-with-two-yolks laid by Leda, Helen’s mother, after her run-in with Zeus. Yes, Greek myths are weirder than we were told in grade-school.)
The encyclopedia describes the technique like this:
In medias res, also medias in res (Latin for "into the middle of things") is a literary and artistic technique where the narrative starts in the middle of the story instead of from its beginning (ab ovo or ab initio). The characters, setting, and conflict are often introduced through a series of flashbacks or through characters relating past events to each other. Probably originating from an oral tradition, the technique is a convention of epic poetry, one of the earliest and most prominent examples in Western literature being Homer's Odyssey and Iliad. Other folk epics beginning in medias res include the Portuguese The Lusiads, the Spanish Cantar de Mio Cid, Germany's Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs), the Indian Mahābhārata, and the Finnish Kalevala. Virgil's Aeneid began the tradition in literature of imitating Homer, continued in Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, John Milton's Paradise Lost and Inferno from Dante's Divine Comedy.
Like with the Indiana Jones series, where you meet Indy right in the middle of a small, introductory adventure, this device has been used over and over again because of its effectiveness. The audience has no time to decide if they like this or that character, or to be put to sleep by some long and boring struggle to get to the adventure. War movies rarely begin with our hero getting suited up to head off to boot camp, or in Horace’s example, being born. That’s 16 years of prologue the audience now has to get through, before the hero even thinks about joining this conflict.
This technique has its ups and downs, however, and cannot be used simply because it lends itself to a quick and easy hook. Inevitably, the storyteller must turn around and explain this background. Flashbacks work for this, but can be tricky. Dialogue is an excellent tool, where two characters discuss or explain something that has happened previously, outside the context of the story. You must always be careful, though, of telling, rather than showing, events that are important to your tale. After all, your characters will be telling the events from their own perspective. Even if they tell it exactly as it happened, a discerning audience will take this conversation with a grain of salt and may have their doubts about the veracity of your background story.
These flashbacks, whether true flashbacks, or dialogue, or some other device to show a past event, must be used with care. Each one has the threat of overtaking the real story you’re trying to tell, and it can be jarring for the audience to go back and forth. They very well may lose track of which time is ‘now’, and which has already happened. Details that you want them to remember may be lost in the time you’ve taken to explain a history lesson. Be prepared to remind your audience about important facts when you come back from these flashbacks, and emphasize what is important now, as opposed to what was the focus then.
The most important thing to remember is that ‘in media res’ is a technique to begin a story. It should not dictate anything else about your story, and once you’re past the first few paragraphs and deep into the action, your audience should be given enough information that they be able to forget that they were dumped into this tale in the middle of things.
One tool used by the word-artist is something called “In media res”. It’s a term from Horace’s “The Poetic Arts”, and it’s part of his description of an ideal poet.
“Nor does he begin the Trojan War from the double egg,
But always he hurries to the action, and snatches the listener into the middle of things…”
(Double egg being a reference to the egg-with-two-yolks laid by Leda, Helen’s mother, after her run-in with Zeus. Yes, Greek myths are weirder than we were told in grade-school.)
The encyclopedia describes the technique like this:
In medias res, also medias in res (Latin for "into the middle of things") is a literary and artistic technique where the narrative starts in the middle of the story instead of from its beginning (ab ovo or ab initio). The characters, setting, and conflict are often introduced through a series of flashbacks or through characters relating past events to each other. Probably originating from an oral tradition, the technique is a convention of epic poetry, one of the earliest and most prominent examples in Western literature being Homer's Odyssey and Iliad. Other folk epics beginning in medias res include the Portuguese The Lusiads, the Spanish Cantar de Mio Cid, Germany's Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs), the Indian Mahābhārata, and the Finnish Kalevala. Virgil's Aeneid began the tradition in literature of imitating Homer, continued in Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, John Milton's Paradise Lost and Inferno from Dante's Divine Comedy.
Like with the Indiana Jones series, where you meet Indy right in the middle of a small, introductory adventure, this device has been used over and over again because of its effectiveness. The audience has no time to decide if they like this or that character, or to be put to sleep by some long and boring struggle to get to the adventure. War movies rarely begin with our hero getting suited up to head off to boot camp, or in Horace’s example, being born. That’s 16 years of prologue the audience now has to get through, before the hero even thinks about joining this conflict.
This technique has its ups and downs, however, and cannot be used simply because it lends itself to a quick and easy hook. Inevitably, the storyteller must turn around and explain this background. Flashbacks work for this, but can be tricky. Dialogue is an excellent tool, where two characters discuss or explain something that has happened previously, outside the context of the story. You must always be careful, though, of telling, rather than showing, events that are important to your tale. After all, your characters will be telling the events from their own perspective. Even if they tell it exactly as it happened, a discerning audience will take this conversation with a grain of salt and may have their doubts about the veracity of your background story.
These flashbacks, whether true flashbacks, or dialogue, or some other device to show a past event, must be used with care. Each one has the threat of overtaking the real story you’re trying to tell, and it can be jarring for the audience to go back and forth. They very well may lose track of which time is ‘now’, and which has already happened. Details that you want them to remember may be lost in the time you’ve taken to explain a history lesson. Be prepared to remind your audience about important facts when you come back from these flashbacks, and emphasize what is important now, as opposed to what was the focus then.
The most important thing to remember is that ‘in media res’ is a technique to begin a story. It should not dictate anything else about your story, and once you’re past the first few paragraphs and deep into the action, your audience should be given enough information that they be able to forget that they were dumped into this tale in the middle of things.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Restoring a Portrait
It can be a lot of fun making sure your digital photographs look pristine and clear of intruding tourists. Photographs that tell a reliable story can capture a moment for a long time. Did you know that modern ink used in home printers is actually designed for archive use? Tests have shown that desktop printed documents are capable of surviving over 200 years. That’s a long time for you to be keeping pictures of Scruffy the dog, still wet from his first bath.
Some images, however, are priceless. They’re not printed on modern acid-free paper, using this state-of-the-art ink that makes us glad we’re not running our cars on anything made by Lexmark. These photographs are often of our own ancestors, the portrait surviving only because it has been behind glass for years, or was tucked into the attic for a couple generations, or sheer luck. Sometimes luck isn’t enough and time takes its toll despite our best efforts.
This is another image I found on the internet. There is an amazing amount of old photographs that have been scanned and uploaded onto the world wide web, and many of them are in similar condition to this. Age spots, mildew, water damage, creasing, wrinkles, and simply the changes in environment making the ink peel and flake off – many things can cause these minor bits of damage that grow to ruin the entire image. Soon, the portrait becomes unrecognizable and it goes from priceless to worthless. This effect is tragic, but correctable.
It used to be, before digital technology, that a skilled artisan needed to step in and take the original photograph to a laboratory. There, under a microscope or multiple magnifying glasses, the artist would carefully paint, cut, paste, and eventually repair the marred surface of the image. It was a painstaking process, not least of all because the artist was working with the original piece. If anything should happen, the photograph is gone, and is irreplaceable.
Nowadays, with scanners and other digital-capture devices (even your camera!), you can have something to work with and leave the precious original alone. To mimic the hard work performed by the artist mentioned previously, you simply need to use the methods I mentioned in the beach scene. You cannot erase the damaged sections, but you can take pixels from another section and paint over the flaw. Taking your time and envisioning what result you want will allow you to gradually restore the portrait to its prior glory. With the right training and a lot more time devoted to the project, it is even possible to improve on the original and clear up errors inherent in old photography – even adding color to a black-and-white portrait!
Here is the result of a few minutes’ work on this piece I found.
If you did not know it was originally damaged, it should be difficult to tell that anything has been done to the image. It is still very soft-focused, the colors are all the same, and lines that are supposed to be continuous do follow from one point to another without apparent disruption.
Just for comparison sake, here are the two images side-by-side.
Now if only we could make her smile…
We can. We’ll do that next week.
Some images, however, are priceless. They’re not printed on modern acid-free paper, using this state-of-the-art ink that makes us glad we’re not running our cars on anything made by Lexmark. These photographs are often of our own ancestors, the portrait surviving only because it has been behind glass for years, or was tucked into the attic for a couple generations, or sheer luck. Sometimes luck isn’t enough and time takes its toll despite our best efforts.
This is another image I found on the internet. There is an amazing amount of old photographs that have been scanned and uploaded onto the world wide web, and many of them are in similar condition to this. Age spots, mildew, water damage, creasing, wrinkles, and simply the changes in environment making the ink peel and flake off – many things can cause these minor bits of damage that grow to ruin the entire image. Soon, the portrait becomes unrecognizable and it goes from priceless to worthless. This effect is tragic, but correctable.
It used to be, before digital technology, that a skilled artisan needed to step in and take the original photograph to a laboratory. There, under a microscope or multiple magnifying glasses, the artist would carefully paint, cut, paste, and eventually repair the marred surface of the image. It was a painstaking process, not least of all because the artist was working with the original piece. If anything should happen, the photograph is gone, and is irreplaceable.
Nowadays, with scanners and other digital-capture devices (even your camera!), you can have something to work with and leave the precious original alone. To mimic the hard work performed by the artist mentioned previously, you simply need to use the methods I mentioned in the beach scene. You cannot erase the damaged sections, but you can take pixels from another section and paint over the flaw. Taking your time and envisioning what result you want will allow you to gradually restore the portrait to its prior glory. With the right training and a lot more time devoted to the project, it is even possible to improve on the original and clear up errors inherent in old photography – even adding color to a black-and-white portrait!
Here is the result of a few minutes’ work on this piece I found.
If you did not know it was originally damaged, it should be difficult to tell that anything has been done to the image. It is still very soft-focused, the colors are all the same, and lines that are supposed to be continuous do follow from one point to another without apparent disruption.
Just for comparison sake, here are the two images side-by-side.
Now if only we could make her smile…
We can. We’ll do that next week.
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