Tuesday, March 21, 2006


So sue me, I got inspired. ;)


I wanted to make a quick post about Photoshop levels. It's a tool used to adjust shadows and highlights in photos. Basically it's three sliders with a grey scale range of 0-255 from black to white. If you crank the Highlights (white) down all the bright parts of the picture go dark and if you crank it up they all blow out super bright. Same thing with midtones (grays) and Shadows (blacks). It's just like adjusting brightness and contrast but you have more control and get a cleaner result


Click on the images to make them larger. If you have Photoshop at home feel free to try it yourself with the originals


Here is photo_01 with normal levels.



Here is the same photo with the highlights taken from 255 to 50 making everything with some brightness in the photo blow out really white. What's interesting here is that the "fog" right in front of me goes in front of the porch. While the "fog" in the driveway is behind it.



Now here is photo_01 with all the Shadows taken from 0 to 100 making everything dark really dark. This one creeps me out the most.

Here is photo_05 with normal levels.

Here is photo_05 with the highlights taken from 255 to 50. You can actually see across the street and up the road. the pools of orange light are streetlamps.


Now here is photo_05 with shadows taken from 0 to 100. Unlike Photo_01 you can only see the snow everything else blacks out. I don't know why the tree and walkway are so light in Photo_01.


Notice that none of the snow has any motion blur. At the time it was falling very slowly with fat wet flakes. Also there isn't any indication of flaring in the whites that would be indicative of fog on the camera lens. Everything is all sharp and clear all the way through the photos.

Strange but true!!

Peace and Love,

Sorry for the lack of quick updates. I’m not a natural writer and usually don’t have much to say even under the best of circumstances. My plan is to transfer this over to my own web space and make a page devoted to these photos and my own analysis of them. Hopefully this will happen in the next week or so. I’ll be sure to update here when this is done.

Peace and love.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Ghost Photos

Location = North Delta, B.C. Canada
Actual Time = March 9th 2006 11:49-11:50 pm PST
Photo's tagged time = March 10th 2006 12:49-12:50 am PST
Camera was not set for daylight savings

Camera = Nikon coolpix 3200
Camera was set to Macro
Auto focus and Flash were on.
Posted Pictures are shrunk 40% from originals.

I worked late that night and didn't leave work until just about 11pm. We had unseasonably cold weather that day and I was caught in a freakish snowstorm on the drive back home. Because of this my normal 25-30 minute commute became a 45-minute drive through a blizzard. I felt lucky getting back because it became near white out conditions on the Alex Fraser Bridge. When I drove up to the house and parked. I shut down the lights then turned off the wipers. As they came to a stop, out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw someone standing in our walkway. I looked and saw nothing out of the ordinary other then the huge amount of snow on the ground for March.

I went into the house without incident and asked my Wife to get her camera so I could take pictures for my friends at work to see all the snow on the ground. That morning I had gotten iced in for about 45 minutes when the ground froze after a wet night of rain. It was a very strange weather day for sure. As I opened the door and stepped outside I heard my Wife say, "Watch out for Lazarus!" So, I closed the door almost all the way but didn't shut it. I held the camera about upper chest height and lined up a shot of my car parked in the driveway covered in snow. I held the button down and let it focus. Held my breath and snapped the picture. What I expected was this:




What I got instead was this:


I was shocked and excited because I could see nothing physical in front of me to explain the image. I hadn't breathed out a cloud of steam. The night wasn't cold enough for it, especially for that kind of volume. It was just cold and clear with lots of wet fat snowflakes coming down no wind or anything. My reaction was pretty much "What the Fuck?" I knew immediately I better take another picture.

Focus and then click.

Very interesting now it looks like it's clearing up. I realized this time to keep a closer eye on what's in front of me instead of what's on the camera screen. Still seeing nothing other then snow and car I took this next photo.


I thought, Hmm it's clearing but still apparent I wondered if I would see it if I took a picture the other way so I panned to my left. The tree on the left side of the frame was now on the right side and I focused on the car parked in the road and snapped another.

Seeing that clear I panned back and took the last two photos.



Funny thing about Lazarus. My Wife said later that he got to top of the stairs looked outside past me and stopped. The whole event and sequence of pictures took just under a minute from start to finish.


There's more to talk about I'll make another post later. I wanted to get this out pretty quick and see what people think.


Peace and Love.





Tuesday, January 03, 2006

I had to make a fucking Blog to post a comment. Can you believe that shit?