Mar Vista Street Fair - June 24, 2023

 I was coming back from Venice Beach, up Venice Blvd, when I ran into the street fair.  After going home and having dinner, thought it might be fun to check it out since I live only a couple of blocks away and can walk over to it.  Happy I did - caught one band playing "Proud Mary."  They did an amazing job on it.  Just after I got there, I ran into Cristina from paddle tennis, then as I was leaving, I ran into Becca from paddle tennis - two wonderful players...and people.  Had some fun taking photos and then when I got home, edited the photos with the new software I had talked about before (ON1).  Sometimes it can be a bit slow but I can do things with it that I can't do with my other programs.  Here are some of the photos from the fair.

Cristina - right after hearing the band play Proud Mary 

Two nice women posing for me

Several Ping Pong tables were set up - all were very busy - I used to be a pretty good player but haven't played that in a long long time.  These days I'm addicted to paddle tennis.

Photo Software, Photos, AI, and an Important Link

First, the link to this week's episode of The Highwire with RFK, Jr. & an interview with Dr. Scott Atlas, M.D.

Here are some photos of Makani taken today at the Venice Beach paddle tennis courts, practicing her shots.  

These were processed with ON1 Photo Raw 2023.5 using some of the program's AI features.  I just saw a demo video of the newest edition of PhotoShop - They also added several AI features to their software.  ON1 enhances many parts of the photo making editing much quicker and easier.  PhotoShop can actually add to and subtract parts from photos creating a whole new photo.  Pretty soon viewers won't know what was reality or fiction in the photo.  I guess that could be good or bad, depending.

Hope you enjoyed these photos as much as I did taking them.  

Some Photos from May 2023

 Here are my photos from the month of May.  Some of you may have seen some of them, some will be new.  I'm putting them here instead of every day every two days on Facebook.  If you see your picture and you would rather it not be on here message me on Facebook.  I get notified by e-mail when I get a message there.  Thanks, and hope you enjoy the photos and you are having a great day.  Now for some photos

Cristina and Tammy at the paddle tennis courts

Sam and his dog at the paddle tennis courts.

This was shot over by the skate dance park at Venice Beach.

My kind of skater she's wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap.

A lot of people don't want their photo taken.  The people above almost begged me to take their picture.

This photo had a plane white sky so thought it would look better by replacing it with this one.  I think it came out a whole lot better.  And it's so easy to do now.

A Deck of Cards, Photography, and the Universe

 A deck of 52 cards can be arranged in more ways than there are atoms on planet Earth and almost as many ways as there are stars in the known universe.  It's 52! (52 factorial) which equals (get ready for this):  80658175170943878571660636856403766975289505440883277824000000000000 (yes, I used to be a math major, haha).

What does this have to do with photography?  When one edits a photo with the current software, that number is even larger.  If someone decided to adjust a photo for a new look every second, our sun would be long gone before they could finish.  Every part of a photo can be changed - made darker or lighter, focused or not focused, objects removed or inserted, colors changed, and on and on.

And now that AI is coming into the picture (literally and figuratively) it's getting easier to make some of these changes.  

Below are some examples (prior to AI).

From color to B & W - and there are way more than 50 shades of gray tones available.

The above is just a tiny sampling of what could have been done with this photo.  Clouds could have been added to the sky, it could have been transformed into a painting, and more.

These two photos of Paula were taken at the paddle tennis courts at Venice Beach.  I have no idea where the top photo background is but it looks pretty nice.  The background in the photo above is on a back road from Hwy 101 to Solvang.  The photos below were processed to look like various painters' work.  The bottom was is based on Van Gogh.

Photos are great memories of people you know, places you've been, and things you've seen.  And now they can be transformed into whatever you can imagine.