Sea and Tower
Comments
Excellent pics. Is this what the sea look like in Japan? Or ist it Russia?
They were all taken at the beach right outside of campus — in fact, I can see the cell phone relay tower from my office window. On Saturday, I was talking to my aunt on the phone and she wanted to see some pictures of the beach, so I headed down there.
The marks I copied onto the images came from the same place, same shoot. During the last couple of weeks, or months, rather, builders put an extra layer of concrete onto the dike to reinforce it; the marks are painted on the fresh concrete.
Oops. I’ve just received a highly unfavourable critique of these images from my dad. He finds the photos “impressive” but he’s “horrified to find those hideous numbers splattered all over them”.
Dad is a working journalist who does his own bit of digital photography. He’s also a typesetter who trained and worked on the Linotype machine. He’s got strong opinions on typography, and messy, whacked-up, “distressed”, misprinted type most definitely isn’t his thing at all.
So, for the benefit of everyone else who might prefer the photos in their unadulterated state, here’s the original batch.
I definitely agree with Mr. Ammann (though those numbers are your trademark, let’s say … in a way they identify your work) Anyway, are those taken with your new camera? I like your pictures, Ruedi, you are good at that. Try to rest during Golden Week.
david :: May 1, 2004
When I saw the photo of the sea and the number, I thought about a date: 1296 there was one of the first Mongol invasion of Japan (in Okinawa). They were repelled only to come back in 1274 and 1281. These invasions, of course, are said to be turned back by the famous “divine wind”.
Jazmin — yes, those pictures were taken with the new camera. As a birthday present, my aunt contributed some money towards the purchase. She may have come up with the assignment because she wanted to see her money at work … Emboldened by the apparent success (minus the ugly lettering, but still) of the first assignment, she has just given me second assignment. Now she wants to see flowers. This will also get me out a bit, she says.
David — no references of this kind were intended, but you do seem you kow your Japanese history.
Erik :: May 2, 2004
I think the lettering adds to the pretty starkness of the photos - nice touch.
pketh :: May 3, 2004
Ya, I’m with Eric. What the letters subtract from maybe photographic purity, I think the ‘feeling’ or ‘groove’ of the pics (for lack of better words) is an overall improvement.
Great job :)
Well, Tsu is full of jasmine blossoms now, take a good shot of them and enjoy the fragance.
Thanks, gentlemen!
Jazmin — walking by my neighbour’s front gate this morning, I was looking at the jasmine shrub there, and the fragrance was really pungent. But for some reason it didn’t occur to me it was jasmine until you suggested it.
If I’m going to take pretty pictures of flowers, I’ll wait until the sun comes out. It’s been too cloudy today.
Ruedi, this is the “fine weather” we discussed with Dylan the other day, remember?
I hope the sun will visit us pretty soon again so that we can take a look at your “new-style” pictures.
Yes, ma’am. Here’s some hot-pink, dripping-wet flowers for you. There’s something immodest about them.
Also, I thought they were called something like Accalea, but then I couldn’t find the word in the dictionary.
pketh :: May 8, 2004
Wow! Bright! My eyes hurt from it — but I see you didn’t ‘modernize’ it yet :)
Was the image tweaked after the shot for brightness or something in photoshop? (which is now my new favorite image software, btw)
Oh ya, finally got my own MT site up — Pketh.com.
I’ve found out what it’s called; it’s an azalea. Yesterday I posted some more pretty flowers to this site.
Pketh — I didn’t do any violence to any of these pictures; I just scaled and cropped them as needed and occasionally tweaked the brightness/contrast settings a bit. I’m still using Photoshop 6.0, which has an Auto Contrast feature that usually does the trick quite nicely.
The GIMP v2.0 has been out for a while now but I still haven’t got around to trying it. It should be good, though, and Mac/Windows ports are available.
Congratulations on the new site! Looks nice.
pketh :: May 9, 2004
Ya, pretty much the same tweaks that I do - I should try my hand at the whole camera macro thing…
I tried to load up your latest pics from the Japanese site, but they weren’t coming through (I got one of those ‘picture can’t be found’ boxes)
I liked the old gimp back in that wild/crazy week I installed redhat linux onto my computer to see what the fuss was about - although linux sucks as a desktop os, I was impressed by the Gimp , maybe you’ll be too :)
pketh :: May 9, 2004
Oh ya, forgot to mention..
Thanks for the compliments on the site, your opinion meant a lot :)
Especially, because I really tried to roll your suggestions on site design into the new layout. I ended up scraping plenty of ideas in my head because they were just too crazy and wouldn’t be really aesthetically pleasing.
You’re advice on keeping the colors simpler and keeping the text more uniform (for lack of a better word) was invaluable.
So thanks again :D
My pleasure.
The pictures are back. I sometimes upload images to the university server, and the data centre apparently had a power outage on Sunday.
kevin :: May 12, 2004
For what it’s worth, I like the photos with the lettering better as well. They’re great photos to start with though. I also really like the star-fish photo.
I read everyone’s comments to you. I sometimes go Ise bay with friends. The sea calms me down. What I felt recently was that the sea in summer and in winter has different expressions.
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I like the last one the best. Where did you take these pictures?