If I didn't know better, the KH sign and backdrop appears as if NBC made a special trip to the Alpine, CA hall up on Victoria Dr. Who are the elders in the hall these days? Is Harris, Walterhouse, Fisher, Houston, Tate, et al still running things? It's been a while since I was in that congo. They must have used that particular hall because of Freddy McLean.
Jourles
JoinedPosts by Jourles
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177
Barbara Anderson is on NBC Nightly News Tonight 11/21/07
by AndersonsInfo ina producer with nbc in new york called within the past hour to tell me that the segment i interviewed for (once in nashville, tn in august and once in washington, dc in october) is set to air tonight on nbc nightly news with brian williams, that is, if no huge calamity takes place to bump the feature.
this piece will be two minutes and 45 seconds long, the longest slot nightly news has for topics of interest, and will feature a discussion about the court documents that are found on the cd i recently produced, "secrets of pedophilia in an american religion, jehovah's witnesses in crisis.
in addition, nbc's internet site, msn, will follow with a detailed story.
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HDR photography anyone? (pics inside)
by Jourles indoes anyone employ hdr(high dynamic range) photography in their bag of tricks?
in a nutshell, you take several photos of the same scene but at different exposures - from dark to very light(your aperture needs to remain exactly the same).
you then merge them together.
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Jourles
the majority seemed to look awful with over-saturated, over-processed, grainy/noisy, and an almost painted/colorized appearance.
It all depends on what the photographer wantsyou to see. When I see heavily post-processed, exteme grain/noise, etc in a picture, the first thing that comes to mind is - did they did it intentionally?(most likely, yes) You really have to ask the photographer what they had in mind when they took the shot. Regarding the cathedral photo just above, to me it looks impressive. It has a video game look to it. Sure it may not look *real* to some people, but to others it is just another form of art and expression. The photographer may have 5 different versions of that same picture. One of those versions might appeal to some, but not others.
Would you mind if I asked your opinion on this photo?
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world's shortest political quiz
by Hortensia inthis was interesting - it says i am a liberal libertarian.
might just be for the usa, though.
http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html.
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Jourles
Not too surprised...
Libertarian
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HDR photography anyone? (pics inside)
by Jourles indoes anyone employ hdr(high dynamic range) photography in their bag of tricks?
in a nutshell, you take several photos of the same scene but at different exposures - from dark to very light(your aperture needs to remain exactly the same).
you then merge them together.
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Jourles
What program do you use to layer them together? In Photoshop, the higher and lower exposure just cancel each other out, giving me an image with the same dynamic range as the middle term. Is there a setting that gets those kind of results
Corel's PSP Photo X2 - it has an HDR merge feature. I recently noticed that CompUSA is selling it for $50 instead of $100. I believe Photoshop didn't include an HDR feature until CS2.
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Six Congos Not Merging But Splitting Expenses
by Clam inhttp://www.syracuse.com/articles/news/index.ssf?/base/news-12/1195466329169760.xml&coll=1.
jehovah's witnesses to share city site .
former brigadier hall in syracuse will serve six county congregations.
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Jourles
It would be fun to show r&f jws posts from this board from years ago. They would probably just think Satan is behind all of it.
Kingdom Hall for Sale - In larger cities, if the KH is not already being used by 3 or more congregations, think about consolidating the region/area to do so. Dedicated publishers will drive a little extra to be at the meetings. Real estate is where the money is at. KH's, with property, can be sold for $200-300k in most areas. If the money crunch really comes, then do as other religions do - meet in people's homes. Book study groups could remain the same for all meetings. A new meeting format would need to be created if this were to happen. If congregations are instructed to sell off their KH's, then that will be the sign of the end for the WTS.
once the WTS feels the cash crunch, they will have to start selling KH's to stay afloat(this isn't just a guess - it is going to happen eventually). It could be that this announcement is primarily for larger cities where there are several congregations colocated in a reachable geographic area. In other words, if a city(including suburbs) has 10 congregations and 5 KH's, the WTS can sell at least 2 KH's and force the congregations to merge or share the remaining KH's...
But it wouldn't surprise me to see or hear reports of KH's being sold more frequently. I would also assume that the WTS will try to keep it fairly quiet.I'm really getting tired of us not getting a consultancy fee for pitching these ideas to the WTS. With the money they are saving by stealing our business plans, they should at least kick back a few Canadian dollars to Simon for board upkeep.
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43
HDR photography anyone? (pics inside)
by Jourles indoes anyone employ hdr(high dynamic range) photography in their bag of tricks?
in a nutshell, you take several photos of the same scene but at different exposures - from dark to very light(your aperture needs to remain exactly the same).
you then merge them together.
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Jourles
taking 8 photos at each exposure level, to average them out when they are stacked.
As long as your ISO is low, the camera is stable, you're shooting in RAW, WB is properly set and you have somewhat decent glass attached, noise shouldn't be an issue. Stacking photos carries just as much room for error as does merging them.
In that city scene, there is quite a bit of noise on the bridge pillars(and even throughout the water - not the foam bubbles). Very obvious. The water statue appears to have jpg artifacts from the file compression - understandable for web viewing.
All of my shots were taken at ISO200. The only perceived noise that I can see is the intentionally introduced distortion I manipulated in Jesus #2. But then again, he wouldn't look as scary if I didn't make him out to be so dark and evil.
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HDR photography anyone? (pics inside)
by Jourles indoes anyone employ hdr(high dynamic range) photography in their bag of tricks?
in a nutshell, you take several photos of the same scene but at different exposures - from dark to very light(your aperture needs to remain exactly the same).
you then merge them together.
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Jourles
I have just started to experiment with image stacking mainly to reduce noise and bring out detail
Are you using a point-and-shoot or a (d)slr? Are you letting the camera determine its own ISO? If you can, lower the ISO to less than 600-800. The lower the better and the less noise you'll see in the photo. Shooting night or dimly lit shots is tricky - especially if you want them to turn out good. In this area, good glass will help you go far. Compensating by increasing your camera's sensitivity(ISO) helps give you that low light boost but also introduces noise. That's the thing with photography, there are so many tradeoffs you have to put up with. An image stabilized lens or camera body also helps give you those few extra stops of light. White balance is probably one of the most important aspects in getting good shots. Most cameras do a good job these days with choosing the right WB according to the situation you're in, but if you can, it's always best to manually set it up if you have the right accessories handy.
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43
HDR photography anyone? (pics inside)
by Jourles indoes anyone employ hdr(high dynamic range) photography in their bag of tricks?
in a nutshell, you take several photos of the same scene but at different exposures - from dark to very light(your aperture needs to remain exactly the same).
you then merge them together.
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Jourles
As an example, here are the three shots that I combined for the river shot:
In X2, you are allowed to bring in (I believe) around 15 shots. You can then pick and choose which photos you'd like to merge together. And as Vinny pointed out, stillness in the sequence is extremely important. Wind blown bushes and tree limbs will blur the result you're looking for. Shooting handheld won't work due to movement. This type of photography is really designed for landscapes. Very rarely will you ever see a person in them unless they are sleeping or are aware of what is taking place and they know not to move.
Vinny, I agree that a properly exposed shot is ideal, but the surreal appearance of HDR is pretty fascinating to look at you gotta admit.
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43
HDR photography anyone? (pics inside)
by Jourles indoes anyone employ hdr(high dynamic range) photography in their bag of tricks?
in a nutshell, you take several photos of the same scene but at different exposures - from dark to very light(your aperture needs to remain exactly the same).
you then merge them together.
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Jourles
How much time between photographs, and which program do you use for merging.
As far as time goes, most dSLRs have a feature called "bracketing" which automatically adjusts the exposure from -2.0/+2.0 for you and fires off a sequence of shots with those settings. I decided to do it the manual way(so I can become more familiar with the technique). Using Aperture Priority mode(the depth of field needs to stay the same!), I set the WB with my exposure at 0.0. I then underexposed at -2.0 snapped the pic, adjusted the exposure to -1.3, snapped the pic, etc. until I got up to +2.0. The time between shots was probably 2-3 seconds. I probably will use the bracketing feature next time seeing that it keeps my hands off the camera.(I'm using a corded remote with tripod) This gave me a nice selection of shots to combine from. All of these are taken in RAW mode as well. I also turned off image stabilization since it's on a tripod.
For post processing, I use Corel's Paint Shop Pro Photo X2. I've been using Jasc for a long time and Corel happens to own them now. I've used Adobe Photoshop, but I can do everything in X2 that I can in PS without the high price that comes with it. A great little side program to have is the Nik filter/effect software - it also acts as a plugin for X2. Amazing stuff.
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43
HDR photography anyone? (pics inside)
by Jourles indoes anyone employ hdr(high dynamic range) photography in their bag of tricks?
in a nutshell, you take several photos of the same scene but at different exposures - from dark to very light(your aperture needs to remain exactly the same).
you then merge them together.
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Jourles
Does anyone employ HDR(High Dynamic Range) photography in their bag of tricks? In a nutshell, you take several photos of the same scene but at different exposures - from dark to very light(your aperture needs to remain exactly the same). You then merge them together. The finished photo contains extreme amounts of detail and appears almost hyper-realistic. I've been meaning to do this for a while now and so today I set out to try my hand at it and see what I could come up with. The clouds were ideal and our trees are a little past peak but still usable. Here are a few of my results:
I could kick myself on this one. I had just placed my tripod and tightened everything down. When I was peering through the viewfinder, I immediately saw what appeared to be a "halo" right above his head. Seeing that you don't always get a chance to get that kind of a photo, I ran through a bunch of shots and then realized that my white balance wasn't set correctly for this capture. In the meantime, the clouds were moving and breaking up. So by the time I set my WB and reverified focus, this is what I ended up with. You can actually see where the cloud portion to the right is breaking away and then to the left it is fading. Amazing what you can miss in the course of 1 minute. This was taken in a cemetary.
This one is from a slightly different viewpoint. I wanted this picture to convey, "Jesus is coming, you'd better look busy!" Sort of a scare poster for churchgoers - to remind them that Jesus isn't all about love and happiness. Afterall, he's coming back to kick some ass, right?
This is just downriver from my house. I probably should have come to this spot about two weeks ago while our trees were at peak color. But like I said, the cloud cover today was awesome for this style of photography. A clear sky just doesn't have the same effect.
So is anyone else into HDR? Have any pics you'd like to share?