If I was a wasp, I'd sting you. If I was a venomous snake, I'd bite you. If I was a lion, I'd maul you. If I was a swamp, I'd poison you. If I was a mountain, I'd fall and crush you. If I was the ocean, I'd drown you. If I was a cat, I'd never let you touch me. If I was a dog, I'd run away. If I was a horse, I'd never let you break me. If I was a farm, I wouldn't grow for you. If I was a fire, I'd burn out without warming you. If I was a home, I would fall apart around you.
If I was harmless and small, and easy to hold, you would love me. If I was a worm you could put me in the soft earth and I would be helpless in your care. Of course you could love me, but could you love me if I stung you, bit you, pulled against you, hid and didn't understand you but wasn't harmless or helpless at all?
Could you love something for what it is, when that means you can't touch it or show kindness, maybe even never be near it, and it might never, ever love you back? Is it okay to exist and not belong to anyone, to not be useful to anyone, to be dangerous or poisonous or a failure but a part of the world all the same?
I know this is a metaphor, but if you take it kind of literally, there is an answer to this.
We build wildlife preserves. Often explicitly for the protection of animals and ecosystems that can and have killed humans.
Whenever a whale gets stranded on a beach, CROWDS show up ad risk getting bludgeoned to death trying to get it back into the water.
Every Zoo has a reptile house full of venomous snakes and a team of humans dedicated to giving them the best quality of life possible.
There are volunteer beekeepers who will travel for miles and miles and hours and hours to relocate an entire hive.
There are people who rehabilitate dangerous dogs and horses
There are people who restore structurally unsound houses
There are people who study the way that fire burns so it can rejoin the ecosystem and not be smothered on sight.
Every day, millions of people get up and devote themselves to things that can and will kill them by their nature. Things they can't touch or show kindness to. Things they can't go near. Things that are wholly incapable of loving them back.
And they do it because they love them.
Everything dangerous, everything poisonous, everything 'useless'- absolutely everything has someone, often many thousands of people, who loves them exactly as they are, without expectation that their affection will be returned.
It is alright for anything, even you, to not belong to anyone, to not be useful, to be frightening and dangerous and not adhere to any standard of success.
It's all alright.
You are loved.
You are loved.
You are loved.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
These outtakes where the flash didn't go off are also AI generated.
I like this spooky dutch angle one.
I was just starting to learn flash and I didn't have all the equipment I needed. Since corgis are quite short, I had to put the lighting on the ground. The off camera flash was on a tipped over lightstand with a shoot-through umbrella to diffuse the light.
But I had no wireless triggers. And the only other way to trigger a flash, is with another flash. So I used the on-camera pop up flash to trigger the main flash.
But I had two issues.
First, I did not want that dinky on camera flash affecting my picture.
Second, triggering a flash with a flash is best done indoors. The flash will bounce all around the room and eventually hit the sensor so the main flash triggers. When you are outdoors, there is no bouncing.
SO... I took a little handheld makeup mirror and angled it toward my main flash. This blocked the dinky pop up flash and sent the beam of light towards the main flash to trigger it.
I was lying on the wet morning grass, holding a camera in one hand, a mirror in the other, trying to aim the mirror exactly toward the main flash, making crazy noises to get Otis's attention, and trying to get the focus point on his face so I didn't get a blurry photo. Also, Otis was much more interested in sniffing things than posing for a photo.
Here is an overhead view that might help explain.
I await all of your comments saying my amazing drawring is clearly AI generated.
Only 30% of the time did the flash actually go off. Aiming the mirror was tricky and I was doing like 8 things at once. I wasn't even sure I got the photo I wanted. But when I came back to the computer there was one that stood out and it is one of my favorites I've ever taken.
It was the best combination of monumental effort, great discomfort, perfect foggy sunrise light, and just pure luck.
Unfortunately, people like me who use advanced sculpting light techniques are getting accused of using AI more and more. Not really sure what to do about itāother than show the 30 awful photos it took to get the good one.
My 80s sunglasses photo and spoon photo get called out the most.
But it's just good old fashioned gradient lighting which has been used in product photography since the days of film.
Most of my photos with artificial light added would be considered "unmotivated lighting." I think that is the term you were looking for.
The short explanation is that motivated lighting always has a logical source. Like the sun or a window or a lamp off to the side.
That doesn't mean there are no lighting shenanigans used.
The overhead office-style fluorescent lights depicted in this scene were actually powerful diffused light bars that were much closer to the actors. They replaced the ceiling in post with more traiditioinal looking lights. So the lighting was still very craftedābut it has a logic and realism that doesn't set off alarm bells in your brain saying, "Where is the light coming from?"
Unmotivated lighting is the opposite. It's crafted, artificial light that doesn't need to make sense. It just has to achieve the aesthetic goal of the artist.
All studio lighting is unmotivated. I just re-edited this old photo of my dad.
There is no room in the world where he could have sat down and had perfectly sculpted light hitting his face. I intentionally directed the light to accentuate his features and capture the best, most idealized version of what he looked like.
Coincidentally I just wrote a post about motivated lighting in films.
š¬ 20Ā Ā š 208Ā Ā ā¤ļø 349Ā Ā·Ā First, thank you to everyone who is nerding out with me about motivated lighting. I love that I can have these convers
Weirdly, I expressed a preference for motivated lighting in movies with a realism-based aesthetic and a lot of people disagreed. They said that the lighting comes from the same place as the music and that you just have to suspend your disbelief.
(Personally I think that is a bad analogy because music is *very* motivated by the emotional vibe. I would say unmotivated lighting in movies comes from the same place as women's apocalypse makeup.)
But I *love* unmotivated lighting in still photography. I love crafting an image and creating it in a fantasy realm where perfect, beautiful, sculpting light can come from anywhere. I want the most idyllic lighting possible.
It's the only way I could make fingernail clippers look beautiful.
And now people are saying unmotivated lighting looks like AI or CGI and isn't authentic. Even though this aesthetic was created before computers were invented and the tools of post-capture manipulation were done in a darkroom.
I'm fairly certain this is because AI does not have a great understanding of motivated lighting. It never thinks about where the light is coming from so it almost always creates images where the lighting comes from a fantasy realm. And now people are heavily associating unmotivated lighting with AI, even if it is a subconscious observation.
I think at this point in time, people are yearning for authenticity. We know so much of our imagery is heavily manipulated for nefarious purposes. Beauty advertising with retouched skin like porcelain dolls and liquified torsos that don't leave space for vital organs. Every fast food ad shows the perfect juicy hamburger because they paid a food stylist $500/hour to perfectly cook and arrange things.
But fast food workers are not food stylists and your burger isn't going to have perfect lettuce and a non-smooshed bun.
(Before you reply with urban legends about food styling, they don't use fake materials. They are required to use the actual ingredients. Those myths came from movie prop masters who needed to maintain the look of food during hours of shooting.)
I think AI just turned our uncomfortable relationship with unrealistic imagery up to 11.
It's a little depressing for me because I love to use light as my artistic medium. I say I am a photographer, but my passion is more focused on lighting.
And I often incorporate my other passion, which is image manipulation. I sometimes add another layer of unreality to my images by artistically editing them.
This is days of work.
I worked very hard for the in-camera image. Dragging a heavy chair and lighting equipment into a field on a hot summer day was not easy for me.
But I also worked very hard on the edit. The RAW file is overexposed, but once I corrected that, the lighting on him and the grass is actually what I captured. I hid a flash in the lampshade and lit him with my big 7 foot umbrella off to the right.
I could have shot this at night, but my area has so much light pollution, I would never have achieved the sky I wanted in my head. So I took the photo knowing I'd replace the sky later.
I like crafting images. I like picturing something in my head and then trying to manifest it in a photo.
I get why people are starting to prefer more natural looking images. I understand why they are currently preferring everything to be captured as it was in the moment. I know why they disparage the amazing work of CG artists and demand that every movie use only practical effects.
When everything is fake, a small dose of reality feels special.
But I see my photography more like a drawing or a painting. Light is my paintbrush and I am just trying to manifest my imagination into an image. I don't claim I don't use artificial light. I never say anything is "straight out of camera." I am very open about my use of Photoshop. If I were able to leave my house and go to more beautiful places, perhaps I would take a more motivated approach.
I mean, I love when the world is just beautiful all on its own and all I have to do is competently pick settings on my camera.
But I enjoy my artistic process and while some of my images may not be realistic, I think my artistry is always authentic.
I don't need every person to like every one of my photos. But when I work hard on a photo and there is clear talent and skill involved, I'm hoping people will still acknowledge that. I hope they will respect the effort and artistry involved.
I didn't enjoy the show Breaking Bad. I disliked all of the characters and the story just depressed me more and more as I watched it. But I still think it is an amazing show created by talented artists. I can acknowledge the monumental artistic achievement even if it wasn't my cup of tea.
⨠The collection of my Mari Lwyd art through the years āØ
ā
First art is called: āDude⦠give me the bottleā (or when you lost a rhyming contest against the supernatural skeletal horse)
Second art is a meme reference x)
Third art is featuring Mari on her day off (hence no rhyming, but she wouldnāt say no to a treat)
Plus other stuff, silly sketches and artworks, like Mari Lwyd in modern times being disappointed that nobody wants to rhyme with her anymore, so she has to buy everything herself (featuring a distant relative of the guy from the first piece, plus a Waterboy mashup).
ā
P.S. - donāt forget about the frogsĀ in some of the arts
Mandatory winter reblog of my Mari Lwyd post, now updated with new artwork š
December is my birthday month (in the end of it), so Iām very happy to have such a wonderful cryptid on my side
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
This is the best description Iāve heard for this method, I always thought it was bullshit because I never heard a description that actually explained how to do this other than ātap your head 20 timesā.
I have anxiety-induced hissing, which sounds/feels different from sound-induced tinnitus (which I have also experience). Sound-based tinnitus actually sounds like youāre āhearingā something in your ears, whilst the hissing I have feels like itās āinside my headā, if that makes sense. But this technique still helps!!
I need you all to know that I think about 13 Latvias so much that now every time I meet someone from Latvia I have to resist the urge to ask "which one"
well⦠no sense in waiting around. ive got to get out of this place. [stands up and you gain control of me] looks dangerous⦠i should try to find a weapon, just in case.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
I am once again reminding people that it wasn't unusual to have this sort of politics on the radio in the 2010s. It's not ahead of its time, your culture just got fascist since then.
Itās wild to me that people hate on Stolas so much when he literally was the one who started what Iām assuming will be an Imp revolution.
They wouldnāt have been cheering BlitzĆø on in the streets after the trial just because he risked his life to save Stolasā. But Stolas wove this narrative that made BlitzĆø sound like the hero to Imp kind.
Stolas literally started the Imp revolution and yet people think heās just this royal that doesnāt care about anyone and that heās āusingā BlitzĆø. I swear, we must not be watching the same show.
Reblogging again cause I tried this site last night and if you need background noise to focus this is perfect for that, I was locked the fuck in on a task. And itās also just gorgeous to listen to
My family has a great way of distinguishing between a new spouse you like and new spouse you disdain!
Your mom/aunt/grandma/etc remarries and they are actually a cool person, you use their first name. So if you were to introduce them they would be: Aunt Jane and Bob.
If your mom/aunt/grandma/etc remarries and they are a fuckwad you introduce them as: this is Aunt Jane and her second husband. The implication being that they are very replaceable and that weāre all just waiting for her to wise up to the situation and serve you divorce papers, she did it once, she can do it again.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
This is our reality in Gaza. Behind the scenes, billions are spent to fund the deadliest and most expensive internationally banned weaponsāonly to kill innocent people, destroy homes, and turn our land into ashes so we are forced to leave. At the same time, they throw us small amounts of aid just to justify themselves before the world, while we remain the true victims.
My family and I are among those victims. We have been displaced many times, walking long distances under heavy bombardment until our bodies could no longer bear it. My parents are sick, collapsing from exhaustion and weak immunity, yet they cannot find medicine or even the simplest form of support. We have written many posts, but only a few have reached out to help us. Donate here
While wars are fueled with money and weapons, we are slowly dying from hunger, illness, and displacement. Please help us just to stay aliveāyour donation, whether small or large, can save an entire family and goes directly to us so we can buy food and medicine. Thank you to everyone who donates and shares our message.
Please help me donate for my children and my sick mother and father. We are now under bombardment.
My Parallel Universe @massivelydifferentkingdom - Tumblr Blog | Tumlook