Some Lightroom magic

A while back I discussed  my work in scanning a photo album belonging to my great grandmother, Edith Fowler.  (See this post).  After scanning and annotating every photo in the album, I chose several for post-scan improvement using a wonderful program called Lightroom 5.  From time to time I will be posting "before and after" photos, showing the state of a photo as it comes from a camera or a scanner as compared to its  state after I apply various tools available in Lightroom 5.  For the inaugural presentation I give you a photo of Edith's son Ray, (my great uncle), as a school boy.  As you can see from the original scan, the photo was pasted a bit askew into the album.  The actual photo is very small and very old.  It is almost completely washed out except for Edith's blue ink annotation: "Ray home from school."  When I first saw the photo and later scanned it I did not believe there was much hope of "saving" it, even using Lightroom 5.  Well, much to my delight, I was able to produce a final print that vastly improves the original.  I'm still a bit amazed.  See what you think.

Before

After

Ear Worm musings

You may have noticed that about a month ago I added a new feature to this blog, which shows my current ear worm (lower right corner.)  Today it changed from Eminem's "Stan" (the chorus) to Dylan's "Tambourine Man."  Like any true ear worm it came upon me unbidden this morning whilst I was walking my dog. In particular the phrase "far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow" powerfully spun in a loop for a long time.  Putting that in context with the rest of the tune shows the derivation of its strong influence on the subconscious.  It appears in the final verse of the song.  These lyrics are the work of a genius, and as you read them and hear Dylan singing them in your head, I'd venture to say that "far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow" might well be the apex for you, as it its for me.

Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow

Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to
Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me

In the jingle jangle morning, I'll come followin' you

Ceilings can be a trip...

Check out these incredible ceilings from around the world.  They are all stunning and beautiful, but the one that strains my belief is the green ceiling in the Royal Palace in Brussels.-- 1.6 million beetles!  Come on man!

Joe Cocker R.I.P.

God Dammit!

Key and Peele

Entertainment Weekly and lots of other publications have been touting the comedy team of Key and Peele, who have a program on Comedy Central.  I am just now going back and watching from season one forward.  Their show is a half an hour so it's perfect for times when you can't commit to something longer, or you just want something to watch before you hit the sack.  One of the guys, Jordan Peele, does a fabulous impression of President Obama.  In the episode I just finished watching, he does an Obama bit without his partner Keegan Key.  I swear it had me laffin' my ass off.  It is frickin' High-Larry-Us.  Check it out right here and see if you agree.  Oh, and start checking out their show.  These cats do outstanding work.

A wise take on music

“Aside from purely technical analysis, nothing can be said about music, except when it is bad; when it is good, one can only listen and be grateful.” — W.H. Auden

Skaters: Who's who...

I'm still enjoying repeated viewings of the Chet Faker video featuring three wonderful skaters.  I got to wondering who they were.  Here is what I found out:

So, just who are these amazing skaters? They are:

Candice Heiden, a well known Los Angeles roller girl who used to run the blog We RollerSkate(which is no longer viewable). She was also one of the skaters featured in Moby’s music video The Perfect Life (featuring vocals by Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips). A look at Heiden’s YouTube channel shows that she has made a few educational/instructional videos on roller skating as well.

April Corley, a professional roller skate performer who served as Roller Skate Choreographer Assistant during Madonna’s Confessions Tour, was one of the principle skate performers inMadonna’s “Sorry” music video and placed 2nd in World Class Pairs at the 1996 Artistic Roller Skating Nationals – Junior and Senior World Team Presentation.

Appelusa McGlynn, another professional roller skate performer, member of the Screen Actors Guild and an Artistic Roller Skating Coach at Northridge Skateland (1999-present) who has appeared as a skater in numerous commercials, television shows and films such as That 70’s Show, Glee and Gingerdead Man 3. She also coached for two distinct productions of Xanadu, one at Pepperdine University and one at The Met Theatre.

I kinda figured these ladies were not amateur light-weights.