Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, creativity, Fiction, inspiration, learning, productivity, Thoughts, Writers, writing on March 4, 2022| 1 Comment »
“I have two questions for you,” I said. “One: Do you want to do better?” …
“Here’s my second question: Are you willing to feel the discomfort of putting in more effort and trying new things that will feel weird and different and won’t work right away?”
— Peter Bregman, If You Want to Get Better at Something, Ask Yourself These Two Questions
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, Affinity Photo, creativity, learning, sff on August 14, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Today, more adventures with photo composites. A few simple experiments to learn where all the tools are and how to use them:
And then a more complicated example:
Posted in Likes, tagged #365Ways, Affinity Photo, inspiration, learning, photos, Thoughts, tools on July 11, 2021| Leave a Comment »
I’m feeling a lot better today, less exhausted ouchies and more “It’s cool, I’m good.” No naps today, no wishing I had a sling for my mostly incapacitated arm, just chilling and learning things.
Like using words to generate color palettes. Let’s see what we can do with that, shall we?
Using the Unsplash photo database, this site retrieves images related to your search term, combines them into a single image, then extracts a color palette. One nice thing is that you can deselect some of the component images, darken or brighten the palette, or zoom in to highlight just some of the colors in an image. I do find that the results tend to be a little muddy (“summer” is a lot duller grey and brown than I expected) but the tweaking helps.
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Then what? I decided to learn how to color grade an image. Essentially, grading is a technique that lets you take the palette from one visual and apply it to another, often changing the tone and emotion of the image. A photo can go from warm summer afternoon to dark and stormy without a lot of fuss.
There are a lot of ways to do this but here’s a handy tutorial explaining the process in Affinity:
Steal the Color Grading from Any Image with Affinity Photo!
PhotoChrome has a link to download the composite image but it didn’t work for me. Instead, I used the “copy HEX” option for the color palette, then copied the darkest, lightest and middle colors into the Affinity photo Gradient Map / RGB Hex Sliders window.
What’s the color of cool? In my version of this exercise, this:
#4b5c74, #656778, #767482, #718694, #80949d
Here’s what that looks like when transferred onto an image.
Then I had to try a couple of others for fun.
It’s probably no surprise that I’m liking Mars best.
Posted in Likes, tagged #365Ways, Affinity Photo, creativity, family, learning on June 28, 2021| Leave a Comment »
I’m not quite done with my grandmother’s portrait, apparently. One of the things I did over the weekend was to start learning colorization, and now Grandma has a pretty pink dress:)
Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, Affinity Photo, Jodi Taylor, learning, quotes, time travel on May 15, 2021| Leave a Comment »
What would you do if you could go back in time for, say, one day? When would you go, and perhaps just as importantly, where?
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For today’s educational adventure I learned how to make a portal. Next time I’ll choose an image with a puddle for the reflection, but the effect is still pretty magic.
So, we have a target place, a target time, and a portal. Who wants to go first?
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Fiction-related aside: Time travel usually isn’t my genre (weird for someone with a history degree once upon a time, but there it is), but this series about historians tasked with maintaining the time stream is fun:
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“History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells, ‘Can’t you remember anything I told you?’ and lets fly with a club.”
― John W. Campbell Jr.
Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, history, learning, on writing, phrases, words on April 3, 2021| Leave a Comment »
I just learned a new word-related thing and thought I’d share. The correct phrase is “just deserts” not “just desserts.”
Despite its pronunciation, just deserts, with one s, is the proper spelling for the phrase meaning “the punishment that one deserves.” The phrase is even older than dessert, using an older noun version of desert meaning “deserved reward or punishment,” which is spelled like the arid land, but pronounced like the sweet treat.
— ‘Just Deserts’ or ‘Just Desserts’? | Merriam-Webster*
I always thought this term was a food reference. Shows how my mind works.
And now that I know I was wrong, I can start being right. Learning stuff is great.
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* So wait, no “dessert” before the 16th century? Dark ages indeed;)
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Posted in Writing, tagged #365Ways, condolences, learning, perfection, writing on February 2, 2021| 1 Comment »
I ran across a draft letter I wrote several years ago, and I’m kicking myself for not sending it. Why? It was a condolence letter to the husband of an old friend of the family, and I realize now that I never felt like it was good enough to send.
L. and her first husband were close to my parents when I was young, and as couples split apart and merged in new formations, L. remained part of our circle. Even when she remarried, moved away and I hadn’t seen her for years, L. occupied a warm place in my heart. Then she got sick and died, and I didn’t know what to say to the new husband I’d never met.
Still, I searched for a card. I bought a stamp. I drafted a letter. I didn’t send it.
Running across the draft, I realize that what I might have said was less important than the impulse to share what L. meant to me. Here’s my draft, names abbreviated:
Dear P.,
I wanted to write to say how sorry I was to hear about L.’s passing. You know my father M. well, of course, and L. was a good friend of our family for years.
L. was many things, an academic, a family friend, wife, mother, upstanding member of the community and snazzy dresser. She was kind enough to invite us to her son’s bar mitzvah. The energy was happy, swirling, bright and compelling, much like L. herself.
When I think of L., I remember her smile, her warmth, the care she showed for those around her. I think of her dancing.
I am so sorry for her loss.*
Perfect? No, but it was good enough. What lesson do I take from this? What will I tell myself the next time?
I wanted it to be perfect because it mattered. But I had it backwards. I understand now that because it mattered, it didn’t have to be perfect.
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Reach out.
Share your feelings.
Send the card.
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* Note following a discussion on this with my father: I debated using the more typical “sorry for your loss” but decided that while I was deeply sorry for P., what I meant in the bigger picture was “I’m so sorry she’s gone.” So I used “her loss.” Told you it wasn’t perfect, but that’s ok.
Posted in Funny, Likes, Writing, tagged artists, creativity, criticism, Fiction, Iain S. Thomas, learning, Motivation, persistence, quotes, rejection, Thoughts, work, Writers, writing on February 3, 2015| Leave a Comment »
J.R. Johnson 
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