No Man's Filters

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I am old enough to remember a time when we had to wait days, if not weeks to see what we took pictures of.  I had a 35mm Instamatic camera that required sticking a flash cube into the top.  The film came in a cartridge that looked like the modern day equivalent of the voice mail symbol on your phone.  You pointed, shot the picture, then had to manually advance the film by a dial on the top that clicked when in place.  You got maybe 24 pictures and had to mail the film away to be processed unless you went to a Fotomat in the mall parking lot, which would still take days.  There was no cloud. We didn’t have filters. We didn’t have ears and noses to stick on our faces. We didn’t even know if we blinked. It was all a mystery to be figured out weeks later.  And we didn’t seem to mind. Nowadays, we have selfie sticks and Snapchats and Instagrams and weird shit that makes our faces look like fun house mirrors.  And now we also take pictures in games.

Now, to be fair, taking a picture of your gameplay in a video game isn’t a new concept. Long before sharing or screenshotting became a thing, some games required you to send in proof that you accomplished some feat or achievement.  Somewhere in a shoe box, is a blurry photo of my high score from Atari 2600 Decathlon, taken prior to 1984.  Again, the ability for us to snap a perfectly framed, in focus, picture with 70s/80s photographic technology was very low and the game would have been turned off or the television would have been burned out before the developed photo ever came back.  But if you were lucky to achieve something so grand as getting over 10,000 points in Decathlon or 20,000 points in Pitfall.  Activision had this thing called Activison Patches which they would send to you in exchange for photographic proof that you finished or attained a particular score in one of their games.  They were these sew on patches you could put on your jean jacket or backpack.  The 80s equivalent to Xbox achievements or PS4 Trophies.  But those were photos of you playing the game.  Then, something happened.  We added taking photos in the game.

Games like the Sims or Second Life took taking photos of your monitor or television and put the power of the photo op into the game.  Minecraft gave players a screenshot feature so that they could share their epic builds or biggest fails with other players.  And other games offered the feature as part of the basic settings, some tongue in cheek like GTA V, complete with selfie mode, filters and sharing capabilities.  Others were more about sharing the environment like Uncharted 4.  But, when you are immersed into a game like Uncharted or even GTA, having to stop and take time to set up a photo op to capture a moment seems counter intuitive to the game itself.  When Uncharted 4 came out, it brought new gameplay features to the decade old franchise.  The first and last title on the 8^th generation console wanted to tout the advanced graphics of the PS4 with the opportunity for players to take a moment to stop and look around at their environment, snapping a picture and adding filters and other added effects.  It’s a nice little thing to do but again, it takes away from the rough and tumble, puzzle solving action of the game.  Cinematically, it was on par with the 2^nd game which seamlessly blended cutscenes and in game action, but touting the newest bell and whistle brought to the table as being able to Instagram your treasure hunt buried my interest in the game.

But, that’s not to say that in game photography isn’t without merit.  I mean, part of the initial gameplay of No Man’s Sky is to scan and observe your surroundings, discovering new species of flora and fauna.  It only makes sense to enhance that initial offering by adding in the ability to put in documenting of your journey into the great wide open by taking some pics.  After all, even though we’re unknown travelers, caught in some weird metaphysical, philosophical mind screw about will and destiny, we’re still tourists, exploring the universe.

The overall aesthetic of No Man’s Sky is based in that kitschy retro-futuristic science fiction art along the vein of Christopher Foss and Ralph McQuarrie.  Those angles and flared pieces of architecture and the animals that look like they were placed in the Cantina scene, straight out of central casting from the Jim Henson’s creature workshop.  Odd shaped necks and horns and flying fish dragons beg to be captured on film. Caves that resemble overgrown maws and throats, ready to devour you.  The skyscape, streaked with jet comtrails from other travelers dividing the space from atmosphere.  It all looks so pretty.  And now, with multiplayer added, Hello Games has given players the ability to gesture in order to help you communicate… or perhaps pose for a selfie.  Saying Thank you or Help or just sitting among the flowing stalks of grass as you contemplate your place in the whole story of Nada and Polo or Atlas.  You thoughts flash towards the meaning of all this… hashtag pensive hashtag Thoughts before falling asleep.

Sampsonia Street Samurais

Google Street View can be useful for a lot of things. If you want to know where the entrance to a parking garage is, or how close a parking spot is from where you need to be, it’s invaluable.

Then, there’s the sheer joy of just looking at the city without having to get real close. You can travel down the streets looking at the architecture from the comfort of your living room. After all, Pittsburgh has been given so many accolades over the past few years, it’d be a shame to not take in all that splendor. And this way, you don’t have to get involved in road rage incidents with jagoffs that make Pittsburgh lefts.

However, you have to wonder if Google does a lot of quality control in their selection of filming. Maybe they just turn the camera on and go. Perhaps they do a few passes to make sure that they don’t have anything inappropriate in the shots or a bug on the lens effing it all up for five blocks.

Sometimes, I think that the folks at Google have to have a sense of humor. Because otherwise, why would you let this be a part of your Street View scenic landscape?

Sampsonia St. Samurais

In addition to all the accolades Pittsburgh has received, I think we need to get an award for Most Samurai Friendly city.   Now, this, of course, is slightly less as prestigious than when South Union won the, “Best Place For a Ninjas to Break in Cars” award.   But, it’s almost on par with Scottdale when it won, “Best City to Abandon Your Kids For Ninja Practice”. 

Now, my brother emailed me this picture, so he gets credit for bringing it to my attention.  But, it didn’t stop there.  Why would it?   You never know what’s around the next corner.  So, my brother sent me the link to this street corner.

Now, at first glance you might say…. “Oh, look, a whale tail!”   

But, more importantly, WTF is in the alley?

Here's a better view from the opposite direction.

It looks like a half assed Matryoshka doll or homemade Gloop costume for Comic Con.  For you kids out there, Gloop is from a cartoon called The Herculoids. 

Still, I have no idea what the hell that thing is. It’s got feet, so somebody is standing under whatever that is. And that guy, with the apron, must work at Doug’s Market and he’s unfazed by all this. Maybe he saw the samurai fight in the distance and didn’t notice the thing next to him in the alley.

So, if you’ve got time to kill, wander around Google Street view in your town and see what you can see. 





Text Me About My Weiner

A friend of mine posed a great statement.   "I'm glad I left the dating scene before people started emailing pictures of their genitals to each other."  Of course, my reply to that was that we both left the dating scene before you could really do that with cell phones.

In the wake of Weinergate and the fact that Anthony Weiner admitted to sending a picture of his package to a female just illustrates further that people, no matter how smart and how aware of the stupidity of doing such things, will continue to make asses out of themselves.

Recently, a PA Turnpike employee was accused of coercing underage girls into texting nude images of themselves to him.  The one girl received a message from an unknown phone number, claiming to be her boyfriend, asking her to send him a naked picture.  AND SHE DID IT!   Then, using fear and blackmail, he got more girls to send him pictures.

As a parent of a child that has yet to enter her teen years, I can only imagine what the technology will be capable of by then.  For the record she's only four but she acts like a teen.   Disappointment is the end of the world and she throws tantrums with the best of them.  Still, I plan on giving her a phone that calls four numbers;  Our house, our cell phones, and 911.   It will not be text capable and no phone will be included. 

The Internet:  Enabling People to Do Stupid Things Since 1991.

Oh, and how classic is it that a guy named Weiner gets busted for sending pictures of his...

I Ought To Be In Pictures

This is a lesson in “Be careful what you wish for.” One of the greatest inventions of the 20th century is undoubtedly the digital camera. For one, the ability to see your picture immediately after you take it eliminates question of whether or not someone blinked. Secondly, the ability to store hundreds of pictures on the camera and then transfer them to an electronic storage device is better than the previous model I utilized which was a shoebox or drawer with hundreds of envelopes filled with random photos. It also makes us a little lazy. Knowing that those pictures are right where you can see them prolongs your ambition to go get them printed. “Well, maybe I’ll just buy a printer and photo paper.” Good Luck, printer ink will cost you a lot of money and so will the photo quality paper. With that in mind, I got my first digital camera for Christmas just before my daughter was born. The prospect of being able to capture hundreds of photos of her every waking moment filled me with a giddiness that could only be rivaled with the thought that I wouldn’t wonder which disposable camera has pictures of her on it and which one has Christmas from three years ago. I still have about five disposable cameras, sitting in a drawer, undeveloped. By now, the film is probably degraded beyond the point of even caring. My daughter arrived and I snapped pictures of everything. I took pictures of her sleeping, her crying, her feet, her nose, her flipping me off…yes, that is correct. After six months, I already had over 500 photos stored on my computer. Unfortunately, I had none in my wallet or in frames on the wall of my home. Suddenly, I felt like the worst parent in the world. People would ask me about my newborn and I had to describe her to them or at least show them a tiny, fuzzy image on my cell phone that was poorly lit. Soon, my wife began complaining that we needed to get actual pictures of her before she graduated college.

This past Christmas she started hinting around that she wanted a printer that could handle digital photos. I remembered the days of trying to get copies of my acting head shot printed out for auditions instead of paying $300 for them to be done by a professional outfit. It would have cost me just as much, if not more to buy the printer, ink cartridges, and paper. But now, they have these little kiosks in stores that will do the work for you. All you need to do is supply the storage device. CD’s, memory cards, and even USB flash drives are accepted in most places and you can manipulate the images right there in the store before buying them. I had a thought. If I could load a bunch of the pictures from my computer onto my 8GB flash drive, I could give my wife a better Christmas present, the actual pictures.

Of course, being the procrastinator I am, I could never find the opportunity to get to a store to do it. I went online and found that I could directly upload the photos from my computer and have them shipped to my house. Now, I realized that I could not get them there before Christmas Day, but the photo albums that my wife would open would be a preview of coming attractions. The quizzical look on her face prompted an explanation and I broke down, telling her that I didn’t buy her a printer, I bought her 228 actual pictures with duplicates. At $0.09 a picture, I couldn’t pass up the chance to have actual photos of my kid from her first six months of life. Eventually, I’ll get around to ordering more but for now, my wife will have her hands full.The Tuesday after Christmas saw the arrival of a pretty good sized box on my front porch. I rushed into the house and tore it open like it was my own Christmas gift and I was, again, seven years old. I began flipping through the pictures and began to wonder. There were no people in any of the shots and I’m not sure, but I didn’t remember going to Disney World in the last 16 months. Soon, I was staring at complete strangers. Who the hell are these people? Where’s my daughter sleeping, crying, and giving me the bird? Where are her feet? I became livid? I called the store and they were of no help. I even went online to the address of the actual service and opened up a live chat session that ended with, “We’ll get back to you.” I checked the box again and there was a packing slip with an email address on it. I figured what the heck, I should at least tell her that I got her photos. Maybe she got mine by accident. The response was positive. She’d ordered pictures at the end of November and had been trying, without luck, to find out what happened since the beginning of December. It just seemed odd that her order waiting almost a month to ship and then went to the wrong person while mine went to her. We both agreed to mail each other our orders with the understanding that our shipping costs would be reimbursed by the vendor. Soon, I had my baby on glossy 4x6’s.

Now, if you think that’s the end of the story, you’re wrong. Two days later, I received an email stating that I would be refunded. There was no mention of the shipping cost through UPS, they opted to refund the entire amount of my order. In essence, I got 456 photos for $8.00. Not too shabby. The next day, I found another box on my front porch. This one came from the photo service. It was another complete order of 456 pictures. I figured that maybe they felt bad and just sent another order and charged me the amount they credited giving me quadruples for the price of doubles. Still, I think I made out ahead of the game. Now, I could give pictures to my family as well as hers and still have pictures for ourselves.

Here it is a brand New Year and in the mailbox yesterday, I found another box. It looked strangely familiar. It was, again, from the photo service and inside was another 456 pictures. I now had 1368 pictures for the price of $8.00 in shipping. So, now when anyone asks if I have any pictures of my daughter I can give them their own personal copy. I can only imagine what the mailman will have for me today.

UPDATE:

As requested...

Digital Cameras for Dumbasses.

Sometimes, I can be a total idiot. I got into a debate at work once while discussing geography. The topic had to do with Dallas, the 80's television show, not the city in Texas. I was adamant that the shooting location for Southfork was in Nevada instead of Dallas, the city, not the 80's television show. Everyone looked at me as if I had just grown a third arm out of my neck. Of course, being the kind of person that has to settle the dispute by going to a higher power for clarification, I searched my old standby, Wikipedia, for the answer. I was shocked. Southfork Ranch was not in Nevada as I had been led to believe. Then my whole world suddenly crashed as if I was Keanu Reeves finding out I was in The Matrix. "Gambling in Casablanca? Soylent Green is people? Dil was a man? Whoa!"

Actually, I blame my parents for the geographical faux pas. Not directly of course, but still, it's because of them that I am unable to correctly use a digital camera without issues. You see, when I was a child, I liked looking watching home movies and seeing photos of my family from before I was born. Being the youngest of three there was a lot of history to catch up on and this was the best way to do it. Once I flipped through a pack of pictures that included shots of my Dad in the dessert outside of Vegas as well as shots of Southfork Ranch. Being that they were from the same roll and all together in the same envelope, I assumed that Southfork was outside of Las Vegas. I realized later, after being laughed at by my coworkers, what had happened. One year there was a Lions trip to Dallas, the next year was a State Farm trip to Vegas. It took two years to fill up one roll film. This is something that even plagues me now in the world of digital photography.

While growing up, I used to love taking pictures on vacation. I had my little Instamatic camera with the four side flash bulbs and barbell shaped film all ready for each trip to the beach or camping. Then, I would get the pictures developed and find that half were either too dark or of someone's ear. Then came my 35 millimeter and I was able to take more pictures with an instant built in flash. I snapped pictures of my bedroom and of my yard and got really handy with being able to capture the quintessence of man's struggle against nature and machine by taking a picture of myself running into a tree while cutting grass with the riding mower. Still, I fell victim to the same folly as my parents. I never could use an entire roll on one trip. I would get pictures back years later that encompassed a trip to Myrtle Beach book ended with Christmas pictures from before and after the vacation. To make matters worse, I can look at pictures taken from 3 different decades and not be able to tell you exactly which one came first because my parents have the same furniture in all three. They aren't exactly ahead of the curve when it comes to furniture buying. They've lived in two houses in my 33 years of life, the most recent one they've lived for over 20 years. The only change to the carpeting was in the basement was due to flooding from Hurricane Ivan in 2004, yet all the carpeting looks as if it was just laid yesterday. What can I say? I am my parents' son. Currently, I probably have 6 undeveloped disposable cameras, somewhere in my house, with pictures that range from 1999-2005 and one picture to take on each roll.

Cameras and photo taking have now become the bane of my existence since having a child. I recently got a Canon Powershot digital camera a couple Christmas' ago and I must say I am hooked. Now, I don't have to worry about fifteen wasted pictures of the inside of a lens cap when I get my prints back. I don't have the hang up of being able to capture the perfect moment only to be crushed by the fact that I forgot to advance the film. I also get the ability to instantly share my daughter's newest tricks with my friends and family without having to lug around a photo album. My only issue is that I am just as laxed now in downloading pictures as I was two years ago in developing film from a 35mm disposable. Since my daughter was born we've been snapping pictures almost everyday to capture each smile, creep, crawl, and clap. I've downloaded the pictures probably 3 times since last July. I have a 2GB memory card and only ran out of space this past week when I attempted to use the movie feature to capture her first attempt at pulling herself up into a standing position. I had to quickly scan and delete some bad pictures of us blinking.

Now in order to keep free space available and a constantly updated library I ordered an external hard drive to hold all of my pictures. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep ahead of the times unlike my parents. I'm currently in the process of trying to scan pages from their photo albums into my computer in hopes of preserving memories of our past forever. Because who wants to lose classic shots of us in Washington DC which, according to my wife was in Washington State until about 10 years ago. Apparently, someone in her family didn't finish a roll fast enough and the rest is photographic history.

Oh, and just for the record, South Fork is not located in Dallas. It's near Plano, in a community called Parker. So, pffft, I was half right.