Friday, December 18, 2009

My Favorite Type of Art

Ever since I was in high school, I've always admired a type of hyperrealistic art which was often seen on album cover designs in the late seventies, and which often involved the use of an airbrush (although that wasn't always the case).

One illustrator who is particularly good at that style of art is Jerry LoFaro. Another similarly talented artist is Frank Ordaz. The two artists aren't identical in style. Jerry's images are sometimes less realistic in terms of subject matter. Frank's images are influenced by his Christianity, and by his previous employment with Industrial Light and Magic (where he worked on films such as ET).

Both artists are extremely talented. To be candid, I admire their artistic styles and skills a lot more than some self-proclaimed "fine artists". If I had to choose a style of art I'd love to be able to create myself, I suppose that this style would come closest to my own aspirations.

Interestingly, LoFaro now creates his art mostly with Photoshop (and possibly other digital software programs). The same could also be said for the vast majority of illustrators currently specializing in fantasy and science fiction imagery. It shows how far digital art has come in the past few years.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Mimic HDR with Topaz Adjust

HDR is an awesome technique which produces photos which capture a much wider dynamic range than standard photos, and which can in many cases look more like very expertly done paintings than photos. It does this by combining multiple photos which are taken sequentially with different exposure settings. (This is known as autobracketing.) So one photo might be exposed for the highlights and another for the shadows, and the HDR software would then combine the best of the two photos (or more than two) to create an image which looks better than either of them alone.

The main problem is that HDR really only works well when there aren't subjects which are moving substantially in-between the different shots. Some HDR software can help to "erase" such subjects to some extent, but HDR is still more of a technique for still life and landscape images than for action photos.

Fortunately, I've found a software program which seems to do a superb job of mimicking the look of HDR photos, without the need for multiple exposures. It's called Topaz Adjust. Needless to say, it's a real boon for action photographers, but also useful for older photos for which there are no bracketed exposures. Or for modern photographers who possess cameras which lack autobracketing capabilities. Here are some very impressive links regarding the program:

http://www.topazlabs.com/adjust/

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=567653

Topaz also makes some other cool programs, such as Simplify. Check it out!

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

So Much for Choice

Whenever one talks about the subject of abortion with someone who opposes the legal prohibition of that practice, one is likely to hear the "choice" buzzword. After all, it sounds so much better to say that one is in favor of "choice" than to say that one is in favor of allowing women to chop up their unborn children in utero, or to destroy them by scalding them in a saline solution, or to destroy their unborn progeny in other ways. The word "choice" is sometimes repeated obsessively, almost as if it's a magic mantra which is capable of answering any and all moral objections to the practice.

The trouble is that such people are incredibly inconsistent when it comes to their alleged allegiance to free choice. Apparently, women who want to kill their unborn children are the only ones who are entitled to have a voice in the abortion decision. Fathers of the unborn children slated for destruction? Not so much. Grandparents of those same unborn children? Again, not so much. The siblings of the unborn child? Again, not so much. People who might have benefited from the contributions of those children to society? Again, not so much. Apparently, working under the idea that "possession is nine tenths of the law" (which, if truly valid, would mean that kidnappers had more of a right to the kids they'd kidnapped than their natural parents, and thieves had more of a right to the products they'd stolen than the original owners of those products), our chief justices decided in their dubious substitute for genuine wisdom that the mere fact that the unborn child currently resides in the mother's womb is proof that her rights trump and virtually eliminate the rights of all others who might be affected by her decision. Not the least of whom is the unborn child himself or herself, who is given no choice whatsoever in the matter. Only the abortionist (also known as the "hired killer" to those of us who refuse to couch things in euphemisms) is granted rights comparable to those of feticidal pregnant mothers.

We're told that we must respect the woman's right to exercise her conscience as she sees fit. But when it comes to the question of the consciences of the voters who are being asked to fund the abortions of potentially hundreds of thousands or millions of unborn children, it would seem that they have no such rights. If they believe that being forced to fund abortions is tantamount to being forced to fund the murders of innocent human beings, that's just tough luck, according to the Democrats who seek to force the American people to accept a national health care plan which makes no exemptions for abortions. They seek to present the issue as one in which petty ideologues s are uncompassionately oblivious to the health care needs of their fellow Americans. But abortion is not "health care" at all. It cures no diseases or injuries, unless one idiotically considers pregnancy to be a disease (in which case one has to wonder why so many people go to fertility specialists in an effort to contract the disease). Abortion's sole purpose is to inflict lethal injuries on human beings who have never deliberately harmed anyone. Calling that "health care" because legal abortions happen to be performed by licensed physicians is like calling it health care when licensed physician dispense addictive drugs which are used solely for recreational purposes, not for reasons which can be justified by necessity.

The problem with using the word "choice" as if it's an automatic rebuttal to any and all objections to legal abortion is that it assumes that restrictions on people's choices are always evil. Based on such a premise, one might reasonably expect that "pro-choice" Democrats would be anarchists. But it's a demonstrable fact that they are not. Nor should they be. There are plenty of "choices" which should be opposed by the legal system, such as the choice to murder or enslave another human being or to steal that person's rightfully acquired possessions.

The extremely biased manner in which "pro-choice" people favor pregnant women's rights over the rights of just about everyone else involved and affected by the abortion decision (some of whom also happen to be women or females) demonstrates that their alleged allegiance to equal rights for all American citizens is a deadly illusion, promoted for propagandistic purposes, and not as a matter of principles.