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henry joy – fake lomo
Originally uploaded by gilesbooth.

Okay I’ve almost got over the fact that my Lomo camera broke so quickly. Now I’ve realised I could have created similar photos rather more cheaply using a cruddy old Windows laptop and a copy of Photoshop Elements 2.0
You can download Fallout75′s PSD file which will even work in Photoshop Elements and allow you to do a pretty good fake Lomo picture, or you can try it manually.
Like most people suggest, I like to increase the saturation and contrast by about 20 – using adjustment layers is a good idea because that leaves your original photo in the bottom layer and it’s easy to tweak your settings later.
A bit of the cross-processed layer is essential – so make a ‘curves’ adjustment layer and click on the curve to make a gentle S shape.
But when it comes to making the edges dark, I prefer to use an elliptical rather than a rectangular marquee… I select the elliptical marquee tool, make the feather large (say 100 or 150 pixels), draw an ellipse that covers all but the corners, invert the selection, fill the corners with black in a new layer and change that new layer’s mode to ‘layer’.
There should also be some blurring round the edges as well I’d have thought. I’ll have to experiment with that some more and write up a proper guide of my own.

http://www.theregister.co.uk
/2005/12/20/google_earth/

How cool is that?!

Whilst we’re talking about GoogleEarth, I have to take issue with El Reg’s spooky pic of HAARP being blacked out.

You see, HAARP have a web site. And they have a web cam – looks a bit parky right now. If they have so much weather-altering spooky ultra-low-frequency skullduggery to hide, why do they have a web cam?

And I suppose they could be lying, but they also say where they are:
62 deg 23.5 min North Latitude
145 deg 8.8 min West Longitude

Which isn’t where the black rectangle is. It looks like this:

Which seems to chime with their own aerial photo.

Not like this:

Still begs the question why there’s a blacked-out patch in Alaska…

Had an idea to while away the long winter evenings…

Create a ficticious Flickr account under a pseudonym. Post some weirdly crap photos, really hideously photoshopped and pointless pictures of scanned objects. Maybe post some almost entirely red photos to ‘The Red Makes It’ pool. Post news agency images. Post scans of artwork to the ‘Scanned Objects’ pool. You get the idea?

Then use my pseudonym to start posting horribly critical comments on my own photos.

Trouble is, my pseudonym might start spilling over into Real Life. The voice in my head telling me I’m shit. Call that prose, cos I don’t? You’ll never get on that train – you know why? THE OTHER PASSENGERS DON’T WANT YOU ON IT.

Then my pseudonym would start making more contacts and friends on Flickr than me. Even some of my real friends might prefer his pictures and his taste in music.

And then I could delete my own profile for good.

Might order one of these posters for the office.

http://www.foundphotography.com
/PhotoThoughts/archives/
2005/10/medium_format_p.html
and you can see Found Photographer’s pictures on Flickr.