DaveH Photography: 2017

Saturday, August 12, 2017

If You Think Google Photos AI is Magic

I have always wondered about the real advantage of Google Photos as a free storage strategy. Many people rave about searching all your photos with AI but I have always wondered.

Its easy to see what it pulls out for you and even that is sometimes pretty poor, like this search for snow.

Admittedly there was no snow in this period and it did find some snow photos later. So we can get an idea of how accurate it is in what it finds - in this case 18 out of 106 photos returned were errors!

The converse error is more difficult to evaluate - how many snow pictures did it not find and what if the one I really needed was one of these?

When I here people saying Google Photos is magic and the answer to photo storage - I am not convinced

Thursday, July 27, 2017

What were The Awesomeness Scores?

In my previous post on transforming photographs, I published four variations on this pretty photo of red tulips, musing that transformation should make them more attractive as Wall Art than this rather anonymous image.

Photographs like this are pretty good from a photographic point of view as the colour is nice, the bookha and depth of focus on the tulips is nice, there is a nice diagonal and there's a kind of a story in the height difference of the flowers - but isn't it like thousands of others online?

The images were processed using the Every Pixel Aesthetics Beta, an AI based program claimed to measure "the beauty of your picture" or it's "awesomeness", with the following results:

the original (A)

brightening it up (B)

dulling it down (C)

adding fantasy colors (D)

or turning up the heat (E)

That's rather interesting and seems to indicate a strong leaning towards brightness of the image. These few shots don't seem to discriminate between photograph like images and more graphic images which was something I'm interested in understanding.

One interesting check that happened by mistake was that I re ran the original image through the software almost 3 weeks later and found the score to be identical, to the decimal point! I will need to do more to confirm whether this is always the case, as it seems to me that you would expect small variations in a human like judgement process over such a period.

Email me with your thoughts!

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Free Poster Files to Try and Use

DaveH Posterart is giving away free 1MP copies of the image files from which it prints its poster. Here is the first one which you will find on their website right now.

DaveH Photoart gives you the right to do whatever you wish with files so long as its not commercial, While the file is too small to produce large posters you could use a small print to see how it actually fits with your decor. The small file would be fine to produce items such as greeting cards, cellar phone covers and coffee mugs.

Friday, July 7, 2017

TRANSFORMATIONS TO IMPROVE POSTERS

In my focus on transforming my photographs into poster art I frequently ask the question "will this appeal" to poster buyers. (A)

Photographs like this are pretty good from a photograph point of view as the colour is nice, the bookha and depth of focus on the tulips is nice, there is a nice diagonal and there's a kind of a story in the height difference of the flowers - but isn't it like thousands of others online?

So we set out to transform the photograph to make it more interesting, but the problem is there are so many potential ways of "improving" the photo - like brightening it up (B)

dulling it down (C)

adding fantasy colors (D)

or turning up the heat (E)

But which one is going to be the most popular? Something I across the other day, may be a useful tool in this kind of choice. EveryPixel is testing a "neural network" that judges the chance of an image "being awesome". I understand their raison d'être is to help users to weed out the useless images in stock photo sites.

This is how EveryPixel sees the first image in this post. Thats just to wet the appetite - I will be digging deeper next time but would appreciate your inputs, on anything about rating attractiveness, at anytime.

How would you rate the attractiveness of these 5 posters - email me using the reference letters.

Thursday, June 1, 2017

PHOTOS & THOUGHTS ON LIVING IN FRANCE - PART 2

I have recently come to France for an extended period and decided to regularly post some of the photos I take and those I process, with a few words of explanation.

Hopefully this will be interesting from various viewpoints and tell some kind of story - the photos will not necessarily be technically the best.

CLICK HERE TO GET TO MY OTHER THINGS ON THE INTERNET

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FIRST PART IN THIS SERIES

WEEK 27
Sunday 20 May 2018

Our first marché aux puces (Flea Market) of the year at Salornay sur Guye. In summer here are many opportunities for sellers to sell second hand goods from stalls in the fields. Each village has it's version of what the British would call a jumble sale and the Americans a boot sal

Saterday 19 May 2018

Atmosphere music

at the Marche du Curieux at the Chateau in Bissy sur Fley.

from info-chalon.com

WEEK 25
Tuesday 1 May 2018

Lillies of the Valley and Champagne on Mayday!

WEEK 24
Thursday 26 April 2018

The cherry trees have woken and the cherries are ripening

Thursday 26 April 2018

Lunch in the suddenly colourful garden

Monday 23 April 2018

Cutting the "grass" in the field

WEEK 23

Wednesday 18 April 2018

I have been busy trying to spread the word on Bob Chuffins art, so haven't been posting here - will change some day.

WEEK 22

Sunday 01 April 2018

The cows are out of the barns and the sun is shining

Wednesday 28 March 2018

The handle on the gate to Le Gros Chigy's Mayor's garden.

WEEK 21

Frday 23 March 2018

Get ready to see fire hydrants in Bourgogne - or rather their backdrops.

or even transformed versions thereof

Wednesday 21 March 2018

Two shots of the same house from yesterday and 27 May 2008

Tuesday 20 March 2018

Spring Equinox

WEEK 20

Friday 16 March 2018

Mirror at a blind corner intersection in Chigy

Thursday 15 March 2018

The Hanging Gardens of Chigy

Wednesday 14 March 2018

Light, dark, highlights, shadows, reflections, shapes and texture.

WEEK 19

Sunday 11 March 2018

Bread and Wine

Sunday, April 9, 2017

Novel Website Advertising

Sitting over a beer at a Paris Cafe I noticed this person taking lots of care while drawing on a poster, apparently oblivious to the Saterday afternoon crowds.

Every few minutes she would walk back and consider her art from a distance before continuing. Few of the people walking past even seemed to notice her and no one did more than offer a glance. Once her work was completed she walked off down the street.

Leaving her completed, essentially free, marketing campaign on the poster. I wonder if she got anyone other than me to visit?

To save you the time, the image below which is a copy of the home page of the site she is promoting.

Yes - that is our Paris sign writer at the top of the page!

Saturday, February 25, 2017

Special - Try Colour Matching Abstract Art Technology for Free

Trying the technology that produces Abstract Art that perfectly matches the colours of your room.

You have probably seen examples of this technology's output online, at places such as bit.ly/DaveH6, bit.ly/DaveHZA1, bit.ly/DaveH7 and bit.ly/DaveHZA8.

You can now try out this technology for free!

Email a photograph of the room to us and you will receive a 0.5 MP jpeg version of the art generated within 24 hours by email. Should this image look good we will work with you to develop it to better match your needs and supply you with a high res image in the introductory cost of R 180. You will then be able to print it in the format and size you need.