The Frogman

One thing I should clarify, I don’t want to banish indigo as a color.

Fri, 01 May 2026 14:30:31 -0500

It’s time for the color indigo to get “Pluto’d” from the rainbow.
ROY-G-BIV.
You were taught it in grade school. You accepted it. You didn’t really understand what indigo was, but it was an easy mnemonic and Crayola was nice enough to create a crayon for it.
But then they realized it was just blue and they gave up on it.
Isaac Newton was one of the first people to figure out the visible spectrum. He was trying to differentiate colors. He had 6 candidates. But he had a religious obsession with the number 7, so he decided there would be blue and also blue but called something else.
When you look at an actual prism, the blue end of the rainbow gets a little murky.
You may notice it sort of ends at blue, but that could just be the angle of the light or the camera had trouble capturing it. Spectral violet is not easy to represent on screens. Almost all LEDs are unable to emit in the violet range. In fact, you may not have seen true violet indoors for years and not enough people seem upset about that. We’re just accepting purple as a substitute. Purple is like Kool-Aid and violet is grape juice.
Sorry, I digress.
But to the human eye, when viewing an IRL spectrum, violet is pretty distinct. It’s often a little easier to spot than blue in actual rainbows.
Indigo, not so much.
In fact, there is a much more distinct color visible that got completely left out of the rainbow. Do you see it next the green band?
Cyan!
When you look at a spectrum chart organized by wavelengths cyan stands out much more than indigo.
Indigo… needs to indi-GO.
It’s time.
I propose we give it a proper sendoff, though.
We will find a team of the world’s best painters, send them to Pluto, and have them cover every inch of the not-quite-a-planet with indigo.
You may ask, why wouldn’t we just teach astronauts to paint?
Because it will annoy Ben Affleck.
Indigo will be referred to as a dwarf color.
Pluto and indigo will be merged into Plutigo.
And they will commiserate together in the cosmos in their demoted states.
One problem yet to solve… creating a new mnemonic.
ROY-G-CBV just won’t do.
The Committee to Demote Indigo will be entertaining suggestions in the replies. I look forward to your creativity.

One thing I should clarify, I don’t want to banish indigo as a color.

This is a pedagogy issue.

The visual spectrum is technically infinite. But infinity is a difficult concept to teach to children. So we introduce them to the rainbow. And we try to separate the spectral bands to help them understand a few of the more distinct colors.

The problem is… teaching indigo as part of the rainbow is a bit like this…

It’s a tiny sliver between blue and violet and it leaves out the much broader and more distinct cyan band.

I did a little more research, and it seems Newton was trying to match up the spectrum to the Dorian musical scale. He thought light and sound were connected and had a lot of superstition about cosmic numerology and the harmony of seven. He originally divided colors into red, yellow, green, blue, and violet. To get to seven “notes” of color he added orange and split cyan and blue into blue and indigo.

Cyan was represented, but the meaning of color names drifted over time. So his blue was cyan and his indigo was blue.

Which I think strengthens my case that indigo, as a rainbow teaching tool, needs to go live with Pluto.

Someone guessed that this was Brad Pitt and it made me feel a bit old.

Fri, 01 May 2026 10:08:44 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

This reminds me of something…

Someone guessed that this was Brad Pitt and it made me feel a bit old.

The man doing the splits is the Muscles from Brussels. None other than Jean-Claude Van Damme.

The motherheckin’ TIME COP.

This man endangered his testicles on a regular basis just to give us some of the best splits in movie history.

Just tall enough to see the food.

Fri, 01 May 2026 09:55:05 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

Otis vs. Chicken
(Remastered in Super Duper High Definition)
I am thankful that I am far enough along in my grief that these Facebook reminders don’t upset me anymore. I miss Otis a lot, but his photos still bring me joy.

Just tall enough to see the food.

Too short to eat the food.

The tragedy of being a corgi.

Was the guilt trip too much?

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 14:28:42 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

Is it possible that the aesthetic decline of modern movies is greatly exaggerated?
Could it be that people are just sharing really shitty screencaps that are not representative of the actual movies?
Legally Blonde didn’t look like that.
Wicked didn’t look like that.
The image from X-Men Origins: Wolverine was actually pulled from an early trailer. And it also didn’t look like that.
That shot isn’t actually in the movie. But here is a screencap from the same scene, which did not look like that.
And lastly, Deadpool & Wolverine… did not look like that.
Every time I see one of these old vs new comparisons the images are brightened, darkened, cropped, desaturated, oversaturated.
I don’t know if this is being done intentionally, but it really makes it hard to have proper discourse when none of the examples are accurate.

Was the guilt trip too much?

Someone mentioned this is actually a West Highland cow.

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 10:00:25 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

Have you ever made a joke where the only one who laughs is yourself?
No one appreciated my 10 Commandment ox humor.
I just want to give this cutie a noogie.

Someone mentioned this is actually a West Highland cow.

But an ox is just a cow with a job.

So to commit to the bit, I have hired some biblically accurate oxen.

This guy is going to remodel my bathroom.

And I’m going to pay this fella to mow my lawn.

I’m just now realizing cows eat grass and the lawnmower might be redundant.

Naomi is an anti-vaxx dipshit and not a great person.

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 09:00:27 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

hempseeeeds:
sirfrogsworth:
People are roasting this person for asking a dumb question. But I think this is a valid query and the answer is actually pretty cool.
Unfortunately, you usually get a response like this.
This is accurate. But not very explanatory. “It’s how light works” just feels a bit condescending.
We need to Bill Nye this shit.
The first thing you need to know is that light competes with light. And the brightest light is always the victor.
And this phenomenon is not specific to cameras. Our eyeballs also play in the light vs light competition.
Every person with a mobile phone has already seen this effect. What happens when you look at your phone on a really sunny day?
You can’t see shit.
The sun is so overwhelmingly bright that it is reflecting light off the screen that is much brighter than the light being emitted from the phone.
However, newer phones are starting to have screens that are extremely bright. Up to 3000 nits in some cases. They are able to emit light brighter than the sun’s reflection.
What happens to our eyes when we go outside on a sunny day?
Our pupils get as small as they possibly can. Smaller pupils let in a lot less light. And when they are that contracted, we can only register really really bright things.
But if we are in the dark, our pupils get super big. They allow in a bunch more light. And after we adjust to the dark, we can see really really dim things.
If our pupils stayed contracted and we looked at a starry sky, it would be as blank as the phone screen on a sunny day. You can even test this with an eye patch. Go into a very bright room and keep one eye covered for about 20 minutes. Then go outside and look at the sky with each eye. One eye will see stars and the other will not.
And this should give you a clue as to how light pollution works. Light bounces off stuff in the atmosphere. And when a city shoots a bunch of light upward, that light reflects back down and is much brighter than the stars.
The brightest light always wins.
Most stars are just incredibly dim. You need to be in a very dark environment in order to see them shine. You need them bigass pupils fully activated. And cameras need either a very large aperture (lens pupils), or a very long time interval to see them.
The sun is so so soooo bright. Many thousands of times brighter than distant stars. And the moon is also very bright. Especially if you are on or near the surface. The properties of moon dust, the regolith, are a near perfect diffuse reflector. Which is why astronauts struggled to see and photograph stars during their moon excursions.
If they opened up their camera apertures and did a long exposure, they’d just get a blank white frame.
There are dozens of photos in which that exact thing happened.
This is exactly what happens if you accidentally shine a flashlight directly into your eyes.
But if we ever have a moon mission during lunar night, those astronauts are in for a starry treat. They won’t have any atmosphere to absorb starlight. So they’ll be able to see the Milky Way, in all its glory, with just their naked eyes.
also, apparently, when you are at the bottom of a deep well during daytime, and the sun is NOT directly in line-of-sight over it, you CAN see the Stars.
I really hope this doesn’t come off as embarrassing, but this is actually a myth.
But it is a really cool ancient myth from one of Aristotle’s essays written 2400 years ago.
And I think it is kind of neat that intellectuals from back then were trying to understand and figure out how light works. And it is impressive that a myth has lasted this long.
The problem is that the sky is a giant light source. A pretty bright one, in fact. People often forget that the sky is a giant hemisphere of scattered light because the sun is so overwhelming in comparison. It’s just so much dimmer than the sun, it gets outshone on sunny days.
But you can see the sky being a light source on snowy days. If you look at photos of snow, you’ll notice all the shadows are tinted blue.
That’s the sky getting into the nooks and crannies where the sun don’t shine.
So if you were deep in a well, you’d just see the blue sky.
HOWEVER, if you were to create a deep hole on the moon during lunar daytime, you could totally see stars. You’d be in a dark environment, your pupils would open up, there is no atmosphere to scatter light from the sun, and the glare of the surface wouldn’t compete with the starlight.
Aristotle was on to something, he just chose the wrong celestial body.

Naomi is an anti-vaxx dipshit and not a great person.

But I think this question was asked in good faith and is also a perfectly valid query.

Moon nomenclature can be a bit confusing. People will reference the far side of the Moon and the dark side of the Moon and conflate the two.

From our perspective, there is a near side and a far side. The “near side” is always facing Earth. And people sometimes think the side facing away from us is also the “dark” side of the Moon.

But the far side is not always in darkness. Only when we see a full moon is it dark.

Astronomers have tried to update the terminology to lunar day and lunar night, but that hasn’t really caught on as popular vernacular. It’s hard to undo Pink Floyd’s influence.

All of this is to say, it is easy for people to get confused about the far side of the Moon being illuminated by the Sun. It’s quite common to imagine it as in perpetual darkness.

But lunar night is not completely in a void of darkness. The light from the universe does very dimly illuminate the lunar backside. And while traditional optics aren’t easily able to see the Moon’s butt, NASA does have a special UV camera that surveys the lunar night.

It’s called the “Lyman-Alpha Mapping Project.”

They love their clever acronyms.

I’ve seen people also confused about the lighting in this photo.

The Sun is directly behind the Moon, yet the left side seems to have light wrapping around to the lunar night side.

And the reason for this makes my light-loving heart full. Because light is light and it works the same way in space as it does in my studio.

This phenomenon is called “Da Vinci glow” or earthshine. The Sun is bouncing light off the Earth, and it is reflecting onto the side of the Moon. And even though it is usually too dim to see without a very long exposure, this eclipse was able to reveal it.

Here is what earthshine looks like to human eyes adjusted for darkness.

And here is a brightened, long exposure example.

It’s literally just this on a cosmic scale…

There is also moonshine, which is more than just a legally dubious beverage.

You may have already seen an example.

The left is exposed as our eyeballs would see it. And the right is brightened with long exposure and a high gain setting.

The Sun is behind the Earth, but it is shining light off the Moon and giving very dim illumination to the night side.

The Moon is a big retroreflector. You have seen a different form of retroreflection when you are driving at night and the highway signs light up as you pass. Your headlights are shining directly back at you.

The special properties of Moon dust give it a near-perfect diffuse matte reflection. And when the Sun is in the right position, it acts similarly to our car headlights and the light shines back in our direction.

A studio reflector needs to be angled just right to shine the light exactly where you want it. The angle of the light is like a bumper shot in billiards.

The Moon scatters light in all directions like a typical matte surface.

However, a non-retroreflective matte reflection on a sphere typically has a bright center and then graduates into darkness around the edges. But the Moon’s super matte retroreflection maintains brightness across almost the entire surface area.

So even though the Moon is quite small compared to the Earth, its regolith creates a powerful reflection of the Sun’s light. You’d think a full moon would be twice as bright as a half moon, but this retroreflective surge makes the Moon roughly 10 times brighter.

If the Moon weren’t such a dusty bitch, moonlight would be dimmer and that nighttime photo of the Earth may not have been possible.

I love film.

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:23:12 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

Corksniffing losers have to sully an awesome new space photo just to erroneously claim film is inherently superior.
I think this version is the original color processed version, which is still not as saturated or contrasty.
That’s still an amazing result just from darkroom processing, but the deep blue version in the tweet definitely needed some help from Photoshop. And, personally, I think they overdid it.
The new photo was actually taken in darkness. It is a moonlit photo taken at extremely high gain (ISO 52,000). They did a long exposure to make it appear as if it were as bright as day. But without significant editing, that is going to make the colors less saturated and reduce the contrast.
The same thing would happen with film.
This is another version they did with a more accurate-to-eyeballs exposure.
Film is great.
Digital is great.
Space is great.

I love film.

But it was not a great medium for space.

Most astronauts are fighter pilots. And there are only a few who are genuine photographers. You can train a fighter pilot to competently use a camera, but becoming a good photographer during the days of film usually took years of practice.

During the Apollo days they would send them up there with the best camera available. Usually a 70mm Hasselblad medium format. But the astronauts proved that the only way to get amazing photos without being a photographer was mostly down to luck.

We see the best photos they took, but those only amount to a handful. And as you saw above, NASA often had to do a lot of darkroom magic to make them aesthetically pleasing.

If you look at the Apollo archives, you can find hundreds of photos like this.

I’m fond of this one.

There was no instant feedback. They didn’t have any instincts for settings or focus or composition. Most of the time they were just collecting visual data.

But every once in a while the stars aligned and they took absolute bangers.

That flag one is amazingly composed. But it took them a few tries.

Digital cameras give you a better baseline of quality. They can focus for you. They can meter for you. And they have high ISO gain that film could never touch.

They are… fighter pilot friendly.

With digital, they can look at the back screen and see if they bungled the exposure.

If they take a photo like this…

They get instant feedback and can be like, “Houston, where is exposure compensation?”

There is an undeniable ineffable quality that film sometimes delivers. But the medium is far less important than the skill of the person taking the photo.

Don Pettit is my favorite astronaut photographer. A true artist.

He really makes you forget about whether film is better than digital. He makes one remember that the person taking the photo is the paramount variable.

There is a great interview from Smarter Every Day where Don talks about how he captures amazing photos from space.

I felt silly for not knowing this, but it seems I am not alone. So perhaps you might find it as cool…

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 22:43:31 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

I had my most profound TIL moment yesterday.
I have officially lost 6 pounds so far.
And as I have been tracking my weight, I noticed that my progress did not correlate to my bowel movements.
And for some reason, I just always assumed that was how the “weight” exited my body.
No one told me this. I was not taught this in school. It just made logical sense to me. If you lose weight, you poop it out. Right?
So I decided to look it up.
Not only was I shocked that weight loss had nothing to do with dropping buddies off at the pool—the actual mechanism is just… bonkers.
If you don’t know already, I’d like you to take a guess.
Feel free to leave a reply before reading further.
Keep reading

I felt silly for not knowing this, but it seems I am not alone. So perhaps you might find it as cool as I did.

Also, I won diabetes.

This graph shows how long my glucose levels are within acceptable parameters. I needed to hit 70% and I overshot by a little bit.

My A1C is very close to being in the non-diabetic range.

5.7% and below is typically where blood sugar normies are.

And, as mentioned, I’m down about 6 pounds.

I have a long way to go, but I’m happy to be heading in the right direction.

I promised my dad before he passed that I would improve my health. I had to make a lot of health sacrifices to care for him and he wasn’t pleased about that.

My weight has become a mobility issue. It’s so hard to move. I am always out of breath. I am not flexible. Taking a shower feels like running a marathon.

Losing weight won’t cure my CFS or narcolepsy. But moving around less of me should use up less energy.

I know I won’t ever feel great, but maybe I can feel not terrible at some point.

Are you on bluesky? We’re trying to migrate sites, and rebuilding a follow list in an UI we aren’t familiar with is kind of a pain

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 13:47:50 -0500

I have reserved my profile and I hope to explore it more thoroughly at some point, but I have not had the energy to figure out who to follow and what I'd like to post there.

I'm probably going to stick mainly to Tumblr until it implodes or the heat death of the universe. Whichever comes first.

But you can follow me and I'm sure I will start posting there eventually.

The Frogman (@thefrogman.bsky.social)

My difficult health recovery has prevented me from doing any real photography since last April. But…

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 17:46:06 -0600

sirfrogsworth:

This is the most photogenic chair in existence.
Taken this morning out my dirty window with a smartphone.

My difficult health recovery has prevented me from doing any real photography since last April. But this damned red chair that I couldn’t drag all the way to the trash pickup has been a weird muse. It is now a sort of mascot for my front yard and a frequent guest in my photos.

I took this picture out of a dirty window with my 6 year old smartphone, but with a tiny bit of Photoshop magic, I was able to make it seem like I used my big boy camera.

Most smartphones have a RAW mode these days. And I suspect people don’t use this mode because the files look boring and flat initially. But you need to think of it as capturing data rather than a finished photo. Interchangeable lens cameras have entire color science departments dedicated to making the RAW files look good. They could just output the flat, low contrast result like video cameras do, but I think that might be discouraging to beginners.

This is what “raw” professional video footage looks like without any grading.

But RAW files from stills cameras look almost fully cooked from the beginning. I’m guessing they give you a head start to save time and figure you can undo their initial grade in editing.

All that is to say, smartphone RAW photos are often ugly. They are meant to be. Apple and Google are much more invested in doing all of the editing work for you. With RAW, you have to visualize what you can do with the data and process them in something like Lightroom. However, if you put in the effort, you can often get better results than letting the phone do its computational magic.

I’ve trained in photo editing and manipulation for longer than I’ve been a photographer. Over two decades now. I started on Photoshop 5.0 which was released in 1998.

Like every skill, I kinda sucked at first. I made some embarrassing things.

I would practice by Photoshopping my friend’s MySpace photos.

I started getting into Photoshop comedy. That involved a lot of cats and memes.

And my skills started getting better.

This parody of 300 with squirrels was the first time I thought, “I might be good at this.”

No one noticed that I turned the zeros into acorns in the logo, but I was proud of that.

I created a popular meme “Babies with Laser Eyes.”

And then I had my first mega viral Photoshop creation.

Eventually photography came into the picture and I was able to combine my skills. I learned professional retouching.

And then the ultimate test of all my skills was learning photo restoration. It is constant problem solving, R&D, hand coloring, and hours and hours of removing specks of dust from 50 year old photos.

I love photography and editing equally. And photo editing is nice because I can do it lying down in my bed if I need to. So if I am not physically able to do proper photography, I still have a related creative outlet. I’ve enjoyed doing photo restoration work a great deal. I get to restore people’s cherished memories and that feels very nice.

That said, I’ve felt more anxious about posting my more edit-heavy art. People are quick to make accusations of AI. And a lot of photographers see editing as a cheat. If you don’t capture the image “in camera,” it is seen as less authentic. This is despite the fact that my image editing workflow is much more complicated, required much more training, and takes much longer than practical photography.

I don’t claim my images aren’t edited. Every professional-level photographer does some editing on every photo. Though some of my least edited photos get accused of being photoshopped, or now, AI.

I don’t understand the shame and stigma that some people attach to photo editing. To me, it is as valid an art form as painting or drawing. And in most cases, I do actually have the photography skills to achieve a similar result using practical methods, but I have to choose which approach will use the least amount of energy due to my CFS.

I got up the other morning and saw a spooky fog. The sun was barely awake and the light was still quite dim. When I looked out my front window, it looked very much like what the photo depicted.

My first instinct was to grab my proper camera and head outside to take photos. But I am at a very physically taxing stage of my recovery and I have trouble standing for more than a few minutes at a time. I gave up on the idea and returned to my sedentary state.

But then I remembered the smartphone photo I took when it snowed.

People really liked this photo and didn’t seem to care that it was taken through my window with a phone. So I figured I’d capture the foggy version and it would be a cool sequel.

Unfortunately, 30 minutes had passed and the dim blue light had become much brighter. But I figured I could recreate what I saw earlier with my editing skills.

And I think it was successful.

If I had the energy, I’m confident I could have captured an equally cool image “in camera.” But sometimes it is cathartic to flex my editing muscles when practical methods are not possible.

The Red Chair Collection keeps growing.

(The blue alien Froggie was from Halloween.)

I am working very hard to get better. And I have made tremendous progress over the past year. But the finish line still eludes me. It is closer than ever but still seems out of reach.

I am an artist through-and-through, and it is difficult to have limited creative output. I miss photography very much. But I am glad I still have photo editing when my concentration is cooperating.

If you are curious how the finish line camera works, I wrote a cool post explaining it.

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 17:20:40 -0600

sirfrogsworth:

Via NPR…
———————-
LAGO DI TESERO, Italy — A local dog made a bid for Olympic glory Wednesday morning, breaking out of his doghouse and onto the homestretch of the cross-country ski course in the middle of a race.
Two-year-old Nazgul was quickly collared by race officials and returned unharmed to his home at a nearby bed-and-breakfast, but not before his genial presence lit up television sets and social media channels around the world — even if he perplexed some of the athletes who encountered him.
“I was like, ‘Am I hallucinating?” said Tena Hadzic, a 21-year-old Croatian skier who encountered the dog on her trip down the homestretch.
But his owners connected with NPR for a brief interview while they were driving to watch an Olympic biathlon race at another venue.
“He was crying this morning more than normal because he was seeing us leaving — and I think he just wanted to follow us,” said the owner, “He always looks for people.”
Nazgul is a “stubborn, but very sweet” Czechoslovakian wolfdog, the owner said.
Race organizers did not make Nazgul available for questions after his capture.
——————-
My favorite part was showing the Omega photo finish.

If you are curious how the finish line camera works, I wrote a cool post explaining it.

I’m going through my old macro photos and re-stacking them. This one was a pleasant surprise when I…

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 17:15:10 -0600

sirfrogsworth:

Sanford King Size Permanent Marker
This is a 52 slice focus stack of the best smelling markers ever made.
“Froggie, did you mean to say best selling?”
Umm… sure.
Sadly, the classic striped design was abandoned and you can only buy these as a Sharpie.

I’m going through my old macro photos and re-stacking them. This one was a pleasant surprise when I first took it. I had no idea markers were hairy.

I’ve been following your blog for… oh god maybe a decade now? It’s been so cool to see your photography grow. I’d like to try my hand at doing miniature and diorama photography. Your posts about photography are always so insightful, I was wondering if you had any advice for someone just getting started. I have a lightbox from Amazon, a phone stand, and my phone. Is there anything big I should know about taking photos of very small things? What mistakes do people usually make when they’re taking pictures of very small things? Any advice would be absolutely amazing. (Also thank you for your advice on ring lights and naughty photos – it definitely helped my self-esteem to know it was the lighting that was weird and unseemingly, not my bits)

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 18:55:13 -0600

There are generally three ways people go about photographing miniatures and dioramas.

Documentary, professional product photos, and cinematic storytelling.

So if you are just trying to get high quality documentation of your miniature stuff, then something like a light box would be fine. You just want to make sure you get soft, even light and good coverage of your subject. Think Amazon product photos.

I wrote a post about how to document 3D museum objects that covers the basics.

Post by @sirfrogsworth · 3 videos

You can elevate that by doing a more professional still life/product photography workflow.

[[MORE]]

I just recently described my workflow for that type of photo.

Post by @sirfrogsworth · 12 images

And the last style is a more cinematic approach where you photograph your subjects like an actual miniature scene in a movie.

My favorite cinematic toy photographer is Sgt. Bananas (Johnny Wu).

This style of toy photography requires smaller and more precise lighting. You have to remember that a small light for a human is a big light for a toy. And dramatic falloff is determined by distance.

So if you want to get these moody noir shots with gradient falloff, you need to get your lighting very close.

Sgt. Bananas has some videos he did with Tested where he shows off some of his lighting techniques.

He uses small LED lights to create his cinematic style.

If I were putting together a kit I would get a couple of these cube lights.

Amazon.com : SmallRig RM01 Mini LED Video Light Waterproof Portable Lighting Kit with 8 Color Filters, Dimmable Fill Photography Light 5600K

They sell a 3 pack kit with a bunch of helpful accessories.

I would also get an RGB pocket video light.

Amazon.com

This is like a softbox for toy sized stuff. The light can stand up on its side so you can get very creative with where you place it. You can make it a window light or a backlight. And it does colors so you can create fun effects with that.

And then I'd probably get one of these LED panel lights so I can get really soft light but still move it in very close to the subjects. This can even work as a background.

Amazon.com : RALENO 19.5W LED Video Soft Light Panel, 650Lux/m Camera Panel Light Built-in 8000mAh Battery, CRI>95 2500-6500K Photography St

And you could put a shoot-through white umbrella in front of it if you want extra super duper soft light.

Again, these are representative examples. I am not saying you need to get the exact items. Always look for deals, read reviews, and do your research.

Additional tips for photographing small things...

Work in a very dark space. Small lights are not very powerful and they do not compete well with ambient light. You will also need to take longer exposures, which will intensify any ambient light. So block out the windows, close the door, and turn off any lights that aren't contributing to your photo.

You said you have a phone stand, which is good. If it doesn't let you play with angles and heights, you might want to get a cheap tripod with a ball head. You need to make sure your phone doesn't move when taking photos. If you notice your images are a bit blurry, you may need to set a timer so you don't shake the phone.

If your phone allows, lock your ISO to its lowest setting for cleaner photos. Since you are on a stand, you can use a long shutter speed without any issues. If it takes 5 seconds to take a photo, so be it. Keeping that ISO low will help your phone photos look like they were taken with a big camera.

Since you are using your phone and it has a smaller sensor, you will have decent depth of field. But even so, close-up photos of small things are going to shrink your depth of field considerably. Background blur can be a good thing, but if you have a deeper diorama, you may struggle to get everything in focus. For an interchangeable lens camera, I'd normally suggest learning how to focus stack. This is where you take the same picture with multiple focus points. So you could do a close focus, medium focus, and deep focus and then combine them in Photoshop. However, there are smartphone apps that allow you to bracket your focus as well. There is one called Open Camera. That is something to look into. I have not tried it myself, but if you search for "smartphone focus stack" you will probably find guides to help you. I wouldn't worry about this initially, but if you run into this issue in the future, this is how you'd address it.

Put some thought into your background. Do you just want it bright white? Dark gray? Black? Do you want a gradient ball like in my photos? One popular method is to actually put a screen behind your scene and use an image of a sky or cityscape. Putting effort into the background is often ignored and one of the best ways to get better photos.

One of the most powerful creative tools you can use on miniature photography is perspective. If you get your camera super close, you can exaggerate the size of your toys. If you use a farther perspective and zoom in, you can enlarge background elements.

I wrote a big post about perspective. All of the examples are of big stuff, but the same principles apply.

Reblog by @thefrogman · 13 images

All of that holds true, but on a much smaller scale. 5 inches might be a close perspective and 2 feet might be a far one.

And my last tip, look at other photos. Find people who do miniature photography and figure out what you like. Don't just start taking photos. Plan them. Find references and do sketches and figure out how you want things to look. You may not be able to duplicate what you've imagined perfectly, but having a well thought out concept will always get you better results.

Hopefully this was helpful. I wish you luck on your miniature endeavors.

I am referencing some deep Frogman lore in this one.

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 15:18:56 -0600

sirfrogsworth:

You know how sometimes you don’t know you have a thing until you see the thing?
I’ve been watching Elementary and then I saw Lucy Liu in a teeny tiny tie.
I think a new thing has been unlocked in my brain.
Now I’m wondering if my thing is just anyone I find attractive in comically small ties or if this only applies to Lucy Liu donning itsy bitsy neckwear.
Further research of this new thing seems warranted.

I am referencing some deep Frogman lore in this one.

I am starting to cook up a post about how HDR actually works, but it may take me a while.

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 18:44:58 -0600

sirfrogsworth:

Why displays are best viewed in a dim environment.
I saw this question on Reddit and it reminded me of the discourse of why movies and TV shows seem too dark.
The answer to this question is the same answer as to why it is best to view cinematic content in a darkened environment.
Ambient light changes your contrast ratio. If there is light hitting your screen, it will change how dark your screen can get.
I’ve prepared a rough demonstration to help illustrate the problem.
I took a photo of my TV in the dark and then with the overhead light turned on.
Photoshop measured the brightness of the screen in the dark at 4%.
It measured the screen with the light on at 25%.
That is over 6 times brighter. And now nothing my screen displays can be darker than that.
Keep reading

I am starting to cook up a post about how HDR actually works, but it may take me a while.

But if I can give a quick explanation as to how it relates to this post…

A lot of people have a mental model of HDR where it takes the SDR contrast ratio and does this…

But that is a bad way to think about it.

The dynamic range of SDR is fairly similar to HDR most of the time. The perceptual “anchor white” for SDR was graded at around 100 nits of brightness and HDR is usually double that at ~200 nits.

But there are screens that can emit over 1000 nits. Why is most content still squished into that 200 nit box?

The first 200 nits usually represent ambient, diffused, and diffuse reflected light.

Ambient light is just the baseline amount of light occupying the room.

Diffused light (lamp shade, frosted fixtures, floor lamp bouncing off the ceiling) takes the light source, softens it, and sends it in every direction.

And diffuse reflected light is how we see most objects. Light hits an apple, the apple absorbs all colors except red, red light reflects into our eyeballs, we see a red apple.

Think of this as seeing the *effects* of light, rather than the original light source.

Most of the day-to-day visual data we absorb is in this realm. We don’t spend a lot of time staring at the sun unless we are the president.

Anything above 200 nits usually represents emissive light (light bulbs, the sun, lasers) or specular reflected light, a.k.a “specular highlights.” A specular reflection is an image of a light source reflected by a glossy or mirrored object.

A mirrored surface almost perfectly recreates the image and intensity of the original emissive light source.

But an apple can have a specular highlight as well. The amount of gloss the surface has will determine if that highlight feels emissive or not. It would need to be a very shiny apple.

And if there is a very bright diffused light source, the color grade might push that beyond the 200 nit white point for the scene.

When you look at this SDR image of a white piece of paper, its measured brightness is almost identical to the bright window light.

In reality, the window light is much brighter than the paper.

If this scene had a bright light bulb in it, the paper would measure as the same brightness in SDR.

But you’ve looked at a light bulb before. You have felt its intensity overwhelming your vision.

We perceive emissive light sources differently. It is a completely unique experience compared to looking at a bright sheet of paper.

But SDR does not have the ability to represent very bright things faithfully. The best photographers and filmmakers can do is let emissive light sources overexpose so they have a glowing effect. They might even add a diffusion filter to make them more glowy.

What HDR brings to the table is the ability to give you a sense of emissive light versus ambient and diffused sources.

The SDR contrast ratio is (roughly) the same and is utilized the majority of the time, but HDR can punch through the ceiling.

So depictions of light bulbs, headlights, flashlights, neon signs, the sun, bright specular highlights, lightsabers, lasers, neon lights… they will all *feel* like emissive light sources rather than a bright sheet of paper.

In my graphic, you’ll see that the emissive circles get smaller and brighter.

When a bright light source is spread out over a larger surface area, it feels less intense. The sum total of light is spread out over a larger area. When it is smaller and more concentrated, it feels more intense.

Think of shining a flashlight on your hand versus shining it against the wall.

Your TV works the same way as the flashlight. It has a limited power supply. It can’t blast ‘1000 nits’ across the entire screen at once, but it can channel that energy into a small 10% window.

This is why HDR doesn’t sear your eyeballs. The brightest depictions of emissive light sources are also the smallest. The feel more intense without blinding you.

When you watch a lightsaber battle and you try to determine how much of the screen the lightsabers occupy, it is usually only a few percent. But with HDR, you can get that feeling of looking at an actual light source instead of a bright white piece of paper.

So the mental model for HDR should be more like “SDR + emissive light.”

With 1000+ nit HDR displays, you can use this extra brightness in two ways.

If you watch in a darkened room, you can get that perception of emissive light sources.

In a bright room, you can shift the contrast ratio to match the ambient light. As you increase the brightness setting, your sense of emissive light sources will be sacrificed. And if you have an OLED, you will not get super inky blacks.

The super bright display gives more headroom where you can preserve that SDR-like contrast ratio. You can get a very nice, visually legible picture in a very bright room, but the lightsabers will look as they did in SDR.

A Quick Froggie Tangent

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 14:15:21 -0600

sirfrogsworth:

artisticmedley:
sirfrogsworth:
2013 vs 2025
Facebook reminded me of this self portrait I took in 2013. I had been learning photography for about 6 months at that point.
I just put a flash on a stand with a cheap umbrella in front and hoped for the best.
The most recent portraits I’ve taken were of Katrina in 2025.
Hopefully, there are signs of improvement over 12 years.
As someone who does only a very small amount of (macro) photography and has only recently developed a slightly better eye for lighting (85% through finding Sir Frogsworth!), i’d like to try and run through some of the things i see here. Mostly it’s just an exercise for me, though it has raised a couple small questions (if you’re up for answering them, no worries if not!)
Keep reading
That is solid analysis. Well done!
I will try to answer your questions and expand on your observations.
Reflections in glasses.
Reflections on glasses have a few different solutions. For professional shoots, they might actually order frames without lenses. But often you can just play with angles to reduce or eliminate the glare. Even just raising the light a few inches and angling it down can do the trick. If you cannot find a way to avoid the glare, you can move the light as close as possible and it will reduce the intensity of the reflection. You can also take a photo with and without the glasses and Photoshop the glare away with a simple composite.
Whenever reflections are mentioned someone always suggests polarization, but that is a high effort solution that is rarely worth it and can cause unwanted visual side effects.
Personally, I like to have a little glare, but not distractingly so.
I think when glasses look perfectly transparent, it looks a tad fake. It looks like they took the lenses out. I like that tiny visual cue that there is glass in glasses. So I put the light close to reduce glare intensity and make sure the reflection of the light doesn’t cover the iris.
It’s subtle, but I feel it makes the glasses feel more glasses-y.
In any case, dealing with reflections is mostly playing with heights, angles, and distance through trial and error. Once you get skill and experience, the process goes much faster, but with experimentation, anyone can figure it out.
Shadow detail.
The bear hat has less detail for the same reason black kitties turn into voids in photos.
Keep reading

A Quick Froggie Tangent

I feel like the fact that none of us have seen violet for over a decade should be a bigger deal.

Most LEDs are “blue pump” and the tiny sliver of violet in the visible light spectrum does not get emitted. The spectrum starts around 380nm–400nm (violet), but blue pump LEDs start at 450nm. So there is virtually zero energy in the 380nm to 430nm range.

Which means white light hitting a violet object cannot reflect that color into our eyeballs. We can see purple because it is a mixture of red and blue. But true spectral violet can only be seen in sunlight, under incandescents, or under rare, expensive “violet pump” LED lights.

All of our screens are blue pump, so this affects digital art and photography as well.

We probably don’t notice because purple is perceptually very close and there aren’t many objects that reflect spectral violet light.

But I still feel weird about it, ya know?

The Devil Wears Prada 2 had skin tones in the 50-60% brightness range.

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 20:49:33 -0600

sirfrogsworth:

So, when I first started hearing complaints about things being too dark, I thought people meant, like… Game of Thrones “The Long Night.”
But now I am really worried people just want everything to be AS BRIGHT AS POSSIBLE.
I suspect part of the issue is viewing environment. If you are in a bright room, brighter exposures have better legibility. But you sacrifice dynamic range, contrast, and dimensionality.
Basically, everything would look like a YouTube video.
Should Star Wars look like this?
Should I edit my photos like this?
Keep reading

The Devil Wears Prada 2 had skin tones in the 50-60% brightness range.

I sampled some of the most well-known movies of the past and they also exposed skin tones in that same range.

In the following examples, I increased the brightness of the skin tones by the same amount as the Reddit post.

Movies have had roughly the same general exposure for quite some time. In that sense, they have not gotten darker.

If I showed you these images without context, you might conclude that old movies were super dark. But that is just your fuzzy human perception liking the brighter thing next to the darker thing. If you were to watch these movies in a theater or on a big TV in your darkened living room, you’d perceive them all as properly exposed.

There are genuine issues with modern movie visuals. And dark, illegible scenes are definitely on that list. But that is an artistic choice and a fad which I feel is fading. Professional filmmakers know how to set their exposure levels properly. And I always get a little peeved when people erroneously accuse artists of incompetence.

I’m worried the discourse is focusing so much on non-problems that the larger systemic issues with filmmaking get dismissed and ignored. But sometimes debunking an issue like this is a good educational opportunity. And I am able to steer the discourse a little bit more toward said systemic problems.

Okay, I just screamed into the void for 10 minutes.

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 19:26:23 -0600

thefrogman:

sirfrogsworth:
This is another cherry-picked, garbage comparison.
They just took bright exposures from the old movie and compared them to darker exposures from the new movie. And then they heavily cropped the compositions, removed all context from the scene (time of day, light sources, desired mood) and declared the new movie looks terrible—despite only a minute of footage existing.
These examples are in completely different environments.
They could have at least matched scene for scene.
Wait a goddamn second…
Something is awry.
THE TWEET IS FULL OF LIES.
Someone cranked up the exposure of the original movie to 11.
As if someone was trying to create nostalgia rage bait for internet points.
They were correct about one thing, exposure is an artistic choice. A lot of photographers fall into the trap of “correct exposure.” You should always trust your eyes over a light meter. And a brighter exposure is not always better.
Contrast is a ratio, not an absolute.
There is a concept called “scene white.” Your eyes adjust to different exposure levels and the brightest white in the scene is your brain’s reference for contrast. And because contrast is a ratio and not absolute, your eyes will adjust to the exposure of the scene.
You can have two scenes with very different white levels, but the amount of perceptual contrast could be very similar. Your brain goes, “what is the brightest thing and what is the darkest thing?” If the difference is small, you will perceive low contrast. If the difference is vast, you will perceive high contrast.
This looks like a bright exposure on its own.
.
.
.
.

And so does this.
The “scene white” in the old movie was actually a *tad* brighter. But your eyes adjust and perceive them both as bright.
And if you put them side by side, the brightest white wins and your perception is skewed. If you compare two different compositions with different scene white levels, your eye is going to gravitate to the brighter exposure. Even though, in isolation, you may not notice how much brighter one scene is over the other.
The original movie had plenty of darker exposures with a lower white ceiling.
And not every frame of the old movie was a visual spectacle.
It’s actually a bad thing if you make every scene a spectacle. The visuals need to serve the story and if they are constantly overwhelming, that can actually hurt the immersion.
If I cherry pick, I can make the old movie look bad and the new movie look great.
Boy, the old movie sure looked bland.
But look at how much depth the new movie has!
Look at this squished subject composition in the old movie.
The new movie has much more balance and symmetry.
Visual spectacle should be used dynamically—just like music. If music doesn’t have quiet parts, the loud parts will have less impact. And sometimes the quiet parts allow you to hear important detail that the loud parts obscure.
The trailer had several spectacle moments.
That looks great!
I have no idea if the new movie looks better or worse. I literally do not have enough information.
But if we’re going to edit images for rage bait…
LOOK AT HOW LIFELESS THE ORIGINAL WAS!
The movie needs to be judged holistically. You can’t take extreme crops of single frames, edit them to be 200% brighter, and compare them to make any kind of determination.
All they proved is that when people see brighter exposures next to darker exposures, their brain goes, “Ooooh, that one is brighter! I like bright things!”
I think as a collective, we all realize there is an issue with modern movie aesthetics.
But the discourse has become so broken.
“Old vs New” is a proven viral formula to get clicks. Dubious content creators are starting to capitalize on it with misinformation. And now I guess they are altering images to get people more upset.
Two can play at that game…
Hot take! Dial of Destiny looked WAY BETTER than Raiders.
OLD MOVIES SUCK!
Set Photoshop to NUCLEAR EXPOSURE and watch the likes roll in!
Where did this aesthetic discourse begin?
I suspect this is patient zero…
Keep reading

Okay, I just screamed into the void for 10 minutes.

Let’s break this down.

This… is a production still.

This is not in the movie. This is on-set photography done to advertise the movie.

This is an actual scene in the movie where she is wearing that outfit.

The lighting environment is the same. This is how the above would have looked, IF it were actually in the movie. It is a much darker exposure.

Also, I found this composition in the old movie.

Compared to the new movie.

The exposure, time of day, and contrast ratios are nearly identical.

I’d also like to note they cropped the composition in the new movie. Which would inform the viewer that the scene is taking place during twilight. Whereas the other scene took place on a sunny morning.

This is exactly why you need to judge movies holistically. You cannot compare static images from random scenes with completely different lighting environments.

I think as a collective, we all realize there is an issue with modern movie aesthetics.

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:39:37 -0600

sirfrogsworth:

This is another cherry-picked, garbage comparison.
They just took bright exposures from the old movie and compared them to darker exposures from the new movie. And then they heavily cropped the compositions, removed all context from the scene (time of day, light sources, desired mood) and declared the new movie looks terrible—despite only a minute of footage existing.
These examples are in completely different environments.
They could have at least matched scene for scene.
Wait a goddamn second…
Something is awry.
THE TWEET IS FULL OF LIES.
Someone cranked up the exposure of the original movie to 11.
As if someone was trying to create nostalgia rage bait for internet points.
They were correct about one thing, exposure is an artistic choice. A lot of photographers fall into the trap of “correct exposure.” You should always trust your eyes over a light meter. And a brighter exposure is not always better.
Contrast is a ratio, not an absolute.
There is a concept called “scene white.” Your eyes adjust to different exposure levels and the brightest white in the scene is your brain’s reference for contrast. And because contrast is a ratio and not absolute, your eyes will adjust to the exposure of the scene.
You can have two scenes with very different white levels, but the amount of perceptual contrast could be very similar. Your brain goes, “what is the brightest thing and what is the darkest thing?” If the difference is small, you will perceive low contrast. If the difference is vast, you will perceive high contrast.
This looks like a bright exposure on its own.
.
.
.
.

And so does this.
The “scene white” in the old movie was actually a *tad* brighter. But your eyes adjust and perceive them both as bright.
And if you put them side by side, the brightest white wins and your perception is skewed. If you compare two different compositions with different scene white levels, your eye is going to gravitate to the brighter exposure. Even though, in isolation, you may not notice how much brighter one scene is over the other.
The original movie had plenty of darker exposures with a lower white ceiling.
And not every frame of the old movie was a visual spectacle.
It’s actually a bad thing if you make every scene a spectacle. The visuals need to serve the story and if they are constantly overwhelming, that can actually hurt the immersion.
If I cherry pick, I can make the old movie look bad and the new movie look great.
Boy, the old movie sure looked bland.
But look at how much depth the new movie has!
Look at this squished subject composition in the old movie.
The new movie has much more balance and symmetry.
Visual spectacle should be used dynamically—just like music. If music doesn’t have quiet parts, the loud parts will have less impact. And sometimes the quiet parts allow you to hear important detail that the loud parts obscure.
The trailer had several spectacle moments.
That looks great!
I have no idea if the new movie looks better or worse. I literally do not have enough information.
But if we’re going to edit images for rage bait…
LOOK AT HOW LIFELESS THE ORIGINAL WAS!
The movie needs to be judged holistically. You can’t take extreme crops of single frames, edit them to be 200% brighter, and compare them to make any kind of determination.
All they proved is that when people see brighter exposures next to darker exposures, their brain goes, “Ooooh, that one is brighter! I like bright things!”

I think as a collective, we all realize there is an issue with modern movie aesthetics.

But the discourse has become so broken.

“Old vs New” is a proven viral formula to get clicks. Dubious content creators are starting to capitalize on it with misinformation. And now I guess they are altering images to get people more upset.

Two can play at that game…

Hot take! Dial of Destiny looked WAY BETTER than Raiders.

OLD MOVIES SUCK!

Set Photoshop to NUCLEAR EXPOSURE and watch the likes roll in!

Where did this aesthetic discourse begin?

I suspect this is patient zero…

Patrick has experience with visual authorship. He knows the technical aspects of creating images fairly well. And so that gives him a sort of “expert” authority.

Aside from his conflating high dynamic range with low contrast…

…his technical arguments are usually accurate.

(High dynamic range is just a capture technique and it does not prevent high contrast in any way. Contrast is a separate artistic choice.)

He has practical experience crafting images, which I do appreciate, and that helps his credibility as a visual critic. I understand why people like him and enjoy his explanations.

But the bulk of his content has a very “mean girl” vibe. Everything made during his formative years was beautiful and if anything new looks good, it is an exception to the rule. A fluke. Or they “used the ancient ways” to his personal approval.

I feel like his ratio of “celebrating artistic success” to “denigrating artistic failure” skews hard towards the cynical. Probably because negativity is more successful on social media.

And considering he spends so much time maligning the work of professional artists, I’m hoping it is fair game to offer some useful feedback about his video aesthetics. I’m going to summon my mean girl energy.

His lighting is excellent and dimensional. He makes great use of warm and cool colors. But he should read my wonderful essay on perspective to learn how to find a flattering camera distance to suit his head shape.

His current close perspective makes him look a bit like Dr. Doofenshmirtz’s best and only friend, Balloony.

He has a lovely head and he should accentuate that.

I might give too many compliments to be a mean girl.

Patrick has infected so many people with his nostalgic cherry picking that they are convinced *nothing* modern looks good. Nearly every viral video essay on film aesthetics has copy/paste opinions originating from him. Often using much of the same language.

If it doesn’t look like an 80s Spielberg movie, it is garbage.

He has isolated all of these tiny variables and diagnosed all modern filmmaking with a case of “doing it wrong.” Everyone forgot the old ways, despite those old ways being used on the regular.

No modern aesthetics are allowed. No one can create a new visual style. No one can learn from the past and evolve those methods. And you better shoot on film or make digital look like film, or else it won’t qualify as looking like a “movie” anymore.

I understand why people resonate nostalgically with the way movies used to look. I had a similar issue with music. I was a teenager when alternative rock became popular. And I got stuck with that music. For years, even after the music world had moved on, it was all I would listen to. I felt disconnected and left behind when trying to sample newer music. I was stubborn and set in my ways. I dismissed new stuff out of hand. And I did not put in the effort to find newer music that I enjoyed.

I was not leaving space for new things. I just wanted everything to sound like Pearl Jam again. That isn’t to say there wasn’t a lot of crappy new music, but I don’t think it is fair to dismiss new art entirely because it doesn’t serve my nostalgia.

It is my opinion that Patrick has severely misdiagnosed the issue. He is so caught up in the tools of filmmaking past that he largely ignores the systems of filmmaking present.

The best looking mainstream movies are made by people like Steven Spielberg, Chloé Zhao, Quentin Tarantino, Jordan Peele, Christopher Nolan, James Cameron, Greta Gerwig, Park Chan-wook, Denis Villeneuve, Ryan Coogler, etc.

Do you see the pattern? (Other than an abundance of men.)

These are auteur directors with a blank check and plenty of artistic freedom.

And almost all of them use classic filmmaking techniques despite the claim that those have all been forgotten.

It’s almost as if hard light compositions take more time and planning and these directors are given the resources to more easily employ these “forgotten” tools.

These directors are not subject to the highly commodified, risk-averse, hyper-efficient filmmaking processes. Their elite status lets them bypass all of the systemic issues of modern filmmaking. They are allowed to make original stories. And when they do adapt an established intellectual property, they are passionate about the material and given free rein to manifest their artistic vision.

But all of the discourse is like…

The backgrounds are too blurry!

NO MORE BLURRY BACKGROUNDS!

Deep focus should fix things!

CLEANLINESS!

That Spider-Menace is too clean!

And we need to stop whatever “Netflix lighting” is.

Look, I’m a visual author.

My whole life is dedicated to making beautiful images and helping others do the same.

I love lighting sooo much.

Like, you should worry about how much I think about lighting.

But if I ever prioritize what movies I watch based on how they are lit, please smack me.

I mean, can I get some modern movies that don’t have “Netflix stories”?

Why does everything need to look like a cinematic masterpiece?

Why are people fixating on blurry backgrounds instead of the writing and performances and narrative immersion?

People keep referencing the past for how good things used to look, but we forget that some of our favorite shows used to look a bit bland and cheap.

I’ve been watching Columbo, and I’m not saying it looked bad, but it just wasn’t very cinematic. It would not meet today’s standards for visual quality.

But it had all of the things that are supposed to “fix” modern visuals. Hard light, deep focus, practical effects, real locations. And it was shot on film. PEOPLE LOVE LIGHT SENSITIVE PLASTIC!

I love that 70s vibe and the sets and locations and costumes were all really well done. But hard light was blasted from every angle because the film stock was insensitive and they had no time and no money to do anything else.

Efficient filmmaking is not new. It is not good or bad. Sometimes a show can’t get made without these processes. But as long as the story and the characters are strong, people don’t mind the production compromises.

Eventually, Columbo went from an episodic series to a TV movie format. The budget increased and the production schedule was longer. The show was able to take on a more “film noir” style with higher contrast and dimensional lighting.

The visuals improved even though they used villainous soft light and evil blurry backgrounds.

But a lot of folks don’t care for the newer stories. They didn’t mind the shallow depth of field. They disliked that Columbo became a shallow caricature.

My all-time favorite show had porn lighting.

NO MORE SHADOWS!

Look at that Netflix lighting. Just a bunch of soft light pouring in from every angle.

This was a production efficiency that allowed them to film at any spot on the bridge set without having to re-rig the lights for every camera angle.

And alien planets used to be painted styrofoam rocks and fake trees.

And that was fine.

The stories were fantastic, so we forgave the lighting and faux foliage.

Fauxliage?

It wasn’t until they got a movie budget that the lighting got more cinematic.

The alien planets were upgraded to real rocks and living trees.

But the story wasn’t as good.

And the improved visuals didn’t make up for it.

I don’t need everything to look cinematic. I would forgive all of the “Netflix lighting” if studios would take more risks with original stories instead of churning out remakes of reboots.

However, if everything absolutely needs to look amazing, changing these isolated variables isn’t going to fix the systemic issues.

Netflix has an “approved” list of cameras and lenses that all of their shows must use. And for a long time, I thought that was cool. I’m a big gear nerd and they are some of the best cameras available for filmmaking.

But I eventually came to realize that if they dictate what cameras must be used, they probably have a lot more rules like that.

They put artists in a box and tell them how to make their art and what tools they must use and how to use them.

It’s not Netflix lighting… it is Netflix production constraints.

They are trying to micromanage the aesthetics to be hyperpalatable like ultra-processed food.

People want the best chefs in the world to create aesthetic meals with complex, varied, diverse ingredients.

But we are being given visual McNuggets and everyone is trying fix them with different seasonings.

More salt!
More pepper!
More ketchup!

Still McNuggets.

Sometimes McNuggets hit the spot. I love a good nugget from time to time. But I don’t want them for every meal.

Again, there is nothing inherently wrong with soft light, shallow depth of field, digital capture, CGI, etc. These are all just tools to help artists author images.

But we need to remember that tools do not dictate the quality of the art. Beautiful images are created by artists, not tools. No one cares what paintbrush Van Gogh used.

When people watch Dune, they don’t say, “Wow, that movie had so much deep focus and hard light!”

They say Denis Villeneuve and Greig Fraser shot a beautiful movie. They attribute the aesthetics to their artistic vision and filmmaking skills.

Dune has soft light and blurry backgrounds and CGI worms.

It has all the bad things!

And aside from inspiring a cursed popcorn bucket that I’m positive people used as a fleshlight, I think Dune was an undeniable artistic success.

If artists are given proper resources, time, and creative freedom, I assure you the visuals will improve.

And so will the stories.

My health has not been great and so I was working on this post since October. But it feels good to…

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 13:52:14 -0600

thefrogman:

A new perspective on perspective.
Understanding perspective and magnification really helped me become a more intuitive photographer. But all of the tutorials and online classes I’ve taken have done such a poor job explaining it. Photography education will often give you a rule and then tell you the effect. But there is no explanation why the rule has that effect.
If you move too close, the face distorts.
This was taken with an ultra wide angle lens. It was almost touching my nose. It’s implied that this goofy level of distortion is caused by a wide angle lens. You’ll even hear it said “wide angle lenses distort things.”
Why? What is the lens doing?
It is said that a telephoto lens compresses facial features.
Why? What is the lens doing?
In both cases, these effects are not some optical quirk caused by the type of lens. The lens isn’t distorting the image. The lens isn’t compressing the image.
The effects are changes in perspective and magnification.
Here is a quick breakdown that may help.
Perspective only changes with distance.
Magnification is any time you make something larger in frame.
Magnification can be achieved by physically moving closer, zooming, or cropping.
So if you move the perspective closer, you also magnify.
But you can magnify a perspective without changing distance by reducing the field of view via zoomier lenses or cropping.
Put simply… if you move, that’s perspective.
If something gets bigger in the frame, that’s magnification.
Perspective changes our perception of distance and geometry.
In this example, I move closer and farther to some basic shapes to show how they distort.
Keep reading

My health has not been great and so I was working on this post since October. But it feels good to finally have it published. Hopefully you don’t mind if I shove it back into the timeline to give it another chance with the algorithmic gods.

Some additional perspectives on perspective…

Perspective is not just a technical decision. It can be used artistically as well.

A close perspective gives the viewer a sense of intimacy. As if they are occupying the same space as the subject.

The lens has a wide field of view, but the photo is taken quite close and your perception feels that subconsciously due to the geometric cues.

What I call “common perspective” is based on the distance we are most comfortable when interacting with other humans.

When people say a 50mm lens is closest to the human eye, they are actually talking about this socially accepted distance. Our eyes have a wider field of view—so it isn’t that our eyes match a 50mm, but rather the perspective the lens must use to fill the frame with a person’s face matches our common comfortable perspective.

For headshots, photographers will typically move a little farther back than the common perspective and then use a slightly telephoto lens to magnify it. This still gives an intimate feel while flattening facial features and flattering proportions.

As I mentioned, it is important to consider head size and shape when using this farther portrait perspective. For big heads it can help to move closer and zoom out a bit. For slender faces you may want to move farther back and zoom in.

A far perspective with a wide field of view gives a sense of the environment. The space the subject occupies becomes a secondary character in the composition.

A distant perspective that is magnified can create an “observer” effect. As if the subject is being viewed from afar. This is great when you want to give the composition a feeling of isolation.

This is also why super telephoto paparazzi pictures can sometimes feel extra unsettling or invasive.

You can use perspective distortion to play with exaggerated size and geometry. A close perspective with a wide field of view can create some really fun and creative compositions.

And another cool perspective effect is to shoot from a low angle. This is often how “power poses” are photographed. You angle the camera slightly upward from below the subject’s eyeline and it gives a sense that they are towering over you.

This can be subtle…

Or exaggerated…

In summary…

Close perspective is intimate.
Common perspective is comfortable.
Portrait perspective is flattering.
Far perspective with wide field of view is environmental.
Far perspective magnified is isolating.
Ultra distorted perspective can be fun and creative.
Low perspective can give a sense of power.

The Frogman

One thing I should clarify, I don’t want to banish indigo as a color.

It’s time for the color indigo to get “Pluto’d” from the rainbow.

Someone guessed that this was Brad Pitt and it made me feel a bit old.

Just tall enough to see the food.

Otis vs. Chicken (Remastered in Super Duper High Definition)

Was the guilt trip too much?

Someone mentioned this is actually a West Highland cow.

Naomi is an anti-vaxx dipshit and not a great person.

I love film.

I felt silly for not knowing this, but it seems I am not alone. So perhaps you might find it as cool…

I had my most profound TIL moment yesterday.

Are you on bluesky? We’re trying to migrate sites, and rebuilding a follow list in an UI we aren’t familiar with is kind of a pain

My difficult health recovery has prevented me from doing any real photography since last April. But…

If you are curious how the finish line camera works, I wrote a cool post explaining it.

Via NPR…

I’m going through my old macro photos and re-stacking them. This one was a pleasant surprise when I…

Sanford King Size Permanent Marker

Additional tips for photographing small things...

I am referencing some deep Frogman lore in this one.

I am starting to cook up a post about how HDR actually works, but it may take me a while.

Why displays are best viewed in a dim environment.

A Quick Froggie Tangent

2013 vs 2025

Reflections in glasses.

Shadow detail.

A Quick Froggie Tangent

The Devil Wears Prada 2 had skin tones in the 50-60% brightness range.

Okay, I just screamed into the void for 10 minutes.

Hot take! Dial of Destiny looked WAY BETTER than Raiders.

OLD MOVIES SUCK!

I think as a collective, we all realize there is an issue with modern movie aesthetics.

Hot take! Dial of Destiny looked WAY BETTER than Raiders.

OLD MOVIES SUCK!

The backgrounds are too blurry!

NO MORE BLURRY BACKGROUNDS!

Deep focus should fix things!

CLEANLINESS!

That Spider-Menace is too clean!

And we need to stop whatever “Netflix lighting” is.

My health has not been great and so I was working on this post since October. But it feels good to…

A new perspective on perspective.

Some additional perspectives on perspective…

Otis vs. Chicken
(Remastered in Super Duper High Definition)