The Frogman

I got a stand-in for lighting tests.

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 12:02:02 -0500

Photographing Birds From Bed (Part 1)
Recovery is boring. And I can’t do proper photography. So I have put together a wireless setup to capture various birds while I am resting in bed. I have a security camera that alerts me to motion and I can trigger my camera with a little remote control.
These are the fruits of my project so far.
I am still tweaking things. I’d like to improve the lighting. And I’m still trying to figure out how to get the birds to land exactly where I want them to. But I think these are pretty good under the circumstances. And the cardinal couple bickering was pretty cute.

I got a stand-in for lighting tests.

I’ve made some progress. My setup still needs tweaking, but the birds are starting to arrive. A lot…

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 11:01:21 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

Bird Watching (in progress)
Years ago, I sold a bunch of my photo gear after my parents got sick. We needed the money and I didn’t really think I’d be doing photography again. It just didn’t seem important at the time. I was taking care of two dying people and making art seemed pointless.
I recently mentioned that I sold my telephoto lens and a follower messaged me about their zoom lens that had been sitting on a shelf collecting dust for quite some time. They asked if I could make good use of it.
So, I have been devising a plan on how to do some bird photography while I am still stuck in bed recovering.
My mom bought this really cool bird bath that is very on theme for me.
I set it up outside my window. I decided to fill it up with bird chow rather than water. And over the past week I have been figuring out a workflow to photograph birds from bed.
My camera has a wireless radio trigger that also sets off the flash. And I can activate the trigger from anywhere in the house. I have my security camera watching the bowl of seeds and it sets off a motion alarm whenever a bird stops by.
I did some exposure tests with Baby Yoda. It seems the lens was a little more telephoto than I thought.
But I figured birds are small and they would be in frame.
Maybe I’ll zoom out a little just to be safe.
I soon got my first customer.
A female cardinal stopped by.
Do you see her?
Okay, so my first attempt didn’t quite go according to plan.
But look at how sharp that lens is!
I’m sure I will iron out the kinks.
I’ve been doing this 5 minutes at a time for days. I’ve been a little frustrated with how little energy I have to work on this project. But the hardest bits are solved.
Now I just need more birds to show up.
I’m hoping they will start to gossip with each other about how I am trying to spread my seed.

I’ve made some progress. My setup still needs tweaking, but the birds are starting to arrive. A lot of them have been camera shy, hanging out just out of frame.

But I inched the camera a little to the right and that helped.

She looked a little mad that I caught her in the middle of eating.

And then a mourning dove stopped by.

That name is a bit of a bummer, so I’m going to refer to its more festive moniker.

This turtle dove was all “check out my booty.”

That’s a nice bird booty, but I don’t think getting 22 of these for Christmas is a good gift.

I did a little research. This is the foundress queen of a Metric Paper Wasp brood.

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 15:10:02 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

I found out why there was a wasp hanging near my door. This little lady built a nest and is protecting some pupae (look inside the hexagons!).
Now that I know where she is, I’m not in any danger, so I’m going to leave her be and perhaps try to get some more photos with different lighting.
I do feel a bit bad about killing her friend, but she’ll have more company soon.

I did a little research. This is the foundress queen of a Metric Paper Wasp brood.

Which inspired this conversation with my friend Ryan.

Froggie:
People are digging the wasp. She has a cool name I can’t remember.

Ryan:
Like surname or biological name?

Froggie:
A queen that starts a colony is called a “foundress”

Ryan:
That *is* cool. Good word.

Froggie:
“ess” is always a good way to make a lady title sound cooler.

Huntress. Lioness. Loch Ness.

Ryan:
hahahaa

Didn’t know it was Lady Nessy.

Froggie:
You’re welcome to prove otherwise.

I’ve been informed that I accidentally smacked a lady wasp into oblivion. The dude wasps have no…

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 19:20:26 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

There was a wasp hanging out on my door handle today and we both scared the hell out of each other.
I got stung on the finger and he got swatted to the afterlife.
Not exactly a proportional response, but I’m afraid he was the victim of an involuntary reflex caused by a case of the ouchies.
I was reminded of one of my favorite macro shots. So I gave the editing an upgrade to pay tribute to my fallen wasp friend.
You may be smushed, but you made some cool hexagons.

I’ve been informed that I accidentally smacked a lady wasp into oblivion. The dude wasps have no stingers.

Though in my research I did encounter this sentence I’d like to forget.

“Males of some solitary wasp species can jab predators using their sharp, non-venomous genitals for defense.”

The chasing squirrel is clearly the mastermind.

Sat, 20 Jun 2026 20:00:23 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

I spent like 10 minutes getting this camera in the perfect position.
Then a high speed chase ensued.
Look at these troublemakers.

The chasing squirrel is clearly the mastermind.

And he returned to the scene of the crime.

Armchair internet critics keep trying to diagnose bad movie visuals. They keep trying to isolate…

Fri, 19 Jun 2026 16:14:20 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

When you are just starting out learning about crafting visuals, the “rule of thirds” is given to folks as training wheels. If you don’t know what you are doing, it is a good way to force people to think about their framing and avoid obvious snapshot compositions.
The idea is that if you gain experience and get better, you will shed those rule-of-thirds training wheels and start thinking more deeply about composition.
Eventually, you learn that central compositions can be done well and may gravitate back to them. Professionals use central framing all the time and some use it almost exclusively. You can play with focus and symmetry and layered compositions. It’s a great way to draw the eye with leading lines. The idea is that you put the subject in a central position and then the secondary subject and the periphal context support the subject.
This movie was not made for TikTok or vertical viewing. That Twitter user overlayed the vertical video lines to demonstrate their point, and it ended up proving them wildly incorrect.
Remember that composition, more than anything else, needs to serve the story.
Let’s look at how this falls apart.
How does this composition work without the other kids gossiping about her? This composition was constructed to show she is a school pariah. If it were on TIkTok, she’d just be walking down a hall.
Here we might not even know these are legs.
Here you can’t tell she’s hiding in a bathroom stall. Never has a roll of toilet paper been so important to a composition.
Have some random fingers, TikTok.
The subject is actually the glowing hands. This is a symmetrical composition, not a central one. Her in the mirror is not actually the subject.
I’m pretty sure that floating mouse needs to be in frame. TikTok gets an eyeball and a thumb to figure out what is going on.
You get one leg to figure this one out. Good luck.
I did find one single scene where the entire context could be shoved into a vertical video format.
That is the only shot that would work on TikTok out of the entire trailer.
What most people call composition is actually just subject framing. Which can be an important part of the composition, but it is only one variable.
I’m going to steal from another post of mine because I don’t feel like writing essentially the same thing over. But I detailed how a professional visual author thinks about composition beyond just framing and rule of thirds…
Things that are often considered when designing a shot… background, midground, foreground. Symmetry or asymmetry. Primary and secondary subjects. Visual weight and balance. Visual anchors. Subject separation via depth of field, background/foreground exposure ratio, contrast, or color palette. And most importantly… storytelling.
Let’s think through the composition of this shot.
I prefer to think back to front. What do I want the viewer to see?
Background is the sky. Midground is the town. Foreground is Michael B Jordan.
They chose a mostly symmetrical composition, with the gun being asymmetrical to help it stand out. The visual weight of the left is balanced on the right. Symmetry is a powerful and dramatic visual anchor. If you would rather the viewer chew on the environment and absorb the entire frame, you may frame the subject off-center.
The primary subject is his face and the secondary subject is the gun. You can tell this because the gun is out of focus. They want you to visually anchor your attention to his expression. The angle of the gun even has a leading line that goes straight to his eyes.
Subject separation is mostly done with an exposure ratio. He is dark against a bright white sky. There is some background blur as well.
The camera is slightly below his eyeline, so it is looking up at him. This gives him a sense of power and control. He is dangerous and imposing. They are using a strong central framing with a low perspective as storytelling tools.
All of those creative decisions are part of composition. If all you consider is subject framing, your shot is probably going to be weaker for it.
I agree that there is some content being made more friendly for watching on phones. But even with shows and movies, most people still make the effort to turn their phone sideways. So I don’t think this central framing thesis holds any water. I think it was just a compositional preference by the filmmakers.
Either that or Wes Anderson was a visionary, creating the most TikTok-able movies before the platform even existed.

Armchair internet critics keep trying to diagnose bad movie visuals. They keep trying to isolate individual variables as the cause, rather than a larger systemic issue of risk-averse, efficient filmmaking—where artists have limited creative control and unreasonable resource limitations.

So far, the villains have been soft lighting, background blur (shallow DOF), CGI, digital cameras, and now we can add central compositions to the pile.

But if you look at the best looking movies throughout history, many filmmakers used all of those things, in abundance, to great effect.

It’s a matter of ratio, intensity, taste, and effort.

Knowing when to use hard vs soft light.

Knowing how to use soft light while keeping the image dimensional and not flat.

Knowing how much to blur the background to get good subject separation.

Mixing practical with CGI to give the effects grounding and real world lighting reference.

Making sure your central subject framing is well designed and having the taste to know you can’t just stick something in the middle and get a good shot without all the other compositional variables considered.

If I could assign bad visuals to one villain, it would be low effort.

If you use soft lighting because it is easier to make look good than hard lighting, that is a low effort issue, not a soft lighting one.

If you blur the background to mush because you didn’t want to put in the effort to create an interesting set or go to a beautiful location, that is low effort, not shallow depth of field.

But often, low effort visuals are the only option available. Filmmakers are given a day to shoot and not enough time and money to prepare. They are told to just use a green screen. They are told to light things flat so they can just fix it in post and easily blend the VFX.

The high effort options are not always available to every director. They are just a cog in a capitalist studio machine that demands efficiency over artistry.

So when these critics blame the artists for not knowing their craft rather than blaming the systems they have to work within, it makes me very frustrated.

And if we take away all of these vital tools to create visuals, it will not make things look better. You just get low effort hard light, deep depth of field of boring backgrounds, bad practical effects, all with everything framed on a rule of thirds grid line.

But hey, at least it is shot on film!

Which, by its nature, is a high effort medium that vastly inflates the budget. So corners will have to be cut for every other aspect in order to support that choice, causing even more low-effort compromises.

The Fox Family is bringing me so much joy and fascination.

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 10:22:02 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

The Night of Foxes
The Fox Family has created a secondary den underneath my deck. So I set up some hidden cameras to capture their nocturnal activities. I didn’t realize I was going to record a nature documentary.
Mama Mia is a very good huntress. She captured 3 mystery animals and a whole-ass raccoon. Which she brings to the kiddos waiting under the deck and they take the kill back to the main den.
They don’t seem very appreciative. It seems Marian, McCloud, and Michael J are spoiled brats. Not even a “Thanks for the dead raccoon, Mom.”
Teenagers, amirite?
I have no idea where Papa Milo was. He’s the biggest and I don’t think I saw him all night.
Probably on the couch watching Fox News.

The Fox Family is bringing me so much joy and fascination.

There is a thrilling sequel posting soon!

Okay… I’ve thought about the names.

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 07:05:50 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

Important Fox Update
So a few days ago I noticed a fox friend running through my yard. I was able to snap this photo.
I called him Milo.
I thought he was a lone wolf who chose my neighborhood as his domain.
But Milo is not alone.
Milo is a papa.
He and his lady fox have three little foxes!
I went from never having seen a fox to FIVE foxes playing in my backyard.
The three kiddos were wrestling. Their opening move is to do this cat-like superjump and then dive bomb into their sibling. Then they roll around. And then a high speed chase ensues.
One of the little foxes came near the house and I got a few closer photos.
I love the little black socks.
I’m going to need to figure out a lot more fox names.

Okay… I’ve thought about the names.

Papa Milo and Mama Mia.

And for the kits… Marian, McCloud, and Michael J.

I’m not opposed to doing commissions, but due to health reasons I am being a bit selective about…

Sun, 24 May 2026 18:38:55 -0500

emeraldraccoon478:

sirfrogsworth:
Scrolling the timeline on Mother’s Day can be hard for me so last year I decided to turn my grief into something positive.
This year, I decided to make it a tradition.
I noticed people were posting a lot of old, degraded photos of their parents. So I try to pick a few good candidates to restore.
I spent a couple of years learning how to do this. I am very good at it. And I really enjoy it. But I learned it isn’t very lucrative and most people are fine with what AI can do now.
It makes me a bit sad, but I actually think restoring people’s precious memories is not the worst use of AI. Plus, I use several AI tools in my workflow. When there is extensive damage, generative fill is a lifesaver. The remove tool makes quick work of stubborn accumulated dust. And AI upscaling makes the photos printable, often at many times their original size.
My restorations are still much better than the free AI ones. I edit them with a precision and fidelity that can hold up to 400% magnification. I take special care to preserve likenesses and often work with reference photos to make sure people’s loved ones still look like who they are after upscaling. I also do colorizing by hand (though I will sometimes make initial color maps with AI). I color grade using film stock color references so the photos still look like film, and I add texture and grain selectively to keep people from looking like smooth rubber.
But that kind of quality takes so much time. One photo is probably several hundred dollars of labor. And no one is willing to pay that so I have to charge below minimum wage.
I will probably just do pro bono restorations from here on out. Focus on fixing photos that AI isn’t very good at restoring. Plus I have a ton of family photos that I want to restore for my niece. At some point, years from now, she’ll be old enough to talk to me without my brother’s permission. And she’ll probably want to know who her grandparents were. I hope to be ready with photos and stories by that time.
In any case, it felt nice to do this on a hard day. And it helped clarify to myself how I should use this skill I’ve developed going forward.
Before and afters…
Ok but do you or do you know anyone who does commissions for this kind of thing? I’ve been really missing my great grandmother recently and I’d love to have a few photos of her restored a bit and although I don’t know when that would be in my budget I’d love to know where to go once I’ve got funds

I’m not opposed to doing commissions, but due to health reasons I am being a bit selective about what I take on. If the job is too complex, it might be months before I can tackle it. If you need it sooner, I can recommend a different restorationist who I feel will do a good job.

If anyone wants a free assessment, just send in example images of what you want restored and I can advise you from there.

My email is frogman54@gmail.com

I am going through a very long and difficult health recovery. And I have this heart thing that makes…

Thu, 21 May 2026 13:11:03 -0500

thevanillahorizon:

thefrogman:
sirfrogsworth:
Scrolling the timeline on Mother’s Day can be hard for me so last year I decided to turn my grief into something positive.
This year, I decided to make it a tradition.
I noticed people were posting a lot of old, degraded photos of their parents. So I try to pick a few good candidates to restore.
I spent a couple of years learning how to do this. I am very good at it. And I really enjoy it. But I learned it isn’t very lucrative and most people are fine with what AI can do now.
It makes me a bit sad, but I actually think restoring people’s precious memories is not the worst use of AI. Plus, I use several AI tools in my workflow. When there is extensive damage, generative fill is a lifesaver. The remove tool makes quick work of stubborn accumulated dust. And AI upscaling makes the photos printable, often at many times their original size.
My restorations are still much better than the free AI ones. I edit them with a precision and fidelity that can hold up to 400% magnification. I take special care to preserve likenesses and often work with reference photos to make sure people’s loved ones still look like who they are after upscaling. I also do colorizing by hand (though I will sometimes make initial color maps with AI). I color grade using film stock color references so the photos still look like film, and I add texture and grain selectively to keep people from looking like smooth rubber.
But that kind of quality takes so much time. One photo is probably several hundred dollars of labor. And no one is willing to pay that so I have to charge below minimum wage.
I will probably just do pro bono restorations from here on out. Focus on fixing photos that AI isn’t very good at restoring. Plus I have a ton of family photos that I want to restore for my niece. At some point, years from now, she’ll be old enough to talk to me without my brother’s permission. And she’ll probably want to know who her grandparents were. I hope to be ready with photos and stories by that time.
In any case, it felt nice to do this on a hard day. And it helped clarify to myself how I should use this skill I’ve developed going forward.
Before and afters…
Some of the most difficult restorations I’ve done…
I’ve had to deal with intense color casts before, but never a green one. Thankfully, the original color was still in the data, but figuring out how to filter out the bad green and keep the good green required a lot of problem-solving.
The original was actually in really good shape and had a lot of detail. But there were just so many people in the photo and they all needed individual exposure correction on their faces. And I colored everything manually. I think this ended up being over 400 layers by the end.
For this one, the car was completely blown out and had no data. But I posted it in a bunch of vintage car forums and was able to identify the make and model. I replaced the blown out car with a better photo of the exact same model from the same year. Then I researched what paint color options were available and matched that as well.
This is one where folks might assume I used AI, but aside from my upscaling tool, I actually did this with traditional compositing techniques. It is probably one of the most damaged photos I’ve been able to save.
Her facial likeness was completely destroyed.
However, I restored this other photo of her.
And I was able to use it as a reference to restore her likeness in the lake photo.
It doesn’t hold up as well as I’d like at this magnification, but considering how damaged it was, I am pretty happy with the result. And I think I was able to make it look like her again.
One might think photo restoration is only about saving really old photos, but I have fixed modern wedding photos that were taken in bad light and I regularly use these skills to fix smartphone photos.
My phone is getting old and is in bad shape. The back fell off and I keep it together with a case. And the lenses are unprotected and hard to clean. So all of my photos look a bit hazy now. But sometimes it is all I have to capture a moment. So I take photos and hope my editing magic can fix them.
I took this out my front window on a foggy morning.
I actually got a court summons for having that chair in my front yard.
It’s a long story.
And I just had a visit from a foxy friend the other day.
My neighbor says he sees this fella all the time. So I feel like he needs a name. Otis’s favorite toy was a stuffed red fox, so I’m thinking maybe I’ll call him Milo.
OP, I would understand very little of your magic so I will not ask on that, but I DO want to hear about the court summons.

I am going through a very long and difficult health recovery. And I have this heart thing that makes me very weak if I exert myself too much. I was trying to take this old red chair to the end of my driveway for trash pickup, but my heart started beating way too fast, and I only dragged it halfway.

So I just left the chair in my yard.

It rained soon after and I realized this pleather chair was waterproof. It shrugged off the rain and was perfectly fine. I then sat in the chair and it was a comfortable place to sit outside and relax.

So I left the chair where it was.

I can’t leave the house much, so I have to find photographic opportunities close by. I eventually started incorporating the chair into my photography.

This thing was nigh invulnerable. No season was able to damage it.

And I did a fun Halloween bit with it.

It was in my yard for over a year, bothering no one.

But then I got a warning letter in the mail. The county inspector claimed I had “rubbish” in my yard and I had to remove it. I’m suspicious that a neighbor tattled on me.

I am making a lot of progress with my health. But I am at a stage where I have to get worse to get better. So I am currently bed bound most days. I have very few good days where I could move a big red chair.

It took me a few weeks, but as soon as I had a good day, I dragged the chair back into my garage and out of sight.

But it was not soon enough.

The inspector referred me to the court and I got a summons for not complying.

So now I have to appear before a judge and explain why I had a chair in my front yard.

I’m hoping they will accommodate my disability and let me do it over a zoom call. This all feels like a silly waste of time. I have neighbors with old cars on their lawn. I keep my lawn maintained and others let it grow two feet high.

But I got dinged for having a comfy chair in my yard.

Some of the most difficult restorations I’ve done…

Thu, 21 May 2026 12:23:16 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

Scrolling the timeline on Mother’s Day can be hard for me so last year I decided to turn my grief into something positive.
This year, I decided to make it a tradition.
I noticed people were posting a lot of old, degraded photos of their parents. So I try to pick a few good candidates to restore.
I spent a couple of years learning how to do this. I am very good at it. And I really enjoy it. But I learned it isn’t very lucrative and most people are fine with what AI can do now.
It makes me a bit sad, but I actually think restoring people’s precious memories is not the worst use of AI. Plus, I use several AI tools in my workflow. When there is extensive damage, generative fill is a lifesaver. The remove tool makes quick work of stubborn accumulated dust. And AI upscaling makes the photos printable, often at many times their original size.
My restorations are still much better than the free AI ones. I edit them with a precision and fidelity that can hold up to 400% magnification. I take special care to preserve likenesses and often work with reference photos to make sure people’s loved ones still look like who they are after upscaling. I also do colorizing by hand (though I will sometimes make initial color maps with AI). I color grade using film stock color references so the photos still look like film, and I add texture and grain selectively to keep people from looking like smooth rubber.
But that kind of quality takes so much time. One photo is probably several hundred dollars of labor. And no one is willing to pay that so I have to charge below minimum wage.
I will probably just do pro bono restorations from here on out. Focus on fixing photos that AI isn’t very good at restoring. Plus I have a ton of family photos that I want to restore for my niece. At some point, years from now, she’ll be old enough to talk to me without my brother’s permission. And she’ll probably want to know who her grandparents were. I hope to be ready with photos and stories by that time.
In any case, it felt nice to do this on a hard day. And it helped clarify to myself how I should use this skill I’ve developed going forward.
Before and afters…

Some of the most difficult restorations I’ve done…

I’ve had to deal with intense color casts before, but never a green one. Thankfully, the original color was still in the data, but figuring out how to filter out the bad green and keep the good green required a lot of problem-solving.

The original was actually in really good shape and had a lot of detail. But there were just so many people in the photo and they all needed individual exposure correction on their faces. And I colored everything manually. I think this ended up being over 400 layers by the end.

For this one, the car was completely blown out and had no data. But I posted it in a bunch of vintage car forums and was able to identify the make and model. I replaced the blown out car with a better photo of the exact same model from the same year. Then I researched what paint color options were available and matched that as well.

This is one where folks might assume I used AI, but aside from my upscaling tool, I actually did this with traditional compositing techniques. It is probably one of the most damaged photos I’ve been able to save.

Her facial likeness was completely destroyed.

However, I restored this other photo of her.

And I was able to use it as a reference to restore her likeness in the lake photo.

It doesn’t hold up as well as I’d like at this magnification, but considering how damaged it was, I am pretty happy with the result. And I think I was able to make it look like her again.

One might think photo restoration is only about saving really old photos, but I have fixed modern wedding photos that were taken in bad light and I regularly use these skills to fix smartphone photos.

My phone is getting old and is in bad shape. The back fell off and I keep it together with a case. And the lenses are unprotected and hard to clean. So all of my photos look a bit hazy now. But sometimes it is all I have to capture a moment. So I take photos and hope my editing magic can fix them.

I took this out my front window on a foggy morning.

I actually got a court summons for having that chair in my front yard.

It’s a long story.

And I just had a visit from a foxy friend the other day.

My neighbor says he sees this fella all the time. So I feel like he needs a name. Otis’s favorite toy was a stuffed red fox, so I’m thinking maybe I’ll call him Milo.

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

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

sirfrogsworth:

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)

The Frogman

I got a stand-in for lighting tests.

Photographing Birds From Bed (Part 1)

I’ve made some progress. My setup still needs tweaking, but the birds are starting to arrive. A lot…

Bird Watching (in progress)

I did a little research. This is the foundress queen of a Metric Paper Wasp brood.

I’ve been informed that I accidentally smacked a lady wasp into oblivion. The dude wasps have no…

The chasing squirrel is clearly the mastermind.

Armchair internet critics keep trying to diagnose bad movie visuals. They keep trying to isolate…

The Fox Family is bringing me so much joy and fascination.

The Night of Foxes

Okay… I’ve thought about the names.

Important Fox Update

I’m not opposed to doing commissions, but due to health reasons I am being a bit selective about…

I am going through a very long and difficult health recovery. And I have this heart thing that makes…

Some of the most difficult restorations I’ve done…

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

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