The Frogman

Full disclosure: There is a popular opinion among color scientists that magenta is fake.

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 17:53:05 -0500

This is one of my least favorite “fun facts” that won’t die.
Partly because it is wrong.
But also because magenta is more interesting than this explanation.
Why is it wrong?
Well, if magenta doesn’t exist, then neither does white. Then neither do a lot of the colors coming from your screen.
Magenta is an “extra spectral” color. This just means it is made up of more than one wavelength.
Pure spectral red has a wavelength of ~700 nanometers.
Pure spectral violet has a wavelength of ~400 nanometers.
What happens when your eyeball receives both at the same time?
Magenta!
But if extra spectral colors are “fake,” then white is super duper extra fake. Because it contains every wavelength in the visible spectrum. White is what happens when you just blast the entire spectrum into your eyeballs at the same time.
All data needs to be interpreted. It doesn’t matter if it is done by a scientific instrument or our brains. You collect information, it goes through an interpretive layer, and then it is processed into a form that can be understood.
If a spectrometer collects red and violet light, it measures the wavelengths, interprets them into digits, and gives you a reading of 700 and 400 nanometers.
If our eyes collect red and violet light, the brain will process the simultaneous wavelengths and give us the experience of magenta.
Every color display is made up of red, green, and blue pixels. Screens do not give us any other pure spectral colors. So anything not red, green, or blue would be an extra spectral representation using simultaneous, combined wavelengths.
So if you see yellow on a screen, is that “fake”?
Every piece of sensory data your body collects is processed and interpreted. If magenta is fake, then touch is fake. Sounds are fake. Your entire human experience is fake.
This is the same annoyance I have with people who say money is fake. Intangible constructs are real. They exist. When your rent is due and you don’t have enough money, it doesn’t feel very fake in that moment. If you are going to go down that philosophical path, then you’ll have to contend with love and sadness and poetry and music all being fake. Many mental constructs require physical constructs to represent them. Sadness produces tears. Poetry is crafted with pen and paper. Music escapes the brain through instrumentation. And our experience of those physical constructs just goes straight back into that interpretive framework in our noggin.
If interpreted data is fake, then nothing is real.
The interesting thing about magenta is that its component wavelengths lie on either end of the visible spectrum.
Our eyes have receptors that interpret short, medium, and long wavelengths of visible light. What makes magenta unique is that it activates the short and long receptors.
The electromagnetic spectrum keeps going in either direction to infinity as a line of wavelengths. But our brains cannot interpret gamma rays or radio waves. Instead, it turns this infinite line into a closed loop of only the data we can actually process.
Enter the color wheel!
So when you have combined wavelengths of red and violet, magenta is the area where the brain does the color loop-de-loop.
I think that is much cooler than the claim of non-existence.
But if you are dead set on arguing that there is a color that does not exist, black might do the trick.
Well, the experience of black, at least.
From a physics perspective, black is the absence of light. Zero photons existing within a given area.
The color we commonly experience as black is actually very dim white. Photons are sneaky and it is actually quite difficult to be in a space with zero visible light. Even the darkest of rooms might have a few bouncing around.
So when we see a black car or a black cat or a black screen, we are still registering photons, and they have all of the same wavelengths of white light.
Here is a gradient of blues.
On one end, you have light blue, and on the other end is dark blue. But we are comfortable referring to all of these shades as a form of blue.
But if you look at this gradient, you have white, gray, and black. We consider them to be very distinct colors. You’d never say light white and dark white.
But the only difference between these colors is their intensity. They all emit the same rainbow of wavelengths.
When does white become gray? When does gray become black?
That is where interpretive context comes into play.
Gray is only gray in the proper context. The stuff surrounding gray determines its grayness.
Take this famous optical illusion.
The top shape is gray.
The bottom shape is white.
Right?
If you were to objectively measure the intensity of the shape faces, it’s the same shade of gray.
When we see a black car, it reflects the same component wavelengths as a white car. But its contextual relationship with its surroundings is what causes our brain to interpret it as black.
But true black, or “blackness,” is impossible for humans to experience. Even if we close our eyes and put on a blindfold with a perfect seal, we cannot visually experience nothing. The receptors in our eyes are still sending data to our brain. Some people see Eigengrau or “brain gray.” Some people see a sort of visual snow. Others see various visual artifacts.
But it is never… nothing.
So, like magenta, the color black absolutely exists. But our brains refuse to let us see the void. Black does not exist within the human experience.
It’s all just noise in the data or very dim white.

Full disclosure: There is a popular opinion among color scientists that magenta is fake.

But that is only because they believe all color is a hallucination.

I don’t agree with that notion. I think it invokes too much philosophizing within a physical science, as it has broader implications about all human experiences being real or fake, but I do think it is a more defensible position than isolating just magenta and calling it fake.

Brains are imperfect instruments of data interpretation. Our interpretive layer is very subjective. Our experience of color is not always consistent. We may have varied individual experiences of color from person to person. Our experience of color is very different from that of dogs and cows and birds. And, as I mentioned, there is contextual color. Our perception of black, gray, and brown is heavily dependent on the surrounding environment. Sometimes our brain will interpret dark orange, sometimes it will give us brown. Same wavelength, different visual experience.

But I think our experience of color and the relationships between colors map pretty well onto objective measurements. The reflectance of an apple measures a certain wavelength, and the human visual system will experience that wavelength as red. Even if my red isn’t your red, the differential relationship between colors is fairly consistent, predictable, and precisely quantifiable. As long as the difference between my red and my green is roughly the same as yours and it matches objective measurements of wavelengths, that is real enough for me.

Fretting Fingernails - A Small Tribute to Dolly

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 11:58:06 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

All of the Dolly stories people are sharing keep turning on the waterworks. I’m worried I am going to dehydrate myself.
This one is tough.
I don’t think a celebrity death has hit me like this since Robin Williams.
I was never a huge country fan, but I was always a Dolly fan. If the music is good, I like it. I definitely swim in certain genres more than others, but I never hold the genre against an artist. If they have talent, I will love their music.
I saw a comment today where someone said they “weren’t a fan of her music,” and I just thought… she wrote over 3000 songs. There is something for everyone in that catalog. If you aren’t a fan, you just haven’t put in the effort.
Did you even know she covered Collective Soul?
Only Dolly could stick a fiddle solo into that song and make it work.
What about her classic duet with that infamous K-named singer?
I think she did something with some Kenny guy too.
The thing that always amazed me about her musicianship was her nails. She was a great rhythm guitarist. Underrated, in my opinion. And nails on the right hand can be a huge advantage. But Dolly was nothing if not symmetrical and she had giant, shiny nails on her fretting hand and it didn’t slow her down. It’s like when I went to the DMV and saw this lady type faster than me with long bedazzled nails. Felt like I was witnessing a magic trick.
One of my favorite Dolly moments was from a 1979 episode of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. The interview is a definite sign of the times. They awkwardly talk about her weight loss and Johnny pulls out a box of cereal for an on air advertisement. Dolly is very reserved and shy. Her full stage persona had not been fully formed. But also, she loved Johnny and was a bit star-struck. He was a big part of her initial success and you can tell how much she appreciated that. To show that appreciation, she wrote a song just for Johnny. She was infamous for how fast she could write songs. I just feel like this was such a sweet moment and the song is genuinely good.
(Song starts at 11:45)
A lot of people have talked about her theme park, her philanthropy, and her genuine good nature, but she consistently wrote amazing music. If you don’t think you are a fan, I encourage you to dig a little deeper and give her a chance to beguile you with her dulcet tones.
Anywho, here is a video of Dolly being adorable and making musicians so happy they cry.

It’s been many years before I noticed that you created the Seymour cat meme with the watermelon from the ocean. Thank you, I still laugh about it.

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 09:07:14 -0500

I initially had no idea what you were referring to.

I haven't made cat memes for a long time. But I actually worked for Cheezburger dot com and made a bunch of cat memes for them. So all of my cat memes are a bit of a blur in my mind.

But I looked it up and found what you were referencing.

I made this 16 years ago!

It only got 500 notes on Tumblr. But at the time, that was a viral success. I'm sure it was much more popular on the Cheezburger website and Reddit.

In any case, I'm glad you enjoyed it. And I thank you for sending me down memory lane.

At this rate, I might just become a full time grackle photographer. The purple and blue interference…

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 19:38:10 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

At this rate, I might just become a full time grackle photographer. The purple and blue interference color on their feathers is so magical.

It would seem the grackle becomes much less sinister when it raises its head.

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 12:01:12 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

Grackles are goth badasses… unless there is a dove around.

It would seem the grackle becomes much less sinister when it raises its head.

My photos make it look like these birds are in the midst of battle.

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 13:37:57 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

Morning Dove vs Grackle
Choose your fighter.
I am booking them to do battle on the White House lawn.

My photos make it look like these birds are in the midst of battle.

In reality, they charge at each other, flap their wings, and then one of them flies away. Lasts about 2 seconds per encounter. But when you use burst mode, you can freeze a moment within that 2 second battle and get some pretty neat results.

That grackle with the blue and purple iridescent head has eluded me so far. This is my first photo of him. Hopefully I can get him in focus next time.

These blue jays are hard core and I am capturing all of their drama.

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 10:21:17 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

Accidental Bird-aissance
I’ve got an entire scold of blue jays hanging about. I think they might be some kind of bird gang. They keep bullying other birds and each other. If I catch one of them selling bird drugs, I am going to withhold their peanuts.

These blue jays are hard core and I am capturing all of their drama.

Froggie’s 11 Tips for Ultimate Photo Sharpness

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 10:30:30 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

Froggie’s 11 Tips for Ultimate Photo Sharpness
I got this inquiry after my recent bird photography post.
They were referring to this insane crop I did of this photo.
This cardinal photo was shot on my Canon 80D. A crop sensor. The 6D has a bigger sensor with more dynamic range than the camera that took the photo they’re asking about.
Which means the answer probably isn’t their gear.
Here was my thought process when capturing these bird photos…
I didn’t know where the birds were going to land.
So I started shooting wide.
I knew my reach was limited.
So I knew I was going to crop.
Cropping magnifies noise, which reduces detail.
So I needed my ISO as low as possible.
I needed a lot of light.
So I provided additional light with a flash.
In the end, I did use Topaz to upscale and sharpen the photo, and that did add a bit of clarity, but sharpening is often a garbage in > garbage out situation. You need to capture good detail in the original photo. And if you try to oversharpen a photo with low detail, it just gets chunky and ugly.
Topaz is a professional noise reduction, upscaling, and sharpening tool, but most image editors have decent sharpening tools that can give similar results.
At normal viewing distances, the effect is subtle. You have to magnify almost 400% to see a huge difference.
Magnified…
You can see that the unsharpened version was not noisy and the lens rendered the detail very well.
So, the question is… how do you capture good detail from the start?
I have compiled a list of 11 variables to consider when trying to capture maximum detail and sharpness. These are somewhat in order of priority, but certain variables may be more important depending on the circumstances.
I created a short version and a longer, more nuanced version under the cut.
The 11 Tips (Condensed)
1. Light
Detail is light versus shadow. Raking, directional light coming in at an angle will reveal more detail and microcontrast. Soft light, overcast days, overhead sun, and front flash can reduce perceptual sharpness by mitigating microshadows that reveal texture.
2. Subject Separation
A strong, crisp outline is a perceptual anchor for sharpness. Create subject separation using methods like background blur, underexposed background, rim light, and color separation.
3. Lens > Sensor > Distance > Magnification
Small and distant subjects need a lens with adequate magnification and sharpness. Superzooms and other low cost telephoto lens solutions may give disappointing results outside of very bright environments when the light is less interesting. Most APS-C and Full Frame cameras with 18+ megapixels are sufficient for sharp photos. Getting as close as possible to wildlife with field craft techniques is a powerful way to reduce the need for magnification. If you can’t get close, then you will need a sharp telephoto lens, which typically has a high price point, even on the used market.
4. Focus
On older DSLRs, the center point is most reliable. Try focus-and-recompose and back button autofocus to help you quickly and accurately acquire focus. DSLRs can also suffer from focus misalignment that skews the DOF in front or behind the focus plane. A focus calibration tool can help you determine if your lens is back or front focusing. This can be corrected with an autofocus microadjustment or using live view mode.
5. Depth of Field
DOF creates a band of acceptable focus and making sure your subject falls within can be challenging. Don’t try to nail one specific combo of settings. Take many pictures with a range of settings, starting with the safest and getting riskier from there. For example, get deep DOF with f/8 for safety, and then take the same shot with f/7.1, f/5.6 and f/4 and so on. Pick the best version later. “Correct” settings are a myth… cover your bases.
6. Shutter Speed
Camera shake can be solved with a tripod, image stabilization, or good handholding technique. Remember the reciprocal rule. Choose a shutter speed that is 1 over your focal length. For example… 50mm requires 1/50th of a second.
If the subjects are in motion and you don’t have a lot of light, you need to dial in the shutter speed to their movement. A tripod won’t save you. Again, start safe with more shutter speed than you need, and get riskier from there. Don’t automatically exclude a shutter speed just because one frame is blurry.
7. Hit Rate
This is the number of acceptable frames within a batch of photos. To make risky settings work, you can use probability to your advantage. If 1 of 10 shots is sharp, take 50 photos to get 5 keepers. Culling through tons of photos is frustrating, but a hit rate mentality is the best way to use risky but superior settings to get sharp shots with a cleaner ISO.
8. Aperture
Two main sharpness considerations… the sweet spot and diffraction.
Every lens has a sweet spot where it is the sharpest. This is typically one or two stops down from wide open.
Every camera system suffers from diffraction blur as the aperture gets smaller. Typically f/11 and smaller will start to soften the image.
Test both in controlled settings to see how your camera and lens perform at different apertures.
9. ISO
Modern cameras have very good high ISO performance. Don’t fear high ISO. However, everyone has a different tolerance for how much noise is acceptable and there is a threshold where the image degrades too much. Test your camera to see what the high ISO ceiling is.
Wildlife photography often requires heavy cropping. While high ISO can be acceptable in an uncropped image, the noise will get progressively more apparent as you increase crop magnification. If you know your image will be heavily cropped, take measures to keep your ISO as low as possible.
10. Practice, Testing, and Problem Solving
A sharp photo is a solved problem, not a lucky button press. Most great shots are the result of an iterative process… testing light, settings, focus method, and timing across many attempts. Simulate field conditions in a controlled setting, like photographing a fake bird in your backyard at different distances and lighting conditions. Even spontaneous photography runs on prior practice. Improvisation is an illusion. Build the experience before you need it.
11. Post-Processing
Make detail visible with the Highlights and Shadows sliders. Build contrast with Whites and Blacks before ever touching the Contrast slider. Use Texture and Clarity to amplify microcontrast. Tools like Topaz can help with noise reduction, sharpening, and upscaling, but processing can only enhance detail you captured.
The 11 Tips (Hyper-Verbose Edition)
Keep reading

I think this blue jay may be in cahoots with the raccoons. As soon as he got his fill, he flew off…

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 18:11:27 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

The raccoons returned.
When I went outside with my camera, almost all of them scurried away into the darkness.
Except the littlest one.
I can’t say we bonded or became friends. But he decided not to be bothered by my presence, as there were leftover peanuts about. (A blue jay knocked over the entire dish of bird food. I have since secured the dish with the power of magnetism.)
Since this little fella was not concerned with me, I was able to take my time and really dial in my lighting and settings. And I think it shows in the quality of the photos.

I think this blue jay may be in cahoots with the raccoons. As soon as he got his fill, he flew off and all of the bird chow came tumbling down.

But now the dish is attached to a cool log with several magnets. Your hollow bones are no match for neodymium, friend.

Epilogue

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 10:00:54 -0500

sirfrogsworth:

The Case of the Decapitated Frogs
As you may have seen, I have been using this frog-themed birdbath as a feed bowl to attract birds for my latest photography project.
It was working well and it added a fun element to my photos.
But the other morning I went to refill the bowl with bird food and it had been knocked over and frog heads were gone.
Then I saw this.
Clearly, the groundhog was the culprit.
Lock him up.
He’s guilty.
The monster even returned to the scene of the crime to admire his murderous vandalism.
Case closed.
OR IS IT?
A new suspect appears!
One of the fox teenagers has been snacking on spilled bird food.
Could he have jumped up to the bowl? Could he have knocked it over to claim more unsalted peanuts for himself?
DID HE FRAME THE GROUNDHOG?
This case is a mess. All I have is circumstantial evidence and speculation. No confession. No eyewitness to the frogicide.
What would Columbo do?
Perhaps he would set a trap so that the culprit would incriminate themselves. He might leave the birdbath filled with tasty bird chow overnight, set up a camera, and see if the groundhog or the fox take the bait and expose themselves as the villain.
JUST ONE MORE THING…
Keep reading

Epilogue

The outlaw gang of raccoon vandals returned last night.

Their ringleader had no shame.

I’m calling him Jesse James.

And I made this cool poster.

I will be locking up the food at night from now on, but I had to capture as much raccoon shenanigans as possible before then.

I got a stand-in for lighting tests.

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

sirfrogsworth:

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.