Reel Expression

I spent all day yesterday with a friend of mine at a cemetery in northern Chicago. Here are some of the pictures I took:

Hopefully next weekend I’ll be going on a photo shoot with a friend somewhere out in Chicago. For at least some of the shots, I was hoping to do a little playing around with high dynamic range imaging (HDRI). It’s a photography technique that increases the range between the lightest and darkest parts of an image by merging multiple exposures of the same shot.

Yesterday I was reading up on some tutorials and found you can cheat it by processing 1 image into the various under and over exposed steps and merge them together. So I dug up the RAW images of my trip to Rome a couple of years ago and had a bit of a play. It might not be true HDRI, but they certainly look interesting.

Update:
About the sources used to “cheat” HDRI. Its actually rather easy if you are using photomatix: copy the picture the amount of times you want (need about 3-5 total), drag them into the box for “generate HDR,” and the program will tell you they are the same exposure and ask if and how much you want to change the E.V. spacing. There are a few other ways to do it, but that’s what I did.

My entire process was pretty much taken in bits and pieces from these 3 tutorials:
http://www.vanilladays.com/hdr-guide/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cleever/145838011/in/set-72057594134300570/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cleever/255026221/

It’s interesting the kind of shot you can get with a mobile phone (palm pre), contorted, unable to move, 1 handed, and having a needle repeatedly jabbed into your leg. The photo is an untouched original.

Last weekend for my birthday my friend gave me a new tattoo. It’s not fully finished, but it’ll be kitten paws going from my heel spiraling up my shin to the side of my knee. That brings the count up to 9 and quite a few more to come. \o/

Don’t mind me.. just making certain the photoblog section is working properly.

Or really just the letter I sent to various organizations attempting to ban the only effective smoking cessation device I’ve ever found:

Dear Anti-Smoking Agencies and the FDA,

The quit or die position on cigarette smoking is absurd. It’s not working as there are many thousands of people still smoking.

It has nothing to do with not wanting to quit enough. It has little to do with the actual nicotine. It has to do with the habit and how it has been incorporated into our lives. When things get stressful, we smoke to calm down. Same with frustration, anger, and confusion. It’s a moment to ourselves. It’s social. It’s so ingrained in our lives that quitting in most cases is impossible.

I had been a smoker since I was 12 – 19 years total – that is until I switched over to the e-cigarette in June. I had tried everything “approved” short of prescription drugs to quit:
- The gum and patch made me twitchy, all I wanted was a cigarette the entire time, and increased my already debilitating insomnia.
- Cold turkey gave me intense flu like symptoms for 2 weeks that went away the moment I broke down and smoked.
- Any method made me moody, bitchy, and extremely quick to anger.

What I do not understand is your position on e-cigarettes. It’s been proven by thousands of users as an alternative to smoking. It’s been proven by the FDA to be safer than traditional cigarettes. If they were, the FDA would have come out with that comparison report instead of the shady one they did. Yes they may not be 100% safe, but neither is driving a car let alone leaving your house.

The absurd idea that e-cigarettes stop people from actually quitting is incorrect. Many who have switched have tried and failed, including myself. It’s not sidetracking us from quitting. It’s giving us the behaviour and habit while we step down the nicotine. The entire reason why these devices work where everything else have failed is because it simulates smoking.

I don’t understand how you can support an anti-smoking prescription drug known to cause suicidal tendencies. Even the FDA has finally acknowledged to receiving 98 reports of suicides and 188 reports of suicide attempts that appear to be linked to Chantix use.

Isn’t a product that may be harmful but not as harmful as traditional cigarettes that may help someone to quit a good thing? If you were so interested in the public health, I do not understand in the least how you could take this position against e-cigarettes.

E-Cigarettes have been on the market for 3 years now. Not a single case of suicide. Not a single case of health problems. And yet thousands of cases of people quitting smoking. If there was, you’d actually have some fire in your attacks. But instead you are grasping at straws.

Since your position is obviously not health related, perhaps it really comes down to one or all of the following:

1. The very act that someone somewhere is bringing something to their mouths, breathing in smoke or vapor, inhaling and then exhaling is offensive to you. Well that perfume or cologne you are wearing is not only offensive to me, but even walking past me seriously aggravates my allergies. E-Cig vapor doesn’t have an effect on those around us, so perfume and cologne should be banned first correct? Ya know, being a danger to my health and all. So with your reasoning, anything anyone does that may offend someone somewhere should be banned. And I thought we lived in a free country. Silly me.
2. It defies your quit or die stance and that frightens you. I’m sorry, but my health is far more important than your pride.
3. You supported smoking cessation devices that were proven failures because if everyone did quit smoking you would have nothing to do with your free time. I’m sorry, but I’m not here to amuse you.
4. You receive funding from Pharmaceutical Companies. That is just shameful that you would hold money over the lives of thousands of people while touting a public health stance.

If you win your campaigning for a ban, your actions will directly result into thousands of non-smokers to go back to smoking. You will be the cause of our deaths. You can tell yourselves how weak we all are to help you sleep at night, but it doesn’t make it true.

Shame. Shame on all of you for spreading ignorance.

Sincerely,
XXXXXXXXXXX
You will rip my e-cig out of my cold dead hands.