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foobarrio

225 karma · joined April 17, 2015

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foobarrio··on Famous Photo of Chernobyl's Most Radioactive Material Was a Selfie
You're right in that we don't know how the photo was taken but a long photo exposure doesn't necessarily mean you will see his trail. My explanation still stands a pure guess of how that photo could have been taken. Let me explain more:

There is only so much range a piece of film can achieve. I don't know how much you know about photos but exposure and light are usually discussed on a log(base 2) scale. Each exposure "unit" called a "stop" equates to doubling or halving the amount of light. So a 4 second exposure is 1 stop darker than an 8s one because it lets in half the light.

Assuming there are no other light sources we can assume the entirety of the exposure came from the flash light. There is a shadow behind and above the elephants foot which tells us the elephants foot was illuminated by a light below the camera. Assuming the guy had the camera at almost eye level, shines the flashlight at waste level could produce this kind of shadow.

Now let's say the guy turns the flashlight off walks over to where he is in the photo and starts moving the flash light more, shift position and does it again. You will not see him walk to the spot in the photo even if the room was not completely dark.

If he took a 60 second photo, he set the exposure for 30ish seconds of light from flash light and not from ambient light. This means the ambient light reflecting off the guy while he walked probably exposed a trail that is over 10 stops below what the light from the flash light did. In good conditions your average color negative film has about 7 stops of dynamic range or +3 from middle tones before turning completely white and -3 from going to complete black. It's not hard to set up a photo where you don't register because you're trail exposes below the range of the film. Many people do these kinds of photos and they are called "lightpainting".

This is very commonly done in landscapes where certain features of landscapes like trees and rocks are painted. You don't see the people walking around because they turn their lights off when they do it. They do produce walking smears but they account for such a small proportion of the overall exposure they don't show up in the final photo. I believe this what these guys do and notice no people in their photos:

http://www.lightmark.de/overview.html

However they might compositing images. Here is another example:

http://cache3.asset-cache.net/gc/554997063-glowing-digital-m...

I've personally done photos like that in a single long exposure. I'm sure the photos I linked have lots of photoshop to get them perfect to get them perfect the principal stands. I'm assuming a lot of photography sophistication that the elephant foot photographer may or may not have but how knows!

foobarrio··on Famous Photo of Chernobyl's Most Radioactive Material Was a Selfie
The photo was taken 10 years after the initial meltdown and photographer is alive. When the meltdown first happened, anyone that close would be dead under 2 minutes. The radiation figures are in the article.

If were to take a 10 second photo, 4 seconds in one spot, 1 second moving and another 5 seconds in another spot I wouldn't be a full blur. The part of me moving only accounts for 1/10 of the entire exposure and the places where I stood still would be much brighter. I can exaggerate this by turning off my flash light when I was moving.

foobarrio··on What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population
I clicked around the PayScale and IMF pages and could not find how they define "Software Engineer". Is this the same as "Programmer" or "Software Developer"? These titles are quite broad in some places. For example where I sit now, we are all "programmers". However one of our programmers is a CPA + some other certs and spends as much time talking to accountants, lawyers, reading IRS notices as she does spec'ing out and developing software. Is she a "Software Engineer"? I spend most of my time fixing bugs and operating our software systems does that make me a "Software Engineer"? I program a lot sometimes but I'd hardly call what I do engineering. I'm in the U.S. and we don't have formal engineering accreditation for software.
foobarrio··on Classism in America
This is not something unique to the US. Mexican soap operas and movies often trump up the darker, poorer people as "noble savages" and native culture is celebrated. However if you look a bit closer, all the money and power is still in the hands of the whiter characters!
foobarrio··on The mobile games industry is kept afloat by less than 1% of users
The games are there, you just have to dig. Phones and tablets lend themselves really well to bullethell and other shmups(of which I love):

   * .Decluster
   * DoDonPachie, DeathSmiles, really anything by Cave
   * Shogun: Bullethell
They have also done remakes of popular shmups like R-Type and popular Neo Geo shooters. There is plenty of depth in and fast action in these games. Tapping rhythm games are awesome like:

   * Rhythm Control 2
There's also adventure games:

   * Sword and Sorcery 
Not to mention the Secret of Monkey Island series and Grim Fandango have been remade for iOS. I also know a guy was super into Street Fighter tournaments and really like Street Fighter IV on his iPad. The platform has already been proven as a viable gaming platform. Very few people other than serious gamers want to pay more than a few bucks for "just an app".
foobarrio··on FBI Cannot Make Apple Rewrite Its OS
The argument is still the same. This a cost/benefit thing. The cost to society of forcing Apple to comply right now is greater than the benefit of unlocking a single phone and setting a precedent and handing more power to the FBI.

If an asteroid was going to wipe out the earth, well then the cost/benefit analysis shifts quite a bit doesn't it?

foobarrio··on Chord progressions of 25,000 songs
I've always seen equal temperament similarly to digitizing or any other form quantization. It's "close enough". Any type of dissonance heard in what are supposed to be perfect intervals is like grain in film.
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