photography

Weekly Photo Challenge: Magic

A photograph itself is a kind of Magic. In its simplest form, it captures a moment gone and preserves a place and time unchanged on its two-dimensional plane. The mechanics of that alone are an astounding feat, where the goal is the image produced and the subject is clearly framed and readily recognised.

fountain

magic fountain

The image, I have selected for the challenge uses some AI trickery. I took a photo of the fountain in Pushkin Square, Tbilisi and transmogrified it using Prisma, an app on my phone, which sends the image to the Prisma servers and returns the image altered in a chosen style in around 5 seconds…all very clever, all slightly magical….the “filter” or style I chose is called “electric”.

Prisma

Yesterday, I downloaded Prisma onto my Android Smartphone, there are 43 different filters which can dramatically transform my photos. The technology is described as “A Neural Algorithm of Artistic Style”.

I am quite impressed with some of the results.

I take my granddaughter to school in the mornings, so as I took her, I played with my new app…

I have had the app less than 24 hours but I’ve already made over 100 images, it is easy and fun to use plus it was free to download.

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this one (called Curly Hair) gives a drawing effect

Some filters imitate famous artists like Munch, Mondrian, Hokusai or Roy Lichtenstein others are just bespoke filters of the app.

The app was created by Alexey Moiseenkov and uses artificial intelligence in a way I cannot grasp.

I can take a photo and apply the filter or download old photos to my phone to be Prismatised.

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I might use this with my diecast blog

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Demolition in the Old Town

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This gives the Metro Carriage a Renoir-look (the filter was called “Dancers in Blue”)

I can see I am going to have a lot of fun with this app in the days ahead.

Chance shot

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დავით აღმაშენებელი

This was a photo I took of the equestrian statue of David the Builder. The cloud above looks like smoke coming from his hand. It was a lucky capture, I was on the minibus from Didi Dighomi to Didube. The statue is on the corner of D. Agmashenebeli Alley, the minibus slows a little to turn the corner, but there is no time to compose the photo as we drive past, just a quick click of the shutter and hope for the best. The windows of the minibus are closed and grimy, closed to allow the air conditioning to function but this gives a murky quality to any photo taken through them.

David the Builder  (დავით აღმაშენებელი)(1073 – 24 January 1125) is considered to be the most successful king of Georgia and the creator of the Georgian Golden age.

Untitled ‪#14

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There is a fountain I pass most days in Liberty Square (Tavisuplebis Moedani), taking my granddaughter to school. I have been playing around with different angles of view. If I get down low, I can have St George and his horse on top of the fountain. Here the hydraulic arm of a fire truck looks to be impeding the flow of the water…which is in fact responding to high gusty winds…

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Weekly Photo Challenge: ROY G BIV (ii)

I didn’t participate in last week’s photo challenge “Off Season”, the first I missed in a long while. To make up for it I’m putting in a second photo to this week’s challenge relating to the colours of the rainbow.

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet.

I like to photograph the rainbow patterns made by oil on wet tarmac.

ROYGBIV the rainbow hues of oil on wet tarmac

ROYGBIV
the rainbow hues of oil on wet tarmac

Sometimes I might see an image in the pattern and play with the image in Mypaint.

rainbow bird

rainbow bird

ROY G. BIV