9/11 Eleven Years On

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Our flag is going up today because we love our country. But I have to say I don’t like this day. I didn’t like it 11 years ago when it scared the hell out of me, and I don’t like it any more today. In some ways it scares me even more now.

 

11 year ago we took a collective kick to the teeth. We learned that being American doesn’t make you magically less vulnerable to the plans of evil men. We learned that for all the cool things we are and do, we are still at the end of the day just as human as everyone else. We collectively bleed, we can be collectively hurt.

 

The best thing that came out of this experience was our neighbors. They all came out the night we lit candles on the curb, and we talked. We needed to talk. We needed to share. It was too much. Things were too important. Me made friendships that night that continue on to this day. It made the block we live on “our” block. It made our house more of a home. It gave us a sense of belonging. This is a priceless gift, as I see the effects on those who do not have this. So thank you 9/11, thank you America for that.

 

But born on that day was another thing, a more sinister thing. An ugliness born of the desire to somehow get back to where we were before that day. I understand the longing for innocence lost. I understand the need to feel safe, and as a father I certainly understand the need to protect our children from the world. But there is no protection that comes at the end of a fist. There is no protection — even for the country with the greatest military on the Earth — that cannot be overcome by evil men if given enough time and money. We cannot will away the scars of 9/11, and unlike Pearl Harbor we cannot conquer the country that gave us them.

 

So we are stuck. Stuck feeling vulnerable. Stuck feeling insecure. Stuck feeling like there is nothing we can do.

 

Except we are NOT stuck. This feeling, this giant collective insecurity, can ALSO be a good thing. It can teach us what it is like to live pretty much anywhere else in the world. We can empathize with people from Somalia, Cambodia, Columbia, and China, because everyone else ALSO has this feeling. This is a good thing, a collective thing. A knowledge that even though we can be hurt we can also work together to not let our children all over the Earth be hurt like this again. Oh I don’t know if it is possible to keep every child on the Earth safe from feeling this way, but I think that’s a damn fine goal to have. I mean if we’re going to think of ourselves as exceptional, why not be exceptional for something worth being exceptional about?

 

This is the lesson I learned from 9/11. This is the lesson I learned the night my neighbors came over and we shared our collective grief, and in that sharing forged friendships that pushed back the darkness. Just a little mind you, but still pushed it back.

 

Terrorists can manipulate your massive and awesome military, heck they are trained to do this. Terrorist can make you feel insecure, and vulnerable. But the one thing they cannot do is take aware your friendships. Terrorist thrive on your terror and your fear, but they have no response to love, they don’t have a clue what to do about caring when they are expecting bombs.

 

So on this 9/11, I say we be exceptionally caring, exceptionally loving, and exceptionally dangerous to those who want us afraid. What better way is there to fuck with those sons of bitches than to respond to their evil with loving and care?

On Deficits and Spending

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This article came up on FaceBook this morning.

I liked the article, but found it takes too many liberal ideas and presents them as fact without supporting them. Perhaps this is just a function of its length. But, the central point of the US being wrapped up in a deficit debate, is worthy of more consideration.

Ponder this: All through the Great Depression (which was most of the 1930s) the big debate in Washington was about deficit spending. Unlike today’s debate, they were all twisted up about ANY deficit spending, as in spending one dime over a balanced budget. The idea just flat out scared them. To let a budget go over what was allocated was madness to them, exactly like we talk about the “massive government debt” and “passing on our debt to our grandchildren”.

This fear of a non-ballanced budget (which we now know does not destroy a country) was so pervasive that it kept all social programs, especially the New Deal programs on a short leash. Too short, in fact. It also kept on defense department stunted at a time when it was critical to expand it.

Just like today, the two major sides were a Democratic party President (and congress) trying to spend our way out of economic gloom, and a Republican opposition resisting any effort to spend over the balance point.

When Pearl Harbor came, it did the one thing that neither party could do; it united the country. And in that unity we gave up the smaller fear of running with an unbalanced budget, for the greater fear of being overrun by fascism or Japanese militarism. In essence, the conservative fears of the dangers of an unbalanced budget suddenly had no traction. Our government started spending like drunken sailor. At one point we actually spent more, in terms of percent of the GDP, then we do today. Overnight we went from zero to 100. We also raised taxes like you would not believe, especially on the rich, and even rationed a huge number of materials (a move pretty much every economist will tell you will slow down the economy).

And the end result? One of the largest and longest growth spurts in our nation’s history. The wonderful economic bubble of the 50s and 60s was based on the spending of the early 1940s.

If there is something I would want to pass on to my grandchildren, it would be something like that. And yes, it came about from “out of control” government spending.

Jesus on the bus

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I met Jesus in the bus yesterday morning. He was a polite gentleman who was reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which turns out to be light reading for someone with a BA in Urban Planning. So now you know what Jesus is reading.

Jesus turned out to be an interesting chap. He’s from down here, but lived in Texas for a while, where he said the idea of Urban Planning has been deeply mixed with that of business. So much so that the electorate are referred to as “clients”, and one is expected to drop everything to deal with their calls. I can see the appeal for working like this, after all it is how I work, but I can also see the distraction. Too much mixing of business practices into governance is probably not a good idea, the two not being anything like the same process, but one cannot often tell Republicans this. I got the feeling Texas was a bit too conservative for our dear Jesus, but he never directly stated anything along those lines. A sharp man, that. He was carefully politically neutral throughout our conversation.

I wish him well on his TA work in the Geology Department at Santa Monica College, and hope his career choices bring him fulfillment and happiness.

And now I have one more book to add to my reading list, which is always a delightful thing.

The Inbetween

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Tonight I ran across an interesting man on my way home. The truth is I didn’t find him, he found me while I was waiting for Teri and Trevor to come and pick my up at the North Hollywood subway station.

I noticed him because he walked slowly in front of me. He was young, early 20s I’d guess, hispanic (a Latino) by appearance, but I don’t know if he spoke Spanish. I say I noticed him, but really he noticed me, as in he looked at me while I was sitting there holding up my Kindle and reading a novel. When I say he looked at me, I mean he really looked at me.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but most people in a public setting do not look at you. Oh they might glance at you, but there never let their glance rest on you for long. They look, and then quickly look away. Sometimes a gaze will linger, but this is almost always to express some form of sexual intent, or aggression. Rarely will a man gaze at me, especially a young man. A naked straight-into-the eye stare is considered a hostile act by most. Certainly it makes people uncomfortable.

(Don’t believe me? As an experiment, the next time you’re out in public openly stare at people. Look them straight into the eyes and do not look away. See what happens. Note: this will be taken as an aggressive act if they are the same sex, or a sexual advance if they are the opposite. Do this at your own risk.)

Anyway, this guy was staring at me. In the eyes. Only his expression was neutral, perhaps even thoughtful. There was no hint of anger. He seemed genuinely interested, like he was staring at a flower, or a car. There was not the least hint of negative intent, or of any understanding that his actions could be considered negative. In short, he was innocent.

Then he asked me what time it was. I clicked the menu button on my Kindle and told him it was 8:23. I told him several different ways. Finally he responded when I told him the way we used to tell the time at the Ren Faire (eight and twenty). His response was to repeat my words back to me.

He looked fascinated at my Kindle, so I showed it to him. He stood there for a second, never speaking. Looking both at the Kindle, and then into my eyes. Back and forth, back and forth. It was unnerving. He was really looking at me.

Then he walked to my right, and sat down next to me. Now I was sitting on a concrete rim of a planter there at the subway station. There were lots of people milling about, high school kids in black sporting skateboards, somber-faced old latinas walking along to their next bus, business people of every stripe and station, and even a few bums and drunks. And this guy. The one now sitting next to me. Only he wasn’t sitting next to me, he was sitting next to me. As in too close. Much too close.

Again, this sort of thing is usually considered an aggressive act, or a sexual one. But he wasn’t interested in either. Or at least I should say he wasn’t giving off the social clues for either.

So I asked him, “How ya doing?”

Its a straight enough question that most Spanish speakers can get the meaning. He responded, with a kind of non-word. A grunt, or maybe a sigh. Essentially a sound without any meaning. At least to me.

Then I looked up, and saw Teri drive up to the kiss and ride. I said goodbye to my newly found friend, and got moving to the car. Luckily he did not follow. If he had, I’m not sure what I would have done.

When I told Teri about this, she exclaimed she would have jumped up and moved away as soon as the guy sat down next to her. No doubt wise advice for a woman. Me, I’m pretty comfortable around the mentally ill, and the strange. This guy I think was likely just retarded. Possibly lost. Perhaps he doesn’t speak English. Who knows?

All I know is he was weird, and if I got a chance to talk with him at any length, I would have probably liked him, much like you like a new puppy. Only people are not puppies.

Resolution on Outdoor Campaigns

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Someone on a professional retouching board I belong to, asked a question below. The majority of this post is my response. It is reposted here because the board is for members only and links will not work for non-members.

The posted question was: Does anyone have any tips for the best way to upsize an image for billboard use?

Here is my response:

I do a lot of outdoor campaigns, (or a mix of outdoor and print) so I run into this issue all the time. Worse, many print places that handle large outdoor pieces will establish some crazy guidelines for the artwork they accept. 200 dpi at size for a 14′ x 48′ billboard. Things like that.

In addition almost everything I do is composited, based upon 3-5 photos (sometimes a lot more), so the artwork is a bit more “created out of thin air” than what many retouchers deal with. Most of the outdoor work I do are ads for television, typically 2-3 big heads (or bodies) and some kind of background. Because of this the techniques I use may not work for you particular situation.
(As a curious aside, most television clients refer to outdoor campaigns are Out Of Home, or OOH. Why, I do not know)

So here’s the rules I have slowly discovered over the years:

 

1) Work at the native resolution of your original images, if at all possible.

This is the most important part of working a campaign of large outdoor pieces. The original artwork will be at whatever resolution it was shot at. This is your starting point, and if it was shot well, and high enough resolution at the start, the only point. For me this means I construct everything at the resolution of my worst photo (or if it is especially bad at some mid point). For the purposes of discussion, we’ll call this selected photo our ALPHA. All images will revolve around its resolution.

In practical terms this means retouching the native images as large as they will come out of RAW, and making sure the work (masks, color corrections, retouching, etc.) will transport well to your composited final files. I’ve found Smart Objects do this well, but not always.

If you doing a campaign (as opposed to a one-off) then build your first composited final piece at whatever resolution your ALPHA photo works to. (if you’re doing a one-off, then assume only one final composition)

This sounds complex, but actually it’s pretty straight forward. I’ll take the initial file (for me this is always a lower resolution comp provided by a design firm), flatten all the layers, and then drag this flattened piece on top of my retouched ALPHA. From that point I simply scale the flattened comp to the correct size so it matches my ALPHA. I find it easy to INVERT the image, and set the OPACITY to 50%, before scaling. Others do other tricks. The important point is to make sure you know EXACTLY what percentages the image was scaled.

For the purpose of discussion, lets say your final composited file needs to be scaled 254.82% to match the size of your ALPHA.

Assuming that the final file is built to mechanical specs in terms of length, width, and bleed (you did build to spec, right?), then all we have to do is change the resolution of the final file to match the ALPHA. Lets say your final file is 150 dpi. Length and width do not matter as we are not going to change them. To scale your 150 dpi file by 254.82% all you have to do is multiply the two numbers, and divide by 100. So 150 x 254.82 = 38223. Take that number and divide by 100 (38223 / 100 = 382.23). So the final resolution of your file will be 382.23 dpi. Set your image size to this (change the dpi ONLY, not anything else), wait for the file to rez up, and then save it off.

Now your ALPHA image should drop right in without resizing.

 

2) Build your background elements, and any other photos, to the size of your ALPHA.

Once you have them all together make sure you test for accuracy and fidelity. If you have several composited image you may have to tweak them to get them to appear the same level of sharpness. This is why my ALPHA is often my worst file, because everything else will look better.

When the file is done/approved, put it in your mechanical, (Most of my clients dump a flattened TIFF from the final file into an InDesign mechanical. You might do it differently), and you’re good to go.

 

3) Send the file away to the printers.

On occasion, I’ll get a printer that insists that their specs are the only “correct” ones, and demand the file at “their” resolution. (Never mind that a photo shot at 300 dpi will never be any better than 300 dpi.) To fix a file for them I add a final step. I flatten everything in my final file I can get away with (which is everything that is not type or vector, but excludes any noise layers) and then rez the flattened file up to the specs they require. If there is a noise layer on the top of the composited file, then I rebuild the noise at the final resolution (as opposed to rezzing it up). This will make the printer happy and save you lecturing them on the stupidity of assuming higher resolution is automatically better.
Now all of this came about because there is a lot of confusion out there about resolution and what it means. As I mentioned above, a 300 dpi image is never going to be better than at 300 dpi. Yes you can build it at 600 dpi, or more, but then your going to be doing all kinds of tricks with it to get it to be sharp, and the file is going to take almost twice as long to build.

You clients may or may not know this. They may be under the false assumption that higher rez is always better. Its not. For instance, a blurry shot at 300 dpi is just as bad as a blurry shot at 600 dpi, with the possible exception that one can retouch a 300 dpi file much faster than a 600 dpi one. So uprezing a 300 dpi blurry shot to 600 dpi, just to retouch, is a waste of your time.

There’s another thing. Most outdoor is not printed high rez. I’ve seen billboards printed at a 25 line screen. Do you have any idea how big the dots are at that size? More over, most outdoor is not viewed close up. Most billboards are 20 or 40 feet above ground. No one is going to walk right up to the canvas that high off the ground and say the image is a little soft. All I’m saying is that “sharpness” is a relative term. Chasing a mythical “perfect” point is a waste of time, especially if the original photos were never sharp to begin with. Its better to balance the image as good as you can get it, and let the RIP handle the rest.

Which brings me to my final point. Most outdoor images are sent from your mechanical to a RIP, and then to a printer. The RIP will automatically uprez your file to the proper size for the output device. As long as the type elements are still sharp (read still in postscript, hence building the mechanical and all possible type in InDesign) then the final image should hold up well. It makes no difference if YOU uprez up your file, or if the RIP uprezzes it, with the possible exception that the RIP will probably do a better job at keeping the file consistent.

Trends in Retouching

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Back in December of 2011, someone on a professional retouchers board asked for opinions on the future of retouching. Since the board is a for members only (links will not work for non-members), I’ve duplicated my response here.

 

A few things here. I see a growing trend in retouching, and I don’t think it has hit its peak yet. Alas, the vast majority of this growth is happening at the low and mid ranges of the work. At a hunch I’d say that for every piece of art one of us professionals crank out, 10 pieces of mid range art are done, and 100 pieces of crappy art are done.

This reflects a similar trend I see which is the growing knowledge of how to retouch. More and more people are starting out in photoshop, and doing their first composites, color corrections, etc. Again, like the statistics I guessed at above, I would bet over 90% of these newbies never get past the “amateur” phase. Probably 8-10% will develop their ability into the intermediate range, and only a small few will reach the rank of “pro”.

Both of these trends are made possible by the growing understanding or photo retouching in the general population. Most people know that one can do something interesting in Photoshop (although most would be fuzzy about the specifics). One can now use the verb “Photoshopped” or ‘shopped” or photochopped” and most English speaking people will know exactly what you mean.

All of these things are a boon for us. The largest hurdle in getting a new client to understand the value of what we do is to getting them to understand what we CAN do. Alas, like the numbers above, most of this new work will start out in the cheap range. They will either hire an amateur, or they will pass on the job to an employee. Most of these new potential photoshop clients will not develop the budgets, or the understanding, to hire a professional retoucher.

Still, I would bet professional retouching holds a consistent 5%-10% of the market share in terms of numbers of items retouched, and probably 50% or more of the market in terms of money earned.

At some point, and no I do not know when, I think the demand for retouching will start to decline, or at least flatten off. Yet numbers of people who gain the knowledge or retouching will probably not peak for quite some time after that. If this happens, then expect to see even the professional range of retouching slowly get saturated with too many retouchers. This will drive down prices, and quality. Neither of which is in our best interest. It will also start to place a greater value on certification of professional ability. Expect to see various ad hoc retouching groups get together and “certify” their professional ability, usually though some sort of professional organization.

All of that is about the work, but that is not all that is changing. The tools we use to retouch are also subject to change.

Sometime in the early 90s, digital retouching started to compete and then overcome traditional retouching. This was a revolutionary change, and not always for the better, as it left a lot of retouching professionals behind. It also made for a lot more work. The good news for us is that I do not see another revolution to our business coming soon. At least not on that scale. We will see some changes, but they will happen at a more moderate rate, and if we are careful, most of us should be able to transition with them successfully.

Our primary tool right now is Photoshop, and the program is definitely starting to get into  the bloated range of software. In many ways this is good for us. Without any serious competition, Photoshop will remain largely consistent, which means we can change with it. Adobe is more interested in finding stupid crap to put in it, so they can justify their goal, which is to get you to buy a new version of the software at least once a year. This is how most software companies make their money. The good news is this allows them to evolve the product slowly, the bad news is this tends to make the product more bloated with junk. I don’t expect to see any large changes to photoshop soon because I don’t expect to see any serious competition to it. Adobe has done an excellent job of watching the little guys, and adopting their better ideas. This is a good model for them, so expect to see more of it in the future.

Where I do expect to see change is in the interface with computers. I think iOS (like on the iPad, iPhone, or Android devices) represent the future of ALL computer work. Couple this trend with the higher resolution touch-screen monitors now coming out, and you start to see a glimmer of what our work will be like in the future. 10 years from now I doubt we will be using a keyboard on our computers. I think the majority of our work will be done with our hands right on the screen, and likely using a stylus of some type. If this is true, then expect to see our work areas go back to something like drafting tables, with large surface areas to rest our hands/arms while we work on the big screen. This more “hands on” approach will not be for everybody, but I expect it to eventually dominate because it more accurately reflects how people actually work. IN that sense, the work of retouching will more closely resemble the other arts, like drawing and painting.

Beyond that, expect to see computers getting faster and faster (over 7 times as fast at they are now in 10 years), files getting bigger and bigger, and the process of retouching being more and more automated. A lot of the easy and intermediate retouching work can be automated, especially with faster/smarter computers. The high end work will probably NOT be. I say this because 1) high end work is a highly complex task (in other words, its art), and 2) because there is not enough money in it to make it worth the investment.

Anyway, that’s some of what I see coming down the pipe. As you can guess, I’ve done a bit of thinking about this. I happen to read and write a lot of sic-fi, so projecting future trends is a bit of a hobby.

On Good Service

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Teri and I went to Gelson’s the other day to see if they had a particular brand of buttermilk we’ve been using, but has been discontinued at our local store. (Teri is a devote to The Perfect Buttermilk Pancake, and let me tell you, different buttermilks make much different pancakes) For those that don’t live around here, Gelson’s is an upscale grocery store. Not a natural one like Whole Foods, its a regular chain with a nicer look, and more amenities. While we were there, we happened to run into the guy who stocks the dairy case. He was helpful, friendly, and made it easier for us to shop.

Then, because we were hungry and it was past lunch time, we decided to stop by the Deli and pick up a sandwich. That is where we met Lillian. Lillian was standing off to one side of the Deli case, and obviously wore the dress/uniform of an employee. There was quite a crowd around the deli case, the customers were taking their little numbers, the ladies behind the counter were trying to manage the crowd, you know, the standard deli experience.

Lillian was different.

When we glanced her way Lillian smiled at us and asked if we would like to order on the iPad which she was holding. There was a large sign next to her telling us exactly what ingredients (breads, lunch meats, cheeses, condiments, etc.) were offered for making a sandwich, which made the complex task much easier. Lillian herself was knowledgeable, friendly, helpful, and generally made the ordering process pleasant instead of complex and overwhelming. In short she added to our experience while in the store and made our short stay much more welcoming.

So given the choice between dealing with the feeding frenzy in front of the deli case, with the employees removed from the consumer behind a huge glass case, or standing next to a smiling person who is helpful and friendly, you would think most people would choose the person over the counter. Only it didn’t work that way. I watched person after person walk right past Lillian, head right up to the counter, take a number, and enter the crazy, busy deli experience. I don’t know if having an employee in front was new, or that the other shoppers preferred their routine, or what. I hesitate to say what might be the cause, but I can tell you they were missing a chance to talk to a warm friend person, and not a busy harassed lady behind the counter.

In terms of customer service, Lillian was the tops. She made our stay enjoyable by making us feel like we were important and not just another number. Yet for all her gifts, she largely was ignored. I don’t know which is more sad, that an upscale grocery store had to hire a person just to offer a level of service that I think should be standard, or that the regular patrons ignored such service in favor of a less personable approach.

Which begs the question: Who is at fault if a customer consumes a less friendly experience? The store, or the customer?

Food Shows on the Radio

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For some reason I love listening to food shows on the radio. The ones on TV don’t do a thing for me, but for some reason driving around and hearing 20 different things to do with macadamia nut oil just makes me happy. Maybe its because cooking is its on kind of story, only unlike writing, cooking stories are all short and end (usually) in comfort. They are a quick emotional fix, maybe a more earthy fix. If a short story is like a complex five course dinner, then cooking is like a cookie. Short sweet, and easily forgotten.

When you eat a good meal that someone has prepared for you, they have literally allowed you to live that much longer. They have nourished you, kept you from starvation. And the euphoria one feels after a good meal is nothing to laugh at.

And yet hearing about cooking on the radio is very removed from the more earthy action of eating. In that sense it is almost a tease. It leaves me with nothing but ideas, and most of those I quickly forget anyway.

You see, while I like to cook, I am also darn lazy. I don’t get the thrill from cooking my mother and sisters got. They can enjoy the making of a meal––the challenge of putting something together new, or well––almost as much (if not more so) than eating it. For me cooking is work. Even when I’m trying out something new, and being creative, it is still work.  So while I love to hear about 20 uses of macadamia nut oil, the truth is I don’t want to make any of them. Oh I might want to taste them, but to the thought of cooking them leaves me uneasy.

Yet when I am driving down the road, and someone is speaking knowledgeably and passionately about making food, I love it. It transports me to another place, another time. Just don’t ask me to remember what they said. And don’t ask me to cook.

I’ve been reading some Dick…

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As in Philip K. Dick, the sci-fi  author. The book is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep which is the book that the movie Blade Runner is based on. Yes, that book. Yes that movie.

What I’m finding is interesting. For one thing Dick is not all that smooth a writer. His copy is disjoined at times, his characters talk past each other, his worlds are put together with glue and despair, and not much else. But oh can this man write. Its the little quirks he gives, little throw away lines, that say so much. One character says, “Hey, I think this dead cat is going to decay” and then he smiles (for a completely different reason). But still the juxtaposition is perfect. So you have to ignore the bumpy parts of the prose and the plotting, and then you get these wonderful little gems of character development. Crazy, yes. But still gems.