Monday, 31st July, 2006

Neat Image (Photoshop Filter)

link photoshop

"A filter designed to reduce visible noise and grain in photographic images produced by digital cameras" — Not tried it myself yet, but it seems to get good reactions. There's a PC version too, but I'll be buggered if I'm linking to that

Well here, let me do a quick test just using the 'Auto' functions to see how it goes, using a portion of a classic Curran snapshot...

Before:

After:

That's actually not bad, considering I just used the defaults, and all I did afterwards was apply a quick Unsharp Mask to the output. There's a whole bunch of profiles that people have shared to work with specific cameras and phones, so I'll have a bit more of a delve into it later — if I get the chance.

Pah. My DIY noise-reduction and overall Photoshop enhancement tutorial trumps you by 11 months

Flickr: white poo

link flickr

Answering one of the greatest mysteries of our time

Perhaps Not

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I was about to go out. Then the heavens opened

I know Almost all of the images posted before the Great Server Crash Of 2005 are missing — probably never to return again. This is why I rewrote that tutorial in June last year

No, stick your alias (resourcefulrobin) in the Flickr box. You don't need the url to your photos.

I'm A Font Trapped In A Typeface's Body

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Technovia: Sorry — which century am I in?

link

My lovely friend Ian has been on great form recently, and this is no exception

Influxes And Tipping Points

community rant photography tranny

I'm not entirely sure exactly what I'm trying to say here, but it's something that's generally occupying my head (in a fuzzy way) at the moment — the whole mass democratisation aspect of the 'new web' (as it were). My general concern, at this exact moment in time, is that I'm going to come across as some kind of 'snob' — but fuck it...

I have, for a while now, been hugely excited by the way in which the emphasis of major web-based tools has been on ease of use — how things like Flickr and del.icio.us and suchlike empower people to get stuff done online, rather than worrying about all sorts of technical voodoo. It's something that I've found within things that I've built as well — you make it easy, and great content starts to flow.

The problem is though, that you get an awful lot of shit as well — and the big question that rings in my mind is how to deal with that? How do you filter out the crap? Who (if anyone) curates the vastness of uploads?

From my position (as someone within the trannie-community), I've been spotting a small trend recently — partly related to my Sloppy Seconds thing (I guess). Initially, you get a group of developers, early adopters, and masochistic beta-testers playing with something. Then come the 'Seconds' (as it were), who take to this New Toy™ and flood it with rich content, create niches, and forge new paths and networks. After that, the Jennie-come-latelies (like me) get there, and embrace the ethos and gladly contribute.

Then, within already-established communities and sections of the web, word spreads, and the influx happens.

Now here's my dilemma ... the influx is needed, because things need to grow — but it's usually around that time that the general overall quality of content starts to diminish — and people start to have to develop ways of limiting and moderating the freedoms that made the tool so wonderful in the first place.

Is this a valid concern? Am I being elitist here?

...

*taps fingers*

*rolls cigarette*

*decides "what the hell"*

Basically, I've seen some really shite tranny pictures recently — in places where I never really expected to see shite pictures.

I know that I'm not always the most self-editing of people — and I'm as guilty as the next trannie of making inadvisable decisions about whether I "look good enough to post" sometimes.

But dear God, the influx of badly-lit, badly-composed, and downright scarey pictures that have been appearing in pools recently leave me thumping my head against the keyboard screaming "FFS" loud enough to worry my neighbours.

I really don't get it. I don't get how someone could look at some of them and hit the upload button.

...

I suppose what I'm wondering here, is how much of a support group certain things should be? Part of me really wishes I had the self-confidence and courage to leave some honest comments on some of the pictures I've seen recently — but I haven't.

But perhaps there is a tendancy, sometimes, within our community to confuse "support" and "encouragement" with generically flattering every single photograph and enfemme adventure that we see/read about — giving a 10-out-of-ten for effort and ignoring everything else. I think there's a very fine line between actually being supportive, and just sycophantically rattling off the usual "u look great!" bollocks that you see everywhere.

I wonder, sometimes, whether it would be a lot more suportive to say "Hey, well done for going out/posting a photo ... but you look like shit".

no you are not Lord Vengeance, you are a 45 year old accountant called Colin

You'll forgive me here, while I piss myself laughing

Ain't I a stinker?

Yes Becky Yes you are

a place that's over-run with irrelevancy [...] I wish I could find better ways of cutting through the crap!

What I'm wondering, is that with The Influx™, comes a general need for a community to become more self-critical. I think that it's almost inevitable that in the early days of something, people with similar ideas and mindsets gather together on similar wavelengths — and that in those situations there's no real need to aggressively 'police' content.

But with a wider appeal, and (natch) a wider mindset, to keep something roughly heading on its original course, voices have to be raised.

Eeek , I don’t know why you think this confined to trannies. It’s in way too many communities.

Ooh Ciara, I know — I don't think it's confined to us at all, it's just the one I've got most experience wth

My general pondering though, is whether or not it's right for me to give someone criticism.

See, on the one hand, I kinda think it's a bit mean of me if I did. Blowing my own trumpet for a second (fnnar fnnar), I'm very well aware of the fact that compared to some people, I am quite lucky in the way that I look. I know I'm not passable (but then, who is? ), but from certain angles a certain angle, I don't look too bad at all.

Is it right though, for me to say to someone "You don't look like a woman in that photograph" when it's perhaps something they really can't help? Should we be putting emphasis on surface-beauty and superficial indicators of 'attractiveness', or concentrating on people's personalities.

But then again, whacking a photo up on Flickr and describing it with words like "I love looking like a woman" — well, perhaps that act in itself opens it up for criticism.

Feist

rant community

The real issue is that Wikipedia is a not-so-small community of people, facing the same challenges of governance, accountability, and policing that any community this size would face. I can't help but think that most of these issues arise because Wikipedia essentially runs with the equivalent of a Declaration of Independence but no Constitution.

(http://www.dashes.com/anil/2006/07/31/antipedia)

And perhaps we're seeing the first signs of the war over here in the west too? The now traditional transgendered contestant in Big Brother, besieged, in the foxhole of the diary room, or sleeper agents being groomed to hide in the other camp in other reality shows. Webloggers drawing up their strategies for the coming conflict in the open briefing rooms of the Internet. Shots fired across the bows of discussion forums and tactics rehearsed in Metaversal simulations like Second Life?

(http://www.thedragnet.org/blog/musings/armistice.html)

When I get drunk — which is what I am, at the moment, unfortunately, against what I promised myself I would do — I sometimes get a little beligerent. I like to imagine that I hold more sway than I perhaps do, and envisage all sorts of phenomenal outcomes stretching far off into the future.

It might be the drink, or it might be just a general series of events of late that are fueling an aggressive streak of activism in my head. Either way, I'm pissed off with things.

There is a very good reason why this blog's title is a pun on the word manifesto...

is "looking like a woman" the sole aim of every tranny?

No Koan, it's not — but I would have thought it's pretty high up there.

I get what you're saying, but I do think that throwing yourself oneself into a stream of photographs whose context is all about 'looking like a woman', then describing yourself oneself as "looking like a woman", pretty much opens up debate about whether you one look like a woman or not.

(She said, realising that using the word "you" there so much makes it look like I mean you — which I don't — so goes back to edit that slightly)

I rather like that Shania Twain's Man I Feel Like A Woman...

I'm on the verge of a conceptual breakthrough...

I, for one, would like to hear more about this.

Don't comment when sleepy, Koan. Clarity suffers.

Equally, don't write when pissed, Siobhan

I guess I felt it was a little ironic, Siobhan, that in some posts you criticise trannys for trying to look like women ("be a bloke in a dress, and be proud of it"), and then in this one, berate them for not looking like a woman, but thinking that they do. I guess I'm trying to determine what the difference is between those positions.

That's a very fair point Koan, and I am wondering about the consistency of what I'm trying to say in relation to things I've said in the past. But I think the core of it is in the words "thinking that they do".

What riles me, I suppose, is is the self-perpetuating stagnation of mutual back-patting that seems to go on in places — the "looking great hun!" responses to a photograph that looks a million miles away from "great", that encourages more of the same rather than suggesting a positive direction in which to take things.

But if someone's point of reference is steroetypical tranny shots ("tranny on bed", "tranny on stairs", "tranny ass shot", etc.) is it any wonder if that's what proliferates?

Exactly But I think that's part of the general point I'm trying to make. When you have a pool that's essentially just the same photograph (but from slightly different angles, and with different people), then that stagnancy increases. What I want to see are things that (urgh) "Push the envelope" as it were, and I think the way to do that is to (a) post pictures that are challenging, and (b) make constructively critical and honest comments.

(In other words, please ignore my "look like shit" thing above, and put it down to me being slightly emotive and a bit drunk. What I'm getting at is something more along the lines of "hey, have you tried taking from a different angle/using different lighting/messing around with photo-software?")

Just as an aside for a moment, there are several discussions that centre around these "tranny on bed"/"tranny on stairs" idea. I'd like to think that the intent behind them is partly to self-mock — to highlight the 'sameness' of photographs by saying "Heh, look. We've all done this — aren't we crap?". But instead it becomes exactly that "how to be a tranny" thing you're talking about — it becomes more rungs on the Trannie Ladder™.

I guess I'm advocating a little tolerance towards those with different technical and aesthetic standards, is all — especially if their main point of reference is other people of dubious technical and aesthetic standards.

I don't know though "Tolerance" yes, but that doesn't mean sycophance does it? What Charlee said above — "If I think otherwise, I'll either a) shut up if I don't know them very well or b) tease my point or c) quietly and privately point out that they look like a twat." — rings very true to me, and it's what I generally do. But I think that now the 'tipping point' has been reached within certain spaces, then a certain increase in response has to reflect that.

As shite as some of these pictures you're discussing are, do we (meaning anyone) have the right to tell them that just because they look like crap and refuse help to look better they don't have the right to post?

I think, Natalie, that that's exactly what I was troubling myself about earlier — that conflict between (as Koan points out) my desire for "pride in ourselves" vs "not looking like shit". Perhaps the emphasis here though is being put too much on "looking like a woman" (God, I'm contradicting myself again ) While I do think that that is a major driving factor behind the motivation for what we do, I think the emphasis should be on looking good.

"Good" is, of course, an entirely subjective thing — but what I'd like to see isn't a black-and-white scenario where photos are judged either as "good" or "bad". I want to see debate, differing opinions, argument — and hopefully some kind of progression in the ways that we express ourselves.

...

Actually, maybe that's my One And Only Point™ — that a massive influx of newness should bring about forward change, rather than just regurgitating everything that's gone before, over and over again. And the only way to do that is to be more honest, more open, and more constructive in the ways that we respond to the things that we see flooding into our aggregators every morning.

Maybe.

Because it was the word that popped into my head, and I can't quite get across what I mean.

What should the emphasis be on then?

Stop having such interesting conversations on your blog.

It's not me — it's other people leaving interesting comments

If someone gets a positive, validatory feeling from posting a picture, isn't that a worthwhile outcome for them, even if the quality (however one defines that) isn't great, in the eyes of others?

You know, I really want to disagree with this — but I'm finding it really hard to find a leg to stand on.