Posts by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
(DIR) Post #AzkxK1krgu0zP0uBpQ by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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Affinity Studio. Free. Still getting my head around that.Affinity Studio is a single app instead of three different apps. Some new features. But they causally mention that it's free and will be free forever, and then just move on. I feel they need to explain FREE a little deeper. How does a company make money from FREE?#Affinity#AffinityStudio
(DIR) Post #AzkxK2lxuIUOYiQaBM by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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The good news is they didn't push everyone into subscription. They aren't bricking existing licences.They're making a grab for market share in a dramatic fashion, and maybe that's the only practical way to kick Adobe in the nuts. Maybe that will work. I very much doubt they'll lock out old licences, more likely they'll be an update of MacOS one day that breaks something and I'll have to reassess whether the new version is really FREE or not. All that seems a fair way down the track.I'm seeing some hyperventilation over data harvesting and somehow being forced to pay to access essential features. I don't care for the negativity right now. I really don't need the doom squad looking for the worst possible angle in everything.Canva are giving away a free design suite in order to build market share for their other products. Existing owners still have access to the software we already bought.Can people just be happy for a moment or maybe go take a walk?#Affinity
(DIR) Post #AzqJuzp10hf6u5gBaS by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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Adding to my list of things that don't make sense.Most days I make the effort to try and understand the world better. And try to better understand humans. Today I had lunch with a nice fella who is very much a humanitarian and very generous, and yet is a big fan of "what Trump is doing".It's a wild ride. I'll call him Cam. Not his real name.Cam has made a lot of money in the construction business in Florida, and as a professional dentist. He and his wife have raised several of their own kids, and adopted a few more. All have been through university. He now spends most of his time in Nepal helping a remote community access education and health care. He taps into various networks of charitable donors to bring money to Nepal, and enable these programs that transform the lives of some of the poorest communities you could imagine.Flip side, he thinks Trump is doing a great job to tackle the waste and corruption that sucks up tax payer dollars. He says there is some "collateral damage" in the process, but sometimes you have to start over and rebuild to make progress. He thinks socialised health care is wasteful and ineffective and one step closer to communism. He is happy to see the SNAP program shutdown because too many people are rorting it. He also made a comment about how God blessed his life and he's doing his best to share his good fortune.Yikes./1
(DIR) Post #AzqJv0hbjjKZdPDmgC by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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I don't think I'll ever understand folks who think any kind of social safety net is bad (because people will scam the system) but somehow corporations can always be trusted to deliver the best results.If ever there is a cohort in western society that is guaranteed to rip off the govt, it's corporations. I would argue that anyone who worries about people "being held accountable" can hardly point to Trump as their example of quality leadership.Obvious Cam doesn't see it that way. He sees Trump as unfairly accused of stuff. Maybe the real clue is his reference to "God". I think it takes remarkable cognitive dissonance to be angry at poor people getting food stamps, while at the same time deciding to privately fund raise for hospitals in the Himalayas because you don't trust the govts there to spend the money wisely.And for sure, lots of govts are corrupt. Have you seen what's happening in the White House lately???/2
(DIR) Post #AzqJv1OVAFdrmRI2XQ by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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Help me to understand this kind of person.Please don't be abusive and angry. I genuinely want to understand how someone can see the need in poor communities overseas, while voting to punish the working poor back home. Someone who is giving his time and money, and pretty much devoting his life now towards helping a specific community overseas. He's a nice person. He's intelligent. He's very positive. What am I missing here?Is this purely a case of someone who has lived a life of privilege and power, and for most of their lives held a distrust for helping the poor... until he finds some brown people in a struggling country?/3
(DIR) Post #B1GKlb1R2l0RFO2mWm by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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@sturmsuchtThat is... Not OK.@theowrites @antimnguyen
(DIR) Post #B1GNxRnPTJcjyCpIFk by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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@sturmsucht @theowrites @antimnguyen I get the need for sponsors at a conference. But making participants repost stuff is unacceptable. Unless they are sponsoring me personally and my addiction to pastries.
(DIR) Post #B1V47tmtipbsIwCwfg by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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@TamamiYou're so talented Tamami. There's a depth to how you use light in your paintings. 🤍
(DIR) Post #B1V47uhcJwyp8qkF4y by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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@TamamiCall it what you will. It's working :)I think a lot of people who never learned to share music or art (or photography in my case) have never learned the joy of making people happy. And it's such a gift to be able to make other people happy.
(DIR) Post #B1dNnz1y4UDT7biWZs by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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@sturmsuchtReally curious to see how this goes. Over 25 years ago I worked for an IT consulting mob and one of our guys was using Linux to DVR broadcast TV and even had a system to detect when the watermark for certain channels was present in order to skip the TV ads (which were not watermarked). He was a smart fella. Lives in a tree now.
(DIR) Post #B1dPsbKnnhIEz9rA0G by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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@sturmsuchtHoly moly that looks swish! Love it. Maybe just treat them to something nice on this occasion, instead of DIY, isn't a bad outcome.
(DIR) Post #B23PkOQ4zAZwiwMvmC by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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I have a few thousand frames to dig through tonight. Just wanted to share something right away, because it's a little bit exciting.I wasn't in the mood to head out and shoot tonight. I was tired to the bones after yesterday's outing, and the thought of leaving our cosy cabin to stand in the cold just in case things kicked off was marginal at best. But the satellite data was pretty convincing. And I knew I half decent spot to shoot from, about 10mins drive away.I grumbled and made a fuss and got in the car and stood out there. Buzzed a buddy and he came to join too. And then it went off like a frog in a sock. Maybe the second best aurora of the season so far. Not fast paced, but very generous and very pretty.This scene is taken with an 11mm F2.8 MF Fisheye by TT Artisan. Half decent lens. Tricky to tame that fisheye effect, hence setting the horizon as close to the centre as possible.#EwenInNorway #Lumix #Photography #Norway #Aurora #Nordlys #11mm
(DIR) Post #B2KhrDFvzX2QzQLOBU by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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It's 2am here. Still buzzing from being out for 4 hours with the nordlys. I found a quiet hill-top with a wide open sky, and watched tonight's aurora show ebb and flow. I feel so small beneath the painted sky. It's humbling and beautiful in equal measure.My cameras were on time-lapse the entire night. One just pointed straight up, the other on the move with me to chase moments.Night like this are nights I wish everyone could experience. Watching the dance between the solar winds and our planet. It's like science making art.#EwenInNorway #Lumix #Photography #Norway #Aurora #Nordlys
(DIR) Post #B2Kx8aA9ZnuaGkNePg by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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@sturmsuchtWe have a place to rent in winter, half way between Tromsø and Lofoten. An hour from Narvik. It's very quiet here. A few of the locals are keen photographers and chase the auroras on big nights. Not many travellers here in winter, which is perfect!
(DIR) Post #B2LKGY49YPV91pLEJ6 by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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@sturmsucht When we first started making Norway out winter home (in part to escape to summer in Melbourne), I had notions of driving all over and seeing every last patch of the north.But we found this quiet little nook, and some lovely people. And I don't really want to drive anywhere. I like staying here and popping 10mins down the road to enjoy a patch of forest, or a beach on the fjord.I'm getting less and less inclined to make that effort to see more. Am happy with what I've got, and deeply appreciative to the folks here who helped us make it our second home.
(DIR) Post #B2SOLGkH8f8UgGGmlU by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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I believe that was a KP9 earlier tonight. And it's not over yet.#aurora
(DIR) Post #B2SOLHYG8p7PBHehfs by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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Next wave is inbound.
(DIR) Post #B2UZ1oC8YKJMRU9236 by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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I probably should be back out there taking more photos, but I came home for a bit to get warm and have a hot meal. And part of me wants to head to bed, and part of me wants to sit out in the cold and hope to see a few more of these.The beauty of the movement, the shapes, the colours and the transience is something I will never be able to fully grasp. But I keep trying.#EwenInNorway #Photography #Auroras #Nordlys #Jan20 #AuroraStorm
(DIR) Post #B2VWhddq4eOrAcJfu4 by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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Was chatting to a friend today about the importance of having art in our lives. To focus our minds on creating art and expressing that aspect of ourselves. Art is like nature, we need to "touch grass" on a regular basis, and we need to "hold the brush" just as often.Here's one of my favourite moments from last night. It's shot with a 10mm fisheye, so it's more than 180° of view from top to bottom. That burst of corona above the fjord is directly above my head, and then continues behind me to the south. The 10mm sees all of this.I must take care to keep my head out of the shot in such moments :)#EwenInNorway #Photography #Nordlys #Jan20 #AuroraStorm #Aurora
(DIR) Post #B2VWhf7IabYjkH6iSe by ewen@social.ewenbell.com
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Okey one more. This time my regular 14mm perspective, looking straight up at a corona. I picked this one from the same time of night, to match the other two 10mm shots in this thread.I am struggling with editing these, because the colours are so intense. It looks un-natural, as though they are doctored. Yet I've backed off the saturation by double my usual amount. It really is an intense display when the big ones zip over head. What colours are real? The camera is seeing a lot more colour than our eyes do. We did see the red and greens in the night, for sure. At times the sky was like daylight, but green and red. If you tinker with white-balance you can push those reds into purple, and the brighter greens into yellow hues. Reality is anything you want it to be on a night like this.#EwenInNorway #Photography #Nordlys #Jan20 #AuroraStorm #Aurora