Classical Composer Reacts To "Pet Sounds"

I've been a fan of the Beach Boys for over 60 years. I've been an occasional follower of The Daily Doug for close to two years. This YouTube channel features classical music composer/educator, Doug Helvering, in a genre known as "reaction videos", wherein experts in one type of music express their reactions to other types of music. For some reason, these are wildly popular. I quite enjoy them myself.

In the relatively short time I've been following Daily Doug YouTube videos he's posted reactions to many of my favorite musicians, including Pat Metheny Group, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd among others. But it always irked me a little that I never saw a reaction video to any Beach Boys songs or albums.. until last Friday, that is.

While scrolling through YouTube's daily recommendations (something I'm wont to do on a daily basis, as mentioned in a previous post here) a couple days ago, I came to a screaching halt. The Friday edition of The Daily Doug, the extended show where he posts reactions to entire albums, would be devoted to, arguably, Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys greatest album: Pet Sounds. And while I had other things I should have been doing at that time, I sat there watching for the next 51 minutes with the volume at 11.

Surprisingly, Doug admitted to only being familiar with only two of the songs on the album! So while he played the album from start to finish, marveling for the first time at the genius of Brian Wilson (and lyricist Tony Asher), I happily sang along with every tune... even the instrumentals.

So, when was the last time you listened to Pet Sounds? For me, it's been a year or two. Buckle up, it's time.

I Am Not A Mime...

 ...but I play one in this Baleaf unboxing video.

If you follow this blog religiously, you will remember I wrote about Baleaf's cycling clothing back in November of last year, highlighting their big Black Friday sale. In the interim, I've picked up a few more items from Baleaf, like some new base layer compression shorts sustainably made from recycled plastic bottles. Nice.

So, to bring this up to date, a week or so ago, Baleaf had a 9th Anniversary promotion, where they were offering free shipping on any order (I jumped at that!), and a free gift for sharing "(my) Baleaf journey." I did that, too, because who doesn't like a free gift? Lazy person that I am, I disclosed that I was a Baleaf affiliate, and gave them the link to my previous blog post. 

And they liked it! I got an email from Polly in marketing who wondered if I'd like to try out some other cycling gear and review it on my blog and other social media accounts. Oh, would I! I looked through the offerings, (and more importantly, the sizing charts), and sent my reply: "Here's my size, and I'll leave it up to you what you want to send".

And what I got was the nice... let me get this right... so the package label says: "BALEAF Men's Fleece Running Tights Thermal Cycling Pants Winter Gear Water Resistant Leggings Pockets Black/Green XXL"  that you see in the video up there. 

Now since these are thermal (really niiiiice fleece lining), and the temps here in southern New Mexico are still in the 90s, it might be three or four months before I can give them the proper workout and review that they deserve. I can tell you, the "fit and finish" is perfect, so I can't wait. I pointed out all the little details and features in the video, but if you want the all the pertinent details, colors, sizes, etc, just click on the picture of me just down there 👇

LOL, just kidding! Not about clicking the picture, definitely do that. I can understand if you're confused, but no, that's not me. 

If this item is not to your liking (or gender), just click on any of the other links on this post and it will take you to the Baleaf home page where you can peruse the men and womens (and a few kids) active wear. Cycling, running, hiking, golf, yoga. Excellent quality, way reasonably priced. Fast shipping. Do it. And SAVE 10% when you use DANIELRGAUSS at checkout~

Oh, and I hope you enjoyed the video😆

Posts may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of these, I may receive a small commission at no increased cost to you. Thanks.

Let's Say I Had This Friend....

...and this friend, knowing I was pretty good at photo editing, asked if I could do a favor for him. See, this friend is roughly the same age as I am, and like me is into photography (but not quite as seriously as I) and way back (let's say in the mid-to-late 1970s) he took a lot of photos of the, um, boudoir genre.

This... friend wondered if I could use Luminar Neo to improve some of his old images. Well, what kind of "friend" could turn down a request like that? 

When I saw what I was going to be working with, I wondered what I what I'd gotten into. The original prints looked like they had been in  ̶m̶y̶  his drawer for the last 45 years. And they were tiny! 3.5 x 5, silk surface paper, with round corners! Remember those?

And check out those colors! Jaundice city! This was not going to be the easiest project I ever took on. But... I had a secret weapon! Oh yeah, Luminar Neo had all the tools I needed to fix the colors, remove the annoying silk texture, and make a much larger image file using UpscaleAI.. from 40KB to 3MB with the click of a button. I had not done this kind of work, ever, and yet Luminar Neo is so intuitive (and quick) that it was easy to figure out what tools would do what. And of course, if I didn't like a result, it's simple to back out, with no effect on my original image file because as I may or may not have harped on many times, Luminar Neo (in fact all the previous versions of Luminar as well) is a totally non-destructive process. No matter how many changes you make to an image, your original file is untouched. Cool huh?

And then, there was Studio Lighting.  I had, in my possession the beta version of the upcoming feature, Studio Lighting, which will show up in the Portrait Tools on the next update around the end of this month. It allows you to re-create  many dramatic lighting lighting effects heretofore only available using actual, you know, studio lighting.  I actually found this fairly daunting, because there were so many controls and I just had to fiddle around with each one to see what they would do (remember "non-destructive process?" Good thing).

In the end I ended up with a simple "stripe" lighting effect, (think sunlight through vertical blinds). Just the right "punch". Added a simple vignette, and called it "done".  I'm pretty happy with the result. Pretty sure you'll agree, the final image is a far cry from where I started.  This is easily the most accurate color I've gotten from faded and color-shifted old prints or slides. Now that I know what's required, I might work on  more of  ̶m̶y̶  his old photos!

Now, after the image, I'll fill you in on all the exciting new updates and extensions coming this autumn from Skylum and Luminar Neo....

Famous Fujifilm Kimono ©Daniel Gauss/Shot On Site

As I mentioned above, Studio Light will be available on August 31, but you can get early bird pricing for all Luminar Neo platforms starting now through August 27th. Here's the deets:

New purchasers have a choice of:

• the brand new Pro Monthly subscription, $14/mo
• Pro 12 Month subscription, $99 instead of $119
• Pro 24 Month subscription, $139 instead of $179 👈 (Best deal, of course)
• New Lifetime purchasers (if you'd rather pick and choose your Extensions) $249 instead of $279 (Trust me, the subscription model is the way to go)

If you're an existing Lifetime user, you might want the 2023/2024 Creative Journey Pass for $39 instead of  $79. You will need this to get the next update with Studio Lighting.

There's so much more to come this Fall, and I'll tell you all about it the very next post! But for now, to take advantage of the early bird prices click on this. And remember, to use the code: AFS-rdFDRy at checkout to save an additional 10%! (PHOTODAN may work as well and you won't have to cut and past, or try to remember that first one)

Here's more samples (by other folks) of Studio Lighting tool...

Posts may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of these, I may receive a small commission at no increased cost to you. Thanks.

Win A Super Light "Killer Whale"... Unless I Do.

 This time I'm definitely going to win! Unless you do..

At the very least, it's fun building your very own custom $11,500 Orbea Orca climbing bike using the customizing tool on the Orbea website. The above is my blue-on-blue design (with the easiest gearing possible, LOL)

Territory restrictions apply (But Europe and North America are OK)

Now We're Just Showin' Off! Three-Hundred-Sixty Degrees.

Earlier today I installed the most recent version (1.12.0) of Luminar Neo, which included the "official" version of the Panorama Stitch extension.  If you haven't made the plunge just yet, here's good news. The promotional pricing for owners of a lifetime license has been extended a week to July 24. That's $39 for the extension.  If you don't have Luminar Neo in any form, you get to choose if and how you receive the extensions HERE. (Hint: the annual subscription is the best deal) And don't forget to use the code PHOTODAN at checkout to save an extra 10%

Business out of the way, here's how I decided to test out the official version of the extension. I found a video I shot 10 years ago at White Sand National Monument (now a National Park). I was traveling light, so shot it with my little Canon S100 point and shoot camera, and I turned a complete circle, meaning the video covered 360°!

I was not prepared for the decrease in processing and saving speed over the beta versions I had been using. From loading to saved image took less than 2 minutes. A few more minutes of editing and I had the final image you see below. 

White Sands (in the round) 2013 ©Daniel Gauss/Shot On Site

You'll have to wait a little longer for the demo of the really cool trick you can do with video clips. I either have to shoot it myself, or find a sample at the Skylum Software site, but trust me, it will be worth the wait!

Posts may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of these, I may receive a small commission at no increased cost to you. Thanks.

Panoramas From Video Clips? You Bet Your Life!

 

Watch this video. I shot this Sunday night with my phone, a refurbished Samsung Galaxy S10 I picked up 2 years ago from the fine folks at Back Market. Check 'em out if you hate new phone prices as much as I do.  

Anyway, the sunset was looking pretty colorful, and I needed a video so that I could demo one of the cool video tools available in the upcoming Panorama Stitch extension for Luminar Neo.  I did about a 13 second left to right sweeping pan of the western horizon, beginning at Dragon Ridge and finishing at the big mesquite tree in my yard, around a 90° angle of view.  It looks ok by itself, but what if I wanted to make a still panorama image. Well, of course I wanted that, why else would I be sitting here typing this?

I'm not going to go over the convoluted, circuitous procedure I went through to get this clip from the phone to my video folder on the desktop (it was too big to email to myself). I'll just say there were moments I wanted to punch a hole in the monitor, and leave it at that.

Once I had the video clip in the same account as the beta2 Panorama Stitch extension, it was simply a matter of dragging the whole clip to the Pano stitch window, and go through the same steps as if you were stitching several still images, except in this case, the program is looking at hundreds of frames. Once it's processed and cropped and saved, (and edited, of course), you get this:

Sunset, July 17, 2023 ©Daniel Gauss/Shot On Site

Is that not sick?? That blew my mind.  To think that I can take a video clip of just about any length, and turn it into a basically flawless panorama still image.  This is next level stuff, folks. And that's not the best part.

Is this the really cool video function I promised in the previous blog post? No, it is not. As cool as this is, it's not nearly as cool as what I'll be able to show you once the official production version of the Panorama Stitch extension is released, (and don't forget, you can save $10 if you order before Thursday, July 20).  

Can you guess what the next feature is?

Anyway, here are your purchase links again:

If you want to get your very own copy of Luminar Neo with all the great extensions, click HERE.

If you already own Luminar Neo, and want to pre-order the Panorama Stitch extension for $39 (It will be $49 on July 20), click HERE.

Current subscribers will get the extension as part of their regular subscription price.

Posts may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of these, I may receive a small commission at no increased cost to you. Thanks.

Panorama Stitching Like Never Before!

Pretty awesome this Panorama Stitching extension.  The images below were made from very old pano shoots. Kilbourne Hole (a Maar volcano crater, 1.5 miles by 2.1 miles and over 400 feet deep, and part of Organ Mountains/Desert Peaks National Monument), below, dates back to my Nikon days, and consists of 5 landscape format images. Hand held if I'm not mistaken. Back in the day, I made the pano with Photoshop Elements. It did a passable job, but was no where near as streamlined as this Luminar Neo image. Simple as loading the 5 images into the app, select them all, drag them into the Panorama Stitch window, press "Start", wait 10 or 20 seconds, and you get a pano ready for cropping, saving, and editing (if needed).

I wouldn't be me if I didn't add miscellaneous bits and bobs to my images. It's only been 3 or 4 days, but I already forgot (without looking at the original images) if this was the original sky, or if I added it because I hate an empty sky.. I think I added it. I definitely added the Red-tailed hawk😆

Kilbourne Hole ©Daniel Gauss/Shot On Site

Back in 2015, we made two amazing sightseeing trips into Mexico led from The Pink Store in Palomas, just across the border. One of the stops was the Hacienda de San Diego, below, one of dozens built and owned by "The Rockefeller of Mexico", Don Luis Terraza whose ranch was so big (7 million acres!) that when asked by someone if his ranch was in Chihuahua, replied, "No... Chihuahua is in my ranch".

This is the simplest pano on this post. Simply 3 handheld, horizontal images, taken up close with a very wide angle lens, which accounts for the curved image. The "experts" will tell you not to use wide angle lenses for panoramas for this very reason. However, I like the way it turned out. Side note: the muted pastels come from using one of Luminar Neo's awesome presets, this one called: Travelogue.

Hacienda de San Diego, Chihuahua, Mexico ©Daniel Gauss/Shot On Site

Holy Warthogs! Did I do that?? 

In 2018, Photo Bro Dale and I hiked up from Mahoney Park on the west side of the Florida Mountains. I think it was to limber up for an upcoming hike near the Gila Cliff Dwellings that turned out to not be quite as strenuous as we'd feared. Anyway, we hit this notch that looked out on the great flat flood plain that is Lewis Flats.  I found a suitable location and took 3 portrait format images to stitch into a pano. Again, the the process was much smoother than the original Adobe effort. So much so that I had extra time to add in the A-10 Thunderbolt "Warthog", just for fun. (It came from the Photo Bro's trip to a local airshow last year.)

I had to replace the sky of necessity. The sky in the  third (right hand) image was totally blown out by the sun. There was no way to retrieve any detail. A problem? Sometimes, but not this time. New sky, problem solved.

Up The Floridas ©Daniel Gauss/Shot On Site

I should point out now, if I haven't already, that I'm using pre-release beta versions of the Panorama Stitch extension. Those first three images were made with the first beta version I received from Skylum. As I've said, they all were made without a single hiccup, from existing, older, photo sets.

It was time to test the extension with some photographic heavy lifting. It was also time, against my better judgement, to brave our 105°F temps and capture my view from the yard in panoramic fashion. I set up the tripod at the fence, put the camera (Fujifilm X-T2, in raw shooting mode) on the tripod in vertical (portrait) orientation, and working left to right, fired off 20 48Mb RAF raw images. (I did make one critical error, but more on that later).

Back in the office, I loaded the 20 images into Luminar Neo, dragged them to the Pano Stitch window, and pressed: "Start".  Since all my other images were just a few jpegs I figured it would take a little longer for the magic to happen this time. And it did.. around 5 minutes in fact. I cropped the edges, was happy with the result, and hit "Save".  The little wheel started turning, and the word "Processing" appeared.  And the wheel kept turning... and turning.  After about 15 minutes I decided to go in the house and have lunch. I came back about 45 minutes later and the wheel was still going round and round and Luminar Neo told me it was still "Processing". At that point, I bailed out of the program, and prepared my feedback to the developers. In my notes I told them I gave the extension a 4/5 rating because of the failure with the raw file pano save function.

A day later I heard from them, and they wanted to see the raw files so that they could diagnose the issue. I spent an entire day on two different machines and two different internet providers trying to upload an 800Mb zip file to Skylum. Without success. 

As luck would have it, the following day, I received an email with a link to an "improved and updated" Pano Stitching beta!  I loaded it up as fast as my rural internet (TWN Communications) could handle it.. about 180 minutes for a 1.8GB zip file.  As soon as I opened the new beta, I loaded up the same 20 raw files, stitched them up, cropped, and hit "save", and waited. And I didn't have to wait long! My saved panorama showed up in the Panorama Stitch folder in about 5 minutes! So glad I don't have to figure out how to upload those files after all. And my latest feedback to Skylum? 5/5

Floridas North End in 120° ©Daniel Gauss/Shot On Site

Now, about that little mistake I made. I shot the 20 pictures in aperture priority. With this many images I should have shot in full manual, so I had a few different  shutter speeds which caused portions of the final image to be darker, specifically about a quarter of the left side. Can you see it?  You can't, can you? Because of the incredible, intuitive nature of the Luminar Neo platform it took only a few tools to fix my lighting. And of course, even though the original image had some nice clouds in the sky, I had to use a replacement over the dark portion of the sky. A small price to pay. That final image above covers about 120° angle view. I like it.  (You can see a screen shot of the post crop, pre-save image at the very bottom of this post)

If you want to get your very own copy of Luminar Neo with all the great extensions, click HERE.

If you already own Luminar Neo, and want to pre-order the Panorama Stitch extension for $39 (It will be $49 on July 20), click HERE.

And guess what? If you're a current subscriber to Luminar Neo, you don't have to click anywhere. It's already included with your subscription! It will be available on the 20th.

Don't delay, get it today!  Oh wait! I'm not done yet. Once the official release happens, I'll have a post here showing what amazing things Panorama Stitch extension can do with video clips! Yes, I said video clips, holy moly!! I've seen samples, and they're just insane!

Posts may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of these, I may receive a small commission at no increased cost to you. Thanks