Picking Up My Fractals…

…From where I left off.

Hallo, welcome to the sputtering refiring of my blog engine.  I would like to offer an apology to those who came to look at my blog, only to find nothing new.  I should have posted some form of “Out of the office” notice or other; I’m sorry.  Medical issues: a surgical visual repair that was undertaken did not have the expected result.  It will be at issue for some time to come so I will be trusting to luck that I don’t just post blurs! You will let me know in the comments, won’t you, please?

Before taking Janet Parke’s Ultrafractal (UF) class, I allowed as to how I would likely be posting some of my homework images here, well, here we go!

I haven’t the experience nor sufficient computing power to ‘go crazy’; so my stuff is from the UF shallow end.  The insufficient computing power can be frustrating even when keeping things simple because, fractals having infinite detail, the clunky fragments that detract from an image generated as a small picture can be hiding some beautiful details and textures. Here’s an example.

This image was rendered small and the details have turned into a distracting mess. The portion in the red box is detailed below from a much larger, and lengthier, rendering.

The detail:

As you can see, the detail is there once you throw enough pixels at it.  UF allows huge renders to disk; the limitations are really what your machine can handle and how long you can bear not working on more images, while waiting for a large render to calculate.  Since the machine I use for UF is shared, I cannot simply dump all the other programs taking up space,  and that computer uses RAM for video tasks,  so with those considerations, not much RAM is generally available. My current big,  straight-to-disk render has a little over two hours of calculating time to go, if rendered straight through.  My wimp-grade computer alerts to overheating after an average of one and a half minutes. If I pause and let the machine cool for about ten minutes I can keep going; a minute and a half plus ten minutes cooling per shot. Suddenly, two hours gets very, very long, lessee, 120 minutes x 10 minutes cooling is 1200 minutes…etc. Can’t wait to upgrade my computer.

The same sort of improvement can be seen with this pair, where besides messing up the smaller spirals in the space off of the main structure, the small render has pretty much made visual hash of the patterns on the ‘copper’ segments:

and

Large renders-to-disk are, in this tyro’s opinion, the Way To Go.

Tweaking things a bit

Some users of fractal software are really only interested in seeing to what form the actual mathematics plot. They are not interested in ‘tidying up’ or ‘improving’ the image,  beyond using coloring algorithms to help keep track of how the iterations are behaving.  I used to lean a bit toward that until I had my breath taken away by some of the ‘fractal-based‘ artworks that started showing up in the Fractal-Art Contests.  I’m hooked!

Back to my homework results.  In my virtual attic, where I’ve stored away the concept of making a sort of museum of Fractint images I’ve made, a whole subsection is of images that look like sculptures constructed of cut card or paper. Without the benefit of layers, that is how they will form, it’s the math.  Using layers, one can alter the image and make something with a more organic texture or ‘feel’ to its appearance.

from paper structure to something carved?

I’d imagine there is a way to manipulate interestingly with averaged layers of color as well, but I’ve tried only once with indifferent results.

Sometimes, to my mind, tweaking isn’t generally wise.  If you like all 68 different ways that you’ve tweaked something it’s hard to know which to concentrate on to work to fuller development of the image. You can take up a lot of memory with whole collections of fractals that vary only by an aspect or two of their make-up.

I’m sure you can see the similarities; one was an assigment, the other was its start. I find the former pretty, while the latter makes me think about how rootbound in technology we seem to be getting. ::shudder::

With all of the possibilities presented by the forms of the math and the creativity of the formula writers, who so generously contribute their work to the public collection for folks to use, you get a whole range of results. Some remind you a lot of things in the physical world, some lend themselves to just working with graphic design and others are just..in the realm of numerically-inspired fantasy.

Messing with shapes and colors:

A more organic look, near-flowers are fun to work with:

This was a surprise..a little cave; a work in progress at this point. For those new to fractals, one of the properties of fractals is self-similarity in structure, that is, you can find very similar structures at all levels of size scale. You can see this in this image by finding the little cave, quite similar, but over on its right side,  roughly an inch up from the bottom and a half-inch in from the right side (as you face the image: your right).

I have a lot of fun putting spheres into things, haven’t quite got down getting them as well defined as I’d like but I do like them:

One of the things we learned to do in UF was use a couple of special formulas to manipulate areas of the resulting image. You can directly select areas to help achieve a design, such as the Mondrian-inspired images of divided ‘canvases’ with fractal focal points by Kerry Mitchell.  At this starting level, however, this tool in UF comes in handy as a way to make mat surrounds and frames for images, right in the parameters of the picture.

I hope this has given you some small cross-section of an inkling of an idea about fractal-based art. If you are interested in trying your hand at UF,  I can’t recommend anything better but that you get hold of Janet Parke’s lessons.  Although she has retired from teaching them, they are superbly laid-out lessons, now available as e-books, and will give you the organized approach that will cut out untold volumes of time in developing a workflow that you can use to continue your own foray into the fascinating, and addictive, explorations in fractal art.

Cheers!

Season’s greetings from limbo!

I just wanted to wish anyone who happens upon this page a memorable, warm and happy Christmas and New Year time!

Thanks to the writers out there who’ve shared so many interesting articles and thanks to the artists of all stripes who keep the web an interesting place in which to wander!

All the best to you all in the New Year ahead!

If I knew then…

Re: If  I knew then what I know now…

A letter to the Flamenco-playing kid in the glasses…

Hey Kid*,

I’ve been asked to give myse…er, you something of a short head’s up on a couple of things to incorporate into your assemblage of philosophical and intellectual tools.  I will Capitalize and Bold them.  With judicious application, they should set you up for a decent swing at the few strikes that you get in your scientifically expanding three-score-and-ten.  I misse…er, you don’t seem to be headed in the directions that will expand your opportunities as you become decrepit like y…er, I have, so here is a little list. Write these down in that gray plaid notebook where you’ve filled in each square with pencil-drawn ideas for paintings, yeah, the one with the poetry for Juli K H on the black inside the cover; oh, and as a side note, paint more than one of those, will ya? Y…er, I’m gonna like the way the one you do turns out, even if you didn’t.

The first thing I want to go ba…er, for you to do is to Attend Social Functions where you are not part of the choir, band, crew, cast, etc. although parties after any such event held by those organizations will do.  Do not, I repeat, do not go or stay within two feet of a wall or doorway unless you are passing through the door. If all you risk is your own pride, Take Social Risks. Do not risk the pride or reputation of others, that is their own option. Smile when you meet people and ask their name.  Practice taking “not interested in talking to you right now” as something that happens,  like dropping your napkin; There are Other People and Other Times, you Just Keep On.   Move to another area and try again.

Plan, (yes the evil P word) Trips to Places That You Want to See/Experience, whether or not you can get anyone else to go.  Do this as often as possible; you never know when that possibility might >poof< vanish overnight.

About maintenance: you know those Lists you hate?  The ones that you have to uncrumple from that little wad when you discover that you’re not actually going to get to spend any time at the summer recreation program,  seeing anyone from school? Here’s another approach.  Take a look at the tasks on the list. Aside from the bi-quarterly moving of the firewood pile, those are all things that build up because no one is assigned to do them as ongoing chores.  If you keep your eyes open and tackle a couple of the less enormous ones for a half-hour or so each day or every other day, you will find they never become major “everything on this list has to be done before school starts in three months” items on The Lists.  Break the Task Down into Manageable Parts. You’ll wonder how it was things didn’t get done before.

I have to get going, so as a general rule for all of the interests you may develop, and you’ve heard this once from Granddad, but I see it didn’t sink in, Take the Risk of Failure, particularly in areas in which you have the most creative ideas. If this  means entrepreneurship, so be it. Find a teacher, find a mentor, but find out what you need to know to make an idea fly and risk making a buck, most people see the point in making money.  And if you fail, Study Failure Until it’s Understood, and Forgive Yourself Your Mistakes. Then, you Just Keep On again.

Oh,  just one more thing,  no matter where you are, or what you’re doing, Be There In the Ongoing Moment with all your might.  Keep your …focus.

Be happy kid,  I hope these are useful to you,

Cheers,

A friend

* we were never all that close

Turkey up top

Gquowp-gquowp-gquowp!   For the last few days we’ve  been hearing a different call around the yard, coming at any time of the daylight hours.  I’ve spelled it as best I can there, but it’s not an utterance with which I’m familiar.  I had heard that our town had its  own complement of wild turkeys but I never thought I’d see them in such a suburban setting. The nearest strip of real woods is on the canalized creek-bed a quarter-mile away and yet, gquowp….gquowp….gquowp-gquowp, now and again.

Then came the early morning sightings out the kitchen window.  Preparing food in the kitchen for the morning feedings, checking out the window to see how low the finch’s thistle-seed feeder has gotten since the day before, when,  just outside the front door and  down between the retaining walls where the violets used to grow, a long neck and large head move cautiously forward, revealing a fairly large feathered  torso on stilts,  across onto the left-hand neighbor’s front yard.  Up along the edge of the hedge, followed openly, about four feet back,  by the right-hand neighbor’s petite tabby cat, who looks frankly astonished. Which look changes, once she sees us looking out at her, to something like “I could take that, ” as she comes back to our front walk.  The turkey, like a magic trick, vanished in the short time we were watching the cat.

We saw it a couple of times in the next few days, strutting from the right-hand neighbors, across the open cul-de-sac and up the driveway du jour to vanish into thin air, somehow, when it reached a house.  Then it seemed to have gone from the neighborhood.

Until this afternoon, gquowp….gquowp…gquowp..mumbling a couple of feet to the left of the backyard glass door.  Still looking for other turkeys, I guess. I went and got the camera, hoping to get a good shot, but when I returned it had, yes, vanished, so I hurried out the front door to catch it coming down the side driveway. Peeked around the corner: nothing.  Went all the way around the house the other way: nothing. Then, faintly, gquowp! Gquowp…gquowp.  I went back around front, looked ’round the yard and found nothing.  Gquowp-gquowp-gquowp-gquowp-gquowp!  Oh, the sound was from something taller than I am, and there was the turkey, on the ridge of the garage, neck extended, calling and looking for other turkeys. I took a couple of shots, until it seemed uneasy. I backed away onto the porch, checked exposures quickly and went back, hoping for a closer shot or a preening or wings-extended shot. No turkey on the roof, but there it was, at the bottom of the front garden walking up across the neighbor’s lawn, on its way to vanishing again.   If I didn’t know better,  I’d swear the thing teleports!

I hope I get some more tries, it’s a tricky critter!

Has the early spring brought you new visitors this year?

Cheers,

pete

Thinkin’ Spring

Oh…the weather outside’s disgusting,

I can hear my knee-joints rusting,

so it’s here inside I’ll grumpily remain,

let it rain, let it rain, let it rain.

With apologies to Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne for fiddling with their classic.

I’m staring out the window at a medium waterfall that earlier was the downspout-less end of the  eaves trough.  It’s overflowing.  The narcissus and daffodils in front and in back of the house resemble a lost colony of colorful morning-after fraternity row students, crashed face down all over the yard where an overindulgence of rain has left them ’til they dry out a bit.  The last few days of seeing them up and alert seemed to promise a return to getting out into the yard with a camera.  Meanwhile, I’m thinking drab little scattered thoughts, as disciplined as a herd of cats, so I am going to post some spring-like pictures, photographic and fractographic, to keep my anticipation going, although some of these need to be re-taken using  better eyes.

Translucent petals on flowers alway make me want to saturate an image with their color. To that end, closeups taken from in front of (in some cases inside of) the flower with the sun or a pair of flashes lighting it from behind, can bring out shades not seen in reflected light shots.

Eye-eye, Cap’n

Just a quick post, inspired by Bean’s post on February third about the I ♥ Faces contest themed, “the Eyes Have It.”   It is also a lesson about Seeing when you are looking through a viewfinder. And making spare copies of prints you like.

I had a particular photograph in mind to enter into that contest.  It was one I took when my sister’s silver-tipped Persian was alive. He had just been bathed, and being a small kitty under all that fur, was peering over the rim of the tub with such a look of hurt and utter betrayal;  I took his picture from bathtub-rim height and it turned out quite well.  I didn’t find out that the only print was no longer here until after the contest’s closing date. (Lesson: make extra copies to file, ya never know). I’ll need a negative scanner, a real one, soon.

While looking for that picture I brought out more slides to scan, (please forgive the dreadful resolution in these scans, it’s as good as I can get out of this scanner)  as I’m trying to digitize my photo files, and came across a series of Dare, sitting in his carrier.  He loved his carrier, an ordinary particle board, wood and hardware cloth cat carrier, to go outside and remain in, lying  on its side with the door open on a small hill overlooking the humans in the vegetable garden, supervising double-digging, hexagonal layout interplanting and so forth.  Anyway, he was in the carrier in the front hall, at night, with the carrier door swung wide open and I thought it would make a good close-up; Dare looking out through the wires.

I turned off the room light, got down on the floor, put a flash well off the camera to my right and took great pains trying to see well enough, without any modeling light, to judge if his eyes and facial fur were sharp…really concentrating on the subject.  The first shot was taken with the door mostly closed

and was rather dark, even for the “abandoned kitty in a cage” look.  I liked the possibilities and decided to use a little more film on the idea.

To reflect a little bit more light into the carrier, I opened the door widely enough to position it to bounce flash in to Dare. With the room light still off, in the dark but for ambient light from way around a corner in another room, I got back down below the rim of the carrier and carefully strained my vision, to focus on eyes and fur again (with the lens closed down to get good depth of field it was VERY dark in the viewfinder), and took the shot.

At this point I’d like to emphasize something for all the photographers out there who fall in love with the subject in the viewfinder: always…always, always check everywhere in your viewfinder when you compose a scene,  especially if you’re in darkness.  I know it’s a beginner’s concept but it bears repeating, or, in my case, tattooing inside my eyelids. I know I’m not the only one with unicorns made of a subject plus a stick, a sign, or a lamppost unnoticed in the background.  I, for example, had never paid much attention to anything but the function of the cat carrier and in the dark, thought nothing of bouncing light off the inside of the door, which I’d never really examined…it’s just particle board, after all.

Well, with this bounced-flash shot, I discovered the manufacturer’s mark for the first time. Sigh.

Check those viewfinders!  *Grin*

Is it possible that this is the first post of the Out-take blog? *laughing*

What have you found in your viewfinder, lately?

Cheers,

pete

Don’t Let it Get your Goad

I take some delight in dreaming up different shapes or sounds of things, art or artifact, that I think  could be brought into the world, based upon that quiet goading from whatever muse is lurking today.  Plenty of others do too,  just look at all the marvelous art, writings,  and handcrafted items on blogs around here! The fact that folks *have* something to put up brings me back, somewhat ashamedly, to the little pokes and prods from the imagination that I allow to just fall away, usually feeling inadequate in skills to the vision, or else too  busy to get beyond putting aside materials for later.

I’ve been more focused on this since the other day, when I read a question on the blog “Over Coffee…” that hit a little close to home. In her blog post, Does our Imagination Inspire Us to Act? Barb Hartsook pondered, “If I don’t act on the imagined, what have I achieved?”

Ulp.  I’d have to say, in my case,  not much more than stored raw materials.

While trying to come up with a post a couple of weeks ago, I had half an ear cocked to an argument on television between financial analysts on what needs to be done to bring the banking system back to health. The phrase that caught my attention was “taking away the toxic assets from Wall Street…”