So Real

If you are truly lucky, at certain points in your life you will have moments of searingly beautiful realisation. These moments might happen once every ten years, or more, but they are brought on by a realisation of scale, a realisation of existence, or an acceptance of truth.

For me, they are often brought about by witnessing a fantastically special moment, often involving nature, and often involving a sense of the absolute honest scale of our home. Most recently, I was sitting on a plane from Rio de Janeiro to Salvador da Bahia, shortly after sunset, watching lightning storms dance across the sky all around the aeroplane, and seeing several shooting stars drifting across the sky. The sudden sense of proportion, not just in physical dimensions, but also in terms of sheer power, was awesome.

Those who wish to believe in something might give this moment a name attached to their beliefs; a religious experience, or a moment of enlightenment.

I choose to see these moments as a tiny ricochet of realisation, bouncing off the surface of what is real. We are trapped by our senses and physical being, obeying the boundaries of our capabilities, but every so often we can get a brief glimpse of life outside these senses, raw power and life energy.

Witnessing nature’s brute-iful (sic) power is incredible, and reminds me of just how diminutive and feeble we are, despite our technological advances/advantage. Experiencing the serendipitous nocturnal display from a “safe” distance accentuates this; I only had a long-distance insinuation of what those lightning storms were like, and even that was incredible.

Less than a week after I experienced this in-flight spectacle, Air France flight 447  was brought down by a similar event. Nature is gigantic, and powerful. It’s easy to forget, sitting in a cotton-wool country such as the UK, where only flu and adders threaten us.

This entry was written by xander, posted on August 18, 2009 at 10:51 am, filed under Words and tagged air france flight 447, awesome, brazil, flight, lightning, rio de janeiro, salvador. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.

Retouching: How to create beautiful golden skin.

In this super-simple tutorial, I’ll be showing you how to turn natural skin tones into a golden hue. Ad campaigns such as the recent Chanel “J’adore” have used this stylization to good effect. Not to second-guess that production team’s workflow, but I’m willing to bet that the vast majority (if not all of) of this effect was done in post-production. The technique I’m about to show you can’t reproduce the high levels of glossy chiaroscuro that come from actually painting a model in high-gloss gold (think bond girl); This would require some seriously advanced retouching (digital painting, for want of a better term), and would look pretty obviously retouched. (more…)

This entry was written by xander, posted on August 9, 2009 at 9:34 pm, filed under Images and tagged gold, golden, photo, retouch, skin, Tutorial. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.