Da_Latios

This is my #1 response to these types of questions on /p/ so I figured I'll post it here too.

This. An unborn child under 23 weeks has next to no thought process. If it can't think, it's not alive. So what's wrong with killing something that's not alive? That being said, I'd still regard it as murder if someone else were to abort another person's child without the mother's expressed permission (that is if the mother is capable of consenting). Aww, he actually thinks citizens hold power over political law-making. That's cute.

HDR done right. I like it.

40D with 50mm 1.8 or 1.4 would be my pick. 18-55mm is absolutely useless. My friend got one kitted with his D5000; it's less versatile than a Vegas hooker. If you REALLY want wide-angle for landscape, sure, go for it. But for portraiture and general use, you'll definitely find the 50mm 1.8 or 1.4 on your body 90% of the time. Ouchy mentioned autofocus. I tried manual focusing with a 50mm 1.8 through the viewfinder and the photos look like utter crap. If you're going to manual focus with a shallow DOF, you need Live View.

Not trying to be offensive but what lenses are you using. The quality seems OK, but not great, and it seems a bit strange for you to have a 5d mk II. The first three you linked to are with the 50mm 1.8. It's a $100 lens so epic quality is not expected. The last image you linked to was with a 24-105mm f/4 L. Yes, in retrospect it was probably overkill to buy a 5D2, but the thing is godly and the videos I've made with it have presented me with so many career opportunities that it's certainly paid off. Moar contribution: I was A/V manager at a massive annual religious camp - close to 10,000 people. Anyway, I was supposed to be an event photographer but got caught up with so much video work that I only managed to take a few snaps, which I've posted here. I'll also post the 25min+ video I directed during the week later when I fix it up. [hide] [/hide]

Second panorama is my favourite.

Some that I've picked up along the way: Is it better to tell a sick man he is well, or a well man that he is sick? Why is it that religious people believe they have better morals than non-theists? If the only thing stopping you from killing someone is a belief in the giant security camera in the sky, you have mental issues. Look around you. Would any of this be any different if there really was a god? We are beginning to find planets outside our own solar system which are suitable for human life. Yet, nobody alive now will ever get to see these planets. It's a sad, sad reality. A better question than 'What is the meaning of life?' would be 'Is there a meaning to life?'. We are here. That's all we know. We don't need a purpose; we're not here for any reason. We just are. What if there was nothing? What if the universe never came into existence? What if nothing had ever existed, ever? Try to imagine it, you can't, but it is interesting to try. The glass is neither half full, nor is it half empty. Merely, the glass contains half its available capacity of liquid. One may also argue that the glass is twice as large as it needs to be. A common misconception about atheism is that atheists cannot be spiritual. Quite the contrary; it's perfectly possible for an atheist to disappear into a cave for days, lost in meditation. What atheists don't do, however, is create the assumption of a supernatural force or claim divine relations from that spiritual experience. When a person dies, their consciousness (or as some like to call it, a soul) does not go anywhere. It is just gone. When you build a house out of lego bricks and then dismantle it and place the pieces back in the box, the house did not go in the box with the pieces. The house was an arrangement, much like ourselves.

I've noticed that a lot of people in The Gallery have been posting threads about photos lately. A lot of these are just snapshots, or just "updates" to people's photography endeavours. So, I thought I'd take on a norm on /p/ and start a recent photos thread. This thread is a place to post pictures which you otherwise would not have created a whole new thread for. That is, snapshots and stuff. I guess I'll start. [hide=Photos!] I hope the bokeh works as leading lines. A little soft. Damn people moving back after I focus. At a playground. Turned my flash upwards and a little fill light + white balance in post and it looks alright.[/hide]

Without the motion blur please! :shades:

Damn, I came to this thread too late. Now I can't say "Get an abortion" without sounding like an ass. My mother is a single parent providing for my sister and I. Surprisingly, we're doing pretty okay. My mother is a nurse earning under 40K a year but we still have enough money for fast Internet, a flatscreen TV and all those other luxuries. We do get government support though (~$65/week from gov'ment). Our rent is $310/week. Sure it's hard, but we get by. I just recently got a job with a wedding company filming and photographing weddings, and my sister has applied for jobs as a waitress/shopkeeper. My job and my sister's job doesn't (don't? This was a hard-to-structure sentence) contribute to the rent or food because I only got this job last week. Needless to say, life is looking alright now. Single parenting is a lot of work, and there are more bumps along the way than you may want to tolerate at times, but my mum loves us and I'm damn sure you'll love your child too.

Me on the left - testing out my new microphone on a makeshift boompole (dismantled music stand and choir mic holder)

I've always found it easier to expose dark areas than to recover blown highlights, so I will never overexpose a shot, but I will frequently underexpose. I couldn't resist: ^never do this in real life

Youtube HD Video - This video will cause high CPU usage, to view the video in a lower quality, please click . So I was given $400 to shoot a short film (this isn't it! I haven't started filming yet) next week. This is basically a test for cinematographic techniques and colours which I'll be using for the short (which isn't really short; I estimate it to be over 30 minutes). The bits in blue which look like night were made simply by lowering the white balance to 3200K and setting the colour tone to the blue shift. I made my own colour presets which are evident in this shoot; much of the colours are desaturated, and the white balance is very skewed. For sound I used a FXLR-mini jack (3.5) cable which was attatched to an XLR extension which was connected to a mic which we fitted on to the end of a boom. We had to change mic boys (I like to call them that) halfway through which is why you hear some distortion in the second half. But yeah, I definitely won't be using these actors for the real one. Except for the black guy. :mellow:

1. Okay - could have done with a lot less contrast, plus it wasn't even you who took the shot 2. If all you did was smash some brushes onto a brown canvas, it's not art. The only thing you could be accredited on is the way in which you assembled those brushes. 3. Not a bad photo, but the editing kills it - in fact I think this photo would look very nice without that horrid colour processing 4. This would take literally under 30 seconds to replicate 5. Again, not even your own image. Deadly editing. All in all, the only acceptable image is the first one, and you still managed to kill it. I hate sounding so mean, but honestly these are just so... not masterpieces. Read up on photography; composition, lighting, techniques. Also practice with Photoshop. A lot. Also know that most of the editing you will ever do with photographs is going to be white balance edits, cropping and shadows/highlight control. Effects like the ones you just did are almost never seen, if ever. Here's a typical colour correction: Before: After:

Dear god.

Here's something I read on Reddit: buy a bunch of Arabic-translated Bibles and give them to the Christian fundamentalists to burn. They will think the translated Bibles are Qur'an books. Tell them afterwards that they just burned a bunch of Bibles. Or, if you don't want to burn books: 1. Buy 19 Arabic Bibles 2. Throw them in the stash 3. Tell them there are 20 Arabic Bibles in the stash 4. Watch as they sift through the mountain of books searching for 20 Bibles with the aid of a translator 5. Practice your trollface

Quick shot before heading off to school: I know I look funny; I'll do a proper one later.

Check the EXIF, 500D.

The only okay shot is the last one. That said, flowers = big no. A lot of these are out of focus and/or have no discernible subject. I'm not sure how you're getting motion blur in broad daylight. Do you have Parkinson's? EDIT: Just looked at your EXIF. What compelled you to use a 250mm focal length on flowers? They're not going to bite you; get up close and personal if you must!

This hasn't been cropped, and it has been processed. I could have gone a lot wider, I had to be quick in order to not be noticed. Original: What would you suggest I improve?

None of these photos are offensive to the subject in any way, so I'm pretty sure nothing will become of it. Also, in Australia you do not need a model release to publish photographs of other people as long as it's not for commercial use, so the chances of them suing are, well, nil.

Well, tonight was Riverfire. Tens of thousands of people flocked to the city so naturally, I went. [hide=Photos] ^Okay, well maybe this one's not candid, but I still think it deserves a place in this thread. Bonus shots: ^The view from our spot. ^This is me. Being an idiot. I let my friend take the shot; he does not yet know how to manual focus properly.[/hide] Bonus: (this is the event I was photographing, and this is a compilation of clips I took that night. There are a lot more which I haven't uploaded, of course) Youtube HD Video - This video will cause high CPU usage, to view the video in a lower quality, please click .

I believe mine is awesome.

Interestingly enough, I believe it was you that started the original "How to get a girlfriend" thread. Or did you juts get credit after the roll back? Yeah, I became thread owner after the rollback.

No, they did not do a system update to begin XP weekend last time. You should be able to start a dungeon before XP weekend and end it when XP weekend begins.