Canada, 1990. My best friend at the time. One of my favorite photos. A few years later, life changed for him and he didn’t want to be friends anymore, even though we’ve always lived within walking distance of each other ever since. Sometimes life doesn’t go the way you expect it to.
Years ago, when they were colorizing old black-and-white movies, there were a lot of detractors to the idea; over time, I’ve come to the opinion that sometimes, it is a good thing.
Sometimes, the original version is best, and the best way to go is to have both versions available. The technology exists to allow both colorized, touched-up, and originals to co-exist.
I feel the same way about sequels; some are great, most are awful, but if I don’t like a set of sequels, I never have to watch them again. Sometimes, it was a possibility of creating something great that didn’t turn out as such. Take the shot.
I’ve been working in Photoshop for many years, touching up photos. Some of them, I’ve spent hours on.
Now, with A.I., so much of that hard work is no longer necessary. And I’ve realized that so many of the untouched, original photos have flaws that I never really noticed. Yet, one has to be really careful with A.I. because it will change things, sometimes very little details, that are absurd or unnecessary.
I try to compare the original to the new version to make sure it is as close as possible. I don’t always know if a shirt was really yellow or light green. Do those details really matter? There is no way to know. Sometimes, though, a photo comes out of the A.I. and really hits home. Becomes a favorite. Like this one of my grandparents with my mother.
I am so glad that I can do this, to improve and preserve a photo that someone back in the day took the time and money to capture. Curating things like this is an excellent use of one’s time.
He said at the end of the video that he wants to go back, because the people were just lovely… I can find plenty of lovely people close to home, without having to go to Afghanistan! He had to leave within hours, or he’d go to prison for who knows how long… but… go back because the people are lovely? Uh, no.
He did another video, and went on a train that was actually a step up from the one Bald and Bankrupt went on in India. (Backpacker Ben, a hard-core traveler, was beyond his ability to endure on that trip. If he can’t handle that train, nobody can.)
Joe Fazer was on this train for three days, having to share his bunk bed with strangers, in addition to all of the other wonderful things that Indian trains are known for.
I am going to watch his Yakutsk video, as that is slightly less insane than Afghanistan or India. Just slightly.
I like these kind of videos a lot, because they show more reality than the travel shows I used to watch so often, or the National Geographics where I’ve read about these places. People walking around with cameras, showing what life is actually like in these areas, wheras GlobeTrekker used to try really hard to make the worst places seem so much better than they actually are. (Still a great show, though.) So many of these sources don’t have incentive to show you the real negatives of going there, something apparent in the videos of a regular person with a camera.
And yes, he’s going to the most dangerous or unappealing places on the planet to get clicks, I get it. But like police body cams, people with video cameras are revealing things that were hidden from us by the likes of shows and magazines that didn’t have a good reason to show things as they really are. And still there are a lot of cultural aspects to these places that aren’t fully explored, most of these people running around with their cameras need to get along with everybody, so there isn’t much revealed about pre-teen girls being sold as brides, things like that in these walk-around videos, but they are another step in being more aware of how things work in other parts of the world, other societies and cultures where there are major differences from our own other than language, food, and fashion.
This was my favorite cap when I was a kid. “Rydberg Construction” was the company of my Dad’s cousin, but I thought it was cool because it was a construction company owned by someone in the family, and to a kid, that is a big deal.
I was walking home after a piano lesson, and this older kid on a BMX bike came up behind me and just took it off of my head. I’ll never forget the way he slapped it onto his head with one hand, like it was not a big deal, and lazily rode off as I ran after him, unable to keep up.
So, I get home, and as luck would have it, my big brother and his big friend were there and I was crying. They took off in my brother’s cool Camaro to find this BMX jerk. That’s what good big brothers and their friends do.
Unfortunately, they never found the guy. I suspect that years later I rode the same bus with him as this happened in the same area as the Drake Jr. High bus stop, and there were a lot of jerks on that bus, too. Or, perhaps the world is simply full of jerks.
Anyway. I got the bright idea to recreate the logo, which only took a few minutes, and when I find employment (I’m between jobs right now, http://randyrydberg.com) I’ll be ready-to-go to have a new cap made. Maybe more than one in case someone else gets the bright idea to steal it again.
I did get a new “Jedi” cap for Christmas later that year though, which I still have. There’s a famous photo of George Lucas wearing the same hat, which makes me quite fashionable.
As it turns out, the original logo had two different fonts, but I just went with the secondary font for the entire thing.
This is my PowerMac G4 Tower. It has long since been relegated to my boneyard of old, treasured Macs along with a G3 tower, Quadra 605, and a nice aluminum Pro Tower which was a gift from a friend. I wish I’d kept the PowerComputing 150 clone I used for nine years, but I can’t keep them all. (I try, though.) That one had been Frankensteined with every upgrade possible to keep it relevant. I was so upset when Steve Jobs returned and killed clone licensing, but he was correct to do so.
Because the Quadra 605 requires a simple battery to start up, and the G3 has a bad power supply, this is my only OS9 computer that works. Eventually I want to replace the hard drive with a solid state one, as this old example has just begun to fail.
I have no real need for anything OS9 (Who does?) but there are a lot of old, treasured games that I’d like to have available as well as the nostalgia of firing up QuarkXPress 3.0/4.0, something I spent a lot of time working with back in the day. It is a familiar, comfortable environment that brings back good memories. Plus, although this isn’t as pretty as my aluminum Pro Tower, it is a nice example of computer design done well and not just a box on the floor.
The beige G3 tower had the ability to fold out flat for upgrades, which at the time was pretty fancy. This one did better with its more simple open-door access. It was nice to have a computer that was so much better thought out than what everybody else was using. And that went for the operating system as well. Still does.
That PowerComputing clone I had for so long actually cut my hands more than once when upgrading it because aside from the operating system that it ran, it was just another beige box from the beige world of beige computers, with no thought at all to anything other than slapping parts together in the cheapest way possible.
Efficiency and design must be in balance in order to do the best work, and Apple has always had that going for it while all other computer makers were just slapping parts together in the cheapest way possible, and calling it a day.
I have watched the evolution of Apples’ design over the years, and in this world where there are so many ugly things, it is nice that this company has it in them to make something positive and appealing out of what everyone else overlooks. Which leaves us with tools that are aesthetically pleasing instead of more plastic-generic mediocrity.
More art by Aunt Ida at: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjCS1xn
My late Aunt Ida was a prolific oil painter, and unfortunately we have no idea where her paintings went, other than the four that we have in our house. This mountain painting, which is pretty small compared to the one of the country house, was just found in my Dad’s files. It is nice that we have a fairly diverse collection, even if it is only four pieces.
Work like this is one of the reasons I’m not a fan of “Modern Art”, where people just toss two or three cans of paint on a canvas and declare the result “Artwork”. Or drawing two rectangles on a white canvas, and if you don’t “get it”, than you aren’t sophisticated enough to understand how ground-breaking it is.
Declaring things that are ugly, visually chaotic, insultingly simple, childish, and lazily random to be great art is what happens when standards no longer exist. My aunt learned a craft, practiced it prolifically, and the result were paintings that are unique and beneficial to the soul.
I’ve posted this photo before, but I just touched it up in Photoshop a bit more and felt like sharing it as the Lincoln is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up. (As Ferris Bueller would say).
It is a great example of how fast time flies as this photo is ten years old already. This was taken outside the Ralston Road Cafe, which a few years later became one of those classic instances where a business one takes for granted just disappears out of nowhere without warning. Currently, new townhomes fill the space it once occupied.
The parking lot has significance to me as it is where I worked for seven years pushing carts at Safeway, my first job during and after high school. Pushed a lot of carts here. Chased a lot of shoplifters. This lot is now a bunch of townhomes, and there is still building going on in this immediate area, which was admittedly getting a big run-down. I’m not even sure Walmart across the street was open when this photo was taken.
