I Need to Take a Break

TL;DR: I don't have time, and I'm a little burnt out.

In the last couple blog entries,

• Equipment, Computers, and Social Media 2014-2019 
• Creative Expression 2014-2019 

I've been laying the groundwork to say: I need to take at least a couple years off from photography. I expect I may shoot a performance or project here and there, but I'm effectively on hiatus / inactive.

Creative Expression 2014-2019

In my last post, I discussed changes in my camera kit and computer and impacts to my time and efficiency. Here, I'll discuss content.

Equipment, Computers, and Social Media 2014-2019

This is just me whining/venting about my new laptop not behaving like my old one.
Lots of things I hate about Windows 10. A little bit of talk about Lightroom, but no pretty pictures.

Lytro Wrap-Up - Summaries and Conclusions

Now, I'll wrap up my thoughts on the Lytro - from my expectations to final workflows and deciding which format to publish.

Playing With The Lytro Illum 4: Processing Software and Animations

One way to showcase the Lytro's "living pictures" is with an animation.
Like my other entries, I'll go over the difficulties I had trying to wrangle the software.

Playing With The Lytro Illum 3: Processing Software and Stills

I found the Lytro Desktop software difficult to deal with, especially compared to established products like Lightroom or even Photoshop. And a lot of my critiques really come down to "Desktop isn't Lightroom" so decide for yourself if you think that's fair.

A Brief Tangent: Computing Depth Maps

I think a depth map is an integral part of the Lytro photo processing. I may express some discontent about this, so I want to back up and talk about what I think are weaknesses in computing depth maps.

Note that Lytro keeps their depth algorithm secret, so I know nothing about Lytro's depth algorithm.

I'll just go over some basics of what I think are the basics of a common algorithm and its problems.

Reconstructing a Scene From Two Cameras

Images from two cameras

Start with a scene with two cameras (L and R). Each takes an image of the world (this scene has 4 balls with different shades of gray.) We know where our cameras were and what direction they were pointed and we want to use the images to figure out where the balls were. In particular, we want to know their depth.