Roving-Eye Gallery update and newsletter #30 for April-August 2024

Hello to everyone and thank you to the new subscribers.. welcome aboard!

 

With the latest HUGE update just uploaded head to What's New - August 2024 | Roving-Eye.com and you can scroll back month by month for an easy catch up for previous months too!

 

It’s been too long since the last newsletter so sorry about that! I didn’t expect that to be the case. I will do better! I will write for a bit longer this time to make up so read it at your leisure!

 

Since the last newsletter there have been 5 gallery updates.. so there’s quite a lot to see in there! One month had the least images of all (just 11 for May) while another had the most ever (134 for August).. so you can never tell what is going to happen month by month!

 

The first main factor is the weather, if it’s blowing hard or raining for days then that really makes it hard to do much work and puts a big dent in the available time. Other factors are fatigue and sometimes sadly motivation.

 

It’s just not possible to go hard all the time so things tend to yo-yo a bit. From what I’ve seen of others in creative pursuits that looks to be normal to have such fluctuations otherwise you’d burn out physically, emotionally and creatively!

 

I want to invest genuine fresh energy and enthusiasm into the images, I hope that shows, even if that means there is something of a variation to the image count.

 

The images included in this newsletter are one from each of the months April-August and are examples of what I’m always doing to generate images for each month’s photography update.

 

The whale and the rainbow shot are what I do a LOT of.. which is opportunistic shooting. If and when something presents itself then I’m ready to pounce. You may have seconds or at most minutes only to get the shot.  

 

For the whale I was flying around with the drone in the hope for something but wasn’t

to know how great the extended whale and dolphin interaction was going to be, the best and longest I’ve ever had! I got a great video of it.. check it out at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aPt3bF23_E

 

For the rainbow shot I was already in the surf for a personal swim session but had a compact submersible camera with me.. just in case.. and how great that turned out to be! I wasn’t expecting a rainbow and it didn’t last all that long.. but I was there with gear already in hand to get it promptly while it was there!

 

I use an Olympus Tough TG-5 for that kind of situation. It has a ruggedised body with a submersible rating and has a handy zoom range and several shooting features from the pro SLR world. If you’re ever after a capable, travel-ready compact camera that can survive almost any treatment then I can highly recommend this one!

 

Of course you can’t always carry all the gear with you ALL the time.. a long lens hanging off your shoulder in the supermarket aisle might come across as a BIT weird after all!

 

The 3rd shot of the smashing wave is on a longer timescale. In this case there was a storm and strong winds battering the coast for some days so there are hours worth of opportunity to get hundreds of shots.. which I did.

 

Lastly the moon shots are where you wait a full month to see what happens. With a planning app you know the exact point on the horizon and time the moon will rise so you can get into position ahead of time and then see what the conditions are like as it rises in the sky!

 

The moon shots I like to do the most are using the long zoom lens to combine the moon of a decent size with an interesting foreground. The silhouetted walker is pure happenstance but I had already positioned myself hundreds of metres away amongst the sand dunes in the dark to get the alignment and zoom level I wanted on a path leading to a lookout.. and when a walker came along I was ready to pounce! Plus or minus a second in such a shot makes all the difference.

 

When using the zoom tracking the moon against a foreground object you really notice how fast the Earth is rotating so every few seconds I need to move a couple of steps and be ready to shoot again to maintain the required alignment for as long as you can to milk the situation for any other strokes of luck that may come your way. A sturdy tripod is your friend here to give the essential stability for a sharp shot while changing positions so much.

 

If you need to walk into the surf then that’s what you do.. or into the scratchy bushes then be ready to do that too! Rarely do the clothes and boots come back intact from a beach side shoot.. I can’t count the number of times things have got saturated because I’ve had to stay or move into the required position no matter what the waves were doing!

 

In other news over these months I’ve had to make 2 major decisions regarding the online portfolio.

 

Firstly I’ve cut out the early parts of the portfolio to help keep a consistent high standard I am aiming for.

 

A recent client purchase of a large framed print really highlighted the need to do this after a long time of pondering it already. The image they liked had some great lighting and colouring and was of the exact location they were interested in so an order was placed to get it done as a retirement gift so quality was paramount!

 

It came out well but on close inspection I see things have improved on several fronts over the past few years since starting and I really want to have things that can be potentially enlarged without flaws being present so this purchase was the trigger to let the axe fall.

 

There are 3 main reasons why the image quality has noticeably improved over that time. Hardware, software and techniques.

 

Firstly and most definitely my editing techniques have become less, well, heavy handed.

 

This also goes hand in hand with continuing refinements in the editing software which can now offer such essentials as “noise reduction” or “clarity” without producing unnatural artefacts or excessive softening as was (thankfully only mildly) present in that client purchase!

 

Lastly the hardware. With lenses you do get what you pay for.

 

I had a decidedly budget zoom to start out with but the difference between that and something costing several times as much is significant in terms of image quality and to aim for a higher standard that gear has also been upgraded over that time.

 

All 3 factors considered you can see the difference from the early part of the portfolio to now so in the interests of keeping the quality levels as uniformly high as possible the decision for the cut of the earlier work was made.

 

In the coming months I will see what might be brought back and decide how to organise them into a suitable gallery for re-inclusion.. but my judging eye will be hard and only the top quality ones will make it back in.

 

The second major decision made was to cut out ALL print ordering options available on the website. This might seem counter-intuitive to running a business but again in the interests of quality it needed to be done so down came the axe again.

 

While the global automated online ordering process was definitely attractive initially the farming out to an anonymous 3rd party for order fulfillment has proved to be a hit and miss affair.. and I just can’t allow for patchy service or quality to happen for the health of the business. The online ordering system was paying it’s way but several clients had come to me with disappointing results and so I needed to act.

 

Part of the problem is that the images I shoot just don’t fit any particular shape. They are cropped to best suit the individual image and not a particular frame size or shape. The image should be matched to a service that can wrap itself around the image, not the other way around as was happening with the hands-off processing service.

 

Sometimes the client has part responsibility as well. if they choose an image that is somewhat panoramic but the chosen frame aspect ratio isn’t.. well, something has to give. The 3rd party providers would then just carve out the middle section and print that.. sometimes then missing a crucial part of the image the client made their purchase decision by!

 

Regardless of the reasons the end result was a sometimes disappointing client experience and I most definitely don’t want that!

 

So I’ve kept the small options I would never get done otherwise such as coffee mugs or iPhone cases, but the core photographic product such as framed prints, canvases etc I have taken back and will take care of personally using local or other services I can control, guide and liase with to ensure it is all coming together as it must.

 

That way I am on hand to advise the client what best suits their specific mage selection and make sure that’s what is delivered! Perhaps I might take a hit for online sales made but it will definitely jump the satisfaction rating up to the solid 100% mark which is what it needs to be each and every time.

 

Even with the large cull made there are still 3,805 images spread over 104 galleries so there’s still a large body of work remaining online!

 

Nevertheless I have made a big effort to “restock” as it were hence the large number of images appearing in the August gallery.

 

Part of this large number result was also the widening of the scope of the photography.

 

Although land and seascapes are my major focus wildlife and “people” shots appear more regularly in the monthly sweep now as I don’t want to miss out on any other potentially relevant and saleable outdoor subjects either.

 

You never know from one day to the next when a client may walk through the door with a set of requirements you may have just covered by the widened scope.. so I want to be ready to capitalise on that by already having a good range of images in hand!

 

Of course there are other one-off events such as the recent storm and high winds which generated huge seas and I took a much larger than typical number of shots of the breaking waves to be included in the August gallery too.

 

Not every month will have or need such a huge influx of purely surf or people shots but this certainly starts to make up for the cull with such a big single month!

 

I have mentioned before about including more black and white shots and the people shots in particular I like to make silhouettes against the ocean as a style I like and the August waves also came out way more interesting as black and white since a lot of subtle structure and detail can suddenly become prominent with that process that is sometimes missed with the colour original.

 

It really is an amazing transformation and there are so many different ways you can re-process as black and white that is a great thing to include alongside colour if it brings something extra to the table for a particular image.

 

As part of all these changes being made to the online gallery I’m making sure a good title and description (as well as map location link) exists for each image to use the home page “search” box facilities more. It will take time to go through all the galleries and bring all the image attributes up to the same content standard but it is happening.

 

As the portfolio grows it is essential images become discoverable by a deep dive.

 

You might want to search for “black and white”, “Koala” or “Tacking Point” and expect to get a relevant list presented to you instead of a time consuming scrolling gallery by gallery, which is fine but nice to have choices on how you look at an ever growing body of work.

 

Of course I can’t think of, and include, every possible term or attribute but it’s a decent practical and immediate step to make things better but it is still inherently limited using simple text technology.

 

What I’d REALLY like to have to round out the discovery process is a smart image search which I doubt the current website platform would provide for a while, if at all.

 

With a smart image search you could start a search with some simple browsing and key word selections, pick an image you like the look of then use THAT to really go to town.

 

The key to such non-text smart image search is AI, Artificial Intelligence.

 

“AI” is a much abused term by some marketing types who like to thoughtlessly tack on the latest buzzword of the day to whatever product they are spruiking at the time so you will see “AI” tacked onto many things these days. Some is deep and genuine, some less so.

 

Image search and reverse image search, is big business.

 

Witness Google including it into it’s ever expanding toolbox and the thousands of software engineers it has to throw at such challenging problems. There is huge commercial value to be unlocked in addressing and solving them and providing an easy to use facility for anyone to access.

 

At the other end of the spectrum are the developments that give similar power on local silicon to the small end of town instead of concentrating it into the far-away hands of the few to monopolise and control and make others dependent on them.

 

I am keeping a watching brief on such AI hardware and software developments relevant to my needs in the field of image search, and specifically “one shot image similarity”. This is somewhat of a holy grail and not terribly easy to even define let alone smartly and reliably deliver... yet.

 

“Traditional” AI works by being “trained”.. so the software is shown hundreds of shots of cats (for example) before it is ready to smartly identify “cat” in any given image. Substitute cat for “person” or “vehicle” and you have the foundation for a security system for example.

 

My ultimate goal is to have the capacity for an interactive kiosk setup where, for any image you see and like, to then search a vast library for “similar” and so bypass the inherently limited text-only methods and also avoid long scrolling sessions.

 

As each image is unique there are not hundreds of prior use pre-trained “cat” images for the software to know what to look for.. it must, in a single shot, know what is being asked and use the power of processing to sift thousands of candidates and discover and present a good list of matches.

 

The trouble is what makes an image similar? Colour? Subject matter? In which case how do you define “subject” and how to handle multiple subjects? and how do you weight the relative significance of each? And what significance, if any, do small (pixel count wise) features play?

 

Part of the inherent difficulty in providing a solution to this question is that 2 people can think of an image in very different ways.. so what can software (AI) possibly decide to do that we think is reasonable?

 

A case in point was a recent image I took with the drone of Tacking Point headland and the beach in the last light of day. To me the major motivation in taking the image were just 3 white lines, the front of the surf in successive waves catching the low angles of light and becoming 3 strong parallel lines of nice interest. The rest of the image was “nice” but the 3 lines by virtue of the timing were the key but they are only a tiny part of the image content wise.

 

To another person the same image might be all about “headland” or “lighthouse” that attracts their eye and the surf plays just a supporting part only. So what can software possibly do to know what is “similar” when different people can look at the same image in so very different ways? Look for Lighthouses? Headlands? A particular wave pattern and lighting? Aerial? Only if all 4? ..or 2 out of 4? or..

 

As I said it’s not easy.. but it’s big enough business for not only software but now hardware to be dedicated to this emerging task, and be affordable and accessible with full control for the small end of town to be able to deploy, not just the mega corporates!

 

Thus we are entering the 3rd age of computer tech as we speak.

 

Firstly came the CPU (Central Processing Unit), the general purpose and essential component of any computer and the start of the computer revolution.

 

Then came the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) as the expanding gaming market demanded more dedicated hardware for increased graphics performance and relieved the CPU of that workload and gave us realtime photo-realism in an unprecedented way for not only gaming but also revolutionised such as movie production.

 

Now we have the TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) which is for enabling AI specific processing which cuts across so many fields with ramifications we are only at the beginning of appreciating.

 

Those processing needs are laid out in dedicated silicon (the TPU) which gives the required speed and capability jump just liked the GPU hardware did for the CPU and to make whole new fields such as a smart “one-shot image similarity” increasingly possible.

 

I know this sounds like a deep dive into something completely unrelated to photography but it is very much relevant and the few paragraphs here doesn’t do the field justice but I hope this gives you an idea for the new abilities coming our way and I can’t wait to get my hands on it and use it to make for a smarter search system well beyond the limits of simple text attribute search.

 

Lastly, if I may, the taking up of doing sand art at the start of the year has really engaged the local community and visitors alike.. there has been 100% positive feedback across all demographics and age groups.

 

It has brought me much pleasure to do and I know it has done the same for others by the many comments by everyone that has seen them. In a way it’s just like photography in that it celebrates something visually and sometimes meaningfully and so is a good fit for what I like to put ongoing time and energy into.

 

Drawing on the sand is firstly governed by the tides and happens in a cycle and I aim for when the low tide happens during peak daylight hours so that makes it a more or less week-on, week-off basis and of course the weather on the day is the other major factor to determine if drawing is possible.. or not!

 

It has filled the need for an additional creative outlet and can be done at many times of the day when not doing photography or other work and so is an effective use of time as well by plugging those otherwise unused gaps!

 

As it happens with the tide cycle you get a creative break and so return with fresh energy and ready to get creating again.. so just like photography then!

 

You can visit the Facebook page “Art In An Hour, a rake, a stick and some string at the beach” at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555873877155

 

Also the IG page at Alex McNaught (@art_in_an_hour_at_the_beach) • Instagram photos and videos

 

My personal YoutTube channel, which contains a broad cross-section of subjects, also has some fun timelapse videos of all the scurrying around making the various lines in the sand! Head over to https://www.youtube.com/@AlexMcNaught/videos

 

Oh and very lastly I have an entirely new creative work in progress in the realm of “Kinetic Art”.

 

I’m taking an existing idea that is a perennially popular item and adding a whole new level of interactivity with a capacity for almost infinite personalisation and I haven’t seen anything like it in all the top and long established makers. That either means I’m thinking and doing something crazy wrong or it’s a really big thing lol. Time will tell!

 

I have done the initial proof of concept stage developing the core software and electronics for it confirming the concept is indeed a viable foundation to build upon and I am pushing for the middle of next year to complete the follow on prototyping then production stages to create the very first implementation.. and promptly post it up for sale!

 

The final product will be made up of the finest materials with a great aesthetic using carbon fibre and stainless steel.. I want it to be a thing of exquisite beauty along with great brains embedded deep within!

 

It will be “different” that’s for sure and has been a lot of fun seeing the many separate devices come to life one by one as I understand their operating characteristics and how to control them and then merge them and work flawlessly together as envisaged.. just wait until you see the final creation!

 

I know I’ve talked a bit at length but it’s been a while and some major changes were made to boot.. hence this longer newsletter this time around!

 

I promise the next one won’t be as long in coming or as lengthy!

 

Take care and thank you for reading this far and sharing the journey!