Author: Rod Fleming

Scottish Writer, photographer, artist and musician. Currently living in the Philippines with the lovely Sam. I like photography, art, motorcycling, food (too much) sailing and dogs. I am a published author.
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Stopping down, Depth of Field and Bokeh

Originally posted 2013-04-12 19:28:25.

rod fleming depth of field
Limited depth of field, as seen here, can separate the subject from the background and strengthen the image. Pic: Rod Fleming

In the last article we looked at the optical principles that govern focus and depth of field. Now let’s explore how these are applied practically in the camera. For the moment we will assume that we are using a single-lens-reflex (slr) or rangefinder type camera, either digital or film.

If you look at the lens barrel you will probably see a ring which controls the aperture diaphragm. This will be numbered in f-stops, which on modern cameras will run f1.4,2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, (32, 45, 64). I put the last three in brackets because you’re pretty unlikely to have them but you might see them on view cameras. Note that the numbers double on every second step—2,4,8 etc and 2.8, 5.6, 11 etc. The f-stops are determined by dividing the effective aperture into the focal length, so a 50mm lens with an aperture of 25mm is f2, and with 12.5mm is f4. Each f-stop, going from low number to high, admits half as much light as the one before, so f2.8 is half of f2 etc. It’s easy to work out why if you’re mathematically inclined, but if not, just remember it.


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The Naked Truth

Originally posted 2013-11-03 23:31:55.

I grew up in a world where photography, especially monochrome photography, was synonymous with ‘truth’. That was never strictly accurate, of course, and as a photographer I knew the extent to which the truth can be manipulated. Nevertheless, as evidenced by the incredible work we saw every day in the newspapers of the 60s, which I consumed with passion while still at school, a photograph was regarded as an equivalent to reality; it was not just a representation of truth, but an affirmation of it.

“Look,’ it said, ‘This is a true thing; I stand witness to that.’ Even today, when PhotoShop has put tricks of the trade that I spent years learning at the click of an amateur’s mouse, photographs brook no argument. The leaves really were that green, the sunset that orange, the woman so perfect. Yet perfect beauty was never in the sorcery of the darkroom or the airbrush artist’s hand, nor is it in the magic of digital manipulation; real beauty is actually real. It needs no PhotoShopping or dastardly manipulation, only to be seen and known, and recorded.

The other part of my life, however, is very different from the ascetic artist whose delight is in the expression of pure form or idea. As a musician, I am by definition an entertainer. And my professional photographic career has been mainly in Photojournalism. Indeed, long before I immersed myself in Weston and Brandt I was mainlining Cartier-Bresson and Don McCullin. Continue reading “The Naked Truth”

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The New Atheists, New Age woo & Cultural Marxism

Originally posted 2017-08-01 19:48:42.

The New Atheists,  like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, the late Christopher Hitchens and many others, purported to offer a sane, secular attempt to roll back religiosity for the betterment of society. Instead, their efforts have begat the mother of all calamities.

How did this come to pass?

Scientific atheism, as promoted by the New Atheists, lacks any unifying central structure or code. Essentially it is based on a negative — not believing in God. So it can’t have a defining structure. Richard Dawkins, one of the most prominent New Atheists, tried to answer this with his ‘brights’ — which was an embarrassment. (Since at least 2014, Dawkins has self-identified as a ‘secular Christian’ anyway.)

After the Enlightenment and especially the French Revolution, European secularism based itself around Reason as the core methodology that would replace, in the minds of those who were atheist, religious belief. This reflected a rejection of hierarchical religious authority, which had begun in the Reformation. The works of philosophers like Descartes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant and Paine promoted the idea of the free-thinking individual whose intellectual scalpel was Reason.

books by rod fleming
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Focus and Depth of Field

Originally posted 2013-04-12 19:23:44.

Focus and depth of field are related, and the advancing photographer should understand the relationship between them.

If you are used to using a digital compact, then focus may be something you take for granted. Things just are in focus. But if you are thinking of buying a DSLR or a film camera, then focus becomes much more important. In fact it is one of the primary creative tools the photographer has.

 

About Lenses

Lenses resolve the light emitted from objects in the world into an image that we can use. Sometimes, as in a telescope, this is for direct observation, and the focus is inside the eye; in photography, resolution is always on a plane behind the lens.


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Filipino skin, baklas, sex and men

Originally posted 2022-06-19 15:31:43.

I was shocked, when I came to the Philippines first, at the level of discrimination that exists, not between Filipinos and other ethnicities, but between pale-skinned Filipinos and dark-skinned ones.

Filipino ethnicity is essentially built on a Malay base, but with many later additions. This gives rise to both a hierarchy and a whole industry. The paler one’s skin tone, the more beautiful/handsome one is. This is a universal rule. Extremely beautiful women with spectacular bone structures but dark skin are regarded as less attractive than plain, pale women and the same is true of men. This is true across Asia, but in the Philippines it reaches extreme levels.

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How to catch and keep your ladyboy lover

ladyboy

Originally posted 2021-12-09 16:20:34.

This is the fourth in my series for those men who seek to find a long-term relationship with a ladyboy. Is hope it’s useful! 

It’s as easy as pie to have casual sex with a ladyboy, all you need to do is to go to a suitable bar. Thailand is full of them and I may do a couple of reviews if there’s enough interest.

Always remember that my videos are mirrored on Odysee. Nobody trusts YouTube any more.

https://odysee.com/@RodFleming-World

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Grip: How to hold the fiddle and bow

Originally posted 2013-07-03 19:59:34.

Grip the fiddle and bow photo
Grip the fiddle and bow so that the bow crosses the strings at a right angle

Once you have the grip of the instrument under the chin sorted out, the next thing to address is the right hand’s grip on the bow. This can cause a great deal of trouble though in my opinion is not as tricky as the left hand. Again, the secret is to avoid tension; the hand must be relaxed. To do this, all four fingers and the thumb must be in contact with the stick, and all must be curved. This is hugely important. The most common grip errors are for the little or pinkie finger to lock and become straight and rigid. Do not allow this to happen. Another is for the pinkie to lift off the stick, which is also wrong. More subtle and harder to see but just as damaging is for the thumb to become stiff.


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Social Autogynephilia and Schadenfreude.

Originally posted 2017-10-24 21:35:44.

Autogynephilia is ‘a man’s propensity to be sexually aroused at the thought or image of himself as a woman’. For many practical purposes we might restate that as ‘a man’s overwhelming desire to be a woman’, to ‘become that which he loves’ and so on. It is a man’s deeply-felt identification with the object of his desire. So what might social autogynephilia be?

 

 

 

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God proposition: god true or god false?

Originally posted 2013-07-03 16:53:42.

The god proposition is supported not by fact, but by faith. At the end of the day, the final word that the religiously-disposed have is to say that “It is so because I believe it to be so,” before covering their ears. For them, this trumps everything.

 This is the hook that caught Descartes when he confronted the issue, and then backed off very quickly. “I think,” he said, “Therefore I am.” This is fine. He is self-aware therefore he is sure he exists. He cannot be entirely sure that he exists as he perceives himself or that anything that is around him is as he perceives it, but he does make a very convincing argument, based on the progression of rational logic, that it is so (and thus takes several hundred pages to confirm what any pragmatist already knows. But that’s an aside.) However, when confronted by the idea of God, God must exist, he says “Because he cannot imagine a world in which he does not.” Oops.


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