Curie Author Showcase (January 27, 2019)

Photography has adepts and lovers all over the world, as it allows people to share their points of view in unique forms. Most photographers, amateurs or professionals, are usually enthusiastic seekers of more knowledge and experience in this art. If you're down for some learning on the long exposure topic, @fiftysixnorth's post is definitely for you. From the essential equipment to the post-processing, the author's tips will surely shine a light on how to improve your own skills. Here's an excerpt of the article.

Long exposure photography is a fun and creative way to take a shot. It can dramatically change a scene and opens up new possibilities for what you can do with an image. It is however very easy to screw up a long exposure, and I have screwed up plenty in the past so I will share with you my tips for improving your long exposures so you can skip the screw ups I made!

(...) The histogram is your friend… Learn to read it. One of the main things people often get wrong in their long exposures is to either to blow out the highlights and overexpose, or to underexpose and loose the shadows to total black. Sometimes you will do this for intentional effect, but generally you want to avoid it. Remember the shot above with the light leaking from the viewfinder? The windows in that shot have no detail because I overexposed and blew out the highlights! If you have live view on your camera you can usually also super impose the histogram over the live view and you can see what your settings will produce. You can use this as a guide for your camera settings. (...) — @fiftysixnorth

My name is Karsten Moerman and I am a photographer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Photography is not my day job, but it is my passion and one I enjoy sharing with others online. Aside from various photography gigs, by day I work in IT and learning technology at the University of Edinburgh. By night I work in a cemetery (for a tour company) that is famous for two things; a dog (Greyfriar’s Bobby – immortalised by Disney) and an active poltergeist, though he’s only every attacked me once, but I’m still a sceptic and think there is a perfectly reasonable explanation that doesn’t involve ghosts. (…) I try to practice my photography as often as I can. I do this by exploring and photographing the city I live in, and by taking trips to other parts of Scotland and to places further afield. One of my aspirations is to be a proper travel photographer. — @fiftysixnorth

To continue on a learning note, here's some first-handed experience from a talented filmmaker. How to make your movies stand out and look more cinematic? In his own words, this lighting technique will change your life. Through a narrative with plenty of humor, @distantsignal presents this topic on the third episode of the 90-days Changelings vlog marathon. Changelings is a project he has been working in, defined as the first horror/thriller film made on and with the Steem blockchain.

Today I'm going to talk about the lighting technique that helped elevate my lighting more than any other... backlighting! See some early shots from Snoop, a short film I shot last year and how this all relates to Changelings. — @distantsignal

I look forward to seeing how @distantsignal implements backlighting on Changelings. His tips and advised technique are guaranteed to give films a sense of realism and dramatism, go ahead and try them yourself!

My name is Phil Abatecola and I'm a filmmaker in Los Angeles. Cliched, I know, but this is what I've chosen and continue to choose. For a quick reference, I'm the guy in the yellow hat.

For me, Distant Signal is a concept. I wanted to represent the idea of a calling, a dream, a vocation, etc. in the name of my company. I imagined that people who felt compelled to push towards the unknown, who choose to go to great lengths to achieve what they want to be called by a Distant Signal. — @distantsignal

Many things can get easier with practice. Our skills, attitudes, and performances vary and improve over time. How do you overcome the risks you encounter in life? Through her insightful writing, @natubat provides a personal analysis of some different approaches to taking risks. As a climber, she has faced many challenges, but her position has been mostly to prepare and train until feeling ready. Here's an excerpt of her words, to deepen on the subject.

The Needle (pictured above) is a rock chimney on the top of the mountain, known as the "true summit". I've been told that it's not too difficult to climb, but there is a massive drop below, and not much margin for error. I've climbed The Cobbler four times, but I haven't "threaded the Needle". It's described as "threading the Needle" because there's a rock window that you walk through on your way to climb up the thing. I have looked through this "window", and I decided that this was as far as I would go.

It wasn't a long, drawn-out decision. I thought I could probably do it, but that the risk was simply not worth a photo of me standing on top. What surprises me is how much passion my decision often provokes from people who have "threaded the Needle" (and there are many of them!). They raise their voices an octave higher, and say "You'd easily be able to do it!" And it seems many people do feel they have to do it. On a dry, sunny day at the summit of the Cobbler there are always people standing on the Needle, many of them relatively inexperienced climbers. — @natubat

For those who don't know, Alex Honnold climbed El Capitan, a 3,000-foot sheer rock face in Yosemite, solo, without using ropes. I watched Free Solo, the feature film about Honnold's climb, on Christmas Eve – which was the only time I could book a seat for the film. It was so popular that most of the screenings were sold out two weeks in advance in my town.

What Honnold did seems totally crazy to me. Not surprisingly, "free soloing" – climbing without using ropes – has a very high death rate. But I find Alex Honnold's philosophy about solo climbing very interesting. You'd expect someone who climbs vertical rock faces without ropes to have a wild, devil-may-care attitude, but Honnold is thoughtful, introspective and methodical. He spent two years preparing to solo El Capitan, climbing it with ropes repeatedly, getting to know the rock intimately and practising every single move. (…) Preparation, practice and rehearsal build confidence and reduces risk, and this is true in just about every aspect of life. I like doing things when I feel fully confident in my ability to do them. — @natubat

I'm Natalie, from the UK. I'm currently enjoying renewed health and fitness after a couple of years of weight gain and fatigue due to a thyroid problem. It's made me appreciate my health more, and I love getting out in the fresh air to climb mountains or just for long walks. I've also discovered indoor climbing and bouldering, which I have an absolute passion for.

My former job as Editor of a trade magazine gave me up eight years ago, when I was made redundant after a lengthy period of bullying from my employer. (…) I'm much poorer financially now, but I'm fitter and healthier and I have a better work-life balance. I love getting out into the hills, and I've met so many friends on these excursions and through indoor climbing and bouldering. I'm no longer interested in climbing the career ladder. I prefer to climb hills, mountains and rocks, for fun and enjoyment. And that's why I'm a social climber. — @natubat

From the animation studios' background to the plot and production, @bohemian.machine gives us a thoughtful, profound review of Disney's recent animated movie, the sequel for Wreck-It Ralph: Ralph Breaks the Internet. According to him, it represents a real surprise and an improvement, with outstanding production. Here's an excerpt of the author's analysis.

At a time when anti-values seem to have become fashionable in human relationships – try reading some young adult and erotic novels of our time, for instance (?) - it is refreshing that Disney takes a step forward in discussing said values, especially when they were culprits in bringing a lot of said distortions decades ago. However, this creates a somewhat strong dissonance considering that the film was theoretically not about toxicity, vanity, and bad decisions, but about the Internet... and, unfortunately, Ralph Breaks the Internet does not fare very well when it comes to actually break the Internet.

Although most of the jokes about ~millennials’ preferred vice~ the World Wide Web are funny, they only work at a basic level. Probably because of the weight of being a family movie at its heart, Ralph Breaks the Internet does not allow itself to be acidic enough about issues that besiege the Internet community as we speak – Twitter’s nauseating toxicity, the net becoming social justice warriors and trolls’ main battleground, sensitive information leaking, to number a few. The result is a decaffeinated, rather hopeful version of what we are actually facing right now as Internet users. Where Ralph Breaks the Internet largely succeeds, however... is in mocking, openly and sincerely, Disney’s own legacy. One can only wonder how the film's production team could have gotten away with so many self-referential jokes. — @bohemian.machine

I started writing in Steemit primarily because I wanted to give a 180º turn to my life. I was working as a graphic designer and content writer in a corporate environment, but I was feeling increasingly frustrated and bored and I longed to fully exploit my love for writing. Fortunately, Steemit allowed me to take that opportunity head-on, by participating in a lot of writing contests and, eventually, writing my own pieces of opinion about movies, TV shows and video games I love.

What I mostly intend with my Steemit channel - apart from showing my own original content - is to showcase storytelling that isn't exactly getting the recognition it could deserve. As I'm a fan of comic books and quite a geek myself, I could dangle with the usual superhero movie or blockbuster and that will be OK, but I mostly want to keep underdog, thought-provoking works at the forefront. Even if they're critically panned; at the end of the day, we can always learn from storytelling, either from its virtues or its flaws — @bohemian.machine