Saturday, August 7, 2010

2 Things Challenge: Smooth/Ripple


The 2 Things Challenge for this week was Smooth/Ripple. If anything says smooth and ripple at the same time to me, this is it. It reminds me of the splash from a pebble with the ripples racing across the surface. This may be my first interpretation that doesn't have an actual photograph, but hey, I saw it, and I pressed the button to capture it (just not a shutter release). It's sort of like a photo without my trusty Sony Alpha. I'll tell you how I did it in the comments, maybe Monday or Tuesday, or you can guess.

7 comments:

Rob said...

That is an awesome image, rather arty with the smooth rippled colors. Can't figure out what this is.

Eeyore said...

Like I said, it's not a photograph per se. But 2 Things will take anything.

Jack Thyen said...

Very Cool!

Eeyore said...

Okay, how'd I do it?
First, I have an old version of iTunes on an old computer, and I started it playing some of the smooth, bluesy, slide guitar music from the Almon Brothers. For kicks, I turned on the visualizer, that button that fills the screen with moving, flowing images that are created, if you will, by the program and the music. Pretty psychadelic stuff sometimes. I noticed the slide guitar sort of created "smooth ripples" so I captured an image and posted it. Actually I had to do it about a dozen times to get the one I really liked. How'd I capture it? The Print Screen button grabs an image of whatever is on the screen the instant you press it, not unlike the shutter release. In the "old days" that button would actually send it directly to the printer, but now it just saves the image to the clipboard. From there it's easy to paste into PhotoShop Elements, or whatever, and save as a jpeg, not a lot different than uploading from the camera.
So, is this something I created? Well, yes, about as much as I create the sunset I photograph, but maybe with not quite as much control on my part.

Maya said...

Clever! I like it.

Alexa said...

Love it! And it took a lot of thought and imagination too—looks like the work of a retired nuclear engineer. :~}

Cameron said...

Oh I'm too slow - I was going to guess it was an audio visualization, but I didn't realize you could do that in iTunes. I was going to guess Windows Media Player or WinAmp.