How www.daninjapan.com Gets Created

Here I am concentrating intently while working on my pictures. The thoughts zipping through my brain are: "This picture? That picture? Lighter? Darker? Two degrees off level? Too much blue? Digitally remove that blemish? What was that building called again? What time is it!? I take too many pictures!" This is me, all done with a picture section. Time to hitch up to the phone line (in the kitchen!) and transfer the pictures onto the Internet for all of you to see...

Changing Reality, Digitally 31 Mar 1999

When I first put up pictures of the Sugimoto bar [1.24.2], one of the students complained that I had just broadcast a picture of him drinking beer onto the Internet (when he said he wasn't supposed to be seen drinking it). It was already too late (the pictures had been online for at least a week by that time), but to have some fun I used something called a "rubber stamp tool" to remove the evidence of his drinking from pictures. Don't ever believe what you see in a digital picture! Original Bar Picture 1 Bar Picture 1 with beer glass digitally removed Original Bar Picture 2 Bar Picture 2 with beer glass digitally removed Would you have been able to tell if I hadn't told you?

Group Pictures - Making a Hybrid Picture 31 Mar 1999

One of the hardest things to take a picture of is a group of people. Whenever you get a bunch of people looking at a camera, one person blinks, looks away, yawns, or does something while everyone else has a perfect smile. If you take another picture, that person might look OK, but then another person will have a strange look. This happened to me when I took a "class photo" of the first year Japanese class [ichinensei]. The first picture turned out OK, most people had a smile, except Jeff Watson was looking at the floor. The second picture turned out much, much better, except for some reason Chris Houbeck turned around and faced the wall! But because he was standing in exactly the same place, and because someone was standing in front of him both times, I was able to use a little digital voodoo -- copying, pasting, and using the magical "rubber stamp tool" to make a hybrid picture: Chris Houbeck (purple shirt) in the first picture Chris Houbeck in the second picture Chris Houbeck in the "hybrid" picture The entire "hybrid" picture Would you have been able to tell if I hadn't told you?

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