Howdy there !

If you're in Melbourne, hope you're doing okay with the first weekend of Stage 4 lock downs. It's a bit eerie around the city with hardly any people around. Stay safe if you're going out for your hour of exercise. There's some pretty random but mind-blowing (was for me anyway) bits in this weeks newsletter. Hope you like them and as always, I'd LOVE to hear your feedback!

As always, this is a new newsletter and if you've enjoyed it or found any of it useful, please let your friends know so they can subscribe to it! And also, thank YOU for reading along too!

Anyway, on to this weeks surprises...

Watch

Light beam in slow motion

https://petapixel.com/2020/07/30/high-speed-camera-records-video-of-light-beam-bouncing-off-mirrors/

This video seriously blew my mind! It's a laser beam captured bouncing between mirrors in slow motion. Can you imagine the slow motion tenchology required?! So it turns out, they built an imaging system that can capture frame at 70 TRILLION FPS!

There also seems to be some other videos on this topic (predictably!)

from the Slow Mo guys. It's no less insane than the one linked above. One of the quotes summarises the sheer mind-bending nature of all this: "A picosecond is to a second as one second is to approximately 31,689 years.

See Also:

• Filming Light at 10Trillion FPS



Listen

Boards of Canada - Campfire Headphase

https://open.spotify.com/album/0wBiN0fKhy0ywx732SpgUs?si=J-sOM8oKTbu7j152iln9HQ

Given all the downtime recently, I've been enjoying my ambient/chill out music. The Campfire Headphase is a whole album from the genius duo that are the Boards of Canada.

Something about the combination of electronic instruments with the analogue distorted sounds makes the music sound like a sun-drenched nostalgia trip into your childhood summer holidays. I can't begin to count how many times I've listened to this album both because it's so good (even as background music) and how "different" it sounds from BoCs other works.

Gadget

Self-watering planters (set of 3)

https://amzn.to/3ioGiuz

Well after increasing my caffiene intake thanks to the Ember Mug, I've now decided to turn my attention to mainstream lockdown endeavours by planting a herb garden on my windowsill near the kitchen!

These planters seem to be just the right size and come in a pack of 3. As you can see from the transparent version, it uses a wick system to keep the soil hydrated to reduce the need for watering (yay for laziness!).

I've been researching the best soil for the job and I'm not sure if things are comparable to the article I have found on the topic, but the links below are to the list of herbs/seeds available at Bunnings and the potting mix I'll be using - haven't quite decided between indoor plant and vege and herb mix. Any ideas?

I've also ordered an interesting planter from Amazon. If it works out, I'll definitely be showing you next week...

See also:

• Which potting mix is best?
• Osmocote Tomato, Vegetable and Herb Potting mix
• Osmocote Indoor plant mix
• Bunnings Herb seeds

PxR update

Photos x Raffy Youtube

https://www.photosbyraffy.com/youtube

This week I hope to (finally) have the last bit of the Ramadan in the time of Covid episodes done! The penultimate one was just uploaded to youtube last night and the last one should be done sometime this week! Whew!

On another note, I have been digging through my hard drive to edit Antarctica photos and have come across a TON of videos. Due to the unanimous votes on instagram, I'll try to make a short video from the trip. Stay tuned for that (but don't hold your breath!).

Photo tips & submit your image!

PetaPixel composition tips

https://petapixel.com/2016/09/14/20-composition-techniques-will-improve-photos/

Last week we talked about editing and before I get to this weeks tips, I wanted to reinforce just how crucial editing is. So, I'm asking you to send me some of your photos (just email me: raffy@photosbyraffy.com ) if you have an image that you think could be much better from a quick edit. I'll try to pick a few and explain what I did. If nothing else, you get a free edited image!

Now, this week I wanted to focus on composition. Basically it refers to general rules about how to position the elements in your frame to make an aesthetically pleasing photo. The psychology and history of all this is a bit of a rabbit hole and dates back to the days of painters and how they composed their paintings. It's a bit of a staple for all photo blogs to have articles like this, but I thought instead of re-inventing the wheel, why not link to one that's already pretty good?

The PetaPixel article linked above goes through the common composition tricks. As always with rules, they're meant to be broken. However, maybe try following them first to see why they work so damn well 99% of the time.

Ps - would love to know whether you'd want to read my version of a similar article? I'm not a big fan of rehasing whats already out there, but I'm told people like to read things in the style of certain writers so I'll consider it if there's enough people asking...

Quote I'm pondering

“Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change...”

― Confucius

The thing I like about old quotes is just how well they withstand the test of time. This one caught my attention because in the world today, we tend to assume absolutes: people are "experts" or you have your opinion about Person X etc.

Firstly, experts are people and they too, are entitled to change their mind if new information comes to light. In fact, those that do are probably the ones worth following: they're not blindly sticking to dogma. Secondly, YOU are also totally allowed to change your mind. Maybe you think vanilla is the best flavour of icecream (everyone knows it's chocolate right?!), but maybe no ones tried the Movenpick Cookies & Cream(which is also amazing!).

On a personal level, this caught quote is one I'm holding in my head a bit as this newsletter evolves because I didn't start with a concrete plan on what it was meant to be. So I'm allowing myself the luxury to experiment with it. So thank you for following along while I randomly tweak things (hey, that was part of the sign up speil after all!).

Thanks for joining me on yet another week of randomness!

Danke shoen and stay awesome!

- Raffy

PS - Sorting out logistics of actually sending things in the pandemic is hard. Hence the delay with the competiton!