VoiceOfEmerika

As I mentioned in my previous post I had an idea for a long blend while in Joshua Tree. The idea was to highlight the wind in the scene. If things had gone as planned, you’d be looking at something with hard, solid rocks and other bits, contrasted with soft and fuzzy plants.

Instead… as you can see for yourself, everything is hard and crisp.

This is a blend of a hundred frames each five seconds apart. I’m left to mull the results and the difference from my expected outcome. Which reminds me of a great talk I just listened to:

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Future Has Always Been Crazier Than We Thought
Monday, February 4, 02008

http://www.longnow.org/projects/seminars/ (I hesitate to deep link directly to the audio–you can find it.)

There is really quite a lot to think about in this talk. Hints as to my inability to predict the outcome of this photo abound.

So, why did this photo fail? I believe the fact that the plants tend to a center position is the answer. Well, that and the huge number of images I blended. I am going to try this again blending just a few frames. The fact I used so many images seems to just have reinforced the strength of the norm and washed out the movement.

Figuring out the issues around licensing has been a long road. At first non-commercial seems to make sense. The reality is that the definition of commercial is unclear. Many more things that you might think could be considered commercial. So, I have been bad mouthing non-commercial for awhile now. Imagine how silly I felt when I saw that I never changed my licensing. Feel free to use or remix my movies. My licensing is now attribution only.

The source of a lot of what has shaped my opinion has been difficulties I experienced using other peoples work. Pretty quickly I stopped using anything that wasn’t attribution only or public domain. Keeping track of a bunch of different licenses is such a bother. I’m happy to attribute all, even if it’s public domain, but further than that becomes too limiting.

As long as I have the floor, I’ll throw a rock at the freedom Nazis. I’ve lost all patience with people trying to force their idea of free on me. Hello! We’re talking free right? This share-alike business, super annoying. It seems all lovely dovey, but really these people promoting it are just control freaks. So, I can use people’s share-alike stuff, only there are conditions. One condition is that I must control what people do with my stuff, perhaps our stuff is better said. Can I give it away? Nope. The only people that can use my stuff must give it away and require that others do the same. –SIGH– Now imagine you’re trying to use stuff with different licenses? Ugh! When people tell me my stuff is not free enough because it doesn’t have enough restrictions I want to throw them out a window. Pretty soon I’ll go public domain–see how they like that!