Tag: #RBOSS

I missed the moon

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Every month seems to bring a different moon thing these days. Sturgeon Moon, Blood Moon, Super Blood Moon, Super Blood Super Moon, Blood Blood Super Blood Strawberry Moon, Buck Moon, Flower Moon, Wolf Moon etc. usw. ens.

We never had those names when I were a lad, and I don’t care if they are the traditional American First Nation nomenclature for them, I don’t want them now either.

As it happens, we got none of this month’s Nonsense Moon down here. The weather was overcast and grey and the moon was merely a bit full when we did catch sight of it through the clouds. But thanks to the power of Facebook and the ubiquity of mobile phone cameras in the Northern Hemisphere, I don’t feel like we missed out at all. Here are some examples from groups in Sheffield, Bergen and the Isle of Man. Special moments, captured specially.

To begin: Deliciously dreamy soft focus over industrial Attercliffe:

“That’s no moon!”. Orange blob over unnamed warehouses:

They’ve #RBOSSed the moon:

Twice. Seriously, this looks like the Teletubbies sun has got the bad jaundice:

I call this one “thanks for sharing”. It could be a streetlight for all we know. Try taking the phone right out of your pocket before grabbing the shot next time:

This is better. It’s like you were actually there. But you forgot to bring your glasses:

Bergen. Norway’s most beautiful city. Home to this 1.3MP potato camera:

And then finally, my favourite. Where the ‘tog has got all the elements (the moon, the shimmering water, the fairytale castle) he or she was after, but feels that it just needs a touch of editing to bring out the best bits – then slips on the dehaze slider and in the process somehow manages to tear through the fabric of time:

Seriously, what on earth happened there?!?

Given the number of images on social media, it’s clear that this month’s full moon was something rather special. It’s also clear that a lot of mobile phone photography has a long way to go before we can reasonably say that it’s worth sharing on social media – or anywhere else.

I… I have no words.

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Thanks to the work of the Ramsey Bay Over Saturation Society and their insistence on pumping up the Lightroom sliders to unbelievable levels, we’re now all painfully aware of the #RBOSS phenomenon.

Using software to make shots look better than they actually were is fine. Of course it is. It’s when you go WAAAYYY over the top that it gets silly and ugly and then when you have the audacity to suggest on social media that “it came out of the camera like that”, well, then we’re really heading way down the road of RBOSS wankerdom.
It’s just deceitful karma-harvesting and it pisses me (and a lot of other people) off.
Quite reasonably.

I’m talking about stuff like this, this and this. It even spread to Bergen, which really doesn’t need assistance in looking good in photos.

But all of that (literally) pales into insignificance with what I saw on a Sheffield Facebook group this morning. Because… I mean… even when a sunset is spectacular, you can’t claim that it looked… that it looked… like this:

What in the ever living fishcake has happened here?

This isn’t “Tonight’s sunset over the village” as the protagonist claims. This (I think) used to be Aston on the border of Sheffield. But this isn’t a sunset. This is the actual star crashing into our planet. This is thermonuclear detonation. Billions of megatons of raw explosive power blasting out streams of plasmatic energy across the rolling hills of South Yorkshire. Every atom right across the Western sky exploding in perfect synchronicity, creating an ultra-electromagnetic shockwave that instantly kills everything in its path.

And it’s not helped by comments such as “Absolutely gorgeous!!! [several heart emojis]” or “breathtaking!”. The only breath that’s being taken here is your final one as the blast of hyper-energy – having melted your eyeballs in a nanosecond – sucks the very last molecules of oxygen from your lungs, leaving merely a smouldering pile of desiccated remnants where you once stood.

What makes it impossibly worse is that this guy sells images from his drone. It’s his business. He wants you to pay for this kind of thing. Money. Real money.

To be honest, this is beyond RBOSS. No-one could have known that the technology to over-saturate to these sort of levels even existed. We simply didn’t think it would ever be possible, but this guy has unashamedly gone multi-Sharples.

End times are upon us.

Day 196 – A new challenger approaches

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Wandering through that Manx group this morning on Facebook and suddenly was stopped by this:

Technically, this doesn’t count as an RBOSS, because it’s Douglas Bay, not Ramsey Bay.
So this is a DBOSS.

It’s not quite on par with the master’s work, but we’re very much heading that way. And it’s worth noting that there’s no suggestion of that “this is just how it came out of the camera/mobile phone” BS. This is merely overdone and unpleasant, not overdone, unpleasant and untruthful.

But I have to ask – what is it about the East Coast of the Isle of Man that brings the Saturation Slider insanity out in people?

Really. No need.

Day 193 – Never go Full Sharples

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We’ve been here before.

My camera doesn’t work the same as Ian Sharples’ camera. My camera produces reasonable, lifelike images, not like the spectacular stuff that “comes straight out of the camera” Chez Sharples.

Stuff like this:

or this:

or this:

Sweet Jesus.

Well, it must be a very special camera. Or a very broken camera. Because sunrises over Ramsey don’t look like this. They often look very nice and very pretty, but they don’t look apocalyptic. I know this because I have friends whose homes overlook Ramsey Bay and who take photos of the sunrises because they look nice and pretty (the sunrises, not necessarily the friends) (shall we park this one right here and move on with the rest of this post?) (yes, we shall).

Their photos don’t look like these ones.

And so we can deduce that the images above are the result of one of three situations:

1. A massive nuclear explosion over England, which lies to the east of the Isle of Man.
2. A massive saturation explosion performed on Ian Sharples’ computer, or
3. A completely unique camera which our protagonist possesses which produces blindingly oversaturated images like these.

The continued existence of England tells us that it’s not number 1. All sense, logic and reason tells us that it’s number 2. But Ian tells us that it’s number 3. So why – apart from the fact that all sense, logic and reason tells us that it’s number 2 – wouldn’t we believe him?

Well, it’s just that he also occasionally takes photos of other things which aren’t blindingly oversaturated. Admittedly, not sunrises, but why would his camera not blindingly oversaturate everything, not just the Ramsey Bay sunrise images he posts for likes on Facebook?

It’s just weird.

My camera doesn’t work the same as Ian Sharples’ camera. My camera produces reasonable, lifelike images. If I want to make images of sunrises or whatever else that look like Ian Sharples’ sunrise images, I have to use software and drag several (or more) of sliders all the way to the right*.

This takes time, so I have created and saved a preset called Half Sharples:

You’ll see that I have a couple of other presets there too: Astro fix, which helps me with images like this one; Project Orange Bright Light fix which assists with photographs taken in and around orchards in the midday Mpumalanga sunshine, and Full Sharples, which I’ve never dared use.

I’m not sure my computer could take it.

There’s simply a limit to the processing power of my laptop. Just as there is a limit to the cerise pixel quotient on my fancy screen. And then there are my eyes. I only have two and they’ve got to last me all my life. Basically, the expense of replacing your motherboard, GPU and monitor, and the medical costs of mending your retinae is simply not worth the risk.
Even if you do want a few more likes on social media.

Save yourself.

Just say no.

Not even once.

Never go Full Sharples.

 

 

* just like he does