Light Is So Weird

Why it acts like both a wave and a particle and gets stranger still.

If you remember the double-slit experiment from school, this video is a super accessible refresher and a reminder of just how weird light really is. It behaves like both a wave and a particle.

But it gets even stranger. When scientists tried to record which path the photons took (slit 1 or slit 2), the wave pattern disappeared. Even more baffling, this happened even when they recorded the path after the photon had already hit the screen.

Stick around until the end of the video to see the quantum eraser in action. So very weird.

Oh, and of course the related videos has a video by Sabine debunking the quantum eraser idea.

Ha, what a rabbit hole. What she says makes total sense. I’m going to watch her bomb video next.

I asked ChatGPT to explain what’s going on. It went way over my head. Further study is required.

Fisher or hunter street photographer?

Sean Tucker gives some great advice to landscape photographers, likening landscape photography to fishing in street photography. Fishing is the act of finding an interesting place on the street and waiting for someone to walk through. I’m more of a hunter. I keep walking, looking for an interesting subject or situation, rarely stopping. You’ll see many examples of that in my Edinburgh photos.

“It’s a great place for landscape photographers to start. They’re used to fishing, to framing a composition first and waiting for the weather or light to come to them.”

I’m always wondering if I should post photography stuff on this blog here, or should I write my words about photography on my photoblog? What say you, gentle reader? Should I care at all? It’s a personal blog after all.

Most people change with time

Skeletor saying, "So many people from your past know a version of you that no longer exists. Celebrate your growth".
Source: Inspirational Skeletor

Some people don’t change however, and never learn from their mistakes.

“IT’LL be dark at 5pm before you know it” one parent dropping their child off at school cheerily said to themselves as the telltale sign that an Irish summer is over, Enoch Burke hovering at school gates, has arrived once again.

“Fuck sake,” confirmed much of the nation as the emergence of a wild Burke haring back to its unnatural habitat of outside a premises they haven’t worked at since 2022, signaled the summer is well and truly over.

Geotag your photos in Lightroom Classic

A gentleman in tan hat and plaid shirt standing at a busy car boot sale in Bantry with market stalls and shoppers browsing various items spread on tables, County Cork.

Geotagging your photos means adding location data to the image so they can be displayed on a map. Be aware that doing so might reveal sensitive information you’d rather keep secret like your home address.

You can of course remove location data when you export images, like I did with the images in this post.

Anyway, here is how I geotag my photos.

For photos I’ve already taken, I use Google Timeline and export it from my Google account using Google Takeout. You’ll get a rather large “Recent.json” file out of that. To convert that file into the GPX format usable by Lightroom Classic, use this Python script which I’ve already covered in this post.

When I go out with my camera now I use the Anrdoid app, OpenTracks. It’s a free app you can grab from f-droid, but there’s also a paid version on the Google Play Store if you want to support the developer. You can also use GPSLogger, a free app that has the advantage of being able to save your .gpx files to Dropbox or Google Drive.

On iOS, the myTracks app appears to do a similar job but I can’t test it. Please comment if you have tried it or know of decent alternatives.

To geotag your photos in Lightroom Classic, the Adobe documentation on the subject is excellent. Once you’ve opened the Map Module and done it once it’s easy to do again. When you geotag your photos, the Map Module will look like this.

A satellite view of Cork City with a blue line showing where I walked and orange squares showing how many photos I took at various locations.

There is also Jeffrey’s “Geoencoding Support” Plugin for Lightroom that I’ve used for years but maybe it’s because of changes to LrC in recent years, it’s gotten really slow for me. I usually use the built in LrC functionality in the Maps module now.

Transfusion Art Gallery at the City Hall

TRANSFUSION TRANS JOY THROUGH ART @ Cork City Hall

I helped the kind folk at TENI set up a small art exhibit in Cork City Hall yesterday. This week is Cork LGBT+ Pride Festival and this is one part of that celebration.

Transfusion features art made by young trans people, including a pencil drawing by the late Jordan Howe. She was a 19 year-old transgender woman from Belfast who took her own life because of transphobic bullying in 2014.

Drop into the City Hall on Anglesea Street. You can’t miss it. The exhibition will be on until August 15th.

Search for a camera

While watching Stephen Leslie’s latest video on Lee Friedlander it occurred to me I could search Google Photos and Immich for “camera” and I might get back fun photos of photographers at work.

Sure enough, it did, including many photos of people from Blarney Photography Club, and of course people in Automattic. There were also a couple of people who have since passed away which was sad to see, but still a nice memory to have. They’re not tagged nearly well enough to identify the people. I sometimes wonder what will happen to this collection when I’m no longer around to pay for backups, and make sure the external drive they’re on is working.

Anyway, here are a few I liked.

A photo of me from behind as I take a photo of a mountainous scene with my phone. I have a perfectly good camera hanging off my neck.
Thanks Kuba for this photo of me in Germany.
A young woman photographing another two young women who are sitting on a railing on a steep stepped street.
What kind of camera was this I spotted in Valletta, Malta?
Mark almost lost his camera there.
Procession in Malaga.
A man hanging out the side of a car while holding a DSLR camera.
The Cannonball Run in Blarney, 2018
A sheep poses for a photo in a pen while someone holds their camera phone up to them.
Posing for a photo
Lots of photos of my camera taking a photo

Using machine learning on photos is a great way of diving into your collection of images. You’ll unearth all sorts of stuff!

See more of my photos on my other blog.

There’s no such thing as a safe tan

The What’s Up Docs podcast from the BBC is an entertaining but factual podcast about health presented by two doctors, Chris and Xand van Tulleken (brothers and twins!) who find out to their dismay that they were wrong about the dangers of getting a nice healthy colour from the sun.

A cat lying on the ground and enjoying the sun.

A tan occurs when UV radiation damages skin cells, causing them to produce more melanin as a protective response. This process involves DNA damage to skin cells, which can accumulate over time and potentially lead to skin cancer.

Sunburn is obviously harmful and painful. Even one blistering sunburn in childhood can double your lifetime risk of melanoma.

It’s a bit late for my Irish readers, as we had cloudless skies and a hot sun last week. Temperatures reached 25C where I was, so I slapped on the factor 50 sunscreen and made sure I was wearing a hat when I was outside. Many years ago, a neighbour died of skin cancer at the age of 52, only a few years older than I am now.

The Met Éireann UV Index page will show you what the UV index in Ireland is. If it’s 3 or over, you should be covering up with clothing or sunscreen. It’s quite alarming that the difference between a clear sky and a cloudy sky is 1-2 or 8-10 on that index.

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