Rainbow Journeyman’s diary

As journeymen we have many a discussion about resolution and pixels. Pixels are the dots that make up the basis of all digital pictures today.
Pixel comes from the word pixelated meaning crazy. If you look at the screen on a detuned television you will know what I mean. The dots fly every which way and back again. Now I don’t propose to get to technical about all this guff. Interpolation and the likes, as it gets boring past the first few words. Suffice to say, it’s as always the end results that I am interested in. The picture.
It is also politic to say that the purists are right and that digital has not caught up, yet, with film. Films equivalent resolution, and I think that I am right in saying this, is about 30million pixels. So, we still have a little way to go. But it’s happening

But hold on. Revelation here! (Big light glowing) Its a bit like the audio response of Hi Fi. Top class amplifiers can and do produce sounds that dogs and bats find interesting; but humans don’t have the audio range to hear. And, wait for it, it the same with our eyes. Beyond a certain pixilation even bats can’t tell the difference. And for those of you who haven’t caught on. (Blind as bats!! Yeah yea!)

But I am serious about what we can and cannot see. Up to a point that is. When you look at a picture on a postcard. It’s a picture. Might even be a nice picture. Sort of, Hoom har , Mmnn that’s nice, type of picture. Followed by a big yawn if you attempt to extract the rest of the pack from your pocket.
But stop for a minute. Take a moment or two and enlarge it to a metre and quarter long, by three quarters of a metre deep; then you have a b e a u t i f u l picture. It lives, it has life, and it extracts the WOW factor from the once bored audience. The effect is pure magic. Trust us, we have done it again and again.

Time out! Time out!

I have to add a clause here!! You’ll never make a bad picture a good picture no matter how hard you try. Unless you crop to creases for abstracts or something equally weird. (We do quite a lot of that on the odd occasion; does that tell you something about Journeymen? Weird bunch I hear you say. Yup, you could be right) Any way back to pixels.

Here’s the revelation. If the pixel count is too low it starts to show.
As it expands through A4, A3, A2, A1, and so on up the grain starts to count.. …. literally. But, if the picture is upwards of eight mega-pixels when it leaves the camera you’ll begin to see the magic. At last the AO picture appears and then some and then the WOW factor cuts in. It’s a picture that you can’t take your eyes off.

A whole new talking point.

“Where’s that too. (Devon talk) Look you there’s pretty (Wales) Way I lar, there’s brae. (No idea!!) But take our word for it. They are superb works of art. Ask our Helen. We had to send her off to have her jaw lifted back into place, after looking at the boat on Padstow Harbour, enlarged to AO size. And as our Helen never stops yacking you’ll understand the misery she went through until the quack could see her. Although I am told from a reliable source that it was her husband, not some anonymous caller, that kept cancelling her appontments!!

Then there’s a second point. Add a frame to suit your décor. Every picture should be framed properly or not at all.

Frameless is good!

Pictures really do help you relax. You don’t need stare at them all daylong. But after a hard day they are as welcome as spring rain on a parched lawn. You sit and you look and you dream yourself into the picture. It’s your mini holiday whilst you are still at home. And hey, next year you could go and see it for real. After all they are all pictures of the West country that you know.

More soon

Mike Tyrrell a Rainbow Journeyman on his travels - www.rainbowjourneyman-southwest.co.uk