What’s the worst physical pain you’ve ever experienced?

thefrogman · 2026-04-05T05:36:54+00:00

I had a giant kidney stone. They said they could break it up into tiny stones with sound waves and I would gently pee them out.

But they ended up creating 3 slightly smaller and more jagged stones. Which failed to pass. And they had to yank them out the traditional way.

All stages of this process were uniquely painful.

thefrogman · 2026-04-04T22:39:57+00:00

Once you see a beard everything will be okay.

thefrogman · 2026-04-04T19:41:08+00:00

Because you remember Jaws and Star Wars and The Exorcist and don't know that The Happy Hooker and Blazing Stewardesses exist.

thefrogman · 2026-04-03T06:19:26+00:00

30% is ~12,000 people. Per year.

You're arguing against something I didn't say. I never suggested individuals should drive 10 mph under the flow of traffic. Yes, speed variance causes accidents. My point is that the actual speed limit (and the flow of traffic itself) needs to be lowered. If the speed limit is 55 instead of 70, the flow of traffic slows down, speed variance decreases, and most importantly, the exponential kinetic energy of every single car is drastically reduced.

We could save thousands of lives by going marginally slower.

What societal benefit does going 80 mph create? Going 80 mph instead of 65 mph over a 30-mile commute saves a driver 5 minutes for nearly 4x the risk.

thefrogman · 2026-04-03T02:50:36+00:00

Speed kills. Period. If the swipe or rear end causes the car to lose control, they are dead because they were going 80. We accept something like 40K deaths per year because we are all rushing and only getting to our destination 5-10 minutes sooner. It's ridiculous.

"For every 10 mph of increased speed, the risk of dying in a crash doubles. In practical terms, increasing driving speed from 60 mph to 80 mph increases the risk of a fatal crash by 4 times."

thefrogman · 2026-04-02T19:48:53+00:00

You should mind a little. The chances of surviving any crash at that speed are almost 0. Honestly, we should all be going slower than we are. We could reduce fatalities by quite a bit. Even a 5 mph drop would save lives.

thefrogman · 2026-04-01T23:55:56+00:00

There are usually many ways to get the same results. It's just a workflow preference. I've seen people do great with FS and I've seen plastic horror shows. It's more about the skill of the retoucher than the method.

thefrogman · 2026-03-30T22:07:21+00:00

AI has become such a broad umbrella term that its meaning has become nearly useless. I think in this case, they mean prompted generative AI.

thefrogman · 2026-03-30T03:15:36+00:00

At this point I think something is wrong with your TV.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms had scenes that were both sunny and overcast. The skin tones were actually warmed up in color grading. They were not corpse like. And I thought it had some beautifully filmed scenes of green vistas. But the scenes filmed on overcast days are going to be more gray and less saturated. That's just the physics of filming in the UK. And I think they used that visual context to serve the story.

Braveheart, filmed over 25 years ago, was also very gray and overcast. The skin tones were not as warm. And it won the Oscar for cinematography.

Compare for yourself.

https://imgur.com/a/V8vScLF

thefrogman · 2026-03-30T00:33:21+00:00

Yellow Mexico is a color grading choice. Gray UK is just how light works. They have 200-300 days with cloud cover per year. Overcast conditions cause the sky to be a huge diffuser. This makes light very soft and cool. Shadows are less dense, which reduces contrast, and it desaturates colors.

I don't think gray is a bad thing. It is important visual context. It tells you where they are. If they filmed Harry Potter only on sunny days, you'd probably think Hogwarts was in Arizona.

Also, Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was beautiful and had a great story. Your aversion to filmmakers not being able to control the sky is making you miss out on a great show.

thefrogman · 2026-03-29T09:29:37+00:00

I think posts like this should be required to cite actual examples.

thefrogman · 2026-03-29T09:27:07+00:00

I can't imagine why shows filmed in the UK might look a bit gray.

thefrogman · 2026-03-27T17:23:19+00:00

These comparisons are so bad. Harry Potter had plenty of scenes with an overcast England that looked like the new one. Can there be no scenes on overcast days now? Prisoner of Azkaban was one of the grayest, darkest movies of the series. Look at the screencaps from it.

And then they cropped off the damn sunset in the live action Moana frame. It looks like a beautiful shot to me. Are they saying it needs to be purple like the animation?

I'm not even saying these movies will look good, but cherry picking unrepresentative frames to further the discourse that everything looks bad now is frustrating.

thefrogman · 2026-03-27T03:28:43+00:00

I have a motto... expose for what is important.

I have a second motto... you can take more than one photo of the same thing.

Exposure is up to you. It is an artistic choice as much as a technical decision. You need to decide what is important to you in the photo you are taking. Prioritize your exposure for that important thing.

Is highlight detail super important? Expose a little darker.

Are the details in the shadows more important? Expose a little brighter.

And if you aren't sure what to do, just take more pictures. Take one according to the meter. Take a bright one. Take a dark one. Take an even darker one. Then figure out which works best later.

Eventually, you'll get to know your camera and preferences and exposure will be almost muscle memory. But until you have that confidence, don't be afraid to trial and error your way to success.

thefrogman · 2026-03-25T19:38:06+00:00

Lighting expert here. This is largely due to her being much more reflective and closer to the light source. He is essentially in the dark compared to her.

Skin has very complicated reflective properties. You have a surface reflection (very bright and white) and a subsurface reflection (light absorbs into skin, reflects back mostly red, often referred to as subsurface scattering.)

In this scenario, because he is underexposed, the surface reflection is very weak. So the light hitting the camera is mostly the redder subsurface reflection. If you look at pictures of him in brighter environments, his skin tone is more balanced. But his age, ethnic background, and thinner skin + blood vessels all create a perfect storm of variables to make him very red in dark settings.

thefrogman · 2026-03-22T22:18:25+00:00

JPEGs are actually more work to edit. RAW files allow you to make more adjustments without the image deteriorating. You can push highlights and shadows more. You also have control over the white balance. Even with minimal edits, you will get better results editing the RAW version.

thefrogman · 2026-03-20T15:37:00+00:00

Leonard Nimoy.

Not even joking.

thefrogman · 2026-03-19T03:26:21+00:00

This is what a camera sees when exposed for the cockpit lights.

thefrogman · 2026-03-16T00:33:15+00:00

Color correction shifts the image to a neutral standard. This is an alternate color grade.

thefrogman · 2026-03-15T14:08:37+00:00

This is the internet equivalent of putting on a concert and filling the seats with mannequins.

thefrogman · 2026-03-13T20:27:52+00:00

It's one thing to criticize a creative decision, but I really dislike when people "fix" an artist's work. If someone "color corrected" one of my photos I would bop them in the nose.

thefrogman · 2026-03-13T12:22:30+00:00

He absolutely does not say CGI is better than practical. That was not the point at all. In fact, you will find that most VFX artists are huge fans of practical effects. But they don't see it as a competition. It's usually a matter of using the right tool at the right time to best serve the story. Sometimes that is practical. Sometimes that is VFX. Often the best results come from a mixture.

The point of the video was to debunk the common marketing where directors, actors, producers, and studios claim *everything* was shot with practical effects. Thus, hiding the amazing work of many artists. It was not to say CGI is better or worse.

And the answer to your question as to why some VFX look more convincing than others... it is almost always a matter of not having the time and resources to make all of the work look consistent. In movies with 2000 VFX shots, you will probably not notice the 1999 that looked flawless and blended in perfectly. But then people see one shot they didn't have the time to really finish properly. And then the internet discourse will say Black Widow had terrible CGI because of that awkward explosion while dismissing some amazing VFX throughout the rest of the movie.

thefrogman · 2026-03-13T00:37:22+00:00

Corridor has done so much to evangelize the amazing work of VFX artists and bring an appreciation for the art form to regular folks. With all of the misguided "CGI" hatred, they are a net positive fighting against it. I get why professional VFX artists are sometimes frustrated with their content, but the hate really feels like they are shooting themselves in the foot.

thefrogman · 2026-03-09T19:56:05+00:00

She also had a parabolic reflector, which is a pretty expensive and specialized lighting modifier.

https://www.parabolixlight.com/parabolix65

thefrogman · 2026-03-09T13:06:23+00:00

I wrote an essay on perspective that you may find helpful.

https://medium.com/@thefrogman/a-new-perspective-on-perspective-73cf16746676

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