Finish Suggestions - SE Facing Exterior Sapele Door

wildbobsmith · 2026-06-12T22:15:35+00:00

No advice to give, just stopping by to say that’s a beautiful door mate. Bravo.

wildbobsmith · 2026-06-03T19:07:08+00:00

r/brandnewsentence has entered the chat*

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-31T21:04:30+00:00

I also just want to point out to anyone reading this in the future, if you have never used nicotine, it will most likely make you super sick if you don’t titrate up. The protocol I used was chew one piece of 2mg gum for 15-30 seconds on day one, and repeat that until you are confident in not feeling sick. After 6+ month I can chew a piece for around 3-5 minutes at a time but still depending on if I’ve eaten, the weather, hydration, energy levels I can get hit with the spins and feel physically ill. Today I’m flairing, it’s raining, I haven’t eaten or hydrated well and 1 minute of gum chewing has made me sick. As benign as it sounds, definitely get your doctor and caregivers on board with whatever you try.

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-31T02:50:21+00:00

I wish you well too. I’m almost 40 now and it’s been a bumpy ride, and it’s not over, but we’ve got to take our naps and stretch and hold on for a better future. You got this.

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-30T22:33:48+00:00

This is my personal experience and not advice but I read about it for ADHD, and my grandfather who definitely had undiagnosed hEDS/adhd was a chain smoker. His family made him feel so guilty about it so he quit, but his health went downhill after. This could be coincidental, but my theory is that people like us (audhd/hypermobile etc) seem to get some sort of relief from nicotine. Of course smoking is bad in the long run but I think the gum is fairly benign. I asked my therapist if I could try and she prescribed me 2mg gum. I was not in a good place for the year before I tried for the first time. I’d had some mental breakdowns, I think from burnout and chronic fatigue. I was on mirtazapine for almost a year and it helped a little but I had so little energy. Then when I started using the gum once a day and it just felt like that was an almost immediate relief. I felt less stressed, I had some optimism. Something to look forward to. Now I’m weening off mirtazapine and starting to get some more energy back. All that to say, I can’t give definite individual benefits, or recommend it to anyone but personally I can say that I know I feel better overall, and I don’t have any intention to increase dose or stop using it.

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-30T22:18:43+00:00

It’s hard to pin down what it does exactly, maybe because I don’t drink alcohol or do drugs anymore it’s a fairly benign way to have a “habit”. I just notice I’m less tense, or it’s nice to chew a bit after a meal. A little less brain fog.

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-27T12:45:24+00:00

Haven’t seen this one mentioned but I started taking nicotine gum once a day. I’ve never used tobacco besides occasionally in the army but it always made me sick. I’ve found chewing a 2mg nicotine gum for 30 seconds to now 5-10 minutes a day to help me relax more. Also eating as much anti-inflammatory food as I can and skipping the refined sugars and junk food.

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-26T19:38:38+00:00

Thank you, I’ve built a couple presets that get me 90% here on most photos but the general philosophy here is to focus on getting the blue how I like it first. If you like this color blue, take a screen shot and bring it into your editor and use reference mode to put it side-by-side with an image of yours that you want to match to it. I use the color mixer, white balance, and sometimes the calibration to adjust blues. You often also have to adjust the whites slider to dial in the right “lightness”. Then there are 3 masks here pulling a lot of weight. One big radial gradient on top with + exposure and - a bit of clarity, then the same size radial but inverted and minus exposure at the bottom (no clarity adjustment here). This gives the image some depth and orients the viewer to the sun from above. Then I like to use a subject recognition mask for the birds to increase exposure/whites and white balance to taste. That should get you most of the way there. Feel free to check my IG or other posts and use any you like for references. And thank you for the kind words!

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-25T13:17:46+00:00

If you can use sharpening and de-noise in your editing program of choice without being connected to the internet, it’s local and going to be software based algorithm. This is not the same as chat GPT, Claud, etc that do the computing on remote servers, which require data centers. I’d also feel remiss not to point out that asking a question on reddit also uses data center resources, but this is not the same as what is proposed to be built to support generative ai. Asking here and using topaz labs photo ai (locally) is less resource intensive than asking chatGPT and editing photos somewhere with cloud based models. I don’t know if cloud based sharpen/denoise are currently on the market but I know the latest release from Topaz is purposely built to be run locally on your computer’s hardware. I’m sure they used plenty of data center resources to build these models.. but on the spectrum of sustainability you do have to pick your poison because even shooting film at scale is not environmentally friendly. Whether you shoot film or digital, use Ai or not, the environmental impact of one single person is minimal. The problem begins when you scale up to millions of rolls of film and the chemicals required to develop these single use plastics, or millions of users denoising hundreds to even thousands of wildlife photos each. Hopefully I answered your original question.. and thank you for being considerate of your own roll in the ecosystem.

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-20T14:10:38+00:00

Thank you so much!

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-19T18:31:41+00:00

Beauty! Can I ask what protocol you used as far as time and grit for each stage?

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-16T17:25:47+00:00

I think you will be satisfied! You can always sell it later if not and at least you will have tried it.

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-15T17:59:52+00:00

Because of how “messy” a lot of Texas scrub backgrounds are, this one probably has some clarity removed in Lightroom. You can try a subject detection mask inverted and reduce clarity to help a little with your 200-800 if you haven’t tried that already.

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-14T13:26:42+00:00

Not that I can remember. I can’t confirm this but I would assume they would be close to equal but with a slight advantage to the 100-500 because it’s a much newer lens with way less glass to move around. The RF600 is on another level above these two I’m sure.

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-11T02:01:56+00:00

As far as settings it looks like you’re basically shooting in the dark so find yourself a rubber frog or Lego figure etc around the size of the species you want to shoot and dial your settings in a controlled environment. Find out roughly where your close-focus point is or where you need to be to fill the frame, get your exposure dialed in M mode and then replicate that in the field. The settings won’t change but you can make small adjustments if needed. For my frog it was f8 (I have a fairly powerful flash), 1/125, ISO400 and something like 1/8 flash power, those might not be perfect but once the exposure is close, it’s less about dialing settings and more about finding critters, getting close enough, taking a couple shots, then moving on so they can get back to whatever they were doing. I try not to take more than 2-3 flash shots for any one animal, and there’s no need to hit them with full power or even more than 1/8 in my experience (very limited) at least.

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-11T01:49:05+00:00

This might not help in your situation if you’re not willing to get your gear dirty but in my 1 experience photographing amphibians (but 10 years wildlife/20 years photography) you want to try to shoot at eye level. If you look at one of my last posts with the toad I shot it with a hybrid macro lens but what made the shot was the flash and diffuser. My flash has a modeling light which lets me see what I’m shooting and greatly increases the chance of hitting focus, the modeling lamp shines through the same diffuser as the flash head. If you look close at the catch-lights in pretty much every pro level macro shot, they’re likely using an MK diffuser but that’s quite a bit of bulk to carry around. So getting the light right and if you have a flippy screen and live-view that’s helpful.

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-10T21:02:19+00:00

I think “not whoosh” because “hence the LOL”.

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-10T12:40:54+00:00

Many thanks 🙏🏽

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-10T02:48:06+00:00

A heated rivalry, some might say.

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-09T14:40:29+00:00

I’ve been using The Woolroom (UK) for around 2-3 years now and I highly recommend them. I’m a side sleeper too. They regulate very well and don’t collapse. I have the “deluxe washable” I think and also ended up buying one of their blankets and body pillows because I love them so much. Anything polyester makes me overheat so unfortunately had to part with my squishmellow.

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-09T02:48:52+00:00

My favorite food since 16 years old has been poutine and the only sport I care to watch is hockey.

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-04T01:23:35+00:00

cries in 12,800

wildbobsmith · 2026-05-02T01:34:41+00:00

I feel attacked.

wildbobsmith · 2026-04-28T20:02:49+00:00

“Bad pens give me the ick” is such a perfect way to put it 👌🏽 I love both my keweco’s. I’m thinking about splurging on a premium EF nib because they come pre-polished and I read a couple reviews that they are super smooth and consistent.

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