Posted by wallflower 3 days ago
Having a quick read through the comments I just want to say thank you for the kind words! Please follow my IG (https://www.instagram.com/deepskyjourney) to see more of my photography, and the reddit article if you want to drop a comment with any questions :)
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectHailMary/s/NbRv3sj3fs
Cheers,
Rod Prazeres
Jazz hands
My website is also www.rpastro.com.au :)
Very nice shots. It must be a great feeling to see one's own footage in a feature film!
How long do you do astrophotography?
Congrats on this, not only you got credits on a feature movie, you got one of the good ones. Cloud 9 for you, enjoy!
On a personal note, I find it very refreshing to hear that a major studio opted for real captured photography. Love that they specifically wanted the authenticity of real narrowband data and that speaks to the production team's vision. Enjoy the premiere night, feel incredibly proud. I was already planning on watching the movie this weekend (it releases here on the 26th) and now I'm doubly excited because I know this neat little tidbit.
I'm pretty sure this "Dad did something crazy" moment is going to be a core memory for your kids. Congrats!
As an example terrestrial telescope mirrors get dusty. You're not going to break down the scope just to clean up the dust as this is a many days operation in most cases. So instead you would take "flats" that were of a pure white background and thus showed the dust in its full, dusty, glory. When you take your actual images, you negate (subtract from the original image) the flat and thus any noise generated by the dust. You can use this same method for removing brighter stars from an image that would otherwise saturate the ccd and wash out the background. Turns out it doesn't work for planes. Ask me how I know!
> Traditionally (pre-ai) you would use another image of the same part of the sky and negate the items that you want to remove from the image.
I'm not an astrophotographer, so I'm interested about why that method would work for stars. Are not stars fixed in relation to the images taken? I could see how the technique would work with planets, maybe, but not stars.Why does the technique not work with aircraft? Because they generally fly on fixed routes?
This time-lapse probably better visualizes it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFpeM3fxJoQ
Its done with using dedicated astrophotography software (StarXTerminator). Example: https://astrobackyard.com/starnet-astrophotography/
So these are more artistic photo works than real science photos...
Rod Prazeres the Astrophotographer, has given this interview where he talks about the process: https://www.astronomy.com/observing/the-astrophotography-of-...
> So these are more artistic photo works than real science photos...
I disagree. If there are many flies around a statue, and I photograph the statue but remove the flies in the photo (via AI or any other technique), then I'm still producing an image of something that exists in the world - exactly as it appears in the world.I agree that the claim "no generative AI used" is technically incorrect, but I do feel that the image does not contain any AI-hallucinated content and therefore is an accurate representation of reality. These structures appear in the image exactly as they exist in nature.
I have yet to see a precise technical definition of what "generative AI" means, but StarXTerminator uses a neural network that generates new data to fill in the gaps where non-stellar objects are obscured by stars. And it advertises itself as "AI powered".
But that's very different to saying that no generative AI was used at all in their production. "AI augmented" sounds pretty accurate to me.
Likewise, if someone posted a photo taken with their iPhone where they had used the built-in AI features to (for instance) remove people or objects, and then they claimed that no AI was involved, I would consider that misleading, even if the photo accurately depicts a real scene in other respects.
https://astrobackyard.com/starnet-astrophotography/
“StarNet is a neural network that can remove stars from images in one simple step leaving only the background. More technically, it is a convolutional residual net with encoder-decoder architecture and with L1, Adversarial and Perceptual losses.”
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtfzjehDg74
* transcript: https://otter.ai/u/PA9dbWFA7BgPgLZN9CSo1WFAjXk
* https://www.iflscience.com/wildlife-photographers-viral-squi...
* https://markmangini.com/Mark_Mangini/Blog/Entries/2021/11/7_...
Story of her 'adopting' the squirrels:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tDlh62AVPo
The name of the squirrel is "Baby Pear"; her viral tweet:
* https://twitter.com/DaniConnorWild/status/127534941750838476...
My wife and I saw the movie this weekend, we thought it was great. I adored the book, yet I recognize a book can’t be perfectly translated to the screen.
I thought the directors did a good enough job at translating the sci-fi into something the masses would enjoy.
Kudos to you
That said, I never read Harry Potter and can't imagine going back and reading it now. So, YMMV.
But I am glad I read the book first, I got much more out of it - it goes a lot more in depth into the science and engineering challenges that occur throughout. Which I appreciated. I'm not sure I would have read the book in the same way if I had seen the movie first.
I tend to prefer movies as a storytelling medium, and enjoyed watching the story unfold that way. I ended up just wanting to know more about things that were implied in the movie but not explained, and the book filled in those gaps well.
So if you want to do both, and want to get something new when you do each, then, having done it that way, I would recommend it.
Edit: reviewing my app history, it took me somewhere between 10-11 hours to read the book, and I do not read fiction especially fast.
By reading the book first, you’ll have a better background and understanding of the context of the plot, the science, and the overall objectives of the mission. There are also several “twists” in the book that were cut from the movie for runtime.
I enjoyed the movie after reading because I got to see the story “come to life”.
But I could also understand the perspective of enjoying the movie first, and then having the story/world expanded 8x with a 16hr book.
You’d could equate “movie -> book” order to watching the LoTR standard editions first, and then watching the extended editions.
I listened to the audiobook narrated by Ray Porter (on Audible) and would recommend that production if you enjoy audio.
I don’t think you can go wrong either way :)
Watching the movie first will set the stage for a lot of details that work better in a book than a movie.
The book is more of a true sci-fi novel, with the relationship stuff keeping it interesting.
I liked both a lot, and think both could be enjoyed fully with or without the other, in either order.
I would recommend reading the book first at least.
I recommended it to a co-worker, who ended up going with the audio book, and found he found it good.
I am currently reading the book.