Creative Inquiry Project

I know that I haven't posted in a while, and I can't promise that I will keep up with regular posting this week as it is the week before finals, but I am going to try to get most of the posts that I have waiting to go up done today. But I said try. At least I am going to edit the photos...so yea.

This post is going to be more writing focused, so most of you will probably disregard it, but for those of you who don't, or for those of you who are interested in the Evolution/Creationism debate, I would encourage you to read this post and hope that you enjoy it. And please don't feel like you can't comment on it, one way or the other. Healthy debate is a good thing for research.

A little background, I am in a research group that aims to gather information about the Evolution/Creationism debate with the goal being to show that evolution is not some evil thing that says we are descended from monkeys and show what it really is. (So yes it is biased, but we represent things in an unbiased way meaning that we think if both sides are explained properly and fully it is obvious that there should be no argument between the two because they mean different things. If you are confused then read my podcast, it should help to explain that.) So anyway, part of the project is that the people involved produce a series of podcasts explaining varying things about the whole evolution/creationism debate.

A few weeks ago we actually got to the point where we were recording our first podcast, and here is a written copy of mine, along with some pictures from the recording session:

This series of podcasts deal with the Evolution and Creationism debate, but on a broader scale; over the course of these next few episodes, we will look at not just evolution and creationism, but the bigger topic of Science vs Religion, a topic that is related to, and in most cases a result of the evolution and creationism debate. Just as a preview, over the course of these next few podcasts we will be looking at the goals of science, the goals of religion, the philosophy and purpose behind each of these fields of thought, and some basic misconceptions about the purposes of science and religion. So, lets begin with just an overview of the goals of science and religion, and then touch on a few misconceptions about each, and then in the next episodes, we will take each a little more in-depth.

Let’s look at science first. The goal of science is simple and straightforward; to find out and explain to the best of our knowledge and understanding how the natural world works. There are a few key phrases/words in that definition: first – “explain to the best of our knowledge” and second – “natural” world. These are important because they show the two greatest limitations of scientific inquiry and scientific knowledge: first, science can only explain things that are natural, or that occur in the natural world (this doesn’t mean just out in nature, but anything in the physical world). This does not mean that science doesn’t believe in God; there are lots of scientists who are religious. But, what it does mean, and this is important, science can not make any claim about anything metaphysical or supernatural in origins – because science only deals with things that happen in the natural world. And second, scientific explanations are not an “end-all-be-all” kinda deal; a scientific explanation is an explanation that looks at all the facts and information we have available to us at the time and explains an event with all that information that is deemed relevant. This is important to keep in mind because this means that as more information comes to light, it is possible that explanations (or minor details of explanations) may change. That’s right, science is not as static as your third grade teacher wanted you to think – science changes with the knowledge we gain about it.

Now, we will cover this in more detail in a later podcast, but here is a brief explanation of how science goes about achieving its goal. When a scientist has a hypothesis about something he thinks about all the relevant factors that could affect the outcome of any attempt to test that hypothesis, and then forms an experiment that tries to test the thing in question. The scientist records the data from the test, and then the test is ran again and again to see how the data holds up. Eventually once enough scientists have done the test and gotten the same results, and have reviewed papers and articles published about the test, some kind of scientific statement is made about that thing that they were testing. And, in a sense, new science is made. Now that is just a really general overview that we will go into more detail on later, but the main point is that the goal of science is to figure out how the natural world works, and experiments are how scientists go about doing that.

So, it seems pretty straightforward; however, there are quite a few misconceptions about science. I am going to point out just one of the bigger ones here, and then later in the series there will be a podcast all about misconceptions about science and religion. So, without further ado, one of the biggest misconceptions about science is the thought that science can prove that things are a certain way. This sounds really good, especially if you are in a third grade classroom, but the fact of the matter is that science does not “prove” things; it is very hard to really prove something. So does this mean that science is worthless because it can’t actually prove anything? No, not at all. It is actually very hard to prove something is true; we would have to test and find out every possible thing in the world that could have some affect on the event that we are trying to prove, no matter how small. This is a very substantial task, and virtually impossible because we don’t even know all of the things about the world that we would need to take into consideration when conducting a test (that is the very reason we are still doing science – to figure out these things we don’t know!) So then, what can science do for us if it can’t prove things?

Well, what science can do is point us in the right direction, and offer a “best scientific explanation” for some happening that we see in the natural world. For example; in order to prove that the sun is at the center of our solar system, we would have to know absolutely everything about our solar system, the sun, stars, astronomy, astrophysics, etc. etc., and we just don’t know all of that. But, as this example shows us, just because we can’t actually prove something, that doesn’t mean there is not good scientific evidence to believe it. In this particular case of whether or not the sun is at the center of our solar system, there is an abundance of scientific evidence that points us towards believing that the sun is in the center of our solar system. But to say that we can prove it with no question is just scientifically inaccurate. Now the example of the sun being in the center of the solar system may seem a little silly because of the extremeness of it, but it demonstrates one of the fundamental limitations of science.

This is not to say that science should not be taken seriously though – that is very far from the truth. Knowing that science doesn’t just take arbitrary facts and “prove” things helps to understand more about the nature of science. It is not some rigid fortress that has an agenda and wants to make school boring for everyone. Science is a flowing and shifting body of knowledge that constantly seeks to better understand and explain the natural world, and is willing to change in light of new evidence.

So, that is a basic overview of science; now for the other side of the coin – religion. Religion stands in stark contrast to science, but, unlike most people seem to think, that does not mean that it stands in opposition to science – just that it is different than science, a lot different. Let’s start out the same way we did with science and look at what the goal of religion really is (and more specifically the Christian faith, since creationism is a mainly Christian-based idea).

Now, one of the obvious differences in religion and science is that there are many different religions in the world, and only one “science” (yes there is biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc., but they are all part of Science [with a capital S]). Now, this doesn’t mean that because they aren’t unified all religions are wrong and science is right; what it does show however is that there is a stark difference in the goals of science and religion. In science the goal is to find out how the natural world works; religion doesn’t try to “find out” anything in the same since that science does. Religion has a set of truths (theological, moral, and/or philosophical truths, not scientific truths) and followers of a religion seek to order their lives around that particular set of truths. So, in a broad since, religion’s goal is to motivate people to a moral or philosophical change. There are a lot of ways to achieve this goal, about as many different ways as there are different religions themselves. Some religions seek to achieve this through rituals, worship services, sacrifices, or a variety of different ways. But, mainly, religions deal with explaining why things such as philosophical, moral, and theological ideas are the way they are; they deal with the supernatural world, not the natural. And, just like science is limited to matters of the physical world, religions are limited to the metaphysical.

That is a basic overview of religions, but since the evolution and creationism controversy centers on Christianity, lets look at the goal of Christianity, and how Christians seek to achieve that goal. No matter what the goals of Christianity were in its beginning days, to most present day American church-goers the goal of Christianity is to “spread the kingdom of God to all parts of the world.” Now, regardless of if you agree with whether that “goal” is the correct one or not, it is obvious that it is a lot different from science’s goal “to figure out how the natural world works.” And, given what we know about the nature of religions (to motivate people to a moral/philosophical/and/or theological change) it would seem that modern day Christianity wants to change how people think about the metaphysical aspect of their lives. And, if the goals are so different, it seems obvious (or at least I would think that it seems obvious) that science and religion don’t actually compete with each other; each deals with its own realm of knowledge, and each has different ways to achieve its respective goals. But, there is a movement in America that holds that science and religion are in contention. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough time left in this podcast to talk about that movement; but rest assured that there will be one to address these issues.

There are a lot of things that I didn’t mention in this podcast that are important differences between religion and science, but that is because there is not enough time for me to mention them all in this podcast. However there will be more podcasts in this series, and a lot of key differences will be addressed when we talk about the philosophies behind science and religion. But for now, let’s do a quick review of what we have covered today.

Review:

1. Science is not “the best and only explanation there will ever be for something” it is “the best explanation that we have for an event, given all the information that we have at our disposal.”

2. Science is limited to explaining things in the natural world, and cannot make any claims (affirming or denying) about the existence of anything in the supernatural realm.

3. Science cannot explicitly prove anything; it only points us in the right direction to finding the true answer.

4. Scientific explanations for things can change in light of new evidence.

5. Running experiments is how scientists test ideas about how the world works, but figuring out how the world works is the goal of science; doing experiments is not the goal, it is how scientists achieve the goal.

6. Religions have sets of moral/philosophical/and/or theological truths that instruct their adherents to make a life change, and that make statements about the moral/philosophical/and/or theological conditions of the metaphysical world.

7. Modern-day Christianity has a goal that is not directed at figuring out how the natural world works, so in reality there should be no conflict between evolution and creationism.

Thanks for listening and hope you tune in next time for more.

Sam is our professor's kid. He was needed by one of the students in the group to read a child's part in a podcast.

The recording gear they had was pretty awesome, I don't know how to work all of this stuff, but I do know expensive gear when I see it.

Anyway, like I said, I have a lot of work to do, but hopefully I can get at least one more post up today. Hope that everyone had a good thanksgiving,

-joshua

Interesting Photoshop Technique: Multi-Layer High Pass Filtering

So, we have a paper due tomorrow in my GC class and the topic is an interesting photoshop technique. For my paper I decided to do the multi-layer high pass filtering technique that I have been working on since this summer (you can see that here). The paper is pretty straight forward so I will just post the paper into the blog (visual aids included! haha):

Interesting Photoshop Technique: Multi-Layer High Pass Filtering

I got the inspiration for this technique from seeing some of Tim Tadder’s work and then just playing around in photoshop with the general idea and adding my own changes and modifications. However Mr. Tadder is not the only person who is doing this technique. High pass filtering is actually a new trend in photography and many photographers have their own version or way of doing it. This technique is interesting because it makes the photo pop and look slightly surreal. It doesn’t take too much to do a simple high pass manipulation, but if you are going to take the technique and make it your own then it could take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to manipulate one photo.

For this paper I took a photo of the factory on campus located between the stadium and Holmes hall (facing the west side of the factory). This is the original photo:

[Started as a .CR2 (Canon RAW file) taken on a 5D MkII with a 16-35mm @ 35mm, 2000 ISO, f/2.8, and 1/13^th of a sec.]

From there (a RAW file) I took the file into Adobe Lightroom 2. The pre-sets for the Canon RAW files take the Temp to 3400, Tint to -4, Brightness to +50, and Contrast to +25. I did a few adjustments to the saturation and luminance (Saturation: Red -38, Orange +11, Yellow -20, Blue +36, Purple +100, and then -18 in the Yellow luminance slider) and moved the clarity slider to +100. This doesn’t make that much of a difference at just a glance but the post-Lightroom 2 photo is slightly softer around the lamp lights. (It is easier to see when the pictures are at a higher resolution.)

From there I took the photo into Adobe’s Photoshop CS4 as a .DNG file. I adjusted the tone curve in the Camera Raw 5.0 window that pops up when you open a RAW file in CS4. I turned the highlights down 18, the lights down 27, the darks up 22, and the shadows up 23 points.

Then once the photo was opened I duplicated the layer so that there were two unaltered layers of the photo. What gives the multi-layered high pass filtering technique its look is the fact that there are multiple layers stacked on top of each other with differing effects on each. There are three basic layers to the high pass filtering technique that I use. The bottom layer is a copy of the original photo with a few adjustments; the middle layer which is a copy of the original photo unaltered (or in this case with just the Lightroom adjustments) and then the top layer which is a copy of the bottom layer with the High Pass filter ran on it. To start the process take the bottom layer and edit the shadows and highlights. This bottom layer will serve as the base for the photo. For it to serve this purpose it needs to be edited so that the shadows are very bright. To do this, go to Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights and set the shadows somewhere between 70% and 90%. For this particular photo I set the shadows at 80%. I also went into the advanced options and set things up like this:

Once I did that I took the bottom layer and duplicated it (so that there were three layers then) and put this newest layer on top. This top layer is the one that I ran the high pass filter on. The filter can be found under Filters > Other > High Pass. It is generally recommended that the radius for this be set at 75 pixels. (Sometimes I go more or less, it depends on the overall look/tone of the photo.) Because I wanted the photo to be several different photos layered on top of each other I decided at this point that the middle layer was actually not something that I wanted (as having a middle layer that is unaltered just serves to make the photo darker and this was a night scene it was not something that I wanted) so I deleted it. I then took the top layer and applied the following adjustments in the Layer Styles pallet:

For some photos the desired affect that you want will need more of the High Pass layers, and possibly a different Opacity value. There is no rule that you have to follow to achieve this affect for every photo; each one needs a different set of layers/opacity. For this particular photo I used 6 High Pass layers (I duplicated the top layer 5 times, so that there were 6 of them) until it was like I wanted it to be. Then, because it was still a little too dark for me, I adjusted the Opacity of the bottom layer down to 29%.

The photo was almost how I wanted it. It just was a little too yellow in the bottom right hand corner. To fix this I applied a few more effects to the photo: in the Hue/Saturation Pallet (under the Adjustments/Masks Pallet) moved the Yellows “Lightness” slider to -11 and under the curves pallet I changed the Output to 23 and Input to 21. I also applied an Underwater Filter (Density of 9%) to the photo for the final look.

And the final image looks like this:

So, until tomorrow (hopefully, but maybe Tuesday), when I will have some photos edited. I have at least three posts that I am working on I know, maybe some more. Just keep looking this coming up week!

-joshua

Clemson Football (vs. Florida State)

So, I know that I have been promising these photos since about two days before I actually took them, but well, now they are here - so no need to complain anymore. (And I don't feel bad anymore about not having them up. lol)

I was really nervous/not excited about taking pictures at the FSU because it was a night game and that means insanely high ISO (which makes for grainy pictures) and I was afraid that it would be pretty cold. But it wasn't bad, and I actually got a lot of pictures that were really good. And by a lot I mean a lot...

ESPN was at the game, and they had this very nifty little skycam thing that flies over the field. I know that we have all watched games from it before and know wht they are, but it is interesting to see one in action. I am curious as to how they work. You would think that there needs to be a team of people or something, but that would just seem really complicated to me.

The students were very excited for this game and lots of time was put into making signs and letters for the ESPN crew and just for atmosphere. It must have worked to - we won the game 40-24 and were ranked 24 after the game.

This is one of my fellow photogs out there on the field (and court) most games. I felt like this should be like a ThinkTankPhoto ad or something, and I also want a pic like this for my profile pic on facebook lol...I should get on that; I do have to do a self portrait for my GC class...

I really am not sure what the heck was going on on this play; the O-line did not move and our blockers were all up in Ponder's grill (sorry, I know, I am white, but I just got caught up in the moment). I have been told that when the defense goes off-sides (or something like that) the Florida State O-line doesn't move so that it is obvious or something like that (shesh, I don't know a whole lot about this "sports" thing do I?) and there was a flag on the play so perhaps that is what it was. I just wanted to see him get killed. (But that didn't happen.)

This photo was taken on the next play, and it is one of my favorites from the game. I just love how Ponder is throwing the ball and in the middle of the frame and everyone on the outside is leading in towards him. He is the peak of the action and this is what a sports shot is suppose to be all about.

These guys were celebrating after the play for some reason (I have forgotten now) but I think that it was because of an interception. (They aren't in the end-zone so interception is all that I can think of.)

This is also a really cool shot (though it didn't make it to the portfolio consideration folder) but I like it as a leading shot from the game. Xavier Dye is actually from Greenwood (my home town) so that is pretty cool. He had a good game Saturday and really stepped it up.

Florida State's Jermain Thomas was I think the only person on the Seminoles team that did anything. I don't actually think that, but while I was captioning it felt like his name was the only one I was writing down from Florida State.

This is a really nifty new thing that we are doing in the stadium. If you have a wifi enabled phone, while you are in the stadium you can connect to iTiger which will give you real time updating on the game stats. I really was a little doubtful at first but after checking it out, it is actually really a pretty cool thing. And I think that they are still working on doing more things with it and making it better. So I am excited to see the things that are becoming from all of our Top 20 Initiative programs and from just upgrading and modernizing our campus. There is really a lot of cool things that can be done with modern tech and it is cool to feel like you are on the cutting edge of those new trends.

This is a picture that I really like that I feel captures motion very well. The twirlers and color guards in bands can really add a lot to it and I really think that the ribbons are a lot cooler than the batons (that is just my opinion though). At any rate, I like the motion and action in this picture a lot.

Here is 38 again diving for the first down (I don't know if he made it or not but it is still a cool picture). I like this one a lot because even though there is a lot going on in this picture you are drawn to the ball carrier. And if you look closely you can see that even though there is a lot happening in this photo, several of the other players are also watching the ball carrier. I like the since of unity in multiplicity that this photo has (Oooo, look at that big fancy term from philosophy of aesthetics last year haha) and this is definitely one for the portfolio.

(I think that this one would make a really cool background for a computer)

I really like this shot too...If he had actually blocked the pass it would be amazing, but I think it is pretty great as it is.

As always, Spiller was a beast during the game. We are going to miss him next year, but Ellington has really been stepping up so that is a good thing.

This isn't a spectacular photo per say, but what I really like about it is how the clemson players are watching Ponder through the ball. It is kinda like...darn...we should have stopped that from happening.

This was the third time that I was almost ran over at the game. (Second by Spiller). But I have learned by now when to stop taking pictures and when to run.

I believe this was after the last touchdown that we made and I really love this photo because almost half the team is in this photo celebrating.

The drum line gave a performance after the game and it was pretty good. It was suppose to be a drum-off between the Clemson drum line and the Florida State drum line, but I guess Florida State was just really sad that they lost the game, or something. It was a pretty awesome game for us as afterwards we were ranked (24, but still) and it set us on the path for the ACC Championship.

Anyway, hope that you can enjoy these photos and I am looking forward to tomorrow's post because it should involve Brother Micah (HE'S BACK!!!!)

Until tomorrow,

-joshua

Yearbook Photos

So, yesterday I was taking group photos for yearbook and I shot an event too (for yearbook) and then I lounged. I didn't get a post up, but I will get two up today because I am editing the football pictures now. So, here is just a look at some of the things that I have been shooting for yearbook.

This deadline and next we are focusing on getting Greeks and Orgs group pictures for their group pages. I can't say that I enjoy taking these pictures, but they aren't horrible when the groups are wanting their picture taken. (Try to take a group picture of a group that isn't there for that explicit purpose...it is hell.)

The big thing that I was taking pictures of yesterday was the 5K Student Memorial Run which was to raise money for the "All Faiths Chapel" that we are trying to build somewhere on campus.

There were lots of serious runners there, which was cool.

Many people had iPods. (Just kinda making statements...lol)

This photo I thought was kinda cool. All the "serious" runners were more or less in sync in this photo (which was only about 2 seconds after the start of the race).

This is something that I took for a spread that we are doing on the Top 20 Initiative here at school. We are installing moving bookshelves in our library - which I think is really cool. Maybe that is just the nerd in me, but I tried out moving one, and it was pretty cool haha.

This is the other side of the first floor (the one they are re-doing right now). You can see the tracks that they are putting down. I am not sure if they are going to go on and do the other floors too, but I would assume so. I have not really seen much on campus that they are doing with the Top 20 Initiative until lately, but I really like what I have seen so far. (I will talk a little more about that when I have the football post, because I have some other Top 20 photos that have to do with the football program.)

Until later,

-joshua