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Man, this one hurt. I grew up 2 hours from where the Braves played and I watched virtually every game on TBS. When I wasn't watching the Braves, I was watching the Cubs on WGN. RIP, Ryno. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/28/sport/hall-of-famer-ryne-sandberg-dead-spt

NYT distinguishes itself. https://theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1819576527/

In an earlier era, I was a regularl reader of The Online Photographer.  I haven't kept up with it in years, for a host of reasons ranging from lack of interest to not really gleaning much worthwhile info to entirely too many Amazon affiliate links.  One of the entries on TOP from 15+ years ago was "No one cares how hard you worked."  I took that one to heart.  I've spent ages editing a photo only to earn a collective shrug.  Conversely, I've had SOOC jpegs from years ago that get attention to this day.  With that in mind... OnnnnOn two occasions recently I've had the hood on my 17-40mm misaligned and not realized it.  It's not super noticeable in the viewfinder and I don't chimp (stare at the LCD like a monkey) much.  The misaligned hood only shows up in super wide angle shots, say 17-20mm.  On Saturday, I had that problem for the entire shoot and didn't noticed until I was done.  I have had quite a job with the Healing Brush and Spot Healing Brush tools in Photoshop, painting out the upper left corner of dozens of photos.  When that doesn't work, I have to crop.  Sometimes, both are necessary.  Also, as was the case last year, the lighting conditions were harsh and difficult.  I'd already edited 30 or so photos in Photoshop before I decided I was unhappy with the results and ran them through Luminar 4. Let's talk about Luminar for a moment.  I pirated it 5 or so years ago.  I liked it enough that I bought it.  It does a lot with pseudo HDR math, similarly to what smartphone cameras do.  The advantage Luminar offers is that it has sufficiently deep granularity in its controls that it's possible to reel in the more cartoonish aspects of HDR.  With careful tweaking, Luminar allows for improvement of the dynamic range of images without looking like Photomatix vomit ca. 2006 or Facebook family vacation photos.  L4 is no longer updated and in its final state is a quirky and buggy app.  I have to make a copy of every photo I feed it because if I use the original, L4 will delete it.  I learned this hard way and had to do serious work to replace all the originals Luminar deleted when I discovered this "feature."  The app dev Skylum is now pushing the successor, Luminar Neo.  They want it to be rentware like an Adobe product, but they don't have ADBE's clout.  There is a lifetime license.  I bought it on sale months ago for like $120.  I am ...underwhelmed.  Some of the UI is better than L4, but Neo is enough different that my workflow is much slower in it.  Also, said UI is basically a new coat of paint on the same old engine.  I find this displeasing. So far I have edited 102 photos (ya rly) including in a number of cases several edits of the same image.  If you're really impatient, they're on my Flickr page.  It has been been uncharacteristically hot and humid here on the Vineyard, and I swear I can feel my brain swelling.  I went over my work earlier and found I had uploaded dupes of at least four different photos.  Then there's the issue of figuring out which photos to post here and arranging them.  It's exactly like a DJ set in that regard.   Anyway, here's a nice bright rear end to tide y'all over while I finish editing The truck.  I'm talking about the TRUCK.  Stop looking at me like that.