Welcome to the team for now.
I'm just going to take a quick little break and get some honey.
I'll take over in the meanwhile, not to worry.
Thank you, Tano.
No problem.
Hey, Austin, in the meanwhile, just let everybody know who you are, what you do, and how did you find Nostra?
Sure, yeah, thanks.
First, I really appreciate you all having me on.
I feel really privileged to be here today or tonight.
So thanks for that.
My name is Austin.
I'm a photographer.
I'm originally from Florida, living in Hawaii.
And I like to make nighttime photos, Milky Way photos, and generally landscape photos.
I've also in the past made architectural photos or sometimes I'll make some portraits of my lovely fiance.
Maybe you've seen a couple of those recently.
Zapathon was a hashtag that somebody told me about the other day.
I thought it was funny.
Yeah, I'm just a pleb, yo.
I'm just a pleb that makes photos.
I found Nostra through I think when Jack posted about it on Twitter and sent me to the damas test flight.
And I hopped on and I think it was like December of last year, late last year.
And I got into that test flight before it was filled up and just been hanging out on Nostra since.
I deleted all my Instagram pages since then.
And I had stopped using Facebook a while back, but just kind of use that for some communication with some old people.
But yeah, ever since I found Nostra, I've just gotten rid of my Instagrams.
And now I'm just a Nostra guy.
Absolutely amazing.
Were you aware of Bitcoin before or you learned about it after you joined the platform or the protocol itself?
No, I was aware of Bitcoin before.
I learned about Bitcoin maybe 2016 or so.
And kind of I had heard about it before that, I guess.
Somebody had told me about it and they told me that they were mining it on their computer at one point before it kind of blew up.
But they told me they were using it for buying drugs online or whatever.
So I didn't really get into it then.
And then another friend of mine told me about it in 2016 and said that it was going to be the next thing.
And I kind of ignored it still until like 2017 when it started to kind of rocket ship then.
And that's when I started paying attention to it.
But yeah, so I knew about Bitcoin before, but I found Nostra and I kind of just I like Nostra more from my creative kind of background
because I thought that it was such a unique platform for posting imagery and then somebody being able to like...
First of all, I really thought it was cool because I could post my imagery and host it myself and maybe even like the protocol interested me
in that I could make maybe a relay and post my own imagery and not be like reliant on Instagram
or some big service provider to take my photos and then use them in their own marketing or whatever.
Like the control over my own content really interested me.
And I'm glad to see all these developers that you've had on over the evening so far and through tomorrow are just so impressive to me.
You know, especially I heard... I was on a plane earlier today, but I heard one of the earlier spaces or Nest with the filter.wine people.
And they were talking about creating a relay where like a paid content kind of block relay. I thought that was so cool.
Yeah, absolutely. I really love to take what Zin and Katie had about it.
As a content creator, I'm actually curious, like how does Nostra differ from, I guess, all the platforms and or your previous experience for that extent?
I mean, what do you like and maybe what's something that you miss over here maybe?
And what's something you might be expecting to see in the future?
Well, one thing I'm expecting to see in the future, and I think it's going to come, is like for Damus to create a separate part of the profile
where you can kind of like put photos as like a gallery and that's like always there as opposed to it just constantly be a chronological feed of everything that I posted.
Just to kind of like create a curated section where people can kind of see like right now, for example, I just had to post on my my my feed kind of some photos that I had posted previously,
just to make sure they're at they're at the top of the feed so that if anybody wants to go check them out, they can click my info and go to my page and they'll be right at the top and not just like whatever shit posting I was doing earlier today or whoever was responding to.
So that's something I'm expecting. I'm hoping, you know, it will change.
But as far as things that are different, you know, the previous, you know, Instagram, for example, when you post your photos to that, you know, they they reserve the right in the terms of service to use those photos for their own advertisements for their own profit means to serve ads to you to do all kinds of things.
And you just you immediately lose your, your kind of rights to your own imagery, as soon as you posted to that kind of stuff.
So the idea that filter dot wine would be able to, you know, create a place where I can host my images and have control over who's able to see those or where it goes.
The idea that I could potentially do that myself.
The idea that, you know, like there's there's the ownership of the data could be maintained in my possession, as opposed to just freely given away to other parties.
I think all of that is really amazing about Nostrad.
Yeah, absolutely. Especially I agree with you regarding the media sorting right now when when, for example, people like you who post a lot of photographers that people would like to look back to that have to do a lot of scrolling because there might be a lot of different kinds of posts in the middle.
And there's not a separate tab to really go through all those photos, I guess. And if there was even a possibility to scroll through them or swipe through them, I think it would increase the amount of content being posted in that sense quite a lot.
I can see that.
Yeah, yeah, that's true. There are, you know, the great thing about Nostrad is like all the different clients, right. And I am kind of like a mobile first person so I do kind of like use Domus and I'm on my phone so I do use Domus more than anything else but I have found that Nostradgram in particular as a web client is really amazing at having like a media tab that you can tap media and it only shows you photos or you can change that media tab to only show
audio or NEST or things and gives you a lot more capabilities for sorting. So that's maybe something else that I expect in the future from Nostradgram clients in general is like having these additional sorting features that allows us to kind of, you know, see the media that we want to see, or I think the like Mazin was talking earlier about how you could have a relay that's like a
relay that's like media specific, and then you could just have your relays on and off and know that you're just looking at that relays content and that relays like media content or art content or whatever content you're looking for. So that's not something else I'm expecting.
That'll be amazing.
Absolutely. I think like having a certain hashtag down in the future, and maybe a couple of keywords and also being able to have your photos and like certain relays that people that are into photography and art quite a bit more than maybe the other relays.
I think it will create a lot more like distinct groups of people that would interact a lot more because right now it might be quite difficult to maybe find the right people let's say you're into something that's quite niche, and it might be quite difficult to find.
But like, currently, I'll go about about it just using Nostradgram band and maybe searching for a certain keyword to try to find it.
Yeah, you know I've been trying to tag keywords and, you know, I've been using things like picture or art on Nostradgram, but then I've seen some other.
There are some more kind of artists and coming on board, I've seen recently.
When I first when I first was posting back in like, December.
I'm opposed to it was mainly Bitcoiners or developers.
But over the last two months I would say in particular, I've noticed a lot more general kind of art people coming on board.
And something like artster.
I saw that one today. I saw that that one to be promoted by somebody that's into art.
And, you know, like, there are some typical hashtags like hashtag photography was, but it was kind of being like reposted and reposted fan.
Sorry, it's a loud car going by.
But, you know, so, but I do think those hashtags are starting to grow in their, their specialties and and use cases, and I'm trying to do a little promotion for art on Nostra at the moment.
Somebody gave me a big zap the other day. And so I'm paying that zap forward by like, sapping people that are posting to art on Nostra, or generally just art that I find over the next four or five days.
And so I do think that like hashtags are important for helping people find content they're interested in.
So, you know, it'll it'll come with time. I think that I think it'll be helpful.
Absolutely. Sleepy, you have any questions regarding photography as as my as I'm really just a novice and a beginner and somebody that doesn't know that much about photography.
I don't know if I have that many in depth questions that to really grind your gears, I guess, or maybe in the audience somebody who's really, really in love with photography has any really interesting questions.
I'd love to have them. I'm curious as to like what's your what's your go to when you're staking out like, like, you know, the nice guy in your, or you're just like, at a scene and you have to wait for that perfect moment.
What's something that, you know, allows you to like pass the time or what is something that you've, you know, that has become become like sort of like a habit that you do whenever you're in that situation where you're sticking the perfect shot.
Any preparations any. Well,
first of all, I found frog talk while I was out making some photos. So one thing I do is I peruse peruse Nostr and I found Nostr Nest and I found frog talk.
I don't know. I think it might have been the first day that you guys were frog talk and I might have been one of the first people that that hopped into frog talk.
I just saw it on the Nostr Nest page or whatever. But I remember I was out. I was out in the field making photos that day and I just needed to pass some time and I hopped in here and started chatting with you all.
So that that was one thing. But, you know, I think the main thing that I'm looking for when I'm out and about and and and making photography is, you know, I'm just actually kind of experiencing Earth as as it is taking in the sounds, the smells, the sights, the light of Earth.
And one of my big goals when I'm out making photos is to capture not necessarily the most artistic thing I can capture, but the most realistic thing I can capture.
I really appreciate how beautiful Earth is on a daily basis and just the natural beauty of the world. And I think my goal, especially when I'm capturing the stars, is to try to capture, you know, reality in its full glory.
It's immaculate beauty, you know, the the perfection that we live within, which is this amazing ball in space roaming around the sun.
And, you know, so I would just one thing I did want to comment on before we kind of got into getting questions was just the Milky Way and the night sky in general and how I think now almost 80% of humanity lives in a location where they can't see the Milky Way or it's it's it's hard to see.
And ever since we invented the light bulb, every light in on the whole planet, every light bulb, every single one is literally too bright.
Your eyes are amazing, and they can adjust to see amazing detail, even in dark conditions. And by placing light bulbs that are bright in our environment around us, so that we can quote unquote see what it really does is it limits our ability to see it limits our ability to see detail in dark and dark conditions.
And, you know, it's actually pretty unfortunate that we've surrendered the night sky to this kind of reality of of illuminating that which is immediately around us with light bulbs.
It's, it's something that is is a modern miracle in a way.
But it's also something that has created generations of people now that are very disconnected from the reality of humanity and its connection with the night sky.
The wonder that the night sky brings people through looking up at the stars and the Milky Way, the differences between a moonless night with the Milky Way. So the on a moonless night in a dark location, the Milky Way is actually so bright.
It produces a shadow. You can see your own shadow, simply through the light of the band of the Milky Way. And, you know, that's something that many humans probably will never experience going into the future.
And it's something that inspired humanity for thousands of years, millennia. And it's an inspiration that is, you know, I think, critical to humanity's evolution.
You know, once once we had fire, which is another thing that is very inspirational. You know, we had fire we were we were safe at night, and we had the time to look up at the stars and wonder and dream and imagine.
And those wonders, those dreams, that imagination led us to the path that got us here where we are today, using NOSTER to communicate around the world for 24 hours a day, you know.
And so, yeah, I think that my photography is really just based around trying to capture the world in its full glory. And I try to seek out locations where you can still see that.
And I think that's really important to kind of share with everybody, especially now that we're going into a world where, you know, artificial intelligence, AI generated content will become very dominant and very good at what it does, and very convincing with its
you know, outputs.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. It's getting, it's getting pretty scary on that front.
Do you want to by any chance talk a little bit about AI, and the possibilities for photographers using AI as a tool?
Yeah, I actually, I signed up for Mid Journey the other day after I think we had a different space, Sleepy, and I started playing around with it. And I started trying to make some nighttime kind of photos with it.
And, you know, it's amazing, the quality that it outputs already. I will say that there are some nuances that will
you know, interpret appropriately as like a night sky photographer. One example I did was I did a photo, or I had it made of AI generated photo of the Milky Way over the Statue of Liberty in front of New York City.
And, you know, it did things like have the Statue of Liberty facing the wrong direction, or have the Statue of Liberty holding two torches both arms up, which was pretty hilarious.
But, you know, it had like the Statue of Liberty in a place where, where, where, you know, it could never be. And it looked really impressive. And I would say the Milky Way that it produced was, you know, maybe pulled from somebody else's picture or something and then
manipulated a bit. So, you know, it may not have been like the right Milky Way in the right position at the right time, which may be difficult for AI to get done correctly.
I will say that if I, if I could maybe start changing my prompts, I started working with my prompts and maybe I can prompt it in a different way. I do think that somebody that has the knowledge of these details could potentially prompt the AI in such a way and let it
create itself enough to get something that's convincing. And if not now, for sure in five, ten years, it'll 100% be possible. So, you know, it's an interesting tool.
But I do think that it's a tool that will allow for people to lie. And people already lie using Photoshop and putting a night sky in a place that it doesn't belong, for example. But maybe that'll just mean that people will find value in the type of work that I do in that, you know,
find trust in me that I'm not lying to you. And when you see my photo, it's a photo that if you went to the location I told you and you hung out there long enough or at the right time of year or during the right moon cycle and under the right weather conditions, you could see the same photo that I took, you know, which is something that I try to inspire with my photography, at least to inspire people to get out into the world and see the world for all of its glory.
You know, enjoy what it's like to be alive in a place that is alive, you know.
That's incredible. I loved everything that you said, man. And I couldn't agree more. I tend to see these images sometimes from photographers on Instagram from, I believe it's Iceland or Greenland, one of the two where they have these amazing, oh my God, it's escaping my mind right now.
But, you know, or a Borealis. Yes, yes. They took the greatest image. They took the greatest pictures out there. And it just invites you to go in to visit that place and explore like you said.
Yeah, it actually like awakens something in that adventure that's inside of all of us. And I think it's amazing, man. I think it's nowhere near close to replicating those shots that you guys take hours to actually take.
It's not even close right now. But something that was in my mind was when you guys, you know, finally have, you know, thousands of photos, you know, stored in a whole bunch of hard drives and you want to put them to use and you put them into a model.
And you train that model for a specific, you know, specific parameters for yourselves. That's going to get really fun because it's not just like, you know, sort of like a mid-journey model that's trained on a whole bunch of different artists.
And you'll get a whole bunch of mixed styles. When it comes down to a specific photographer like yourself, where let's say you want to input only nice guy photos, you're definitely going to get a way better output than any of those models would have.
When it comes down to you knowing, you know, what you're looking for to get out of that model because you fed the initial inputs, if that makes sense.
And yeah, it's going to be very like a creative process where you could like really mess with it to an extent that we, I don't know if a lot of people have explored yet.
Sort of like when you first found Photoshop.
My bad, Austin. You were, yeah, I can hear you now. I can hear you now.
Okay, okay, good.
Your mic is actually cutting in and out.
Can you hear me?
Yeah, my Wi-Fi dropped. Okay, so you're talking, yeah, you're talking right up my alley here. That's exactly the next step from my perspective is where is this AI where it's like containerized in a way so that I'm not feeding my imagery to the world, but I'm just feeding it to like my own little local AI.
And it assesses all of my personal images and takes my prompts and uses my personal imagery to prompt into new, new, new images.
And that's definitely, I think, where we'll start to get some really interesting work out of the AIs. I still am not positive that it'll do the right thing in that what I mean is, you know, the, if you're, if you're south of the equator, you know, the Milky Way is typically towards your north or directly overhead.
If you're north of the equator, the Milky Way is only in a southerly direction. If your, if your photo is facing north, for example, then there's no way that if you can see the North Star in your photo, you can't see the heart of the Milky Way.
So, you know, that's why things like a photo of the Statue of Liberty with the New York skyline in the background, and the Milky Way, it's actually a physically impossible shot. You can't do it.
So, I could use that trained AI to make that image, even though it's impossible, which is interesting. And that's not to say it's wrong, but it is like false, it is not truthful.
You know, so, yeah, it is interesting. And then the other thing that happens is in a place like New York City, you know, it's physically impossible for you to see the Milky Way.
There has been some interesting art done by individuals who took Milky Way photos and place them over places like New York City, and then took like all the lights out of all of the buildings in New York City and did some art that was like, if New York City turned off the lights, this is what it would look like overhead.
And, you know, that's a very interesting concept to me, and something that is super unique and AI could help with. But, again, if you were to take the photo from the Statue of Liberty and looking towards the city, that's a north shot, so there's no way to get the Milky Way above the city.
You know, but it is, there are other directions where you could make that photo, and it's physically impossible with all the lights on in New York, but the AI could help make that photo a reality and, you know, probably make it pretty realistic.
And if it could do things like take into account time of year, you know, moon phase, all of like direction, cardinal direction information, latitude and longitude, all those things, like, would help with making it more accurate, right?
So I anticipate that, you know, five or ten years from now, you know, it'll be able to input all that data and boom, you'll get maybe a super honest, realistic image out of it.
So I think it's coming. That's the thing, you know.
And, and I think that it's going to be, it's going to change, you know, art, it's going to change production, it's going to change a lot of things.
But I don't think it'll ever change the inspiration you get by leaving your hometown and going to someplace you haven't gone to before, and standing at a spot and being there for five or six hours and watching the sunset and seeing the light fall away and watching the stars come out and seeing the moon rise.
You know, those, those are kind of like more soulful activities. And I do think they connect us with like some primal part of our humanity that would be really sad if it disappeared.
I completely agree, man. I, I agree. I agree. I agree. I was actually going to tell you that it might be closer than we think. I don't, I don't really think it's five to ten years away. I think it's much closer.
It's just, you know, the models that are currently out there are very creative.
And when it comes down to, you know, creative, it's, it's, it's for everybody to explore, you know, like the playground is yours, you can really do whatever you want at this very moment. But when it's your model, you set the parameters, you know, to be as truthful as you want them to be.
So Austin, it's just about getting the right, you know, dev to help you out with that. Because I've seen recently that I was looking at this, this model that they were actually, they fed an image to.
And this is a model that you ask certain questions about images that you show it. And the image that they showed it was, I believe was a kid holding a whole bunch of balloons, right?
And they asked the model, what will happen if the, if the string attached to the balloons were to be cut? And it answered truthfully that the balloons would fly away.
So there's, it's, it's a whole bunch of stuff that's just, you know, it's, it's at the, it's under a grasp, literally, but it's coming sooner than we think.
I don't know why it always feels like it could be potentially like far away. But I don't think we should think like that because these, these models are being trained on information from previous models and they're getting better.
You know, understanding this training data and just building upon it over and over again. It's crazy and more and more people are getting into the field.
So there's, yeah. No, I hear you. I agree. I think one thing that we always under appreciate is exponential growth.
And I think Bitcoin is something that demonstrates that. But also this AI is going to demonstrate exponential growth as well.
And especially, you know, when, when the dev, yeah, and, and maybe, maybe, you know, I need to be a little bit better regarding development and learn some of that so that I can tell the AI in a better way what it needs to do.
But certainly if a dev gets to it before me, then, which they probably will, you know, then I would, I would, I would love to use the model that is able to, you know, collect all the weather data.
The one thing I will say is the data collection, we, we think it's really good, but it's really not like, for example, I was in Oregon or actually earlier today, and the weather suggested that it was going to be a clear day and the visibility was going to be 10 miles.
And in reality, this like sea fog developed over the ocean and kind of crept inland and visibility was 10 feet, not 10 miles, you know, and so, you know, the AI is only ever going to be as good as the data that we collect to feed it.
So that's probably going to be its biggest downfall, especially when it comes to like modeling real world activities or real world situations, we have to be able to collect the data to feed it.
I don't actually believe that the data we collect is as honest and truthful as we, you know, it's good enough for what it is, but I think we all know the experience of like weather, the weatherman being wrong 50% of the time.
And it's like that that's just going to be the type of data that is fed into these models. And if you're feeding it 50% incorrect data, then you're going to get an incorrect outcome.
So, even though potentially the models and the development may be fast, you know, there's going to be something where we need to collect accurate data in order to feed it accurate data, and that may be the, you know, the, the thing that holds everybody up.
That might be the hard work that needs to be done. That might be the thing that people need to go out and set up sensors for things like that. But it is it is very interesting, you know, this AI stuff.
I saw somebody on Nostr post a hashtag, not, not AI generated or not AI. And they commented that they're a real artist, and that now they have to post this hashtag that it's not AI.
I actually had somebody asked in one of my comments, one of my photos the other day like, what model did you use and what what, how did you prompt the AI for this and I had to respond that, hey, I actually I like made this photo.
And I'm searching up all this site that literally has a, where you're talking about. They made it into a badge basically so the site is called not be why AI.fyi not by AI.fyi.
So this is a badge that human creators are putting on their content, whether it be a painting photography, writing content, music, whatever the case might be.
They're adding to their content to show that it was created by a real human and not AI.
Yeah, what do you think? Yeah. Well I heard I heard that like I could upload my photos to something and then they would like it would analyze how, how likely it is that it was made by AI.
And, you know, I thought that was funny. I also thought that it was a good way to upload to harvest a lot of imagery that you could then feed into an AI.
Like I'm kind of hesitant to just like upload my imagery to stuff to get a get a get a logo or a watermark you know.
But no, I mean it brings up an interesting point that like now artists have to think that about that or are are trying to think about that.
And as a photographer, it's interesting too because I come from a medium where it was born from the same argument in a way.
And, you know, painters said that photography, photography was not art. And, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of the same technological kind of advancement in a way.
You know, so history, history rhymes, I guess. But, you know, I mean, yeah, it's just, you know, that's, that's one of the things that's that's going to be that's going to be a future.
I don't know, I did, I did want to get to one question that I had gotten in a comment.
I don't know if they're in the space or if they'll listen to it later. But I think, I think they had said, sorry, let me, let me go back, I gotta look at, look at this.
See not, Noster is like hard because you got to scroll through all my shit in order to find the comments of previous posts.
Oh yeah, what is the most important thing to consider when shooting landscapes was the question that a wolf, wolf, PFP guy asked me, and I just wanted to kind of answer his question, which, which is something that I think is like, it's like, it's actually a really great question.
And I don't think it's impossible to answer. I think that it's very, I think there's two things when it comes to shooting landscape photography in particular, that people should pay attention to.
And the number one thing is composition.
And the second thing is light.
And those two things are what make any kind of imagery.
Interesting and, you know, beautiful to look at.
You know, you can't always control the light. And sometimes the composition and the moment demands that you make the photo right then and there.
And sometimes if you find the right composition, and you have the time, then you can wait for the light. And I think that's where you get the absolute best imagery is where you notice a great composition.
And it's something that you can wait for or hang around for or come back to. And you can find it at the moment with the perfect light.
And that's really what photography is all about is capturing light. It's a medium where you capture light on a substrate or a sensor.
And that's all we're doing. We're capturing light, reflected light, refracted light, all kinds of light that's bounced off of something of color. And so it's changed its color.
And that's where you get the most interesting imagery. So I just want to answer that question from Sigtow, which is the best, the most important things to consider when shooting landscapes are composition and light.
I don't know if there's any other questions that you got.
I don't think I do, but I could bring up some people from the audience right now. And we can have a little live Q&A for the last, I believe, 12 minutes.
Sure. If anybody's interested.
Otherwise, I'll just keep chatting about chatting about the Milky Way and my, and I really do think that if, if nobody's had a chance to see the Milky Way in person.
You should really take, take a moment and find.
There's like some websites like dark skies.
If you search like dark skies on Google, you'll find some websites that kind of like show you where dark skies are at.
You'll find a dark sky location, but the best, the best dark skies ever seen were like the Australian Outback or on a boat in the middle of the ocean, or, you know, off in some some parts of Utah and the, in the states, Utah has parts of Montana.
The American West has some dark skies still.
Canada.
I would imagine that Africa haven't been there but I would imagine parts of Africa still have like really amazing dark skies.
And I'm sure that there's some some great locations in South America too. But places like Europe, there's probably nowhere in Europe where you can see, see the Milky Way properly.
Yo, what up.
Hello, it's hello late.
We're straight up I'm tired but a great job putting this together, sleepy super cool that people are hanging out.
Austin, I'm a fellow photographer.
I'm a member of the cultural heritage institution, and document historical items and artifacts and whatnot but um yeah this whole discussion about AI I'm very interested in. And, you know, specifically on how it relates to truth and what we see, I mean, historically.
Photography is a medium that that has always been assumed to convey truth although we know that's all wrong today. But, um, you know, even back historically you know I think Matthew Brady Civil War photographer was moving dead bodies around to get the perfect
composition and so I know that guy. He was documents he's documenting stuff. What a scammer.
He's doing crazy shit. But with AI, with AI man like this, there's this whole question is to, you know, when when when it's able to produce images that that are just even digitally, not able to be ascertained to be real or fake.
And that's a huge implications I think to, to just our ability to, to trust, and then the necessity to go through and verify, and, you know, that's very difficult to do with with photography, when it gets to a certain point, you know, I think there are really great
photographers out there that can create some really stunning images that are difficult to ascertain as to whether it's real or fake but anyways, just just an interesting thing that I've been thinking about just in the context of photography since it's something I work in
frequently. No, I agree with you 100%. And, you know, for example, if you look at my profile picture here in the Nostra Nest. It's a photo of delicate arch with the Milky Way inside of it.
And the way I made that photo was with a flashlight.
You know, I took a flashlight and I use that to light paint the, the delicate arch, while taking a photo of the Milky Way. And, you know, that that type of, you know, photo, I don't know if using my flashlight to illuminate the arch is lying.
But I didn't have to move anything. I didn't have to Photoshop.
But, in, in a way, you can go there and use your flashlight and see that image for real.
But if I was standing on the other side of the arch, and I took a picture of the arch the other direction. And I made the same photo and Photoshop. That's an impossible shot to see, you can never see that the Milky Way is only ever in the south, when you're
looking at it from delicate arch. So, it, I do think that there, there's going to become a point in time where trusting and verifying is going to be heavily dependent on humanity and relationships between each other, and communication between each other, and
trusting the artist themselves or the documenter, or, you know, and, and I think that, you know, holding, holding that trust in high regard, and as, as somebody that's making photography, being respectful of yourself and of the people that you show your imagery to,
and holding yourself to a high standard is going to be really important because once you lose that trust from people, I think it's going to be very, very, very difficult to ever gain it back, especially in this future world with AI.
Yo Satoshi, what's up.
So, I live in Costa Rica. I don't know you can guess from the icon, whatever. But I went to the website you suggested, darksky.org, and I'm very sad to report that I don't see any single dark sky spot here in my country.
So I'm wondering, being on the very center of the continent. Where do you think we should point the cameras to or where should we look for, for getting, you know, a shot of, of something cool in the sky, hopefully the galaxy, but
Yeah, sure. I, so for you, I think what you should do is probably go to the west coast, and maybe like one of the peninsula's like near Gulf of Necoia or something like that.
You know, and and and shoot try to shoot some stuff faced southwest. And maybe you'll have to wait for a time of like in the summertime would be best, and then you'd want to be like, you know, facing southwest, and you might need to wait until the
morning hours, potentially, for for kind of the, the Milky Way to rotate over towards that side of things.
And then you'll probably be able to get some stuff. And so, the other thing you could do is you could head to the east coast and kind of face southeast. But yeah, unfortunately, there, there's one thing you can do to, which is, even though
maybe you don't live in a dark sky spot, it might be difficult to see with your eyes, but your camera could probably capture some some data there, and you'd be able to get it on camera. But if you find like a location in the jungle or something like that where
you're, you're kind of blocked from like you're in the shadow, you're in the shadow of the trees, but you kind of got a view of the sky. You might be able to find some some interesting, some, some interesting scenes there.
But yeah, you know, it's, it's really unfortunate how overwhelmed the world is with light. And reality, I think that if if we ever want to bring humanity back to being able to see the night sky everywhere, then what we need to do is probably cut the power of
every single light on the planet by, you know, 95% or so. And if we did that, it'd be interesting because your eyes would adjust in the evening, and you would still be able to see everything that you can see.
But it requires that all lights be dimmed because as soon as there's one bright light in an area, it's going to impact your, your, your vision, and you're not going to not going to be able to see everything else you know so it is it is unfortunately a result of basically
the very first light bulb from the horsehair or whatever it was burned way too brightly, you know, and, you know, fire was interesting because fire is so orange in its color that that doesn't impact our night vision as much.
And if you if you stare directly at fire it does impact your night vision, quite a bit but if if it's just kind of around and glowing, then your night vision kind of is not as impacted because it's such in the red color spectrum and I don't know if you've noticed
but like, you know, red lights don't really affect your night vision as much as white lights or other color lights. So, yeah, but my suggestion for you in Costa Rica in a place where maybe there's not really dark skies is to go to a coast and point your camera out
over the ocean, and take the time to look kind of over the ocean and the other thing you want to do is, you know, it takes about 30 to 45 minutes for your eyes to really adjust. And so, you don't want to look at a phone, you don't want to look at a bright light, you don't want to have a flashlight on, you want to sit there in the dark for 45 minutes and let your eyes adjust, and you'll be amazed at how bright your shadow is from the moon, and, you know, how much you can actually see at night.
You know, without any lights around.
You mentioned early morning, so what time approximately?
So, the time, well in Costa Rica, it's going to be, you're pretty close to the equator so it won't vary that much throughout the year. But what you really want to do is you want to, if there's a website called time and date, and if you go to time and date, it'll tell you what time sunset is, but then after sunset or what time sunrise is, and either after sunset or before sunrise, there's a couple other kind of periods of time.
There's twilight, there's nautical twilight, and there's astronomical twilight, and ideally, you want to be later than astronomical twilight or earlier than astronomical twilight.
That's when you're going to see an actual dark sky, and that's when you'll see the brightest Milky Way. And if you've let your eyes adjust at night, and you're there at nighttime, which is pre, like let's say you're out there in the morning, for you it might be like,
let's say the sun comes up at 630 or 6am, you'd want to be out there at, you know, 330 to 430 in the morning would be maybe nighttime, and then come 430 in the morning, you know, you'll start to see in the east, the sun, you'll start to see some light in the sky.
So if you're on the east coast, you definitely need to be out there pretty early. On the west coast, you'll get a little bit more time in the morning hours because the sun's rising behind you. But if you're out there at sunset, for example, then you would see until, you know, nighttime comes around.
Like in Oregon, for example, where I just was, it didn't get, it wasn't nighttime until 953 the other night. So as summer comes along, and it depends on your latitude, you know, in Costa Rica you're closer to the equator, so it doesn't change.
I'm here in Hawaii at the moment where it's similar, you know, the sun goes up and comes down between, you know, 630 and 7 o'clock every day all year round. But sometimes if you go to a different latitude, then it can be different for different people.
Alright, thank you. I got it all written down and I hear the recording to get the tips done. Thank you.
Yeah, no problem. Really appreciate the question, y'all.
Alright, I guess we're winding down. Austin, I appreciate you. Anybody else have any other questions before I close it down? No?
I was just going to say Austin knows his shit about some nighttime and landscape photography. I even learned some stuff right there, so appreciate it.
Thanks, Book Guy, I really appreciate it. Yeah, I've been doing photography for, you know, 20 years now. It's kind of amazing for me to think about it, but I'm not that old of a dude. I'm 36, but I've been doing it since I was 16, so yeah, it's pretty amazing that I think one of the first night skies I made, I was in Australia before my grandmother passed away.
She helped me go on my first international trip and I got to go to Australia and New Zealand when I was in high school over the summer break.
And I think I just turned 16 and I got to see the Milky Way and the Australian Outback and over some parts of New Zealand. And it was growing up in Florida, South Florida in particular, where there's kind of quite a bit of lights.
And I was totally enthralled and I guess here I am 20 years later still making photos of it. So, you know, I think it goes back to how that's kind of a core inspiration for humanity and I think it really touches on a part of our personhood that is important to connect with.
So, yeah, I hope everybody that listens to this gets a chance to see the Milky Way sometime. What's up, book guy?
I'm just pushing buttons blindly here. I was going to throw you some 100s.
Oh, thanks, dude.
Really appreciate it.
Yo, I just want to also say real quick, SleepyTanel, it's been amazing getting to know you over, I don't know, last month or so while you're hosting these Frog Talk nests.
And so proud of you all for doing this 24 hour nest and getting all these amazing people up here.
What an amazing thing. And it's great for Noster.
And yeah, thanks. You guys are great for the community. So just want to say thank you to y'all.
Yo, thank you, Austin, for all like I learned so fucking much in this in this time slot. Like, honestly, like I appreciate you so much and I've grown to love you.
Like over this past couple. It's been like, it's been longer than a week. It definitely has to be. It feels like it's been a month, I won't lie.
I think it's I think it's I think the first Frog Talk was about a month ago.
No, no, no, about a week ago, about a week ago.
Like, yeah, it feels like a month. I'm telling you.
Yeah, absolutely. I think I think you were maybe one of the first people who I met on Nests before, like Noster itself, actually.
Yeah, yeah, Austin definitely showed up for the first one, I think.
I think I'm pretty sure you guys started at Nests and I saw it and I hopped in and you guys and then I hung out there and it was one of the all of a sudden panel.
It was like I asked you what time it was. It was like 3am and then I asked you what time it is and you're like 8am and it was like five hours later and you were still doing your Nests.
Well, it's 11am right now for me. So I've been going through the night, nine hours already. So going strong, going strong.
Let's fucking go.
Yo, thanks y'all. Really appreciate it.
Thank you, Austin. Appreciate you so much, man. I can't wait for the next one. You killed it.
Thank you guys.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.
Appreciate you guys.
Alright, I'll close the recording here.
Thank you guys.