From today you can make your movies with Midjourney!
I tried a catwalk at a fashion show, just few seconds but impressive result.
The movements are quite natural and coordinated.
Huge step indeed š
Midjourney movie clip
luisa
Venetian Graffiti n.2
My photo of another interesting graffiti on a Venice street wall
‘La patria sarĆ quando tutti saremo stranieri‘
literally:
‘Thereāll be a homeland only when weāre all foreigners.‘
A paradox that overturns the traditional idea of homeland: not an identity that excludes, but a condition that includes.
Only when no one is āat homeā can we all feel at home.
Is it utopia, or simply a definition still ahead of its time?
Venetian Graffiti
My photo of a whimsical graffiti on a Venice street wall
‘Non c’e piĆ¹ nessun Virgilio a guidarci nell’Inferno‘
literally translated:
‘Thereās no more Virgil left to guide us through Hell‘
Weāre lost in the dark, and this time thereās no teacher, no poet to show us the way.
Maybe we burned our Virgils, or maybe we just stopped listening.
Gameover POD Galley – Ice Dance Sketches
new!
I made this set of (almost) black and white sketches using one of my personal styles developed on Midjourney.
I like them. It is not only about dancers but also about frozen movements in a moment of grace and black-and-white contrast: they speak of passion, raw energy, precision and elegance. And why not, freedom.
Pity I have not a single space left on my walls š
An own Print-On-Demand website?
VoilĆ , here it is!
How did I come to face such a feat?
First of all, for fun: I love making websites, thatās it. I had just completed a serious, demanding, challenging website ā a historical archive ā and needed to do something relaxing to rinse my brainā¦ OK, thatās the truth, but not the whole truth: there was also a bit of commercial interest behind my resolution.
All began when I started visiting the usual popular Print-On-Demand sites…
… disguised as a buyer, in order to find out why I was selling so little on them ā well, I actually did sell something there, but not enough to deserve any serious time or toil. I focused on the most obvious form of POD: the art that one hangs on the wall.
I was appalled by the prices:
would I buy anything that expensive myself? Definitely not! Unless perhaps in case of love at first sight, but that seldom happens.
Greed may certainly play a role in setting those high prices, but there must be something more to it. Letās give it a thought:
First question: why should one buy a framed work of art somewhere halfway around the world and pay the outrageous shipping costs, when the bare printout would travel much cheaper and faster in a cardboard tube?
Then all it would take is a walk to the do-it-yourself shop around the corner to have it framed according to oneās taste, in a self-chosen frame, maybe also with a sheet of real glass (rather than those horrible acrylic substitutes that would survive the shipping). Which would save about 3/4 of the total cost.
But thatās not all.
Second question(s):
who prints the work of art you choose, and on what paper, and what kind of printer do they use? Most of the times the colors you see on your monitor donāt look very much like those you see printed on paper. Who checks the color rendition? And the diffusion effect? And the overall quality of the finished work?
Then a disturbing thought came in without knocking:
of course the POD website gets the lionās share, but also the printers must have their slice of the pie, and the packagers, and the shipment companyā¦ whatās left for the author is but laughable pocket change š
Which encouraged briefly the sneaky temptation to bypass at least the POD sites and go directly to those sites that offer printing&shipment as a serviceā¦ but alas, nothing doing: unguaranteed printing quality, long or very long processing times (up to 2 weeks!)ā¦ better forget it.
All of the above looks pretty disheartening, but Iām stubborn: my glorious printer can handle up to A3+ paper sheets (13ā x 19ā), quite a respectable size for a picture on the wall. A high-quality printing on it takes a mere couple of minutes of my time. Iām free to choose the best possible paper with the right grammage, texture and consistency. I have an encouraging constant number of visitors who show up in my websites, thus thereās no need for advertisingā¦
So why not?
If it works, fine. And if it doesnāt, at least I learnt something new and had my fun š
As a matter of fact I already had a lot of fun thinking of what would fit best on a wall and devising the proper mockup images to convey the mood to my visitors ā here too MidJourney, adequately flogged and directed, proved to be a great limitless resource.
The yuck side: bureaucracy
Death and taxes are notoriously inevitable, and in this case the taxes were the belle of the ball: I had to comply with the EU legislation on VAT applied to member states, which makes a sharp distinction between digital goods (images made of impalpable bits) and tangible objects (images printed on palpable paper), thus taxing them slightly differently ā bureaucrats love to wallow in such byzantine subtleties. Fortunately enough I have several websites, so I can place the impalpable stuff on one of them and the palpable stuff on another.
The novelty: Tarots on demand
While I was at it I also designed a couple of sets of author-signed tarots to be printed on demand. It posed some challenges such as finding out the proper paper, learning how to laminate it, improvising a device to cut them out precisely by hand and round up the corners comme il faut, finding the right boxes to dress them up appropriately for their travel to the customerā¦ live and learn š
Have a look at them ā youāll find an (almost) classical deck as well as a retro-steampunk one with a pinch of humor scattered here and there ā the latter, I confess, being definitely my favorite š
Dante’s Inferno Project
reposted
It has been quite challenging to produce (with the help of Midjourney) some spectacular and dramatic imagery inspired by the Inferno of Dante’s Divina Commedia.
Danteās Inferno is a fascinating journey through the nine circles of Hell. This journey isn’t just for kicks; it’s about confronting the consequences of sin and understanding the need for repentance to reach salvation.
Dante places there historical figures and contemporaries, passing judgment on their deeds and misdeeds. Itās a personal and political elegant revenge, wrapped up in an epic narrative. Very cool of him.
From an aesthetic standpoint, the Inferno challenges and expands the boundaries of medieval imagination, blending horror and despair with complex allegories, making it a timeless piece that speaks of the eternal complexities of ethics.
You’ll find my images here.
I enjoyed this Midjourney’s ride, I hope you will too š
How to sell stock images today
preamble: a professional photographer asked me some hints to sell stock images. I answered her privately. Then I thought that a slightly fleshed-up version of it might also deserve a little corner on my blog.
For decades now I’ve been looking for some magic formula to sell good pictures on the web, and if I had run into an effective one I wouldn’t hesitate to pass it to you. But, alas, that seems fated to stay a dream.
Then let’s put aside the dreams and face today’s reality, so that we can realistically adjust our targets and methods to it, thus sparing us the worst disappointments:
1 – nowadays (and for quite some time) just everyone is a photographer – or believes firmly that she or he is one, even if all they do is tap the screen and upload the picture. What they lack in skills is amply offset by the hi-tech electronics inside the chatter can.
2 – most of the audience – the buying audience – don’t appear very interested in the quality of the images they purchase. I sold at a comparatively high price and/or in impressive quantities pictures that, if not totally dull, were nothing exceptional, whereas a number of really beautiful ones are still there awaiting their first buyer.
An example?
This image is one of my bestsellers at Adobe with 280 sales until now (from .38 to 26.40 USD each) and keep selling. I am the first to admit that it is nothing special, even if the composition and the content is good.
3 – There seems to be no rationale for the criteria they use to choose which images to purchase – or if there’s one I failed to see it in the last 16 years.
4 – Whoever buys the images prefers the big agencies over the small individual seller, no matter the price, the quality or the professionalism of the agency, as long as it has a name big enough. Possibly (just a wild guess of mine) for they pay out of their client’s pocket, not of their own.
And still, despite such a bleak scenario, I keep making decent money by selling images on the web. How?
In the first place I put in the freezer my ambition to make money by selling art: for my most beautiful pictures I have a couple of private websites that produce a few sales and a lot of satisfaction.
Then I discarded the smallest agencies. Why? Let me explain: I think that Dreamstime is a quite fair agency, but it takes me 2 years to make the same amount I achieve in less than a week by Adobe. Moreover, I would be competing against myself.
Actually I’m selling pretty well at Alamy (the best for me), Adobe and Istock. I obviously discarded Shutterstock, leaving there (in my still open account) only a toilet paper still life.
As for the small agencies, I deleted most of my images there but left my account open: should the situation change I might reconsider coming back again. Except for the ones I really dislike: by them I deleted everything and disappeared in a puff of smoke (a name? Wirestock).
With this tactical approach I saw my income soar… well not enormously but significantly.
And I began listening to the old saying “when you go fishing put a worm on the hook: it’s the fish that must like it, not you” and uploading to the agencies mostly nice but quite ordinary pictures, the kind ordinary people would like and buy.
I hope this helps you rather than discourage you…
RUNWAY brush second round
Still testing the RUNWAY free version to generate movies from images.
I was pretty curious about the new brush tool.
From my Midjourney-generated images I chose a beautiful Labrador pet stretched on the floor near the fireplace
Without prompt, only by brushing the dog head and the fireplace like you see above, I managed to get this small movie here
I confess this not the first attempt. I had to play a little with the brush parameters to tune it, but now I understand better how this great tool works š
As usual, we need to develop some dexterity, not very different to practicing with Photoshop, paintbrushes, camera or other established means – whatever the ones who choose to remain behind might object.
My first attempt with RUNWAY
This is my first attempt to make video with AI.
WOW! I tested RUNWAY (for now just the free version), starting on some Midjourney images of mine and doing my best to add some simple movement. Just for fun (the last famous words… š ).
The results look pretty promising, – at least to me – although the free version doesn’t allow movies longer than a few seconds.
Here I used this image 
and a quite generic prompt “(scuba floating gently away under water with fishes)”.
And here… voilĆ Charon’s boat stuck in a hellish cave while the souls of the dead are waiting…
In this case I used the brush option to show where and which elements of the image should be involved in the motion: astounding! intuitive, quick and easy. Easier than by prompt.