Live data from Hacker News

My astrophotography in the movie Project Hail Mary

rpastro.square.site

171–180 of 214 posts

Re: My astrophotography in the movie Project Hail Mary

#171

Hey everyone, I’m the astrophotographer, but I’m not OP. I’m assuming OP picked up my article and posted here and that’s ok! So I quickly created an account here to comment. 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 an…

hey! congratulations!! I've been quite unknowingly used your pictures as my desktop wallpaper for years now. don't really remember how I found them, but your clicks are what greet me everytime I turn it on.

Re: My astrophotography in the movie Project Hail Mary

#172
post #102
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A movie which doesn't satisfy your specific tastes and expectations in science fiction hasn't "failed".

Again...dont confuse taste and quality: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47519704

This is pure sophistry. Your complaints about the movie's tone and dialogue are strictly and specifically problems of your own taste, not filmmaking quality. The movie is (objectively!) well made with respect to "craft, skill, storytelling structure and emotional impact".

Re: My astrophotography in the movie Project Hail Mary

#173

Hey everyone, I’m the astrophotographer, but I’m not OP. I’m assuming OP picked up my article and posted here and that’s ok! So I quickly created an account here to comment. 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 an…

I was thrilled to read through to the end of the article and discover a fellow Brisbanite! My friends and I were discussing this movie the other night, they will be stoked to keep an eye out for your images.

The Director of Photography on the movie is also an Australian!

Re: My astrophotography in the movie Project Hail Mary

#174
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Rod, the images you have on your gallery and instagram are stunning but very low-resolution (unless I'm missing something). You mention in the article about preparing IMAX-ready photographs. Is there a way to download those full-res versions of your images?

> Is there a way to download those full-res versions of your images? Maybe because HN is usually geared towards "programmers" rather than "artists", but asking for a (free?) download of full-res versions of a photographers photos is a bit like asking a developer who is publishing commercial desktop software for the source code of the program :) Maybe at least ask to be able to pay for a high resolution version (not j…

I'd gladly pay a few bucks for a digital download of a full-res pack. I would love to use these as desktop backgrounds but the images in his gallery are ~1000px on the long end. Even if I buy a print I can't set that as my desktop background.

Maybe the only way is to screenshot the Project Hail Mary credits when it comes to streaming.

Re: My astrophotography in the movie Project Hail Mary

#175
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a way to download those full-res versions of your images? Maybe because HN is usually geared towards "programmers" rather than "artists", but asking for a (free?) download of full-res versions of a photographers photos is a bit like asking a developer who is publishing commercial desktop software for the source code of the program :) Maybe at least ask to be able to pay for a high resolution version (not j…

I'd gladly pay a few bucks for a digital download of a full-res pack. I would love to use these as desktop backgrounds but the images in his gallery are ~1000px on the long end. Even if I buy a print I can't set that as my desktop background. Maybe the only way is to screenshot the Project Hail Mary credits when it comes to streaming.

> I'd gladly pay a few bucks for a digital download of a full-res pack

It sure sounds like you value his work at less than a dollar per image. The desktop-background market may not be something he's interested in.

> Maybe the only way is to screenshot the Project Hail Mary credits when it comes to streaming.

...and this may be the reason he's not interested in the desktop background market. You make a single sale, and the image is trivially reproduced. Doing it for pennies is not a winning proposition; prints have better margins.

If you want pretty and free nebula pictures, you can have Generative AI make as many as you like - if you want his work: you'll have to abide by his terms.

Re: My astrophotography in the movie Project Hail Mary

#176
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not what starnet does. It just removes the star from the picture you took, nothing else. It also predates generative AI by a few years. If by "not real", you mean "you removed the stars so it no longer reflect reality!", then real photograph doesn't exist. For example, OP uses narrow-band filters, and it's common to map H-alpha wavelength, which is red, to green in the images. Does that make it unreal? In the…

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.”

Your citation is a valid copy-paste from the website linked, but you haven't yet replied to the assertions of the parent comment. Could you, in your own words rather than someone else's, speak more about your concerns and address those assertions?

Re: My astrophotography in the movie Project Hail Mary

#177
This just warms my heart and gives me hope. First aside from the fact this book got me back into reading, and the movie is one of the better book to film adaptations I've seen, and I'm so happy it gets good box office and justified word of mouth. It shows me another thing - there is demand for human generated content. It's not a big revelation, people prefer to pay a little extra for handmade although they might not really know the difference, they do it because it feels right, to support a local business, or not local, when traveling, I want to support their local business, not some conglomerate that bid the lowest and underpays their workers (until replaced by robots).

This gives me hope because as we move to a post AGI world, the only thing preventing a complete dystopia is supply and demand, if the demand for human generated work will stay and grow, we'll be ok. This is not some save the earth, be vegan, "AI is bad" message. If you follow me you know I'm all in on agentic development and try to use AI for everything I can that makes sense, but I do it to free my time to focus on the important things.

If more companies will go for the real thing, and more people like us will celebrate them for it, and vote for it with their pockets, then AI will serve humanity, and not vice versa.

p.s. If you haven't seen the movie or read the book, then read the book, then see the movie, I'm going to watch it twice, and re-read the book. Yes, it's not Dune, or Hyperion, or Children of Time, or The Left Hand of Darkness, but it's such an amazing storytelling journey that made me go back reading after a 15 years hiatus.

Re: My astrophotography in the movie Project Hail Mary

#178

Hey everyone, I’m the astrophotographer, but I’m not OP. I’m assuming OP picked up my article and posted here and that’s ok! So I quickly created an account here to comment. 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 an…

Congratulations Rod. Your pics are amazing! Much success to you.

FWIW, my friend, who is an avid astrophotographer, runs a site Brahmand [1] that captures breathtaking pics of the dark sky, with notes on how he took the pics.

Awesome stuff: https://www.brahmand.me/photo-gallery/

Recommended for anyone interested in astrophotography.

*Brahmand in Sanskrit means the universe

[1] https://www.brahmand.me/

Re: My astrophotography in the movie Project Hail Mary

#179
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Rod, your last name seems portuguese(?) Congrats on this, not only you got credits on a feature movie, you got one of the good ones. Cloud 9 for you, enjoy!

Nice catch. I’m Brazilian but have been living in Australia for over 20 years and thank you!

Hey! Great work, really glad to see a Brazilian fella doing such an amazing work.

Greetings from Minas Gerais

Re: My astrophotography in the movie Project Hail Mary

#180
post #152

Hey everyone, I’m the astrophotographer, but I’m not OP. I’m assuming OP picked up my article and posted here and that’s ok! So I quickly created an account here to comment. 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 an…

Hi Rod, the images you have on your gallery and instagram are stunning but very low-resolution (unless I'm missing something). You mention in the article about preparing IMAX-ready photographs. Is there a way to download those full-res versions of your images?

He sells prints. Looks like the pricing ranges around $13-172 for paper prints, per image. If your budget is a few dollars for a pack of them, you should look elsewhere.
Post reply on HN