April 15, 2026

How We Learn

April 15, 2026/ Allan Walls

I hope everyone is doing well this week.

I had a challenging weekend, courtesy of my left sciatic nerve. If you have never tried to write original Livestream content without being able to sit, or stand, or lay down, then you have missed out on one of life’s truly memorable experiences. I am confident in the diagnosis but surprised by the severity of the symptoms and also by the almost complete immobility that results.

Both of this week’s livestreams examine how adults learn macro photography and also how we often use our deeply rooted biases to sabotage our learning. On Tuesday, our focus will be on the importance of intelligent and systematic self-critique. We will also look at several cognitive biases that may be responsible for our tendency towards overconfidence in our competence, especially during the early phases of learning a new skill. Here is your link… https://youtube.com/live/GjquZbQz4fs?feature=share

On Thursday we will compare the bias-informed learning of the newcomer to the systematic, unemotional approach of the more experienced and informed enthusiast. This is the practical core of the discussion and I will help you explore the way an experienced photographer “sees” an image. This is powerful information that will make you a much more effective teacher, mentor, speaker, and, of course, photographer. I will give you a learning framework that prioritizes the “seeing” step in the ongoing self-assessment/improvement loop. Your link … https://youtube.com/live/M3RgWQceoi4?feature=share

Saturday morning, from 10-11:30am is Tangent time…

You will need this invitation to enter… Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Allan Walls’ Tangent with Larry Strunk

Time: Apr 18, 2026 10:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6916802815?pwd=TS9tZi9ZL1NXeVUvOUF4eTg5YjdlZz09&omn=86809986329

Meeting ID: 691 680 2815

Passcode: 678122

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And that is it for the upcoming events this week. I am looking for requests/suggestions for future livestreams - what do you want to talk about?

I look forward to seeing you soon!

Allan

March 31, 2026

A Rant on Shipping

March 31, 2026/ Allan Walls

But first … This Week in Macro World

Tuesday 3/31/26 - 8pm - A new workflow for designing a winning competition entry - https://youtube.com/live/VXbfK4Kto7U?feature=share

Thursday 4/2/26 - 2pm - The March Competition Results Video - https://youtube.com/live/uNYkttnZMOs?feature=share

Saturday 4/4/26 - 10AM - AfterStack 41 -

Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Allan Walls' AfterStack 41

Time: Apr 4, 2026 10:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6916802815?pwd=TS9tZi9ZL1NXeVUvOUF4eTg5YjdlZz09&omn=85306519037

Meeting ID: 691 680 2815

Passcode: 678122

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What Happened to the Shipping Industry?

Hi everyone.

Today’s blog post may be just a tad off-topic, but depending on your relationship with photography, it may not. But even if this is a subject with no immediate relevance in your life, I believe it is something worth thinking about.

So what is this mysterious topic that has earned the honor of a rant from me? It is the state of domestic shipping in the US. This is not really intended to be a rant, but it will be hard for me to completely ignore how irritated my experiences have been this week. But let me go back to where all this started and walk you through the discoveries that have left me so frustrated.

At the beginning of this week I finally finished prepping my financial records for my CPA to use in doing my tax returns. I had sent her most of the materials electronically but had several important documents that I wanted to give her as paper documents. With my spreadsheets and a two page letter, the final stack of documents was less than 30 pages and weighed under 8 ounces, in a standard letter sized manila envelope. Because I had left it so late, I decided I should send her the supporting documents using an overnight-capable carrier, which I knew was going to be costly, so before heading out to ship the small package I decided it would be prudent to find out which of the available shippers was the most economical for this service.

There are four: Federal Express (FedEx), the United Parcel Service (UPS), Dalsey, Hillblom, and Lynn (DHL), and, everyone’s favorite, the United States Postal Service (USPS). I always thought DHL was a German company and that the D must be “Deutschland” - but they are not, and it doesn’t. Anyway - these were my starting point, and I started doing my homework. My plan was to go to each website, review their policies and pricing and find out who could get my package from Peoria to South Alabama in the shortest time for the least expense.

I started with FedEx, for no reason other than I have always had an inclination to like this company, even though I can’t remember why. This early part of the experience seemed to be consistent with this predisposition as I found their website reason ably helpful, well organized and well-maintained. In no time I was able to locate, on one page a table that showed all of their”next-day” offerings, along with price estimates for each. I am 874 miles distant from my accountant, putting my planned shipment in the most expensive of their three overnight shipping zones. I learned that they offer six different pricing tiers worshipping a package like mine. I could get the package to my CPA by 8:30 AM, the next day for only (!) $130.60. If I could wait until 10:30AM for the delivery, my cost would be reduced to $76.60. For $51.95 I could have it delivered by 3PM, tomorrow. These three products are the FedEx First Overnight, Priority Overnight, and Standard Overnight, respectively. I could save another $1.50 by sending it 2nd Day AM, having it delivered on the second day 10:30AM. For $11.90 I could send it either by “2-Day”, arriving by 5PM on the second day, or for the same price, I could use Express Saver which would have it to the CPA by 5PM on the third day. I decided to go with the $52 option, Standard Overnight, if it was comparable in price to the other companies’ offerings.

After spending less than 30 minutes on FedEx I was lulled into a false optimism that this was going to be a quick and easy process. Then I opened the USPS website and my confidence evaporated. The UPS pricing page is absolutely unintelligible, with a never ending series of tables and charts, a see of numbers with dozens, if not hundreds of superscript number references to allow the user to understand the cryptic mess that they had wandered in to. That was what I thought I was looking at, but after scrolling through the longest webpage that I have ever seen, reading most of the written content, I discovered that the endless reference numbers were not actually accompanied by the expected list of footnotes. They appeared to be unconnected to anything and were clearly of no use whatsoever. The USPS has various express and priority options, but in every case you cannot get a price estimate without knowing in which geographic group your recipient is located. And, you guessed it, this is one of the many key nuggets of information that has footnote reference numbers, but no footnotes. I was able to determine that shipping of the package would cost between $33 and $65, with no extra services. It was also unclear exactly when One could expect the envelope to reach the recipient - somewhere in the 1-3 day range was noted in several places. In the end, I gave up on ever getting a definitive answer from the website.

The next stop in my journey down the rabbit hole was at the website of UPS - a staggeringly frustrating and unhelpful hour in my day. I came away with absolutely no idea - none at all - not even a rough ballpark guess. To get a shipping cost from this unhelpful website you need to initiate a “shipment” order, giving them every scrap of information about sender and recipient - the others were satisfied with zip codes. This felt very intrusive and I felt like the price of getting a quote from these people was a block of data that would, no doubt, be sold on to some marketing outfit or other. Anyway, it didn’t matter because the UPS computer told me that my accountant’s address, copied from her website and double checked, was not a real address and could not be used. There was essentially no useful information available through this platform and I eventually gave up and left the site without the vaguest idea of what the cost of express shipping this little package might be.

I was a lot less hopeful as I headed over to the DHL site, as it appeared that it has become standard operating procedure to keep the customer in the dark and at the shipping company’s mercy. DHL also needed me to fill out a form, with information about me and the recipient, after which it told me that a single envelope, dropped off at the DHL office on 3.27.26 would be delivered 5 days later and would set me back at least $37.98. I was tempted to call the company to get to the bottom of the 5-day-overnight shipping concept that when I glimpsed something in the small print that caught my attention . It turns out that there is a very interesting word used to modify the meaning of the “expected delivery date” language on the DHL website. The word is “possible” and it is used as follows - overnight shipping means that the delivery of a package, shipped this afternoon will be delivered “Tomorrow or on the next possible day”. Am I the only one who finds this choice of words concerning? I couldn’t resist sending a message to their Customer Service Department, asking for their best working definition of the word “possible”, in this context. Paraphrasing, I was told that “when an overnight package arrives the next day, delivery was possible, and when it does not arrive, delivery was not possible”. This circular, outcome-defined predicate, a retroactive definition disguised as a promise, summed up the way this fruitless research had left me feeling frustrated, manipulated, and disrespected, but no closer to having an answer to my very simple question - “what is the most economical way to ship this envelope?”

I made an executive decision and chose the only company that appeared to give me the information I asked for - FedEx. The office is not far from my studio and I set off to get this cursed package off my desk. I walked into the shipping and retail location minutes later and with plenty of time to spare before crossing the “drop-off deadline” for the day - it was Wednesday. I stood in line, with a stiff upper lip, as would be expected of an English gentleman in public, and eventually made it to the counter. I was confronted by an angry woman who was clearly not having a good day, who barked an inquiry one might expect to hear if caught sneaking across a neighbor’s back garden in the dead of night - “what do you want?”. I told her I would like to overnight the small package in my hand. Her claw flashed out from the counter and my envelope vanished from my grip. Without a word she began scratching and clicking on the keyboard of her computer without uttering a word to me. After an eternity she looked up and asked which of their overnight services I would like to ruin her day by choosing. “Standard” I sheepishly offered. To my utter amazement, the price for this service was exactly what I can calculated from the information on the website and, despite the obscenely high price - almost $52, I thought I might be close to the end of this ordeal.

This was when the gorgon looked up from her computer screen and handed me a receipt and confirmed that the package would be at its destination by 3PM on Friday. It was Wednesday and I gently pointed this fact out to the glowering beast who stared at me as if trying to decide which part of me that she should devour first. Reminding her that I had asked for overnight service, she barked back that Friday was overnight. “No” I answered, “Friday is overnights, not overnight”. “Not here, it isn’t” she growled. “Friday counts as overnight for us”. Falling back on my reasonable understanding of how clocks and calendars work I told the thing behind the counter that I would like to change my shipping option to the “2nd Day” service (calculating that this $11.60 alternative would get the package to LA (Lower Alabama) by 10:30AM on Friday while saving me $40 or so). She ripped open the first mailer and placed it in the 2nd Day envelope and announcing that my package would arrive by 3PM on Monday (5 days in the future). Spitefully, I told her that I had changed my mind and would go with the $52 “overnight” shipping after all. As the color filled her face area I beat a hasty retreat, eager to get back to the relative safety of my studio. On the way I could not stop asking myself how a company, albeit a very large company, could, on a whim, change the meaning of a word as clear and unambiguous as “overnight” to something that basically means “some time in the future”. 2nd day actually means 5th day, I suppose. Most first class mail - the kind you put a stamp on and drop in a mailbox, seldom takes 5 days to arrive and $11.90 can buy a few stamps, I believe.

I think that the time has come for me to simplify my shipping strategy and return to the good old post office. The Post Office is archaic, inefficient, and occasionally unreliable, but it is also trustworthy, relatively affordable, and content to leave the meanings of words alone. Not once has the USPS tried to convince me that a package taking three days to arrive should be considered an “overnight” shipment. Neither have they upsold me an expensive “next day overnight” product to ensure that my 2-day shipment arrived in 2 days and not the 5 days I could expect from a 2-day shipment. As frustrating as the Postal Service can be, it is making an effort. The USPS has been a target for governmental downsizing for several years, but you couldn’t tell it from the professionalism of the women and men in the trenches. Indeed, these hard-working public employees have responded to the challenge by improving efficiency and becoming more competitive in the customer service realm. I moved away from the USPS when their prices started to move towards those charged by the big-name shippers. Suddenly ,FedEx and UPS found themselves on a more level playing field and positioned to capture a large chunk of USPS business. Whether they did or not, I don’t know, but after FedEx was able to ship a large framed photograph, to the West Coast, have it arrive in perfect condition, and manage to keep my cost very close to USPS rates, I did switch to FedEx. My business was theirs to lose, and they lost no time making that happen.

At the end of the day, there are two ways by which a product or service can become my profitable for the vendor:

The price is increased while the product or service is unchanged
The price is held steady while the quality or volume (or both) of the service or product is reduced

Neither of these strategies are welcomed by the customer, but either would be preferable to the tactic of insulting the intelligence of loyal customers by redefining the meaning of a key word in the product description, assuming we won’t notice we are paying ”next-day” delivery prices for 2nd day delivery service. Or 2nd-day delivery prices for 5-day delivery service.

For now, at least, the customer still has the freedom to chose which vendor they use and I am exercising my right to take my business to a shipping company that has a track record of valuing integrity over profit, while treating their customers with respect and courtesy. The Post Office is not the super-affordable shipping alternative it used to be, but despite that, it is delivering services that are more affordable and at least as reliable as those the private sector seems willing or able to provide.

We are living in difficult times, with an economy that is pushing businesses to maximize profits, often at the expense of alienating customers. Maybe it is time for us to exert our influence by taking our business to vendors who share our values and are willing to earn our patronage with hard work and integrity? Just a thought …..

What about you - what shipping services do you use and why did you choose them?

One more thing …

I did not intend for this commentary to turn into a rant and the issues outlined above are not unique to the shipping industry. Please also bear in mind that I am the last person you should go to for business advice. I have never built a successful business and don’t expect I ever will. But I have also never taken a penny from a client or customer without earning it, to the satisfaction of that client or customer, and don’t expect that I will ever do that, either. So my comments are made from the perspective of a customer (with limited resources to allocate to shipping) who thinks that you might be interested in hearing about my experience. Shall we get back to photography?

I nearly forgot!

March 03, 2026

Photography and Agentic AI

March 03, 2026/ Allan Walls

Turning Eight Years of Work Into a Living System

Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how creative professionals work, and photographers are no exception. In this article, I explore how agentic AI — a structured AI assistant built from large language models — can help organize, retrieve, and repurpose years of educational photography content. Drawing from my experience as a macro photography educator, I explain what an AI Agent is, how it differs from a basic chatbot, how it works behind the scenes, and what photographers should understand about accuracy, hallucinations, ethics, and long-term maintenance before building one of their own.

I am not a computer expert — not by any stretch of the imagination — but I have not been able to resist the attraction of artificial intelligence.

We are living through a period of change that feels historically unprecedented. Computers are rapidly approaching — and perhaps already crossing — what futurist Ray Kurzweil described as the Singularity: the moment at which technological intelligence surpasses human intelligence and begins improving itself faster than humans can meaningfully understand or control. Whether or not we have fully reached that point is a matter of debate, but few would deny that we are living in a period of extraordinary acceleration.

Watching this unfold is both fascinating and unsettling. At some point over the last two years, I made a conscious decision that I would not be a passive observer of this process. Since the earliest public releases of large language models, I have tried to stay informed and to explore whether these developments might have practical relevance to my work as a macro photography educator.

What follows is not expert advice. It is a report from the field — my experience building what is known as an AI Agent to address a growing problem within my own body of work.

The Problem: When Creation Outpaces Organization

Modern photographers — especially those who teach — face a peculiar paradox. We create more content than we can effectively organize.

mosquito’s eye, for no particular reason

After eight years of videos, livestreams, blog posts, downloadable PDFs, lesson notes, gear breakdowns, and thousands of viewer interactions, I found myself sitting on a tremendous archive of useful material that was becoming increasingly difficult to access. The problem was not a lack of information. It was retrieval.

I did not need more content. I needed a way to find and reuse what I had already created.

What I really needed was an archivist — someone who understood my work well enough to locate a specific explanation from a livestream three years ago, compare it with more recent guidance, summarize the differences, and present the result in a useful format.

The question that naturally followed was this: Isn’t that exactly the sort of task large language models are designed to handle?

It seemed straightforward. It was not.

What my desk would look like if it were clean and tidy

What AI Is — and What It Is Not

Before describing the solution, it is important to clarify terms.

Artificial intelligence, broadly speaking, refers to software systems that perform tasks we associate with human cognition: recognizing patterns, generating language, classifying information, and making predictions. Large language models, or LLMs, represent a subset of this field. They generate text by predicting the most statistically probable next word or token based on context.

An LLM does not understand in the human sense. It does not think, reason, or possess awareness. It generates output based on probability patterns learned from vast amounts of data. Its fluency can easily give the impression of comprehension or authority, but fluency is not the same as truth.

This distinction matters. An LLM can be extraordinarily useful. It can serve as a catalyst for ideas, a drafting assistant, and a tool for synthesis. But it is not infallible, and it does not possess judgment. The responsibility for accuracy remains entirely with the human operator.

What Is an Agent?

A standard chatbot answers a prompt and stops.

An AI Agent is something more structured. It is a system that can take a goal, break that goal into steps, retrieve relevant material, apply rules, and generate structured outputs. It may use tools such as file systems or databases, and it can be constrained by explicit behavioral rules.

The system I began building — which I have tentatively named the AWP Content Agent — is trained exclusively on my own published material. It is intentionally isolated from the broader internet. Its purpose is not to generate new opinions, but to retrieve and organize what I have already said.

Clever robot (right) plays chess with robotic arm (left) and loses

In practice, it functions as a librarian, research assistant, editor, production assistant, and quality-control reviewer. It can locate prior explanations, summarize recurring themes, assemble structured lesson outlines, and identify contradictions across time.

For someone managing a large technical archive, this is not a novelty. It is a force multiplier.

Portulaca seed (from the planet portulaca)

Why This Matters in Macro Photography

Macro photography is unusually dense with technical variables. Discussions of magnification quickly intersect with numerical aperture, diffusion geometry, stacking artifacts, vibration control, rail calibration, and specimen preparation. Explanations overlap. Advice evolves. Positions refine over time.

As a result, the same foundational concepts may appear across dozens of videos in slightly different forms. Over the years, improvements in understanding inevitably introduce inconsistencies. Viewers asking thoughtful questions often require cross-referencing multiple past explanations.

Manually managing this level of complexity becomes impractical.

An agent grounded in my own curated archive has the potential to retrieve all instances of a specific topic, prioritize the most recent guidance, and present a cohesive summary. It can transform a static archive into a working knowledge system.

The Hard Lesson: Curation Determines Quality

I initially imagined that I could simply “feed” my entire body of work into an AI system and allow it to organize everything automatically.

In reality, the quality of the agent depends almost entirely on the quality of the corpus it is given. Content must be cleaned, structured, labeled, dated, and tagged. Canonical versions must be separated from drafts. Outdated guidance must be clearly marked. Metadata must be consistent.

Without disciplined preparation, retrieval becomes unreliable. The model becomes prone to hallucination, contradiction, or overconfidence.

scruffy looking robot arm with optional laser canon

Building a functional agent is less about clever prompting and more about systematic content architecture.

How an Agent Works Behind the Scenes

Although the technical details vary by platform, most agent systems follow a similar workflow.

First, content is ingested and converted into structured text. Next, the system indexes that text so that it can quickly retrieve relevant passages. When a question is posed, the system searches the corpus, assembles the most relevant segments, and passes them to the language model as contextual input. The model then generates an answer conditioned on that retrieved material and on the rules provided by the builder.

The critical point is that retrieval precedes generation. If retrieval fails, generation may still occur — and that is where hallucinations arise.

Because each platform handles indexing, ranking, and context assembly differently, no two agent systems behave identically. All, however, produce answers in the same confident tone.

Confidence, again, should never be mistaken for correctness.

Maintenance and Known Failure Modes

Lady compares her failure modes to those of her refurbished macBook Pro

An agent is not something you build once and forget. It requires ongoing maintenance.

New content must be added. Outdated advice must be retired or labeled. Major shifts in opinion should be date-stamped. Citations should be spot-checked. Hallucinations should be logged and used to refine the system.

Failure modes are predictable. An agent may misattribute quotes, rely too heavily on older material, retrieve incomplete context, or overstep boundaries by offering advice beyond its scope. There is also the human danger of automation bias — the tendency to trust outputs simply because they sound intelligent.

For this reason, I have imposed strict behavioral rules within the system. It must cite sources when referencing my prior statements. It must prefer newer material when contradictions exist. It must admit uncertainty when evidence is insufficient. It must not invent sources.

These constraints do not eliminate error, but they significantly reduce risk.

Ethical Responsibilities

a blind greengrocer struggles with her scales

With powerful tools come responsibilities.

Any AI-assisted content should be clearly identified as such. The human creator remains responsible for accuracy, citation legitimacy, and ethical judgment. Sensitive or private material should never be casually included in a corpus without careful consideration of privacy implications.

An agent is a tool. It is not an authority, and it does not absolve its operator of responsibility.

Where This Is Heading

robot maker regrets using superglue to secure robot’s replaced index finger

For many photographers, building a custom agent may not justify the effort. The time investment is significant. But for educators or creators managing large technical archives, the advantage may shift from those who merely possess knowledge to those who can retrieve and apply it efficiently.

Agents should be thought of as apprentices rather than authors. They can fetch, sort, draft, and format. They cannot replace judgment, ethics, taste, or creative vision.

Photography remains a profoundly human act of attention. An agent cannot see for us.

But in the domains of organization, synthesis, and teaching, these systems can reduce friction and extend our reach. Going through this process has not made me a better photographer. It has, however, made me a more efficient educator and a more informed participant in a rapidly changing technological landscape.

For now, that is more than enough.

The Week Ahead

Thanks to everyone who commented on the “Transition” series of Livestreams.It was a lot of fun to produce and should be useful to anyone new to field or studio macro photography.

The coming week is going to be fun - the competition from February is over and I am starting the judging process today. It has been quite a while since I did a live discussion of the entries and announced the winners during a Livestream.That is what I am going to start the week with - a Competition Results Livestream - where I will show and discuss every entry and announce the winning images. That will be during Macro Talk, on Tuesday at 8PM. Here is your link… https://youtube.com/live/iyXXlhZJ8sw?feature=share

On Thursday I am going to walk you through the steps of creating your own AI Agent and showing you some of the ways in which this remarkable technology can help a macro photographer take better pictures while becoming more efficient. For more information, see below. This is your link to the the Macro Talk Too Livestream, at 2PM on Thursday afternoon … https://youtube.com/live/FKRqffUP8Js?feature=share

Saturday is the March AfterStack - #40 for anyone keeping track - and we are going to be addressing photoshop techniques for correction of focus stacking artifacts. It is free, it is fun, and here is your invitation…

Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: AfterStack #40 - Correcting Stacking Artifact

Time: Mar 7, 2026 10:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86060739147?pwd=3nxx1ShFE7WWd4hCpyGyzWE154nzWO.1

Meeting ID: 860 6073 9147

Passcode: 966162

Join instructions

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And that is it for this week. We Weill be getting back to mainstream macro next week. I also have an announcement concerning the competition, but to hear that you need to come to Tuesday’s stream! Have a great week!

Allan

February 19, 2026

Order, Disorder, and the Macro Mind

February 19, 2026/ Allan Walls

Would you believe me if I told you that I was something of a “neat freak”? Or if I told you that I knew where every single piece of gear, every nut and bolt, every roll of tape, could be found in my studio? Well that is not 100% true, but it is close enough. I do have a long history of organizing my living and working spaces to make my work and my life comfortable, efficient, and predictable (and, in the process, driving my late spouse to the brink of madness). Fortunately, or unfortunately, it appears that that this particular manifestation of my latent obsessive/compulsive nature has gone into hiding, since my relocation to the Arctic Circle (AKA Peoria, Illinois). As a result, my subterranean sanctuary has become a frightful mess. Even more distressing, my efforts to get my workspace tidy and organized have met with a marked lack of enthusiasm. As a card-carrying black belt fatalist I could have simply left it that and recognized that I had morphed into a slovenly lout, and learned to live with it.

But that is not my style. I am not unlike readers of the National Enquirer, in that I wanted to know. I wanted to know why I had let my new workspace deteriorate into such a mess and I wanted to know if my new environment was hurting my work in some way. Or maybe it was the work that was the driving force behind my newfound messiness. I think that I have arrived at one or two reasonable conclusions, as well as a promising fix for the whole mess.

But why am I telling you about it? Well, I suspect I’m not alone. Many photographers—especially those juggling teaching, content creation, or life transitions—find themselves working in spaces that don’t match their values or habits. If you’re a tidy person struggling in an unfamiliar mess, it’s likely not a character flaw. It’s probably a signal that your environment needs to catch up with your intentions. But I am getting ahead of myself…

I have always been someone who values order. Not perfection, not sterility—but clarity. When my workspace is tidy, my thinking feels more fluid, my decisions come more easily, and my photography benefits. So it has been a mildly unsettling experience to find myself working in a space that is… well… none of those things.

After moving halfway across the country, all of my photographic gear—accumulated over decades—was compressed into an unfamiliar, rather dark, underground lair that also, by the way, serves as a laundry room and a general storage area. From the start the space felt, in some way, compromised, and far from the well lit, dedicated studio environment I was accustomed to. Add limited time and ongoing work demands, and organization quickly slipped from “temporarily deferred” to “quietly overwhelming.”

This wasn’t so much a moral failure as an unexpected systems problem.

For someone who is naturally tidy, working in a self-imposed mess creates a constant low-grade tension. You know how things should be arranged, but you lack the immediate bandwidth to make it so. The result isn’t chaos—it’s cognitive drag. Every task costs a little more effort. Every setup takes a little longer. The space stops feeling like an ally and starts feeling like a negotiation.

What surprised me was how quickly this affected my sense of control. Not my productivity—I was still working—but my ease. That distinction matters. Giving it a lot of thought, I was able to identify how a new untidiness might affect someone who is used to strict order, and I came up with these three outcomes:

• The untidiness feels unwelcome and invasive

• The studio no longer feels safe or controllable

• Being in the studio was causing a low-grade but constant irritation

The next thing that I wanted to figure out was the cause. Specifically, under what circumstances would a normally tidy person be moved to bring this kind of disorder into his life? I came up with a long list of possible situations but there were four that stood out as more significant than the rest:

• External time pressure

• Physical limitations (fatigue, injury, reduced stamina)

• Cognitive overload from too many simultaneous projects/promises/responsibilities

• Long projects without natural reset points

It was here that everything finally clicked and was able to see with clarity exactly what had happened (and was still happening). It came down to one dynamic. I still knew exactly how things should be done—but I no longer had the surplus energy needed to maintain order while ALSO producing quality content on a regular schedule.

This creates a painful negative feedback loop, a kind of cognitive dissonance that can be described with three statements of fact:

• Order requires energy

• Disorder drains energy

• Productivity becomes increasingly costly

So while I was asking myself, “What is wrong with me? This stuff used to be easy!” and “Why can’t I keep up - this is not me”, I was completely missing the point. I was looking for an explanation in my character - trying to find something that had broken inside of me - when I should have been looking at whether or not I had the capacity to manage everything I was piling of my plate. Could this mess be a result of too many active projects, a schedule full of self-imposed deadlines, excessively long feedback loops, and the pressure of sole responsibility for the success of the channel.

This stressful mess was not a symptom of some new character defect - it was a systems problem - a problem of unreasonable expectations and an overwhelmed capacity. One could think of this mess as a shadow cast by my productivity.

Yesterday, I decided to test my hypothesis by starting a reorganization that could take weeks to finish. I started with something modest: my desk. It had slowly become a disaster zone—the kind that accumulates when I’m too busy doing meaningful (to me!) work to notice what’s piling up around it. I was looking for something I needed for a Livestream and started digging through one of my five desk drawers. I couldn’t find what I was looking for but I was amazed at how much junk had accumulated in just this one drawer. An hour later I had emptied all five of the drawers onto the floor around me - I could not believe what I was seeing. The junk came up to my knees and it crossed my mind that this desk might well be a an early prototype of Dr. Who’s Tardis. I vacuumed out the drawers, threw away all the junk that I didn’t need and got everything back where it belonged. The relief was immediate and surprisingly intense. Cleaning out the desk didn’t solve the larger problem, but it did something even more important: it restored my sense of agency.

That single, bounded act reminded me that order doesn’t require heroics. It requires only a little commitment and a dash of momentum.

I should have made this point earlier, but I am the one responsible for the disorder in my workspace. I let my studio become like a teenager’s bedroom (minus the posters) and I am the one that let it stay that way for almost a year. But taking responsibility for my behavior doesn’t require punishment. My circumstances changed, constraints tightened, and I adapted by prioritizing output over environment. That choice was probably wrong, but it made sense at the time. Now, although my circumstances have not changed significantly, it’s time for a different choice—and this is the choice that I have made.

I am going to clean this place up. Not in a weekend purge or a grand reorganization fantasy - plans have a way of evaporating when the expectations are set too high. What I am doing instead is a paced reset, done in small, psychologically manageable steps that fit into my crazy schedule, without adding angst. Each step has been designed to result in a space that is not just tidy, but motivating—a space that gently encourages continued order rather than demanding constant vigilance.

The goal isn’t to return to my old studio. That wouldn’t work. It’s to design a new one that respects my current realities: less space, less light, less time—but still capable of supporting careful, thoughtful work.

And that is what I have been doing with my brain for the last day or so. My desk is clean and organized and I feel good about it. It was a bigger task than expected, but it is also a bigger relief than anticipated. If you are stuck in a self-defeating descent into messiness, you might try giving yourself a break, recalibrating your expectations to reflect today’s reality, and getting started with a manageable step in the right direction. However, if you are perfectly comfortable in the horrid mess you have created and would rather just talk about macro photography, you have found just the place!

On Tuesday evening I talked all about the stuff a studio macro photographer should be aware of before venturing out into the great outdoors to try her hand at field macro. It was a pretty thorough treatment of the topic, if I say so myself, and if this a subject that interests you , please check out the recording of the livestream.

Today, I will be looking at the same set of issues, only this time from the perspective of the field photographer coming into the studio for the first time. There is a lot to think about and it wouldn’t hurt to know what you are getting into by flirting with the magical world of high-magnification insect photography. The link to today’s stream is here - https://youtube.com/live/JQjaAG57u3A?feature=share

Next week I will wrap up this six-part series on insect photography by discussing the equipment and techniques that are unique to field and studio macro respectively - same general structure but all new information that will be valuable to newcomers and old-timers alike. But I am getting ahead of myself again!

Before any of that happens we have an episode of the award-winning (not really), internationally acclaimed (also not really) 3D modeling and 3D printing live discussion forum, Tangent, hosted by my good friend Larry Strunk and myself! It starts at 10AM and runs until about 11:30AM and you are invited to join us. It is free and it is fun. You will probably also learn something, or maybe a lot of somethings. Either way, it is worth the price of admission. Here is your invitation to the Zoom meeting -

Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Allan Walls’ Tangent - with Larry Strunk

Time: Feb 21, 2026 10:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)

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I was planning to give an update on the gear exchange program and the AI Assistant Initiative (both are progressing nicely) but it is 2AM on Thursday morning and I am exhausted, so I will wrap things up here. I will be posting the latest AfterStack video and the most recent Crystal Art recording on YouTube today - after I get some sleep! Hope to see you this afternoon for Macro Talk Too!

Allan

December 09, 2025

The Robots are Coming

December 09, 2025/ Allan Walls

Greetings everyone,

I have something very exciting that I want to tell you about this week. Something that will finally fulfill a promise that I made several years ago. The promise was that I would re-organize my YouTube and website content to make it searchable in a way that would allow anyone to find exactly the content that they need, quickly and accurately. Doing this manually, which required reviewing every scrap of content, indexing the best bits by subject, and building a practical database proved to be an impossibly complicated task that, at the end of the day, would result in a final product that was about as accessible as the work already was, in my YouTube back catalog - which is to say, not at all accessible.

I have recognized all along that having a way to retrieve specific content from my extensive collections on YouTube and my website was going to be a mandatory condition for the continued growth of the channel. However, the best I could come up with was adding a search function to my blog page, which turned out to be a much needed improvement, but still not able to find the content without considerable effort and some prior knowledge of the appropriate search terms. We limped along like this for a long time, though it quickly became apparent that there was another factor that was preventing useful extraction of information from my videos and articles. To successfully find specific content through the search function on my blog page (https://www.allanwallsphotography.com/blog) relied heavily on my provision of complete and precise video documentation, along with accurate tagging and key-wording (a fact I only learned much later). As I had been doing none of this, it rendered the search tool frustrating and unhelpful.

Accepting help from outside the organization, an idea that seemed reasonable at the time, proved instead to be a huge mistake. I was so frustrated with the situation, having hundreds of hours of content but no way for viewers to take advantage of it on demand, that my judgement was impaired. Despite overwhelming misgivings, I allowed a slick-talking and self-proclaimed tech-master to come onboard to lead a restructuring of the channel’s operations, including the development of a searchable content database. Many months later, with no sign of the promised content library, it gradually dawned on me that I had been right to doubt this person’s integrity. Eventually it became clear, through official documents that this individual had a hidden agenda and a plan to repackage and commercialize my content through a proposed new company, controlled solely by a new majority owner. Needless to say, my naiveté in engaging with this person was a huge mistake, and while this mistake may still pose a threat to the viability of my company, it also provided me with a lesson that needed to be learned. So, here I was, another year older, and no closer to the searchable content database that had become something of a millstone around my neck

That was such an unpleasant experience, leaving me angry and embarrassed, that I did not look any further for outside assistance with this chronic issue. I did ask for, and received, help from a wonderful group of supporters who volunteered to help me with my next idea for building the database. I am eternally grateful to this group of supporters who took the thankless task of reviewing all my content, organizing it into a catalog, assigning relevance scores to the content blocks, and facilitating the building a searchable data base. These wonderful people were all experienced in business and/or data management, and were led by two long time supporters of the channel. Though this awesome group worked hard to produce a huge amount of of data characterizing the content in a great many of my videos, the data proved to be too granular and fragmented for me to work into a tool that could offer practical assistance to a viewer looking for specific content. I must quickly add that it was my own limited abilities and resources in this area that brought this project to a halt. The data is still here and it may one day be part of the solution. I would point out that this effort was made recently enough that some of the Artificial Intelligence language tools were already appearing on the scene and had been involved in this unsuccessful attempt at organizing my mess.

The men and women who were part of this initiative have my gratitude and respect for all they did. Thank you Amy, Susan, Mike, Jeff, Jillian, and everyone else who offered assistance. To each of these friends I will reiterate that the eventual failure of this strategy was entirely my fault. Overconfidence, underestimation of the size and scope of the project, and my complete lack of time-management skills all conspired to slow and eventually halt all forward momentum. And with that I found myself right back at square one - making content faster than I could document a way to find it once it was made. I thought that would be it, nothing would change, and I would keep on doing the same thing that I had been doing for the last seven years. It turns out that even in this assessment, I was wrong.

This past weekend, during the first Pzoom meeting of December, something happened that, in an instant, transformed this elephant in the room into a real opportunity to reimagine this channel and give my audience what they have been asking for all along. This epiphany had nothing to do with me. It was a result of an idea proposed by my dear friend and long-time supporter, Patrick Stahel. Patrick demonstrated a project he had been working on that used an agentic AI resource (NotebookLM) in the Gemini family to assimilate the transcribed content of most of my back catalog into a fully functional interactive data repository, accessible to anyone with a computer and internet connection. In plain English, Patrick had fed a huge part of my accumulated content into a computer program that used this content, and only this content, to build something very similar to Chat GPT but on a very limited scale. Patrick was able to take yeas of my transcribed content and turn it into an AI powered interface that any of my viewers can use to find exactly what they want from my back catalog, in precisely the format they prefer, in an instant.

Let this sink in for a moment. I am not giving you a list of video titles in which I talk about focus stacking, or bee photography. This is vastly more powerful. You can ask this agent to scan through every word of my content, since the first day of the channel, and give you answers to questions like this:

Q) please recommend the best three pieces of video content related to insect cleaning techniques. Prioritize videos with detailed demonstrations. Exclude videos longer than 45 minutes in duration.

Q) Please find every piece of video and written content in which Allan gives gift suggestions for macro photographers and list the gift suggestions from lowest to highest price. Include a brief summary of each gift’s key specifications.

Q) Please list the top ten field-technique videos based on the number of viewer comments posted on YouTube. Summarize the viewer comments and order the videos based on how helpful the commenters found each video.

I could go on… How you will use this tool is entirely up to you. You get to ask the questions and the bot (for want of a better word) will do the heavy lifting. And it works. Much of the work has already been done, but I plan to start over, building the database with all of my previous work. It will include not only my videos but over 300 hours of livestream discussions and as many printed articles. I think this is at least as important as including video content as my livestreams have evolved into some of the densest and most thoroughly researched content available through my channel. And I have covered a great many topics not discussed in previous videos. I would say the same for some of my written content, which will also be included in the resource pool.

I am not going to rush this process and part of the reason for starting over from scratch is so that I can learn as much as possible from the process. Once the Agent is built it will need to be tested and probed for weaknesses. I will be asking a few people to stress the system to bring out any issues that need to be addressed prior to release. With testing complete, the Agent will get a catchy name and will jeavailable for you to use. I will post the link on my website, the Walls-app, Discord and Patreon as soon as it is launched. It will cost nothing for you to use and I will continue to keep the tool current, uploading each new content block as it is released. While I am obviously not the first person to use today’s amazing technology in this way, I must confess that I am unaware of anyone in the macro-phtography space who is using it in this way - and that is very exciting!

Let me curb my enthusiasm long enough to offer a few words of caution. I am enthusiastic about the promise of this tool for one primary reason - this is exactly the kind of thing that LLMs (Large Language Models) do extremely well. LLMs are made for this kind of advanced language processing, it is their superpower. BUT… (and you will hear this from me again) you must keep in mind that the interface I am giving you access to has a reality that consists solely of the words that I have strung together in hundreds of hours of content. It knows nothing about the world beyond my content (except what it may have picked up from my content) and so it will not be able to respond to prompts about other matters. Also, I make mistakes and there are likely to be inconsistencies in some of the material that I taught five years ago and the way I treated the same content last Tuesday. In other words, you will have access to a machine that can find and organize every word of my published content, but what you do with that information is up to you. Going forward I will be looking for ways to use this remarkable technology to correct earlier mistakes and make the output more up to date, coherent, and complete. But that is going to take time. As has been my goal since the first video was published, I want to produce content that is an accurate, complete, enjoyable, and as accessible as possible. This new development will move me a little closer to that goal. As we develop this tool, I will be counting on you to tell me what is working and what is not. Do not hesitate to tell me when there are improvements to be made - If this isn’t working for you, then there is no reason for me to be doing it.

*****

Before I go, let me briefly outline the week ahead. As usual, we start the week with Tuesday’s Macro Talk, at 8pm central time. This week I am planning to share with you the ultimate holiday gift list. It is actually a wish list for macro photographers, so unless you have one of these rare creatures in your life, you can use this list to guide your hint dropping activities over the next couple of weeks. Your link to the livestream is right here… https://youtube.com/live/i_CtzBlGoVE?feature=share

Thursday at 2PM is Macro Talk Too where we will expand on a discussion we had several weeks ago and talk about your photography plans for the coming off-season. Last time I visited this topic I talked mostly about interesting activities that could replace macro photography during the coldest months, but this time I want to talk about some actual macro activities that either take advantage of the season, or are at least accessible when the frost is on the pumpkin (is that a real saying?). Anyway, some of the ideas I want to discuss are unusual enough to come as a surprise to some of you. Your link to this livestream is here… https://youtube.com/live/a-127D-7Dug?feature=share

For more information about these streams, please visit my website at https://www.allanwallsphotography.com/blog/gift

I will be taking a few minutes at the beginning of both of these livestreams to talk about the new website feature described above, going into a little more detail and giving an update on my progress. This would be a great time to ask any questions you may have, or make any suggestions about features you would like to see included. I will also be able to give a better estimate of the timeline for getting this tested and into service.

Friday is Crystal Art, with Harold Hall and your’s truly. This is a live Zoom event for anyone interested in the fascinating world of birefringence photography. We talk about growing and imaging crystals to make stunning abstract art. If that sounds like fun to you, please join us on Friday, December 12, at 2PM. Here is your invitation to the event. Remember that we will record the meeting for release on YouTube - if you don’t wish to be in the video do not turn on your camera or microphone while in the meeting!

Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Allan Walls’ Crystal Art with Harold Hall

Time: Dec 12, 2025 02:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

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And finally, Saturday sees Episode 37 of AfterStack - a discussion roundtable for macro photographers interested in post processing. A wonderful group of talented artists who love to play in Photoshop! Come learn with us. It is free and you are most welcome. Your invitation is right here -

Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Allan Walls’ AfterStack with Bud Perrott

Time: Dec 13, 2025 10:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)

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And that is it for this week! It is a lot for one post and I hope to see you sometime this week.

Allan

August 26, 2025

How Photography Dies - Ten More Years

August 26, 2025/ Allan Walls

Greetings all!

This will be a short post today. I have a lot of preparation to take care of before the week gets properly under way, and a bunch of errands that I was supposed to take care over the weekend. My assistant is still out sick (it will be seven years at the end of August) so I am flying solo today.

I did spend quite a bit of time at the weekend contemplating the future of our country, our planet, my channel, and our shared enthusiasm for macro photography. All this pondering got me thinking about the future of photography, in general, and macro photography, in particular. I talked to some trusted colleagues and made a lot of notes, and by the time I was done, I had pretty much convinced myself that my prognostications were spot on. The short version of the story that I came up with is that photography, as we know it, will be gone by 2035, and replaced by something only distantly related to what we do now.

But I also thought there was a lot to be excited about during and after this 10 year transition. On Tuesday, in MacroTalk, I am going to lay out what I believe we can expect to see during the coming decade, and I will explain why I believe that we will see the disappearance of photography, as we know it, by the end of that ten years. Here is your link to this stream… https://youtube.com/live/2gOAsER2dak?feature=share

On Thursday I would like to bring the discussion back to the present and talk a little bit about the ways in which our shared passion for macro photography can be used to make our communities a little better. Using examples from across the country and around the world, I will show you how our hobby can used as a force for good in the world. This is a topic that I get excited talking about and I hope you will too. You link to this stream is right here… https://youtube.com/live/YF_R93BBtHs?feature=share

On Saturday we have a Pzoom scheduled for my Patreon supporters - the invitation is over on our Patreon page. This is going to be something completely different. I am going to try something that just popped into my head, but something that I think could be a lot of fun. We are going to have a Q&A session. But a Q&A with a major twist - I will be the one asking the questions! I think I know most of my supporters well enough to be able to get them talking about the things they are interested in. It isn’t a competition or a test - just a fun way for us to get to know one another better, and maybe to learn some new stuff. Participation is voluntary and I won’t be putting anyone on the spot. We will also have time for updates, questions, and discussions, as usual.

Don’t forget that we will be welcoming Lester Lefkowitz for a special Patreon only event on September 13, 2025. He is coming on to talk about his method for organizing images in Lightroom - I am really looking forward to having him back on the channel - I will let you know more about the visit after he and I finalize our plans later today. Here is your invitation to that special Pzoom - Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Allan Walls’ Pzoom, with Special Guest Lester Lefkowitz

Time: Sep 13, 2025 10:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)

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AfterStack 29 was this past weekend, and a lot of fun. We talked about the new tools available in Photoshop, and how we are using them. As always, I left the hangout with a handful of new ideas to try. The video will be posted to YouTube today and you can watch it by following this link… https://youtu.be/w6IjqucarhU

The original art - new cover to follow soon

Don’t forget about our Crystal Art group that meets at 2pm on the second Friday of every month. This is NOT the new cover art for the videos. That is still in the works but should out soon.

I have also set up a Google Drive folder for you to drop any images that you would like to discuss in the group - here is the link. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ngiRDNHPdoGkx2fcOqedd3EDn_TZjVF3?usp=sharing Feel free to use this link to drop any images that you would like to share with the group at the next meeting (September 12, 2025) - it would help a lot if you could add the date of the session in your title, so that I can keep the folder organized.

And while I’m at it, here is the link to the next program on Friday September 12th, 2025!

Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Crystal Art with Harold Hall

Time: Sep 12, 2025 02:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

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That is enough for one post, don’t you think!? I hope to see you at today’s stream! Allan

August 11, 2025

The Power of Light: Photography & the Healthy Mind

August 11, 2025/ Allan Walls

the eilean donan castle near kyle in the highlands of scotland

This week we’re stepping slightly off the usual path — not away from macro photography, exactly, but into one of the reasons it matters so much to so many of us.

If you’ve been part of this community for a while, you’ve probably noticed that the conversations here aren’t just about lights, lenses, and Lepidoptera. Somewhere in the middle of all the technical chatter, there’s a heartbeat — a shared understanding that this hobby does more than produce pretty pictures.

Monument to fallen commandos at spean bridge, scotland

For some, it’s been a lifeline during difficult times. For others, it’s a steady, creative anchor in a noisy, unpredictable world. And for all of us, it’s a way to connect — not just with the tiny subjects in front of our lenses, but with the people who share our passion. Our world is in turmoil, with explosive technological advances, building international tensions, and a deteriorating domestic order. People from Bismarck to Brisbane are worried about their future, and the futures of their children and grandchildren. Many have been struggling to cope for decades. One result of this almost universal angst has been a meteoric rise in the incidence of depression and anxiety; the CDC has reported a 60% rise in prevalence of anxiety disorders in adults and adolescents in the last ten years, an estimated 42.5 million adults in the US alone.

On Tuesday, we’ll be talking about the role photography — and the communities that form around it — can play in helping people manage anxiety, depression, and other emotional challenges. I’ll share a bit of my own story, along with some thoughts on why technical, focused activities can be such a balm for the mind, and how the connections we make here can be part of the solution. We have talked about health before, but never with this focus. I will try to keep it positive and upbeat, but will not be avoiding the tough questions. I will try to leave time for questions. Your link to this livestream is here - https://youtube.com/live/odQh0iSv1yk?feature=share

Then, on Thursday, we’ll turn the conversation toward prevention. What can we do, as healthy, engaged individuals, to keep our community vibrant, positive, and supportive? How can directing our energy outward — encouraging, mentoring, and celebrating others — help keep us strong, too? It’ll be a lighter, forward-looking discussion, and I’ll be looking for your ideas to take into the months ahead. I am proud of the community that you have built around this little channel and I want to do what I can to keep it a safe and healthy resource for anyone who finds us. Here is a link to this livestream - https://youtube.com/live/ntkXC273Fx4?feature=share

These aren’t just “feel good” topics — they’re at the heart of why so many of us keep picking up the camera. The gear and the techniques are important, but they’re part of a much bigger picture.

the high road, or the low road - can’t remember

So, whether you join for the technical tips, the conversation, or just to be among like-minded souls for an hour, I think you’ll find something worth your time this week. I hope you’ll tune in — and bring your thoughts, your questions, and maybe even a photograph or two to share.

That is not everything, of course! We have Pzoom on Saturday morning at 10AM - a two hour face-to-face discussion forum that I host for my wonderful Patreon supporters. If you are among them, you invitation to this week’s Pzoom is over on Patreon, in today’s post.

It seems like it has been a while since our Tangent group met, but that will change on Saturday afternoon when we get together for some 3D modeling chat from 12:30 until 2:00pm. This is open to everyone and it is one of my favorite events on the channel! I never fail to learn a ton of new stuff every time we meet. Please join us - here is your invitation -

Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Tangent

Time: Aug 16, 2025 12:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

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I hope you can make it to some of this week’s activities. Next week we will be jumping right back into technical macro photography with a couple of streams I have already started working on.

July 14, 2025

A New Diffuser, Photographing Coins, & Catching Snakes

July 14, 2025/ Allan Walls

Hi everyone!

Even though I won’t be talking about this in either of this week’s streams, I want to show you something that I invented this weekend - a new and improved diffusion framework that fixes all of the problems of the last iteration. I will show you the device and the Fusion360 model right after these program notes.

Last week was an important week for the channel as Thursday's Macro Talk Too was the 300th livestream I have done since I started doing two streams a week. There were a few occasional streams before that, including a couple of months with only a single weekly stream, so the number is closer to 320 - either way, it is a lot.

Last week I asked you to give me some feedback on the current livestream programming and I am probably going to be tweaking the weekly schedule ever so slightly to accommodate your requests. A huge thanks to Alasdair for providing me with a summary of the feedback from both meetings! I will let you know as soon as I decide on a course forward.

Any changes will begin upon my return to the studio following a short upcoming break, in the first week of August. I will be leaving on Wednesday, July 23 and returning a little over a week later on August 2nd. I will still be here for this week’s Pzoom meeting, on the 19th of July, but I will not be back in time for the Pzoom following that on August 2nd.

In summary - I will be out from July 23 through August 2, 2025, during which time I will not be hosting my usual weekly programming.

Saturday’s AfterStack, episode 27 - a fascinating discussion of the new Depth Map Blur feature in Photoshop, was a big success. - here is the YouTube link to the video - https://youtu.be/waw52kfVOJgt

There is yet another new spinoff live event, starting in August. It is called “Chemical Art”. The program will be a guided discussion on Birefringent Crystal Photography, at 2PM central time on the second Friday of the month. Our first meeting will be at 2PM on Friday August 8th, 2025 - here is the link to the inaugural meeting -

Topic: Allan Walls’ Chemical Art #1

Time: Aug 8, 2025 02:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

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My Co-host for this series of live events is none other than our own Harold Hall and I am very much looking forward to a lively and visually exciting discussion of all things crystal related. Hope you will be able to join us. Stay tuned for more details!

As for the coming week, I have a couple of interesting talks planned:

Tuesday July 15, 2025 - Macro Talk - “My approach to the photography of reptiles and amphibians in the wild” - a topic that will hopefully be useful to anyone struggling with this month’s competition. Here is your link - https://youtube.com/live/MfIXwPp1-Pw?feature=share

Thursday, July 17, 2025 (2PM) - Macro Talk Too - “Numismatography 101” the first in a series of discussions about coin photography. Note that “Numismatography” is not really a word, though it should be (I just made it up a few a minutes ago). Here is your link to that stream - https://youtube.com/live/jJXlp2s-IlY?feature=share

This month’s photography competition, “Reptiles and Amphibians” is going to be guest judged by the talented and delightful British frog photographer (she is British, not the frogs), Angi Wallace - always a popular guest and a very accomplished photography judge. I can’t wait to have her back for such an interesting theme!

Those of you who have watched some of Kelly Bosch’s incredible AI-based video content and are patiently waiting for me to release the interview, please remain patient! I have missed Kelly twice over the last few weeks. Her dog had been in surgery during our first meeting and we rescheduled for the following Thursday. This time it was Kelly who was in the hospital. We are looking at times for another crack at the interview, but I just don’t know if I will have time to fit it in before leaving on my trip. I will keep you posted.

Lester is back! I have asked Lester Lefkowitz to join our Pzoom meeting on September 13 to talk with us about his Lightroom Organization Workflow. He tells me it is a superb system that all but guarantees you will never lose another image again. I don’t believe that for one second - I will continue to lose images in some of the most creative ways possible. Anyway, I will record this section of our meeting for wider distribution at a later date.

I think that is all the announcements that I have for now, so let’s get to the new diffusion frame.

This new iteration of a frame that is flexible, versatile, scaleable, sturdy, inexpensive, positionable, and with much less interference when lighting from below, came to me while trying to improve on the last version, which I found a little cumbersome and restrictive.

This version consists of a slim, vertically oriented body with a female 1/4” 20tpi socket in the base - making it universally mountable. It is made up of three sections which lock into one another around 2-pairs of flexible arms terminating in a pair of alligator clips. For stability the arms are 90º out of phase and lock rigidly into the body when it is tightened from below.

The base of the assembled frame with Small Rig miniclamp attached

Opening and closing the arm-holder body is accomplished by means of a hidden 3mm bolt that can only be accessed by placing an Allen key through the brass insert in the base. This hides the structural components while holding them captive and preventing misalignment of the parts when changing arms. The lower arm set are almost 9” long and allow for a larger external diffuser sheet to be held further out from the specimen while allowing the user to modify its exact position with ease. The upper arms are only 4” long, keeping the inner diffusion layer much closer to the subject and guaranteeing excellent separation of the diffusers (velum or mylar).

The top section with a bass shaft standing in for the specimen holder

The specimen holder replaces the brass shaft in the drawing and can be a mini ball head, and alligator clamp or any other pin holder that works for you. I am waiting on a smaller set of bendy arms to replace the heavy duty ones shown in the fusion model, though the drawings do give you the basic idea, I think.

As soon as I have a couple of working prototypes to demonstrate I will do so. After that I will probably manufacture a limited number of the devices for sale, and may also release the G-code for anyone wanting to make their own.

If you are interested in getting one of these cool gadgets, let me know via a message in the Walls-app - I will let you know the price as soon as I figure out the cost of the parts - which will be about the same time that I demo the thing.

The colors are just for show - the device is black

That is it for this week! See you in a stream!

Allan

July 07, 2025

300 Livestreams!

July 07, 2025/ Allan Walls

Greetings!

And thank you for getting us to livestream #300, this week! Can you believe it? Three solid years of twice weekly livestreams. No wonder I have amassed three file boxes jammed with notes! That is more single spaced writing than I accumulated in 4 years of medical school (almost twice as much!).

I am not a big fan of change, but not caring for change is no excuse for avoiding needed course adjustments. Some feedback that I have been given over the last few days, makes it clear that you may be ready for some change. Let me summarize the issues that are behind the call for change, and after that I will present a few possible solutions, and explain how I plan to use our two livestreams this week to build a consensus about a solution.

The issue will make sense to those of you who have been around over three years since I started doing livestreams twice a week. For the first few months, the livestreams were little more than social gatherings, during which I would answer questions, respond to your comments, and occasionally inject some more prepared content. This was a lot of fun, but seemed to get us away from the information-dense video content that this channel was built on. For that reason, I started working to bring you two solid blocks of quality content every week. I feel like I have been successful in delivering high quality material most of the time. I like this format, because to talk on a given subject, without a pause, for 50 minutes, I have to know what I am talking about - so my preparations for each livestream can take several days - so this way of delivering content is certainly no less demanding than doing so with regular video content, it just stacks the work in front of the content instead of behind it (editing videos is the trade off).

However, it has come to my attention that this way of doing things is not as good as I had thought. The issue is that some viewers have been frustrated by my inability to get to questions during many of these programs. I can certainly see how this might be irritating to someone who is following along and needs clarification on something I said before they are ready for me to move on with my presentation. So a suggestion was made that instead of presenting content live, a better solution might be for me to record the content ahead of time and play it back during the livestream. This way I could pause the playback to answer questions as they come up and engage with the audience while the content of presented. The idea was that I would present the same block of recorded content on both Tuesday and Thursday while being available to answer questions both days. While reasonable on its surface, this did not take into account that many of you attend both livestreams and would have no interest in hearing the same presentation both days. But it did get me thinking. The issue is real, and I do need find a way to do better in the future, and this is what I have decided to do…

Last one, I promise (these were all the same slide)

Later in this post I am going to lay out a few suggestions for changes in programming, some of which are minor and some of which are quite significant. I am going to ask you to look these options over and come to one of my livestreams this week to register your vote for the direction in which my programming will move. These are not set in stone, so if you have another suggestion, bring it on Tuesday or Thursday and I will give it full consideration. If you read this but cannot come to either stream this week, please send me a message through the Walls app (www.walls-app.com), to let me know what you would like to see changed going forward. One thing that I will not be willing to consider is any change that makes it inconvenient for my European friends to participate. I will consider single livestream options, if the time chosen makes sense for both my US and European audiences.

I do not think we will need to take up a whole livestream to deal with this, so I am going to use the remaining time to deal with some questions that have come up over the last week. On Tuesday’s Macro Talk I will present an overview of focal length and sensor size in macro photography. The link to that stream is here -

https://youtube.com/live/fkXpXHkdlL0?feature=share

On Thursday, we will spend the first half of the stream considering the changes presented below and discussed on Tuesday. Following that I will be answering several other interesting questions that I have been asked in recent conversations. Your link to that stream is here - https://youtube.com/live/OdEuWqwCJ4s?feature=share

On Saturday we have AfterStack 27, and I believe Bud will be back to lead the discussion - I am not sure what he has for us this weekend, but I am sure it will be excellent!

*****

Before I forget, I will be out of the studio for a few days at the end of this month and I wanted to give you a heads-up that there will be no Tuesday Macro Talk on July 29 and no Macro Talk Too on Thursday July 24th or Thursday July 31st. I will also have to miss the Pzoom meeting scheduled for August 2, 2025.

*****

Below are a few suggestions for programming adjustments that I would like you to consider. I will be soliciting your opinions in both livestreams this week, but you can also register your choice by messaging me on the Walls-app, anytime this week:

OPTION 1: Don’t change anything - keep both streams every week and continue to deliver 2 different blocks of content each week.

OPTION 2: Record one block of content for playback during both Tuesday and Thursday livestreams (same content) with real time questions and discussion for the whole hour

OPTION 3: Cut back to one livestream every week (extended to 90 minutes) with content broken into segments to allow for questions and discussion in real time. Timing for a single event would need to be early afternoon in the US, early evening in Europe. This would free up enough time to produce more regular video content.

OPTION 4: Don’t change the schedule (two streams a week, Tuesday evening and Thursday afternoon), but break the live content into several short segments with breaks for live questions and discussion

OPTION 5: I have a better idea ……. (Be specific!)

*****

Do you have any other ideas for how I could improve your experience on the channel? Let me know - I am excited about the next chapter of AW Photography. I’m also in this for the long haul, so it is important that I get it right. Please share your ideas with me and let’s see what happens next!

June 16, 2025

Meet Kelly Boesch - an Extraordinary Talent

June 16, 2025/ Allan Walls

Hello Macro-mates (is that even a thing?)

I hope you had a restful weekend, and that those of you still fortunate enough to have a dad around got to spend some time with his on Sunday. I had a really nice visit with my kids (if I’m still around when they are in their 60s, will they still be kids? Yes, of course they will!)

Anyway, today is Monday and there is much to be done, like triple checking my YouTube live-streaming credentials. I was terribly embarrassed last week, after going the better part of a year without a hiccup on the livestream, to have two disasters in one week. At least the disasters were of a common cause, making them more like one extended disaster, which sounds a tiny bit less incompetent. I will do everything in my power to make sure there is not another week like that in the foreseeable future. But there a couple of really fun and interesting things on the horizon that are definitely within the foreseeable future.

Lester Lefkowitz will be visiting with us in a couple of weeks - we still have some details to work out, but it is looking like he will be our special guest for the first Pzoom in July. He is coming back to tell us about his Lightroom system for not losing pictures. He will present his talk and follow up with a Q&A to address any questions that come up. After the Pzoom is over I will edit the content into a YouTube video that will be available to everyone within a few days of the meeting. I will keep you posted when I know is dates for sure.

This past weekend I had the immense please of making contact with one of the most talented artists working in the strange world of AI powered video content creation. Some of you may recall a clip from a piece of generative video content that I showed during a livestream a couple of weeks ago? It was fresh, mesmerizing, with beautiful color and a surreal dream-like flow that was altogether a new experience for me. It was is a selection of paintings by Magritte, or Dali had come to life for a short, but remarkable and very satisfying, moment in time. Well I was completely taken by this new type of video content in general and the work of the artist, Kelly Boesch, in particular. Here are links to a couple of Kelly’s videos. I encourage you to visit her YouTube page and explore some of the totally original content that she is making. I was so impressed by the quality of Kelly’s work that I reached out to her this weekend and asked if she might be willing to record a conversation with me, so that I could share it with you. She replied immediately and most graciously agreed to an interview. One of the things that grabbed my attention was Kelly’s fascination with insects and the frequent appearance of weird and wonderful insect-like characters in many of her videos. I hope that this interview will be available in a week or two - and I will let you know the minute that it is.

Some of my favorite surrealist video art by Kelly Boesch::

1) An AI Dance Music Video - https://youtu.be/soRDe1XbWmM?si=w0-pmnnKWJvwE-Ti

2) A Story About Aging - https://youtu.be/28z0mAxIDQw?si=dtuA5iUwpuj7x7yG

3) Kids with Magical Creatures - https://youtu.be/8wkKg_bdc2k?si=gFZHzPsVDvTQrRkl

Try to keep in mind that these video stories were created in the mid of Keely Boesch but interpreted and transformed into video content by AI tools like #Midjourney, #Luma, and #keyframe!

Let’s get back to this week. I have something very special for you tomorrow in Macro Talk, Tuesday at 8PM. This stream was prompted by a question I was asked last week. A friend asked me to discuss the equipment and workflows being used for high speed, handheld focus stacking in the field, by wonderful macro photographers like Claus Giloi, and Graham Carey. And that is precisely what I am going to attempt in Tuesday’s stream. I will be showing some of the great work by Claus and Graham and then breaking down every piece of equipment and every step in their respective workflows. Bring your questions and get up to speed on the new focus stacking superpower! Your link…https://youtube.com/live/54x6STaXN0Y?feature=share

Thursday’s Macro Talk Too, at 2pm, is going to be a more traditional Q&A where I will attempt to answer the questions that have been piling up for a few weeks - a lot to talk about but feel free to bring any macro questions that you have been struggling with. Here is your link…. https://youtube.com/live/dfzxWF0KjIc?feature=share

Saturday is going to be a big day also - with Pzoom kicking off at 10am - two hours of face to face macro talk, with introductions, updates, and some more field macro discussion. Your Pzoom invitation is going to be posted over on Patreon, probably tomorrow.

Right after the Pzoom wraps up we go straight over to Tangent for another fun and challenging exploration of the 3D modeling world in our Fusion 360 discussion group for macro photographers and makers. If you have a 3D printer, or might one day buy one, you really need to come and meet the group - this is a fantastic resource for anyone trying to get a fast start in CAD/CAM. Larry Strunk knows his stuff and put a lot of work into this monthly gathering. Drop by and see what it is all about - 12:30 until 2(ish), this Saturday - here is your invitation - Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Tangent

Time: Jun 21, 2025 12:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6916802815?pwd=TS9tZi9ZL1NXeVUvOUF4eTg5YjdlZz09&omn=82319653517

Meeting ID: 691 680 2815

Passcode: 678122

OK - that is it for this week - I have a ton of work to get done before tomorrow. Hope to see you sometime this week!

Allan

June 02, 2025

Screw-ups & Gadgets

June 02, 2025/ Allan Walls

Another weekend has been vacuumed up by the past and we are officially in what Middle Earthers quaintly refer to as “summer”. As I look out the little slit windows of the bunker, it doesn’t look like summer to me, but it might be warmer than it looks. I would have to go outside to be sure, and who has time for that!?

We had a fun AfterStack this weekend and I will have the recording up on YouTube later today. We talked about making graphics from photographs and it was a lot of fun. The rest of Saturday was spent in the workshop, making and testing various ides for a vertical mounting system for converted microscope focus blocks. I came up with one that works and spent a few hours adding this feature to the focus blocks that I will be shipping out this week.

The new vertical mount for my BH2 conversion

This is competition week, and Rik Littlefield and I have come up with a plan for judging the entries. We both have the images and will be spending a couple of days looking through them before we meet for the grand judging on Wednesday. That will leave me a couple of days to get any editing done and post the results to YouTube. I won’t be discussing the actual results in either livestream as I don’t want to steal any of Rik’s thunder. I’ll let you know when it drops.

This month the competition is a macro wildcard - any macro subject and everyone is welcome to submit up to two entries, which will be independently judged by me and my AI sidekick, Cindi. I can’t wait to see how this turns out!

Jumping ahead to Saturday’s Pzoom - I am hoping to get my guest Lightroom expert, Lester Lefkowitz, to drop in for a chat about his system for organizing his Lightroom Catalog. If we can get this all worked out by then you can expect a recording of this discussion to be posted to YouTube shortly after that. If we can’t get that arranged for this week, I have a backup plan. Part of that plan is to give a report on several new features I am adding to the channel - some exciting stuff that I think everyone is going to enjoy. It’s all top secret until I have had a chance to run it by my Patreon gang - I don’t do anything until I’ve run it by them. By the way, if you have ever considered doing something super cool, like supporting a YouTube content creator and, in exchange, becoming part of the macro-cognoscenti (we are working on a secret handshake), then now is as good a time as any to truck on over to www.patreon.com/allanwallsphotography and become a legitimate hero.

Turning back to the present, I have a couple of unique and, I hope, fun livestreams to tell you about for this week. On Tuesday, in Macro Talk (8PM central time) I am going to talk about some of the idiotic mistakes I still make in macro photography. I have a lot to choose from!

We all make mistakes — but sometimes those “oops” moments lead to unexpectedly decent images.

In today’s livestream, I’ll share some of my biggest and most consistent macro misfires: focus stacks gone wrong, studio stupidity, field follies, and other misadventures. Along the way, I’ll show you a few of my really “bad” pictures that I still love — and try to explain why they still work (at least for me).

Honest talk, practical tips, and a gallery of goof-ups. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned macro nerd, you’ll laugh, cringe, and (hopefully) learn.

Your link is right here … https://youtube.com/live/cmMZw2Pq-Zw?feature=share

In MacroTalk Too, on Thursday at 2PM, we turn our attention to those dirt cheap, must-have gadgets and gizmos that are always close at hand!

You don’t need to spend a fortune to make unforgettable macro photographs. In this livestream, I’ll show you a selection of the best cheap gear and accessories I’ve ever used — all under $20 — along with the actual images they helped me create.

From homemade backgrounds and lighting hacks to clamps, brushes, and tiny tools, each item tells a story — and every one of them earned its place in my kit.

If you’re a beginner building your macro toolbox, or a seasoned pro who loves a good budget hack, join me for this fun and practical tour of the little things that make a big difference.

Here is your link to MTT … https://youtube.com/live/ZpvVY5QefVU?feature=share

And PS - bring a few of your own gadget hacks to share with the world

I am going to keep it short and sweet today - I have a mountain of Monday work still waiting on me. Please try to make it on Tuesday or Thursday - I hope to have an announcement or two to share with you!

Oh, and PPS - I have looked at the stereo submissions for last month’s contest, and they are AMAZING! Way to go, guys!!!

May 19, 2025

The Ethics of Macro

May 19, 2025/ Allan Walls

Before we get into the topic of today’s post, let me give you a quick rundown of what you can expect this week…

We kick things off tomorrow with Macro Talk at 8PM when I will be talking about the practical considerations of insect collection for macro photography. This will include the target insects, finding habitat, tools for collection, storage and transportation, and the application of AI to improve our success rate. The link for the stream is here - https://youtube.com/live/ZVxpZGJQw8U?feature=share

On Thursday, in Macro Talk Too, we change gears completely and take a hard look at the ethical issues involved the catching and killing of insects for photography. This will include a discussion of how my own thought on the matter have evolved in the year since we last had this discussion. The link to this Livestream is right here - https://youtube.com/live/gUawWEGQxMI?feature=share

A big day is coming on Saturday the 24th of May when I kick things off with Pzoom, starting at 10am and running until 2PM. In this edition of the twice-monthly Patreon-only get-together we will open the meeting for any updates, questions, and introductions and in the second half of the gathering I will talk about the purpose and application of planning in macro photography. If you are a member of my Patreon group, your invitation to this meeting will be posted over on Patreon, tomorrow. If you are not yet a member of Patreon, please consider coming aboard! It is a great group of people with a wealth of experience and knowledge to share and your participation helps the channel to stay afloat in these challenging times. Please visit https://www.patreon.com/allanwallsphotography to learn more.

Right after Pzoom we have another edition of Tangent, an exciting 3D modeling and printing discussion led by Larry Strunk. The meeting is free and the invitation that you will need to get in is right here - Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Tangent with Larry Strunk

Time: May 24, 2025 12:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6916802815?pwd=TS9tZi9ZL1NXeVUvOUF4eTg5YjdlZz09&omn=86781500269

Meeting ID: 691 680 2815

Passcode: 678122

Which is everything coming up this week!

Getting back to this post, I wanted to give you some background concerning the ethical issues around macro photography. My hope is that this will help you get the most out of this week’s livestreams by introducing you to some of the key issues that relate to our conduct as macro photographers.

The ethical issues surrounding macro photography, particularly involving live subjects, have always existed — but in recent years, they’ve come into sharper focus as public awareness of environmental and animal welfare concerns has grown. As macro photographers, we often walk a fine line between observation and intervention. The intention is usually to educate, to celebrate the hidden beauty of the natural world. But that doesn’t exempt us from scrutiny — nor should it.

There are three primary areas where ethical questions tend to arise in our field:

1. Collection and Handling of Live Subjects

One of the most emotionally charged questions in macro photography is whether it’s acceptable to collect, restrain, or euthanize insects and other small creatures for the sake of a photograph.

This concern grows from both the conservation movement and the broader moral stance against causing harm to sentient life. While insects are not protected in the same way as vertebrates in most countries, our evolving understanding of invertebrate perception, cognition, and response to harm makes this a growing area of debate.

Even if the subject is common and abundant, does killing it for artistic or educational purposes cross a line?

2. Staging and Manipulation of Behavior

Many macro photographers employ cooling, restraint, or staged habitats to slow their subjects for better control — particularly in focus stacking or motion-sensitive scenes.

Techniques that are common in studio macro photography (refrigeration, confining the insect in a transparent cube or vial, placing subjects on inauthentic surfaces) have begun to draw criticism as AI-generated images challenge what’s possible without using real animals at all.

Is temporary suffering, disorientation, or manipulation of natural behavior justified by the final image?

3. The Image as a Statement — and the Photographer’s Responsibility

Every photo implies a point of view. Even when we think we are simply documenting, we are choosing what to show and what to hide — which can have real-world consequences.

As images circulate online without context, especially through social media and contests, there is a tendency to forget that photographs can reinforce false ideas about nature — such as pristine, untouched beauty or the docility of wild insects.

Are we unintentionally misleading our audience? Or worse, encouraging irresponsible behaviors in other photographers?

These are not abstract questions. They touch the very heart of what we do as macro photographers. And while many of us entered this field with an ethos of wonder and reverence, we may find ourselves using methods or adopting habits that deserve a second look.

We’ll be digging deeply into this topic on Thursday’s livestream, and I’ll be sharing how my own thinking has changed over the past year — especially in light of some difficult conversations with friends and colleagues who see things differently.

I won’t offer any definitive answers here — not yet. For now, I invite you to come to Thursday’s Macro Talk Too, prepared not just to listen, but to reflect. Bring your questions. Bring your discomfort. This is an issue that deserves our honesty and our attention.

P.S. … What did you do this past weekend? Here is what I did!

Tonight I will be wrapping and packing, addressing labels, and printing invoices. The testing is all done and the first batch of XP3BIOs will be shipping out whenever I can get to the Post Office. An update on the Focus Blocks will be given during tomorrow Livestream!

See you then!

May 13, 2025

DIY + AI = 0.0 x ZZZs

May 13, 2025/ Allan Walls

Greetings from the Bunker!

It has been another busy Monday, getting ready for another busy week. But it has already been a very productive one. I am delighted to say that I am very close to finishing up the printing and ready to begin the final assembly of TEN cross polarization platforms. This feels like a very important step as it seems to have taken an age to get through all this printing. Everything has gone quite smoothly and I managed to find the time to write a detailed instruction manual for the crystal viewer. I would expect to have this batch mailed out by the end of the week, after which both my printer and I will be taking a short break before getting started on the next batch. I thought you might be interested in looking over the instruction sheet so I am posting that separately. This sheet would be very helpful to anyone who is planning to print their own viewer.

To say I underestimated the time and cost of making these things would be a massive understatement - my printer has gone through three spools of filament in a solid week of round the clock printing. The sudden addition of huge import fees (tariff penalties charged directly back to the customer) caused a tripling of my costs for all the parts I order from China - I can’t afford to buy the same parts from a US supplier because they cost over five times as much here. Anyway, it got real expensive, real quick. But I am a man of my word and the folks that ordered this first batch of viewers will have their orders fulfilled for the price promised.

You would think that, as the only supplier of self contained cross polarizing birefringence viewing and photography platforms on the planet (that I am aware of), I should be able to make and sell the things to make a little profit. It is testament to my limited business acumen (very limited) that the completion of my first round of sales will leave me squarely in the red - it normally takes me months to get into debt with a business venture! The viewers have turned out very nice, with all the upgrades. If you are on the list to get one, you will not be disappointed.

The news for those awaiting completion of their Olympus microscope conversions is even better! There were two major problems hindering the completion of the four machines sitting on my desk. The first was that 3/4 of the focus blocks had badly damaged fine focus drive systems, with bent focus shafts and stripped gears. I had thought this problem was fixed when I ordered some replacement steel tubing (from China) and started printing the tiny gears that needed to be replaced. But the tubes turned out to be 4.0mm in diameter, not the 3.97mm (5/32”) that I needed - I would not have thought that an extra 0.03mm (30 microns) would have been enough to prevent a steel shaft from passing through a 40 year old bushing - but it is.

I found some tubing of the correct size but its walls were either too thin or two thick to properly tap them for the 3mm screw that secures them into the focus knobs. I broke all my 3mm taps trying. I could not drill out the thicker walled tubes either. None of my small bits could handle the hardened steel of the tubes. Just as I was getting desperate, the last order of Chinese tubes arrived and they were the perfect size. They fit in the bushings and had walls just the right thickness to handle the 3mm taps that arrived from China in the same shipment. So at the last moment I was able to put together 3 fully functional and perfectly straight shaft assemblies.

But that was not the biggest issue - the real problem was that I had somehow messed up my measurements when making a drilling template for transferring the hole positions from the motor bracket to the wall of the focus block - the holes were all about 2mm away from where they needed to be for the motor bracket to clear the course focus knobs of the focus block. This was a big deal because the only solution that I could see was to reprint all four motor housings - a huge task that took 23 hours and a spool of filament. And I wasn’t even sure I could redesign the mount with sufficient accuracy to get the mounts aligned perfectly with the holes. Then this morning I had an idea. I don’t know what this is called, if it even has a name, but this printed piece was what I had come up with.

It fits perfectly over the base of the unmodified cage and holds it in exactly the right position to clear the focus knobs while allowing me to reposition the mounting holes to a new part of the microscope body. And they work perfectly! Of all the cool gadgets I have made with this printer, this mount adapter is by far the most satisfying.

So, with the microscopes dismantled, deep cleaned and fully reconditioned, I can finish the final assembly and get them all tested and ready for shipping in the next few days - I hope. I have learned more from these two projects than I could ever have thought possible. This kind of problem solving is why I love this part of my work so much. You should give it a try! Time to change gears and tell you about this week’s programming…

The coming week is going to be very interesting. I have been thinking a lot about how the exploding field of artificial intelligence is starting to change everything, and I mean everything. Of course, I am most interested in getting myself up to speed on how it might impact me as a photographer. I have found some new applications for this technology that have shocked even me. So I decided it was time to do an AI update for macro photographers - and before you remind me that I did this only a few months ago, I think an update is long overdue. So on Tuesday’s Macro Talk, at 8PM, I am going to let you know about a few developments that could have a hugely positive impact on us as both amateur and professional photographers. I will be introducing you to five new applications for large Language Model-based AIs and showing you how close they are to upsetting “business as usual” in the world of macro. I don’t want to spoil the fun by telling you about these things ahead of time, but make it on Tuesday, if you can. Here is a link to the stream. https://youtube.com/live/i9fl4bbIMxI?feature=share

Following on from that we are going to look a little closer into how a relatively new kind of application that uses existing technologies to create AI Assistants, could make us better photographers. It is going to be a contentious discussion, I suspect, but there is a lot to talk about and getting the questions asked is a good start. Here is your link to Macro Talk Too, Thursday at 2PM. https://youtube.com/live/o6Vur5r1zZM?feature=share

Holding to our theme for the week, I will be bringing another controversial topic to the AfterStack conversation on Saturday morning at 10AM. I will propose an entirely new approach to photographic post-production and, by extension, photographic training, This is going to be charged discussion but one that we are going to have to have sooner or later - what comes next. We already rely quite heavily on AI to help us edit our images. So what else is right around the corner, or in some cases, right here, right now? Sure to ruffle a few feathers, this discussion needs to be had and on Saturday we do just that! Here is your invitation…

Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: AfterStack with Bud Perrott and Allan Walls - Episode 23

Time: May 17, 2025 10:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6916802815?pwd=TS9tZi9ZL1NXeVUvOUF4eTg5YjdlZz09&omn=85292399173

Meeting ID: 691 680 2815

Passcode: 678122

So with a lot of controversy on the horizon, let’s get into it tonight and see what has changed with machine intelligence since we last talked.

I hope you enjoyed last week’s Stereo conversation and learned enough to try your hand, wowing our celebrity judge with your stereo images! I can’t wait to see what you all come up with!

Please try to make it tonight and let’s get this week of AI off to a good start!

And don’t forget to check out the instruction piece for the new crystal viewer - it is the next post after this.

One of my favorite crystals - top secret recipe

All the best,

Allan

January 27, 2025

The Robots are Coming!

January 27, 2025/ Allan Walls

Hello everyone!

It is Monday, January 27th and the beginning of another exciting week in the world of macro. Since partially resolving my computer issues, at the end of last week and with one more trip to Chicago, I have had a little time to catch up on some reading. And these days, most of my reading has been on the subject of Artificial Intelligence, particularly as it relates to macro photography and art in general. There is a lot going on and some of it is very exciting - Like China’s ChatGPT competitor - supposedly better and much cheaper than our own version. But anyway, I felt like it was time for an update and I am also going to use this opportunity to demonstrate some of the remarkable advances in ChatGPT. I have not decided on the exact programming for the two streams this week, but I will be doing a demo of the new advanced voice capabilities of ChatGPT in one or possibly both of them. This will be a lot of fun and may surprise you!

Macro talk is at 8PM on Tuesday and the link is here - https://youtube.com/live/z82lLYFOUys?feature=share

Macro Talk Too is on Thursday at 2PM and the link for that show is here - https://youtube.com/live/pRJeJNZo8Pg?feature=share

AfterStack 15 was this past Saturday but I have run into some technical problems uploading the video. I will let you know if and when I get it posted.

This coming weekend will see another Pzoom meeting - all Patreon Subscribers are invited to drop by! If you attend my Zoom gatherings but have not had a chance to introduce yourself, you are invited to do so this weekend - bring some of your images and tell us abut yourself and your macro photography (or anything else you want to tell us). This is always a lot of fun and something I really look forward to .

AK Diffuser Update

Later this week I will be meeting with Zamir Pena of AK Diffuser fame for an informal conversation to be published next week. I’m very much looking forward to this talk.

Competition

Also on the horizon is the January Competition - “Mechanisms” - deadline to enter is midnight on Friday - don’t miss the chance to enter. I am also looking for a Guest Judge - actually, I have already chosen one but am waiting for an answer. Fingers crossed!

I am changing the way I handle private lessons…

Private Lessons

I have decided it is time to update my policies regarding private teaching. I have been taking private students since this channel launched, about six years ago. I love teaching one-on-one and am very proud of the amazing work many of my students have gone on to produce. I love the work with almost the same passion that I hate the part where I have to ask for payment. As a result, I have almost never asked to be paid for my time and work. This is a terrible business practice that would surely have destroyed the channel were it not for the generosity and thoughtfulness of many of my students, who paid me anyway.

With the costs of keeping the channel operational, not to mention the rapidly rising cost of living, I have to make some changes to how I do this. The first step will be to lay out my new policy for private tutoring and explain how we are going to handle billing for my services. Private tutoring is expensive, partly because I am a decent teacher with a lot of experience, but also because my time is in very limited supply. My hourly rate for photography services in general is $200/hour, which is a little lower than that of my contemporaries. This is also my hourly rate for personal instruction. My day job (running this channel, and all that involves) takes up almost every waking hour of my week - and this is work that is not compensated. The channel has survived because of the generous support of a small group of Patreon Supporters, and the occasional donations made by other like-minded benefactors. This has never been sufficient monthly income to support the channel but I have always been able to make up any shortfall from my own savings. But as those funds are slowly dwindling, something else is going to be needed and it is for these reasons that I have decided to create this new policy.

I am limited in the number of students I can have at any given time, and I will always give priority to my Patreon Supporters. As long as I have available teaching slots, not already taken by Patreon Supporters, I will take new students. My hourly rate is $200 for non-Patreon Supporters. My Patreon Supporters receive a 50% discount for every lesson with no limit. Additionally any Patreon Supporter will have their first monthly session discounted by the amount of their monthly donation to the channel. For example, a Patreon Supporter paying $40 per month who wishes to have two one-hour lessons each month will only be charged $60 for the first hour and $100 for the second. I think these are very attractive prices and hopefully the added discount will attract a few new Patreon subscribers to the fold.

Payment will be expected at the time of the lesson and can be made using Venmo, the CashApp, or by PayPal. I am also open to other methods of electronic payment upon request. If you are interested in private lessons but cannot manage these prices, I will continue to provide instruction to small groups of 2-3 students at the price of a single student - not ideal, but for students at about the same level, it can be a lot of fun and very effective.

Active and Retired Military

I am also starting something new - I am going to set aside two hours every month for two private tutoring sessions for active or retired military. These sessions will be on a first come, first served basis but scheduling priority will be given to active duty and disabled veterans. I will make sure that every serviceman or servicewoman requesting a lesson will get one. If you know of anyone who might benefit from this opportunity, encourage them to contact me directly. To request a session, send me a message through the Walls-app, including your name, contact information, service branch and status, and what you are interested in learning about and I will get back to you. This invitation is not limited to the US military - if you have served or are serving anywhere, for any nation, you are eligible.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask. If you are interested in private instruction, but are not a member of Patreon, please consider joining - the website is https://www.Patreon.com/allanwallsphotography.

For those who are already part of the Patreon family - your link for Saturday’s Zoom is over on the Patreon site!

Thank you and I hope to see you at one of the upcoming Livestreams, where you will finally get to meet and talk to my personal assistant!

December 02, 2024

Lester Returns and the 2024 Gift Guide

December 02, 2024/ Allan Walls

Eye of a mosquito - a reminder of warmer times

Well it is definitely that time of year again. I woke up this morning to find the ground covered in a mysterious white substance, very cold to the touch (I have been told), and not uncommon enough in this part of Middle Earth. So, one of the ways the people of Illinois survive this insult to the senses is by planning for the coming winter holiday season. In the south, our planning was usually put off until Christmas Eve, or earlier if a cold snap forced the temperatures down into the low 60s, reminding us of the coming festivities. But here we are, covered in deadly snow and still weeks to go before families once again gather at the dining table to scream at each other. With the excitement and anticipation at a fever pitch in all the local drugstores, where Christmas music started just before Easter, I feel like I would be remiss were I not to do my holiday macro gift guide livestreams early this year.

In trying to think up a way to make the guides a little more fun this year I have decided to split them into two distinctly different offerings. On Tuesday, in Macro Talk, I will be focusing on a comprehensive list of all the really practical and useful things that every macro photographer could use and should have in their kit bag or studio. It makes for a long and interesting list of really cool ideas. I will go through the list and explain why I think these are items that should be on your list for 2024. Spoiler alert - I have included links to every one of these items below - if you don’t want to know what I am going to be suggesting, don’t read the rest of this post! The link to the stream is here - https://youtube.com/live/_3iZvU8qO8k?feature=share

Thursday’s list is a completely different matter - it is a list of all the stuff we really want to get for Christmas, but know there is no real chance that we will. But it will still be fun to talk about the gift guide for the macro photographer who already has everything they could ever need. Think of it as the ultimate macro wish list for 2024. Here is a link to the Livestream, Macro Talk Too - https://youtube.com/live/IXj8a-lZWtE?feature=share

Tomorrow I will also be releasing the second half of the Lester Lefkowitz interview, in which Lester goes over the high points of the second volume of his “Guide to Close-up and Macro Photography”. Here is the link to the video, which will not be posted until 10AM on Tuesday 12/3/24. https://youtu.be/UGfMHtmxyuU

To order a copy of Lester’s books, go to Lester’s website, https://www.macrophotographer.net, and follow the instructions. The video is a long one but it is worth watching as it is packed full of fun and interesting information and Lester is in excellent form - don’t miss it!

Also released today was episode 11 of the AfterStack series in which we talked all abut the custom brush tool in Photoshop - loads of good information in this one! The video link is - https://youtu.be/gj6Mb0HMZkA?si=oMIkNFCQRTD0H3SK

This is a Pzoom weekend so on Saturday I will be hosting a discussion for my Patreon supporters - I am still working on the agenda, but it promises to be another entertaining and educational macro photography feast. Your invitation to this event is posted on the Allan Walls Photography Patreon page. I will see at 10AM this Saturday. There is no Tangent this week.

I was disappointed to miss my livestream on Thursday, but it was for a good reason - I was in Indianapolis for Thanksgiving with my eldest daughter, Lauren, and I had a lovely time with her. Unfortunately, it is starting to look like the Christmas week is also going to see a schedule disruption as I will be in rural Tennessee for that holiday. I just learned that internet is provided by some kind of satellite link, which probably means a download speed of <1.0MBPD (mega bites per day) and an upload speed considerably slower. That would be no fun for you or me, so unless I can find a way around it, I may have to take that week off completely. I will let you know if I come up with a better plan.

I am still trying to get the competition plan tied up for this month - I want to find a way to split the prizes between experienced photographers and relative newcomers The problem is that all the handicap[ping ides that I have had would require that I know who has placed in the top ten in previous competitions, but that would take me going back through every competition video I have done in the last 3 or 4 years, and I don’t know when I will be able to do that but I think I will have no other choice. The way things stand now, there are going to be two groups - Group I - those who have ever made it to one of the the top three places at least once and everyone who has placed in the final 10 two or more times , and 2) everyone else.

As promised here is a list of every prize that has been donated for this giant 2-month competition, along with the names of the donors, so far - I will contuse to accept donations right up to the last week of December - so if you have a new or gently used piece of kit that you no longer need, and think would make an attractive prize, please let me know right away. You can also go ahead and send the prize to my studio as soon as you can, so that I can get your name on the list of donors without delay. My address is:

Allan Walls Photography

2417 West Wagner Lane

Peoria, Illinois 61615

Here are the prizes and donors we currently have:

1) Volume I and II of Lester Lefkowitz’s excellent book “Guide to Closeup and Macro Photography:”, signed by the author - donor - Lester Lefkowitz

2) Volume I of Lester Lefkowitz’s excellent book “Guide to Closeup and Macro Photography:”, signed by the author - donor - Lester Lefkowitz

3) Volume II of Lester Lefkowitz’s excellent book “Guide to Closeup and Macro Photography:”, signed by the author - donor - Lester Lefkowitz

4) Datacolor’s Spider X Studio color calibration suite - donor - anonymous

5) 360° Flex Tilt & Pan Head - Z&V Mount Designed with Alyn Wallace, from Move Shoot Move - donor - Paul Maschak

6) Two, 5-day macro photography getaways to the Buffalo National River area of Arkansas with full accommodations - donor - Mr and Mrs. George Simpkins

7) A 3-hour private macro photography lesson package - with me - you set the agenda

8) A Sigma 105mm f/2.8 macro lens (F-mount) - donor - Alan Recktenwald

I think there will be a couple of additional prizes - stay tuned!

*********************************

WARNING - do not read any further unless you want to see the entire holiday gift guide! Listed below are links to every item discussed in the gift guide livestreams scheduled for Tuesday and Thursday of this week. Some of these links, though not all, are affiliate links, which means I may make a small fee when you complete a purchase using one of these links. Now you know!

These are not strictly in the order presented in the livestreams - but close. They should all be in here though.

1) the Laowa 100mm f/2.8 2:1 Macro lens - the one that started it all! https://amzn.to/41eZuo5

2) Laowa 90mm f/2.8 2:1 Macro Lens - the one that I fell for this year. https://amzn.to/3ZjfD9h

3) The wonderful Nikon Z-8 - if you have to ask… https://amzn.to/3CXRYnC

4) Raynox DCR 250 - you already have the DCR 150 - isn’t it time you tried short focus with this bargain beauty? https://bhpho.to/3VjmiPV

5) Godox MF12 macro flashes - nothing more to be said - https://bhpho.to/3OCkLk7 or. https://bhpho.to/3OCkLk7

6) Aputure Amaran AL-M9 mini LED - tiny and powerful - a great little light! - $72 - https://amzn.to/4gaE5Aw

7) SmallRig RM01 mini lighting kit - you need to check this one out - very handy https://bhpho.to/3OCkLk7

8) Manfrotto BeFree tripod - light and compact - https://amzn.to/49l4xoR

9) Platypod Extreme - I want one of these! - https://bhpho.to/4fU0Zwx

10) Novoflex Magic Ball- the best of the best - https://bhpho.to/4ff72Lw

11) K&F Concept - variable ND filter - a very useful tool - https://amzn.to/4gjboSl

12) Lowepro Slingshot Edge 250AW - a great sling bag when you don’t need the whole backpack - https://amzn.to/3VmlcCN

13) Think Tank Pixel Pocket Rocket - the best memory card holder - https://amzn.to/3ZAeziM

14) An awesome bubble level for your macro rig - https://amzn.to/3ZkPhUm

15) Manfrotto Still Life Table - a clever way to shoot indoors - https://amzn.to/4eZSRZW

16) WeMacro Rail - the best bargain in macro-land - Still only $300 - https://www.wemacro.com/?product=wemacro-rail

17) Mitutoyo M-Plan infinity corrected mic cryoscope objectives - the best high end optics for photography - https://www.edmundoptics.com/p/5x-mitutoyo-plan-apo-infinity-corrected-long-wd-objective/6621/?srsltid=AfmBOorjXv4tSqGxZjXGmsWWMkaczq6hh78eVCi1yHeHMMs4cRU8duw_

18) Zerene Stacker - the best Focus Stacking program on the planet - https://www.zerenesystems.com/cms/stacker

19) Godox SL60W continuous light - a powerful addition to the studio - https://amzn.to/49gEejG

20) Swift SW380T Microscope - A reliable entry level scope for photographers - https://amzn.to/4iiFAP5

21) Hoya polarizing filters - a must for birefringent crystal photography - https://amzn.to/3ZxqwG4

22) B&W close up filter set - a great option for macro beginners - https://bhpho.to/3Zw3jUG

23) Fotodiox Reversing Adapter - you don’t have one?!?! https://amzn.to/3OWGPpX

24) Lensbaby OpticSwap macro kit - https://amzn.to/3COWOTV

25) Prusa mark 4S ($729) - https://www.prusa3d.com/product/original-prusa-mk4s-3d-printer-kit/. or Prusa core one kit ($949) https://www.prusa3d.com/product/prusa-core-one-kit/

26) Datacolor SpyderX2 - my calibrator - https://bhpho.to/3B7TEua

27) Lensalign Focus Calibration System - https://amzn.to/3VmrylD

28) Pelican 1510 - indestructible - https://amzn.to/3CW2WKg

28) Dehumidifiers - mine are still going after 10 years from Wisesorb - https://amzn.to/3B9KOMm

29) Smartphone microscope mount from Tridaptor ($47) - https://amzn.to/3OIFoLj

30) Insect Display case - https://amzn.to/4fVk6pN

31) Micropipette - awesome buy - https://amzn.to/4f6QULC

32) Fog Machine - handheld from Ulanzi - https://amzn.to/419xxhw

33) Water Drop Kit - Miops splash - https://amzn.to/3ZxKIY9

34) Books - separate video topic - macro texts, field guides, insect books, general photography

35) Memberships - entomologic society, local or online photography club, etc.

36) Courses and workshops - Bugshot, Paul Williams, Stewart Wood, Macro workshop in Costa Rica (Macro Wild Photo).

37) Trips galore - links in livestream

Camera Bag Essentials

1) a really good flashlight - Surefire EDC-2 - Dual Fuel - $200 - https://amzn.to/3VlgEwJ

2) the best multitool - Leatherman ARC $229 - https://amzn.to/4gjj4nz

3) Water holder - Lowepro $37 - https://amzn.to/3OAbVmL

4) Power bank - Anker 27,650mAhr - $129 - https://amzn.to/4ggjo6l

5) Batteries - the best 18650s you can buy - Molicel P28B - https://www.18650batterystore.com/products/molicel-p28b-18650-2800mah-40a-battery

6) UV light - fox fury Rook NDT UV - https://bhpho.to/3OBLNbh

7) Koala microfiber cloths - https://amzn.to/3OAwTSz

8) Sophia Rose poncho - the best - https://amzn.to/4eYaqJV

9) Lens pen - from LensPen - https://amzn.to/3Vk4rbu

10) - Kiwiphoto 18650 box - https://amzn.to/41l5D2h

11) Fenix HM 65R headlamp - https://amzn.to/3BlXMql

There may be more, but we shall have to wait for tomorrow’s stream to see - this has been a long 14 hours of work and I am going cross-eyed. Hope to see you tomorrow evening!

Allan

November 26, 2024

The Other Thanksgiving

November 26, 2024/ Allan Walls

A different take on the Thanksgiving holiday

November 26, 2024

Best Macro Stuff from 2024 - So Far...

November 26, 2024/ Allan Walls

A look at the week ahead and the year just passed…

November 12, 2024

Complaint Department - please take a number...

November 12, 2024/ Allan Walls

Good afternoon everyone. I read somewhere that it is never a good idea to start a discussion with an apology. That may well be true, but I feel compelled to do so, anyway. I am sorry if this post sounds a little defensive. Rest assured that it only sounds that way because I really am feeling a little defensive.

I’m not having a great day. I got a call last night telling me that some of my supporters were talking about withdrawing their support. This is obviously the last thing I wanted to hear, and not knowing exactly what the issues were, I cancelled my dinner plans and headed back home to find out. As far as I can discern, the problem is with my choices of programming - what I talk about in my livestreams, Pzoom meetings, videos, articles, and other content. On digging a little further it soon became clear that some viewers thought that I had lost my direction and that some of my content did not interest them. I have done a lot of soul searching in the ensuing hours, and this short post will tell you my reaction and what I am going to do about it.

Yes - the new microscope has got me making crystal art again!

For clarity, I want to spell out something I don’t say often enough - there are a bunch of reasons I love my work, but the most important, by far, is the people that I do it for. You are what gets me up in the morning, and keeps me up late into the night. I have the best audience on YouTube - smart, motivated, kind, and determined people who take my work seriously. I am profoundly grateful, and humbled, by having a core group of long-time supporters that see the value in what I do and contribute through Patreon and in other ways, to keep me doing it. I love what I do, and I love the people that I do it for.

I have a strange job. It doesn’t come with a job description, or co-workers to show you the ropes. It doesn’t offer benefits, vacation time, or a regular paycheck. The job requires a strong work ethic, some creativity, and a lot of stamina. When you start doing this work, you don’t know exactly what to do, or, for that matter, how to do it. But if you stick with it long enough, it all starts to fall into place. Eventually, you even get to write your own job description - mine is “… to educate, entertain, and inspire photographers of all levels who share a common interest in close-up and macro photography.”. This is what I do, and most of the time, I think I do a decent job. The first part, educating interested adults, is not too difficult, because I am myself passionate about macro photography and am constantly learning and improving my own technique, while looking for exciting new ways to push our boundaries and tap rich new veins of creativity. Having been an educator of motivated adults for my entire professional life, this is something that comes without too much effort, but is just as personally rewarding as it ever was.

Entertaining adults is another matter, and I make no claim to expertise in this realm. While making content that is timely, accurate, clear and concise can be challenging, it is much harder, and a great deal more risky, to produce content that is also entertaining. For starters, even in the context of a livestream, it is virtually impossible to know if your audience is “getting” it. I have a strange sense of humor - too much Gary Larson during my formative years probably has something to do with it - and a lot of the things I find hilarious may not have the same impact on you. But unless someone comes out and says, “Hey Allan. That’s not funny.”, I just can’t tell if it’s working. So I do what we all do and rely on my own internal reaction to decide if something entertains me and, if it does, I just go with it, and hope it will work for you too. Sometimes I get it right, sometimes I don’t, but I’m not sure I will ever really know how to do it consistently.

I have no idea why I find this stuff so mind-blowing

I think I know where I stand with these first two elements of my job description - I know how to teach and don’t know how to entertain - and this is good because the knowledge guides me and keeps me out of trouble, most of the time. It is the third element, I think, that may be the root of the problem. I like to think that the content presented on my channel, the videos I make, the livestream discussions we have, the photographers that I interview, and even the gear that we review, all have the potential to inspire someone in the audience to try something new, branch out, or get out of their comfort zone. And if that is indeed true, then it is an awesome responsibility and should be treated as such. I look at it like this - the people who want to learn macro photography come to my channel to be taught. With a bit of luck, they will leave here with a better understanding or a new skill. The folks who come to be entertained will either be entertained and maybe come back again, or they will not - but the process is passive - they either receive entertainment or they don’t.

But when someone comes to the channel unsure what they are looking for but with an open mind, then there is chance that they may see or hear something that inspires them - and when that happens there isn opportunity for them to leave with a new passion. And that is the most important thing that I can do for any of you.

I guess you had to be there - never shot crystals? You are missing out on some serious fun!

A few months ago I was planning to do a series of videos on the largely untouched topic of medium format macro photography (it never materialized). This month I have talked about light microscopes and how they are utilized in macro photography, with some content on where to find them and how to buy them. Then, just last week I mentioned my plans to devote one hour a month, for one year, to scanning electron microscopy as a tool for macro photography. What do all three of these items have in common? Well all three are hardly ever talked about in relation to macro photography, for one. They are also all fascinating and may help us understand the extreme limits of macro imaging like never before. I selected each of these topics because they are off the beaten path, because they will enrich our experience and expand our knowledge, because the content that results will be entertaining and fresh, and because they just might inspire someone to do something fantastic! Back in the real world, these were the three subjects cited as evidence of my loss of direction. I had the impression that some people felt betrayed, and I guess I can understand that. They came here to learn about macro photography and now I’m wasting their time with off-topic esoterica. They might be right, but I don’t think so. For all the reasons outlined above, I think this material is important for macro photographers, in much the same way that understanding the geography of a region can help us understand the region’s history. I wouldn’t talk about it if I didn’t believe in my hear that it would educate, entertain, and inspire my audience.

I’m thinking about making a book of crystal images

So what am I going to do… I am going to do exactly what I have been doing for the last six years. I am going to make the best content that I possibly can, on subjects that I think will be educational, entertaining, and inspirational to my community of macro photography enthusiasts. I will continue to invite you, at every opportunity, to tell me what you want to learn about, and when you do, I will adjust my programming accordingly. I know that I cannot please everyone, all the time… but I can try. One last thought before I move on - they say the squeaky wheel is the one that gets the oil, but whoever came up with that one doesn’t build as many gadgets as I do - when one wheel starts squeaking, it is a good idea to oil them all. Which is why…

… Tuesday’s Livestream is a Q&A where we talk about what you want to see on the channel, what I cover in the Livestreams, the subjects for videos, and anything else you want to bring up. I want it be super-productive so I will be coming with a few questions of my own, things that will help me get to the heart of what you want to see. I will not be bringing any prepared material but I will have some amazing pictures and video to show, if we get the chance. I am having some serious epiphanies working with the new microscope. So, if you can make it tomorrow, please come and come prepared to help me chart the course forward for Tuesday’s Macro Talk. The link is - https://youtube.com/live/47k0qfJ5r-g?feature=share

Thursday will be a similar arrangement because I need to hear from my Euro-pals as well. Macro Talk Too will be the same format, but I’ll have different photographs to share and different questions to ask.And, by the way, both of these streams are also macro Q&As, so bring any questions about gear, technique, your rig, or anything else. It’s your hour, so please plan on being there. Your link is here - https://youtube.com/live/kdeJwwrgDC8?feature=share

So, if there is no Pzoom meeting there must be and AfterStack, right? Correct - 10AM Saturday, 11/16/24 on Zoom is AfterStack 10. Several people have asked for more basic AfterStack episodes, and after some good feedback from the Clone Stamp discussion in Episode 9, Bud and I will take turns leading the discussion on alternating weeks. So #10 will be Bud’s and he is going to present some information about Smart Objects. As always, it helps us to have your pictures in advance, so please send me or Bud any photographs you want help with, and be sure to tell us what you are having problems with and how we can help. I will be taking Episode 11, so let me know what tool or process you want to discuss. When you send in a picture please add the episode number you want it discussed during.

You will need this invite to access AfterStack - Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Allan Walls’ AfterStack 10

Time: Nov 16, 2024 10:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6916802815?pwd=TS9tZi9ZL1NXeVUvOUF4eTg5YjdlZz09&omn=85799123411

Meeting ID: 691 680 2815

Passcode: 678122

For my Patreon Supporters

There is no Patreon meeting this week, but I will post the recording link on the Patreon page in a little while (definitely today though) - this was a particularly interesting meeting and if you missed it you should check it out. Let me remind everyone on Patreon that the Pzoom recordings are only available for one month after the show, BUT, if it contains something that you might want to have in the future, you can download it to your computer and keep it for as long as you like.

Thank you to my Patreon Supporters - This channel only exists because of your support!

Note on the photographs - all of the images in this post are crystals made for this purpose and photographed on my Nikon D7500, mounted directly to the camera port of my Nikon Diaphot. The cross polarization was accomplished using a homemade set of filter adapters. This is a really exciting experience, working with such a lovely piece of equipment, and I thought you might like to see what it can do!

November 04, 2024

Contests, Auctions, & Microscopes

November 04, 2024/ Allan Walls

This months contest and the week ahead…

October 07, 2024

Fall for Macro

October 07, 2024/ Allan Walls

Fall is here - now what?

Blog

How We Learn

A Rant on Shipping

What Happened to the Shipping Industry?

Photography and Agentic AI

Turning Eight Years of Work Into a Living System

The Problem: When Creation Outpaces Organization

The Week Ahead

Order, Disorder, and the Macro Mind

The Robots are Coming

How Photography Dies - Ten More Years

The Power of Light: Photography & the Healthy Mind

A New Diffuser, Photographing Coins, & Catching Snakes

300 Livestreams!

Meet Kelly Boesch - an Extraordinary Talent

Screw-ups & Gadgets

The Ethics of Macro

DIY + AI = 0.0 x ZZZs

The Robots are Coming!

AK Diffuser Update

Competition

Active and Retired Military

Lester Returns and the 2024 Gift Guide

Camera Bag Essentials

The Other Thanksgiving

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Allan Walls Photography, LLC

205-515-3494

Fairhope, Alabama

contact@allanwallsphotography.com