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Along For The Ride
6 December 2016
Just off Sixth Avenue in on the north side of Golden Gate Park there is a special asphalt area set aside for roller skating. A big speaker sits inside the painted oval playing dance music and inside the oval a few people are always doing line dancing while others zoom around the outside of the oval.
Along For The Ride. Golden Gate Park roller skaters.
You can see a couple of line dancers discussing things (like why they always end up farther back than where they started) but you'll probably be distracted by the lady in red riding a polar bear around.
Notice that her knees bend just at the bear's hips and her fake gray legs don't at all look too small for her upper body. The illusion is convincing.
So how were we going to get a snapshot out of that video?
Every time she came around, we had to laugh.
This image is a frame from the video we shot with an iPhone 6 Plus. Why did we shoot a video? Because 1) she was skating (you know, moving around) and 2) we didn't want to draw any attention to ourselves.
So how were we going to get a snapshot out of that video?
We opened the clip in Photoshop CC 2017 (which can handle video formats too), scrubbed to the frame we wanted and copied it to a new file. That image was enhanced using the Camera Raw filter, adding Clarity, opening up the Shadows and darkening if not quite recovering the highlights a bit.
We particularly like the way her shadow falls behind her and the bemused look of the woman trailing her.
That bear doesn't look put out at all. We're pretty sure he could do another lap without even breaking a sweat.