When we think of art from antiquity it is often in the drab grey of the marble statues. It has been known for a while that Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans would paint their statues up in garish colors no matter how much we think of classical shapes carved from stone. Ultraviolet light is helping map those colors.

Given the ubiquitous nature of photoshop and how accessible and easy it is now, any picture that appears on a magazine or on the internet I am dismissive of with; "Yeh that is photoshopped." My wife disagrees with me. She still has a touch of romance to her in this area. She also doesn't work in tech and isn't exposed to the constant photoshopping that occurs with any image.

We watched The September Issue on netflix recently. One of the final shoots they did they have the camera man that had been following them around jump in the air while he was being photographed. They then had a model jump in the air. They put those two photographs together in real time on film and then bled the two together. It took a total of about fifteen seconds. Leaving me convinced that everything is photoshopped.

Recently on the do it yourself photographer sights, people have been doing photo shoots with iPhones etc. However, they still have all the professional lighting. The results of the shoot look good of course. Another site decided to do the photo shoot with stuff that is on hand to an amateur photographer around the house.

They used natural lighting, a lamp, a point and click camera and someone's mate rather than a model. However, the last half of the video is a bunch of photoshopping to make the image look good.

Everything is photoshopped. It appears to be a new digital law.

We went and saw the South West Shakespeare Company's Richard The Third at Mesa this weekend. It was very well done. I enjoyed the play and was able to follow the events relatively closely. Like the historical nature of the Wars of the Roses where it is hard to remember who is how in the continually changing factions and noble names that mix first names and locations, it was the same in the play. Who was related to whom was difficult to work out.

Shakespeare did a bit of a hatchet job on Richard of Gloucester. He wasn't the hunch backed cripple in real life that Shakespeare makes him out to be, partly for propaganda purposes and partly for dramatic reasons. Richard was a successful general in his time and well respected in the north of England. He did make a run at the crown, successfully so, but the War of the Roses was all about two families juggling who was going to reign as monarchs. So that is not unusual.

One of the benefits of living in a modern democracy with a separate judicial system to the executive is that it mostly negates arbitrary executive decisions that have the force of law. In medieval times in England it was not uncommon for a monarch to get paranoid and arbitrarily decide to imprison and behead someone for no reason.

Usually a bill of attainder followed it through parliament where the person summarily found guilty of treason has all their lands confiscated from them and given to the crown or other nobles who are currently in the monarch's favor.

This is not much different from the Roman proscription where wealthy land owners were claimed as enemies of the state and their lands were confiscated by the state and their wealth ended up in the treasury. Augustus and Mark Antony used this to fund their military during the civil wars after the death of Caesar.

In the case of William Hastings he, along with Morton and Rotherham were accused of being traitors by Richard at a meeting. Hastings was taken outside immediately and beheaded on a log in the green outside. It was essentially a coup to remove anyone that could oppose Richard's plan to make himself King over the two young princes.

Richard was finally defeated at the Battle of Bosworth after surviving a couple of coups and conspiracies against his rule. Bosworth is odd in that several armies turned up to the field, but until a final swirling battle involving Richard and Henry Tudor it was not know what side the army of Lord Stanley was going to support.

When Richard charged Tudor's small group of men after Lord Oxford had blunted a charge by Lord Norfolk, the Stanley brothers finally chose sides and went to the aid of Henry Tudor. Richard ended up dieing on the battlefield fighting on horse, and then on foot until he finally fell. A very romantic and heroic death. There was one last battle at Stoke but the House of Tudor pretty much had the English monarchy after that.

We went to a Bob Carey exhibition at the Bokeh Gallery. Carey's photos were of him leaping around New York and Brooklyn in a pink tutu. Some of the photos are humorous, some absurd, but all are very colorful and eye catching. It was well worth seeing.

The blurb to the show said that he has had some interesting situations while photographing himself; such as being asked to leave a park as school was about to exit and posing for photographs with police. I guess a middle aged and overweight guy in a pink tutu will draw attention to himself. Bob Carey has a blog where he posts his daily images.