Concrete and Campus
Jake hurried across the quad, late for his Cconomics class, when a loud crash made him jump. He turned to see a hard hat rolling towards him from the nearby construction site. A tall, muscular worker jogged over, looking sheepish.
“Sorry about that,” the worker said, bending to retrieve his hat. “Wind caught it.”
Jake found himself staring at the worker’s tanned, strong arms. “No worries,” he managed to say. “I’m Jake.”
The worker smiled, revealing dimples. “Matt. Nice to meet you, Jake.”
Images
Tech
I employed a multipass workflow to create this image.
- Flux Pro. First, I generated the image with the Flux Pro model via Replicate API. I used Python to access this image to eliminate the limitations on the web UI.
- Detail + Fixes. The original renders were great, but I improved the detail and articulation of the brush strokes by further processing using subtle image generation via the Fooocus Hyper SD workflow with Vibrant Horizon Turbo XL. This improves the overall detail and it fixed some minor artifacts from the original Flux Pro renders. I will write a more detailed explanation in the future.
- Fooocus Upscale. Using Fooocus upscale with the same model allows additional detail to be added using the same model. This can expand to 2048x2048.
- Topaz Upscale. The image was further upscaled using Topaz Gigapixel AI. This puts resolution to 8192x8194.
- Adobe Lightroom. The image was then tweaked for light and shadows. My approach with AI is similar to how I approach photography — following the philosophy of Ansel Adams, I try to keep everything as close to possible in the camera (AI in this case), but make adjustments in the darkroom (Photoshop and Lightroom in this case)
Notes
When I told a friend recently that construction workers always had a place in my heart, he thought that it was purely imaginary. But you see, for me, they really happened.
Art is the ultimate therapy — to express emotions and feelings long lost in the subconscious but yet yearning to get out.
A lot of things that I depicted in my images were things that happened in my past that I don’t talk about. The men obviously did’t look like what’s depicted, but the contexts and situations occurred. A lot of seemingly impossible scenarios happened while I was in college. As someone who is adventurous, I keep the same “what if” and “why not” spirit when it comes to life.
How nice is it to let go of the analytical brain from studying — to let go and be held?
Let go and be free!
Construction Series
- 2Brotherhood
- 4Sleeping
- 5Greek Temple Builders
- 6Custom LoRA gdmjley
- 7Flux Pro + Fooocus