# This Week's Photography Hint . . .



## R. Doug

. . . is on The Rule of Thirds. Come read about the single most important rule for improving your photographs:

http://rdougwicker.com/2011/01/19/the-rule-of-thirds-its-not-just-a-rule-its-the-law/


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## R. Doug

Some pictures I took of Istanbul last Spring, should anyone be interested: http://rdougwicker.com/2011/01/21/istanbul-in-words-and-pictures/


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## telracs

May I just say that I hate it when someone says "You're camera takes great pictures"  or "You must have a really good camera."  My camera is nice, but I'm the one who decides what it shoots![

Thanks for listening.

And loved the Santorini pictures!


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## R. Doug

Ain't it the truth, Scarlet.  A camera is a tool, but it's the photographer who is the craftsman choosing the subject and composing that subject within the frame of the environment which surrounds it.

Glad you enjoyed the Santorini shots.  It's a beautiful island for photography, that's for sure.


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## telracs

I liked your rule of thirds blog, even if I kind of ignore it....

But gotta say, your snow one want right over my pretty little head.


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## R. Doug

OOOooo.  Too technical.  I'll have to watch that.  Thanks for pointing that out to me, Scarlet.  Really appreciate that.


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## ◄ Jess ►

I think the rule of thirds is a good tip, but hardly a law. Once you know what looks good that way, it's fun to play around and try different methods. The only rule I have in photography is to be decisive - have a reason for every part of the photograph.

I ask myself, why am I:
-focusing on that particular spot
-taking the picture at that height and from that direction
-using that aperture and shutter speed
-composing the subject in that manner
-using a particular lens/reflector/diffuser/tripod/whatever

The great thing about digital photography is that you can try so many different ideas so easily, but I believe every shot should have a reasoning behind it. Otherwise, you're just left with snapshots.


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## R. Doug

You are absolutely correct, Jessica.  That is why I will have a future tip titled, "Breaking the Law."


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## ◄ Jess ►

Looking forward to reading it!


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## R. Doug

Violating the Rule of Thirds: Breaking the LAW . . . and Getting Away With It!


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## The Hooded Claw

scarlet said:


> May I just say that I hate it when someone says "You're camera takes great pictures" or "You must have a really good camera."


If a successful writer ever says that to you, feel free to say to her...."Wow, your books are great! You must have a really good typewriter!"


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## The Hooded Claw

Regarding the previous comment, I realize that nobody writes on typewriters anymore (can you even get ribbons for them now?), but "Wow, you must have a great word processor!" just doesn't sound as snarky.


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## R. Doug

The Hooded Claw said:


> If a successful writer ever says that to you, feel free to say to her...."Wow, your books are great! You must have a really good typewriter!"


HaHaHaHaHa! Love it!


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## telracs

As usual, R. Doug, the photos you put in your blog are gorgeous, but due to my current mood, your reflection shot is my favorite....


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## R. Doug

Why, thank you very much, Scarlet.  Glad you approve, but sorry about your mood.  I assume you meant the reflection in red.  Anything I can do to help?


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## telracs

R. Doug said:


> Why, thank you very much, Scarlet. Glad you approve, but sorry about your mood. I assume you meant the reflection in red. Anything I can do to help?


oh, sorry, perhaps "mood" was the incorrect word. insert, "current obssession with reflections". and check out the photo effects thread for what happens when I start playing with reflections.


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## R. Doug

I saw those.  They were great.  I'll be covering reflection photography a little more in depth in Breaking the Law Part Two.


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## R. Doug

Reflecting on Photography.


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## telracs

R. Doug said:


> Reflecting on Photography.


wait.... this looks, oddly familiar.....


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## R. Doug

scarlet said:


> wait.... this looks, oddly familiar.....


Good eye . . . and memory. Yep, one's a repeat, as I thought it pertained to both articles. (I'll be getting back to you this weekend on that stuff you wanted me to take a look at, Scarlet; I haven't forgotten, just been swamped)


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## telracs

R. Doug said:


> Good eye . . . and memory. Yep, one's a repeat, as I thought it pertained to both articles. (I'll be getting back to you this weekend on that stuff you wanted me to take a look at, Scarlet; I haven't forgotten, just been swamped)


no problem, I figured life got in the way. and interesting how you blog about stuff that I'm working on (yes, scarlet is in a reflectory mood...)


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## R. Doug

Scarlet: Analysis sent.  Let me know what you think.


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## telracs

R. Doug said:


> Scarlet: Analysis sent. Let me know what you think.


Response sent. Gotta re-read it at home.

And thanks!


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## R. Doug

A Little Photo Clinic Work


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## telracs

R. Doug said:


> A Little Photo Clinic Work


what insurance do you take?


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## caseyf6

I am in love... 

I do photos for my work.  Sometimes when I go back and upload the photos, I'm lucky enough to say "hey, wow, that came out beautifully!".  But I didn't know what I "did" to create it on purpose.  Now I have a spot to go and find out more.

Thanks!


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## R. Doug

Well, Casey, that is high praise indeed and something any writer just loves to hear.  Photography seems to be one of the more popular topics for my blog, so I definitely plan on doing more such blog entries in the future.

If you have any suggestions on something you'd enjoy seeing, feel free to PM me or leave a post here.


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## R. Doug

The View From Atop Diamond Head


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## R. Doug

White balancing for sunny versus shady photography: 'Tween Sun and Shade-Outdoor White Balancing


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## R. Doug

Available light photography without a tripod.


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## caseyf6

Wow!  That's all I can say.


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## telracs

Nice!  And thanks R. Doug!  I gotta print this one out to refer back to!

Although I think my next trip will be desert shots!


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## R. Doug

Thanks, Casey and Scarlet.  Glad you are both finding these tips helpful.

Scarlet—best of luck with the desert photography.  Best tips for that: Shoot in the early morning or late afternoon, when the sun is just barely above the horizon.  The elongated shadows and reddish tones make for some really interesting and surprisingly colorful shots, and you won't believe how well some of those photographs will convert to black and white.  Which desert will you be photographing?


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## telracs

R. Doug said:


> Thanks, Casey and Scarlet. Glad you are both finding these tips helpful.
> 
> Scarlet-best of luck with the desert photography. Best tips for that: Shoot in the early morning or late afternoon, when the sun is just barely above the horizon. The elongated shadows and reddish tones make for some really interesting and surprisingly colorful shots, and you won't believe how well some of those photographs will convert to black and white. Which desert will you be photographing?


I'll be doing a national parks tour this September (Crazy Horse Memorial, Mount Rushmore, Black Hills National Forest, Bighorn Mountains, YellowStone, Grand Teton, Bryce Canyon, Painted Desert, Grand Canyon).


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## R. Doug

I've done the Painted Desert and Grand Canyon, but not the rest.  One good thing is that you shouldn't have to worry too much about exposure compensation, as you won't be dealing with vastly lighter, reflective sand in those areas.

One additional tip:  A lot of those vistas will benefit greatly from a polarizing filter, but your camera doesn't come with filter threads over the lens.  You can get around that by holding the polarizer up against the front of the lens while you hold the camera and take the shot with your other hand.  You can get some incredibly blue skies with stark white clouds that way, and the polarizer will enhance colors and reduce reflections off wet surfaces.


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## telracs

R....  I'm simple girl.  I just point and shoot.  I have no clue what a polarizer is or how to get one or what to do with one.


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## R. Doug

You can get one relatively cheaply at most places with a large camera department, such as Best Buy. They're also fairly easy to use. Here's what they do (take a look at the differences in the photographs): Polarizing Filter


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## NapCat (retired)

scarlet said:


> I'll be doing a national parks tour this September (Crazy Horse Memorial, Mount Rushmore, Black Hills National Forest, Bighorn Mountains, YellowStone, Grand Teton, Bryce Canyon, Painted Desert, Grand Canyon).


How exciting !! Try to add Zion while you are nearby at Bryce


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## telracs

NapCat said:


> How exciting !! Try to add Zion while you are nearby at Bryce


It's a tour. I have limited control.


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## R. Doug

Megapixels should play only a small part in choosing your next camera: Don't Be a Casualty of the Great Megapixel War.


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## telracs

thanks R. Doug.  This is helpful to me, I always thought more megapixels was better!


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## R. Doug

They can be, Scarlet, but only on a well-designed camera and only if all those megapixels are on a sensor large enough to handle them.  If the sensor gets too small, packing smaller and smaller pixels on it starts to actually degrade resolution rather than enhance it.


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## R. Doug

Sorry, photo-tip fans. It's been a while since I posted a tip because of other things happening in the news involving my former profession. Anyway, this week I'm presenting a two-part tip on shooting photographs in raw vs JPEG. Part 1 of Taking Pictures in the Raw or Putting on JPEG Pants is up today. Part II goes up Friday.


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## R. Doug

Part II of Taking Pictures in the Raw or Putting on JPEG Pants is up.


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## R. Doug

Examples of unprocessed raw images compared to raw files converted with Google's free Picasa 3 software and the raw conversion software that comes with Canon cameras: Processing Raw Files (and with FREE Software)


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## ◄ Jess ►

Wow, thanks for the article on JPG vs. raw! (I'm a bit behind! ) I took a few pictures in raw once to try it out and really wasn't good enough at post-processing to get a great result. I think I'll stick with jpg for now, but it's good to know that I'm not really missing out on that much. I had always wondered what exactly the raw format was. I knew they contained a lot more info, but wasn't sure exactly how. Very interesting explanation!


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## R. Doug

Well, I'm certainly glad that you found it so useful, Jessica.  If you want to see some automated raw-to-JPEG conversions, I did an article on that this past Monday.


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## HappyGuy

Hey, R. Doug, is there much of a quality (resolution, clarity) difference between .png and .jpeg files of the same picture?


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## R. Doug

To be brutally honest, I'm not that up on PNG. If this article is correct, appears that PNG is a replacement for GIF, but that PNG is also better than JPEG because it's a lossless compression scheme. I'm on a trip right now, so perhaps I'll research this and do a blog on it when I get back, in about two weeks or so.


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## R. Doug

I'll be doing a series of photography hints and tips this week-Monday (today), Wednesday, and Friday. Today's blog is on the single most important and often used filter you can carry with you for outdoor photography: Talk Radio isn't the only things that's Polarizing.


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## R. Doug

Using your camera's built-in yellow, orange, red, and green "digital filters" to enhance your Black & White photography: Black & White Photography-It's All in the Color!


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## R. Doug

More B&W photography hints on filtering: Black & White Filtering After the Picture is Taken (and with FREE Software!)

This one is geared toward those with point-and-shoot cameras, or who want even more filtering control than even that built into more expensive DSLRs.


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## telracs

R. Doug said:


> Using your camera's built-in yellow, orange, red, and green "digital filters" to enhance your Black & White photography: Black & White Photography-It's All in the Color!


I knew that black and white wasn't really black and white back in my last film days. the shop accidentally printed 2 sets of the same roll of film, and the black and white pictures were shaded completely differently in the two runs


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## R. Doug

So, were you making B&W prints from color negative or color slides?  I'm assuming so, and that the difference in shading was because the photo lab filtered the original recorded colors to bring out certain details.


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## telracs

R. Doug said:


> So, were you making B&W prints from color negative or color slides? I'm assuming so, and that the difference in shading was because the photo lab filtered the original recorded colors to bring out certain details.


apparently my black and white film was being processed in a color processor.


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## R. Doug

If the photo lab was working with B&W negative film and you got different shading, then it was an inconsistency in the lab work rather than actual red, green, or blue filtering, and all shades would have been shifted rather than select shades based on the color of the subject.  RGB shifting doesn't work on B&W photos because there is no original color information to shift.


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## ladyknight33

Thanks for all the tips you have been posting. I just graduated to a Nikon D3100 from a point and shoot.


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## R. Doug

ladyknight33 said:


> Thanks for all the tips you have been posting. I just graduated to a Nikon D3100 from a point and shoot.


You're very welcome, LadyKnight33. I really enjoy doing these little articles, and I'm glad that they're reaching an audience.

And best of luck stepping up to a DSLR. You'll fall in love with the control over the standard point-and-shoot. Just to give you an idea of all the features, I really like to read the reviews of cameras on DPReview. Your camera is reviewed at DPRevies at this link. It's long (20 pages), but you really might want to read it over for some great information.


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## R. Doug

Today I ran Part II of my series of fireworks photographs, this time with hints and tips on how I took the shots:

4th of July Fireworks Part II (and how I did them)


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## R. Doug

Capturing the vibrant colors of sunsets through exposure compensation and manually setting white balance in:

As Our Hero Rides Into the Sunset


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## R. Doug

This week is on what I call, The Rule of Implied Recognition.


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## hakimast

Some nice tips in there


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## R. Doug

Many thanks.  Glad you're finding some of them useful.


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## R. Doug

Haven't done one of these in a while: When to Convert to Black & White-Landscapes


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## R. Doug

And the sequel: When to keep the colors-Landscapes


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## R. Doug

Haven't done one of these in a while, but today I have posted a blog on how to control depth-of-field:

Getting Out of Your Depth (of Field)


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## R. Doug

Haven't done a weekly photo hint in a while, so: Adding Drama to a Dramatic Sky

You'll learn how to use some of the features in Google's free Picasa photo editing software to do stuff like this:


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## adanlerma

have read your article and downloaded picasa to give it a try, thanks for the heads up and descriptive article, gives me a running start what the various "fixes" menus

looking fwd to seeing how it works, thanks again


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## R. Doug

You're very welcome, Adan.  Let me know if you need any advice/assistance on running Picasa.


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## adanlerma

R. Doug said:


> You're very welcome, Adan. Let me know if you need any advice/assistance on running Picasa.


i appreciate that! i've downloaded it and may give it a try tonight, but if not, then hopefully tomorrow

do you go by doug? hate to call you "r" 

i work w/photoshop a lot, but there's stuff that even preview in a mac, or my phone can do, that's all i really need sometimes, so this will be interesting -

looks like by your article, you adj'd temp, etc; am really interested in trying out that graudated tint feature

thanks again, take care


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## adanlerma

picasa is an interesting and fairly robust little photo editing program, thanks r. doug  

most of the controls are easy sliders, with the slider button and sliding rail nice size, easy to mouse-grip, and fairly easy to slide (not true of all editing programs!)

the softening feature was a nice surprise how well it worked, and the sketch tool type filter was exceptionally good at translating the image in a pleasant way, not too harsh or jaggedy

the program did search and kinda catalog all the images on my harddrive, which i hadn't expected it to do, so i'm not sure if that info is sent or stored somewhere, which i doubt, but it does give the option of having the images in a cloud, which i wouldn't want for most my work, but would be handy for maybe some photos i didn't mind having "out there"

i'll be trying it out more later, as it does have quite a range of filter style adjustments that, in quick testing, also seem to slide-adjust easily and promptly

thanks again r doug, nice program from google


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## R. Doug

Glad you like it so far, Adan.  I find it my go-to program for most quick-and-dirty, get-it-ready-now photo editing.  It doesn't have layers, but for most jobs it does a very adequate job in a most intuitive way, unlike either Photoshop or GIMP.


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## R. Doug

Color Filtering in Black & White Photography Revisited


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## dori chatelain

scarlet said:


> May I just say that I hate it when someone says "You're camera takes great pictures" or "You must have a really good camera." My camera is nice, but I'm the one who decides what it shoots![
> 
> Thanks for listening.
> 
> And loved the Santorini pictures!


I agree with you. you are the one who decides what the subject is in the picture and how it is placed.

We have many different cameras and some of them are better than others and we have played around with them all. the slr is the best and it takes great pictures. but if you don't know how to set up the object that you are taking the picture of then you are going to get just an ok picture but if you know how to set up the subject than it will be an awesome picture.

same goes with no matter what camera you use some cameras are better than others. some people make good pictures some people don't.

I took a photography class and this is something I learned in class and I tested that theory out. I took 3 of our cameras out and took pictures. I took the same pictures with each camera to see what results I would get. It was fun to see the differences in the cameras qualities.

So I wouldn't be insulted when somebody tells you that your camera takes good pictures. I usually say thank you I know I make good pictures with my camera....

I really love making pictures. There is a big difference between making a picture and taking a picture.


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## R. Doug

Well put, Dori.


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## adanlerma

R. Doug said:


> Glad you like it so far, Adan. I find it my go-to program for most quick-and-dirty, get-it-ready-now photo editing. It doesn't have layers, but for most jobs it does a very adequate job in a most intuitive way, unlike either Photoshop or GIMP.


not sure how or why i missed your reply, but yes! the program does have a nice intuitive touch to it's controls

haven't had a chance to play with it much past that initial run, but i'm starting a new series where the photos for the photo-poems will be more creatively produced, and i think this program will be perfect for some of the images

i'll let you know when i have something up to see


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## CarolineAM

As a professional photographer, all I can say is ˝ditto" 



scarlet said:


> May I just say that I hate it when someone says "You're camera takes great pictures" or "You must have a really good camera." My camera is nice, but I'm the one who decides what it shoots![
> 
> Thanks for listening.
> 
> And loved the Santorini pictures!


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## adanlerma

carolineannmartin said:


> As a professional photographer, all I can say is ˝ditto"


yes, gotta agree with both you and scarlet

and i do most of what my final image looks like composing in the viewfinder or screen

that's probably what i do best, then tinker with it (sometimes) in an editing program, best wishes you guys


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## R. Doug

Another in my photo-tip blog series: More Fun with Color Filtering for Black & White Photography


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## R. Doug

Shopping for a Camera-What NOT to DO!


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