The Witcher series has become one of the most popular and beloved fantasy series in recent years. Based on the book series by Andrzej Sapkowski, the show has gained a massive following since its release on Netflix in 2019. With its combination of compelling characters, intricate storytelling, and stunning visual effects, The Witcher has captured the hearts of both fans of the books and newcomers to the world of Geralt of Rivia. The show follows the adventures of Geralt, a monster hunter known as a Witcher, as he navigates the dangerous and magical world of The Continent. Fans have been eagerly waiting for the second season of The Witcher, which is set to be released in 2021. However, there have also been exciting announcements about the future of the series.

Magic bulley

Picture this�. you�re at a photography show or a gallery, and you see a print that takes your breath away. You look at the delicate highlights, perfectly rendered mid tones and deep blacks and think, �Man, what a great print. If I only knew what kind of (pick one: camera, lens, film, paper, developer, toner) he used, my pictures would look just as good.� You are now looking for a magic bullet.

Magic bullets are things that turn a mediocre photographer into a great one with a minimal amount of effort. They often take the form of some highly recommended piece of equipment, or some chemical brew with magical properties. It seems so easy�all you have to do is buy the right thing, and your pictures can look like the ones in the gallery.

It�s an insidious addiction. You�re driven by a desire to improve, so it seems as if the effort and expense is justified. You get distracted, thinking that you need to BUY something to fix your pictures, when you probably need to LEARN something. When the latest toy doesn�t work out, you move on to the next.

I am a recovering magic-bullet chaser. I�ve been down this road, friends, and it ain�t pretty. As part of my therapy, I am posting my painful lessons out here in public for all to see. Let me help you avoid some of it. I�m writing from the perspective of someone who does fine art black and white photography in the traditional darkroom, but the lessons are universal.

For years, I looked for miracle cures to save my crummy prints. I tried every film, lens and developer I could get my hands on (I still have a weakness for lenses, but I�m getting better). I'd read stuff like: "I just bought a 135mm f5.6 Ektakron (with the red dial) and I can't believe the difference! I'm throwing away all my old negatives and starting over!", or "You must try developing TMQ in D41-MicroGoop. I have, and my prints GLOW IN THE DARK". Of course I'd run right out and buy a red-dial Ektakron or ten gallons of glow-in-the-dark developer, and guess what? One more magic bullet, same pictures, slightly less disposable income.

The sad truth is that there are no magic bullets, no single-shot miracle cures. Good prints are the result of many incremental improvements. Furthermore, gross errors in one area can completely mask improvements in other areas. To see lots of improvement, you have to make lots of changes. Not just any changes, but the RIGHT ones.

Let's consider film developer. Judging by the volume of traffic on the forums, many of us obsess about which one we use. We are convinced that good prints will come our way if only we can find a magic potion. Pyro seems to come up a lot, so I'll use it as an example. Please, no flames. I'm sure it's fine stuff; I'm merely using it to illustrate a point.

The resurgence of pyro's popularity owes itself mostly to Gordon Hutchings' book. He makes some specific claims about the properties of pyro negatives, and by the way, his prints never looked better. Recovering bullet-chasers (like myself) read this and immediately start to drool. We fire off frantic phone calls, "No, FedEx overnight is NOT GOOD ENOUGH! Send a courier via a charter flight. I need the pyro by tomorrow morning! The future of photography is a stake!". We tremblingly develop our precious negatives, seductively yellow-green and luminous, while dreaming of "Moonrise, Hernandez". Breathlessly we make a print, and. uh oh. Kinda looks like the old prints.

How can this be? Gordon Hutchings uses pyro, and his prints are better than mine. Didn't I follow all the rules? Wasn't I a good consumer? I bought the book, developer, AND the t-shirt! Why am I being punished? What�s the problem? Well, here's a guess. Before Mr. Hutchings ever used pyro, he was already a very good photographer and a very good printer. He understands his tools and materials. He can look at his print and decide what to do to make it better, and then do it. In the chain of events that starts with the lens and ends with the finished print, he's eliminated 90% of possible problems. He's 90% efficient.

To a guy who's running at 90% effectiveness, a change in developer might make a difference. Maybe pyro has some special properties that give you an additional 3% potential to play with. A guy who's already got his act together will fully realize that potential. The incremental gain won't be masked by other problems.

Now picture someone at the other end of the spectrum. I, uh, I mean HE is running at about 40%. His negative carrier is not parallel to the baseboard, so he has to stop down to f32 for depth of field. Don't worry that you've just lost all your sharpness to diffraction. He overdevelops his film, which guarantees blown-out highlights, not to mention enough grain to bake a billion bagels. His darkroom is about as dark as the inside of a ping-pong ball. Perhaps he has a flimsy tripod, and his camera flaps about like laundry in the breeze. Looking at his prints, he thinks it�s okay that the white horse and the asphalt parking lot are the same shade of gray. With all these problems, you could develop in Pyro or Drano and not tell the difference.

Pyro cannot save this poor tortured soul. Our hapless hero is condemned to wail and gnash his teeth in the outer darkness. Everyone else's prints leap off the page, and his look like they came from a 1970's Soviet photocopier. Any incremental gain he might have realized by changing developers has been consumed by problems in other areas.

Here's an analogy. Countless sets of golf clubs are sold with the implicit promise that they'll make you a better golfer. Legions of frustrated weekenders in plaid pants ante up for the new magnesium WunderWand, when they really ought to be fixing their swing (these are great guys to know, by the way. You can often get their cast-off clubs for pennies on the dollar). Their enthusiasm to improve is sincere but misdirected. They will drop an obscene amount of money on a set of clubs that could (in theory), deliver a golf ball to the hole with pinpoint accuracy. Yet the perverse sphere still turns a right angle and disappears into the pond. Nice try, but Tiger Woods could beat you with a hockey stick. Blindfolded.

If you�re a musician, maybe you�ve had this humbling experience (I have). You hand your instrument (guitar, in my case) to someone else, and they play it like you�ve never heard before. Whoa, I didn�t know it could DO that. Same strings, different fingers. Makes all the difference in the world.

There�s good news and bad news. The good news is that most of us already have the tools we need to make better prints. We just need to learn how to use them. Maybe we need to have someone SHOW us how to use them. I learned this when I attended a darkroom workshop with Howard Bond. He didn't tell me anything I hadn't already heard; but he did show me how to apply it. It�s the difference between knowing that a house is made from lumber and nails and wire and pipe, and actually BUILDING one. There were no red-dial Ektakrons or D41 Micro-Goop in his darkroom. What I did see was an experienced craftsman, using materials not unlike mine. It was liberating to know that I already had everything I needed to make much better prints. I just had to maximize their potential.

The bad news isn�t really all that bad. It�s just that there�s no five-minute road to success. You have to get a number of things under control. Some are more important than others. Yes, there are certain minimal technical standards for equipment, but lots of timeless photos have been made with second-rate hardware. Far better that you should refine your vision and printing skills than obsess over the newest APO 90mm f4.5. If you don�t like your pictures now, buying the new lens won�t help.

And you have to learn to SEE. You have to learn to look at a print and understand it�s potential. This is harder than buying a new tripod, and it�s best learned from someone who already knows how.

• Do you know how to focus your view camera, and how to use movements to optimize the plane of focus? Always using f45 is not the answer.
• Is your tripod up to the task of supporting your camera?
• What ISO is your favorite film? It's probably not what's on the box. Same for development time.
• Yes, developer does matter. The old standards (D76, HC110) work well, but there might be reasons to use others. The standard advice is to pick something and stick to it for a while. Pretty good advice, really. The worst thing you can do switch developers every week and never understand any of them.
• Your enlarger's negative holder, lens board and easel all need to be very, very close to parallel. If you've never checked, they probably aren't.
• Do you use fresh, healthy chemistry?
• Your enlarger lens has a sharpest aperture. Do you know what it is?
• How dark is your darkroom? Turn on the enlarger and look up into the light, and see what your print sees. Any other light sources up there? Reflections? Does light come under the door?
• Does your enlarger vibrate when trucks drive by?
• In any process that involves a chemical reaction, are all the variables (temperature, time, dilution) under tight control?
• Do you know how to burn and dodge? Do you have effective tools readily available? The good news is that, unlike everything else in photography, the tools are cheap!

So, anyone want to buy a red-dial Ektakron? It's in MINT condition, and guaranteed to make your negatives glow in the dark.

Epilogue

I originally posted a version of this on the photo.net Large Format Forum in November 2001. Since the original posting I have purchased and read Barry Thornton�s �The Edge of Darkness�, which addresses some of the non-magic bullets listed above (Sadly, Mr. Thornton just recently passed away). I found the book to be well written and very useful. You�re not going to find a cheaper bullet than a paperback book!

I got many thoughtful follow-ups. Some were incorporated in the essay, and here are some others. Several readers pointed out that mentoring was an important link in the quest to be a better photographer. I agree. If you can, find someone whose work you admire and ask for advice and help. Life is too short to reinvent the wheel. It�s something worth having, even if you have to pay.

It is possible to produce perfectly executed prints that are completely devoid of soul and passion. We aren�t serving artistic inspiration here; you have to bring your own.

Please understand that I�m not knocking experimentation. It�s an important element of your work. Just don�t thrash about randomly and tell yourself that you�re experimenting. They�re quite different.

One of the most important things you can learn is to look at your prints objectively. Does it need to be darker or lighter? More or less contrast? Can I burn or dodge something? What does this print need, and how do I get there? What would it take to make this thing come alive? Having some high-quality prints on hand is one way to learn this, having the afore-mentioned mentor is another.

Thanks for reading, and good light.

The Original Magic Bullet Blender

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However, there have also been exciting announcements about the future of the series. In December 2020, Netflix announced that they had renewed the show for a third season, even before the second season had premiered. This news has created even more anticipation and excitement among fans.

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The O.G. magic bullet®: the tiny flavor vortex that started it all. This compact countertop wizard chop chop chops the freshest pico, whips up the creamiest milkshakes, and zhuzhes all your concoctions in basically zero seconds for less stress and way more fun in the kitchen.

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The Magic Bullet does NOT work for me!

That’s strange; I thought Works-for-Me Wednesday this week was supposed to be a “What’s not working for you?” edition, but the hostess has explained how to make a burlap wreath that apparently works for her, and now that I think about it, last week she explained why online calendars don’t work for her. I must have gotten the dates confused. Well, anyway, here is something that’s not working for me:

The Magic Bullet is a blender/chopper system that supposedly “does ANY job in 10 seconds or less.” Seriously, any job? Really, they mean only food-cutting jobs, like making smoothies, dicing vegetables, grating cheese, chopping nuts, crushing ice, pureeing beans, etc. Still, that sounds good! We bought one on special at Costco almost two years ago.

Our conclusion, after trying hard to learn its ways, is that the Magic Bullet does a few kinds of jobs in 10 minutes or less and is annoying, if not incompetent, at all the other things it claims it can do.

The basic idea of the Magic Bullet is that you screw a blade assembly onto a cup with some food in it, and then you press the blade assembly into the base that holds the motor, causing the blade to rotate in quick pulses. Sounds reasonable. The trouble is…

• Only the food right around the blade gets cut. In order to get the rest of the food to the blade, you have to shake the cup in such a way that the cut food falls off the blade and lands in the opposite end of the cup, while the rest of the food moves around it. The instructions make this sound easy. It isn’t.
• Lining up the tabs on the blade assembly with the notches in the base is difficult. They’re really small. If they don’t align perfectly, the thing won’t run.
• You’re supposed to run it in pulses, just a few seconds at a time. But once the tabs and notches are engaged, they tend to jam together, such that releasing your pressure on the cup doesn’t necessarily cause the thing to stop.
• The motor overheats really easily. If you accidentally run it for 10 seconds straight, it starts to smell bad. A few seconds more can overheat it to the point that its safety feature shuts it off, and then you have to wait at least 15 minutes before it will run again. This makes it not very convenient for quick ingredient preparation!
• It doesn’t dice or grate anything. It tears everything to bits. Instead of pretty grated carrot, you get carrot that looks like it’s been chewed and spat out–okay for making soup but not for topping salad.
• If you want to make a full cup of something–for example, a smoothie–you cannot put in all the ingredients at once; it works best if you puree one ingredient, then shake it to the other end of the cup and add the next ingredient, puree that, shake it off, add the next. . . . This is a real hassle because you have to unscrew the blade assembly, take it off (dripping food), and then screw it back on. It’s much more complicated than a regular blender, where the lid is easily removed and you don’t have to handle the blade until you’re done.
• Leaves and tough fruit peels (like apple peel) get cut very unevenly, usually leaving a few awkwardly huge pieces.
• Forget about kale. You might get away with a few pre-torn smallish bits in a smoothie, but if you try to shred a handful of kale in the Magic Bullet, it winds around the blade and jams the motor.
• The motor is very loud and obnoxious.
• It’s no easier to clean than a standard blender. It seems very time-consuming to clean because, almost every time we have attempted a job with the Magic Bullet, we’ve ended up also using a knife and cutting-board or our food processor so had to clean those as well!

These are the only tasks for which we’ve found the Magic Bullet works pretty well:

• Grinding flax seeds. As long as you fill the cup less than 1/3 full, it does a really nice job. (But not in “10 seconds or less” because you have to stop and shake it several times.)
• Making a smoothie from mostly soft ingredients, such as banana, melon, and berries.
• Pureeing soft, non-sticky foods such as cooked vegetables. (Beans are too sticky.)

We do have one nice thing to say about the Magic Bullet: Its user’s manual + cookbook is unusually well-written. It not only avoids that “translated from another language, possibly by robots” style of many appliance handbooks; it’s actually written in a pleasant, enthusiastic tone that is fun to read. We’d be happy to have the author over to dinner and find out if he or she actually was able to make the machine perform as described or was simply doing the job well!

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In addition to the third season, it has been revealed that a prequel series, called The Witcher: Blood Origin, is also in the works. Set a thousand years before the events of the main series, Blood Origin will explore the origins of the Witchers and the creation of the first prototype Witcher. This has sparked a lot of curiosity and speculation about what this new series will bring to the table. While the exact release date for The Witcher season 3 and Blood Origin has not been announced, fans can expect to see more of their favorite characters and new adventures in the Witcher universe in the coming years. With its rich world-building, complex characters, and thrilling storylines, The Witcher series shows no signs of slowing down and will continue to captivate audiences in 2023 and beyond..

Reviews for "The Witch Series Fandom: Meet the Dedicated and Passionate Fans"

1. Jane - 2 out of 5 stars - The Witch Series 2023 was a huge disappointment for me. I had been eagerly waiting for the release, but it fell short of my expectations. The storyline was weak and predictable, lacking the depth and complexity that made the previous installments so captivating. The characters felt one-dimensional, and I couldn't connect with them on any level. Overall, the execution of the plot was lackluster, leaving me unsatisfied and uninterested in continuing with the series.

2. Peter - 1 out of 5 stars - I can't even begin to express my disappointment with the Witch Series 2023. It felt like a desperate attempt to milk money off the previous success of the franchise without putting any effort into crafting a compelling story. The writing was lazy, the dialogue was cliché, and the plot twists were painfully predictable. I found myself struggling to finish the book as I couldn't engage with the characters or the world they inhabited. I will not be recommending this book to anyone who loved the previous installments.

3. Sarah - 2 out of 5 stars - As a longtime fan of the Witch Series, I was truly let down by the 2023 edition. The plot was convoluted and confusing, and it seemed like the author was trying to introduce too many new elements without giving them proper development. The pacing was off, with long periods of boredom followed by rushed action sequences that didn't make much sense. I also felt that the characters I had grown to love were pushed to the sidelines and weren't given enough meaningful arcs. It pains me to say it, but this was a miss for me.

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