Once again we are featured on AdWeek! This was a awesome project we worked with Remco Vloon at Nike on. Lots of fun on this one.
Weekend Personal work
Been busy as all get out here so I have not been posting as much, many apologies. But in trade have some images I made this weekend.
Most shots are from a hike at Wahclella Falls on Saturday with a dead phone booth on Alberta on the same day and a 3d render test from Sunday night. The render is noisy and unacceptable but I still enjoy the direction it is heading.
Danklife on AdWeek
We made it into AdWeek's Curated Gallery again! This time with our a project we did with Travis Barteaux at Nike for their World Basketball Festival. Thanks to Travis for the the great direction and to the team here who made it possible.
Art Producers Speak: Kenji Aoki
All of my inspiration comes from geometry. When you have an object that needs to be photographed with a certain concept, you always come across complex visual problems that need to be solved. By thinking of the object as a pure geometric shape such as a circle or square, the speed required to visually communicate the concept of the image and the object itself is accelerated. The space that it’s in, the color, the shadows — balancing all of these elements allow these sensations to penetrate a deeper place.
Via: A PhotoEditor in the links on the left.
Nike Air Max ‘Sunset’ collection goes live.
A project we worked on with Photographer Ryan Unruh, ADs Brian Foster and Remco Vloon at Nike just went live and is getting some press. We were asked to go for a very "real in studio" vibe on this project and I do quite like the outcome. Read up more on it at Size Blog.
Fun project, thanks all!
Harddrive not on desktop or Finder but visible to Disk Utility in 10.8.3
Work up to a odd little bug this morning. Booted up the Mac and one of my drives was not showing up on the desktop or in the Finder window. So first thing I do is launch Disk Utility and I see it sitting there all fine a dandy. Odd, me thinks. So I run some repairs, fix permissions, sfae boot, zap pram and everything is all good but no hard drive on desktop still. Perplexing. So then I right click on it to reveal in Finder and this happens.
I get a "Ghosted" version there with all my files there and I can browse just fine (I just greyed out the file names in the screen cap). So it turns out that the Preferences somehow got scrambled and set this drive to invisible and repairing permissions will not fix it. Off to the googles where I found this page on how to fix it. Basically open terminal and enter this:
chflags nohidden /Volumes/YOUR DRIVE NAME HERE/
And there you have it. Apple seems to have a lot of bugs at start up and with permissions these days. If you keep losing connection to your PC look into this hack to fix that glitch as well.
On the Constant Moment- Clayton Cubit.
Imagine an always-recording 360 degree HD wearable networked video camera. Google Glass is merely an ungainly first step towards this. With a constant feed of all that she might see, the photographer is freed from instant reaction to the Decisive Moment, and then only faced with the Decisive Area to be in, and perhaps the Decisive Angle with which to view it. Already we've arrived at the Continuous Moment, but only an early, primitive version.
Evolve this further into a networked grid of such cameras, and the photographer is freed from these constraints as well, and is then truly a curator of reality after the fact. "Live” input, if any at all, would consist of a “flag” button the photographer presses when she thinks a moment stands out, much like is already used in recording ultra-high-speed footage. DARPA has already developed acamera drone that can stay aloft recording at 1.8 gigapixel resolution for weeks at a time, covering a field as large as 5 miles wide, down to as small as six inches across, and it can archive 70 hours of footage for review. This feat wasn't achieved with any new expensive sensor breakthroughs, but rather by networking hundreds of cheap off-the-shelf sensors, just like you've got in your smartphone.
Just Like Being There
Damn good documentary on the gig poster world. Available on NetFlicks instant watch now, highly recommend it. I worked in a screen printing studio in the 90s for a bit shooting and pulling screens for band merch so I can relate to a lot of this. The "Test Print" pile of shirts were my favorites to wear.
2013 World Press Photo of the Year faked? Mmmm, I'd say no.
The photo, dubbed Gaza Burial, was purportedly captured on November 20, 2012 by Paul Hansen. Hansen was in Gaza City when Israeli forces retaliated in response to Palestinian rocket fire. The photo shows two of the casualties of the Israeli attack, carried to their funeral by their uncles. Now, the event itself isn’t a fake — there are lots of other photos online that show the children being carried through the streets of Gaza — but the photo itself is almost certainly a composite of three different photos, with various regions spliced together from each of the images, and then further manipulation to illuminate the mourners’ faces.
....
The Huffington Post has learned that Paul Hansen is working with the WPP and independent imaging experts to determine the photograph’s level of manipulation. Hansen has said a single file was used, though it was “developed over itself.” It’s being determined whether or not what he did was in violation of the WPP’s rules.
Interesting. I do not think I would call reprocessing the RAW for multiple exposures and stacking them faking. It is still one frame captured and not a composite of different images. It is something that is akin to burning and dodging in the darkroom to me so it's fine. If he composited another frame then I would call it illustration. That's my Two Cents on that.
Thanks for the link Mike!
Entropy – Long version
2000 pictures compose this piece- that is, 2000 perfect different water drops into which we mapped an animation. Droplets that behave and look strangely similar at the stage of less entropy, and become more disordely as they splash.
Fuji X100s Review - Fallin'in Love All Over Again
Because this is a romance-rekindled kind of article, a lot of what follows focuses on improvements on shortcomings over the X100, and things I would still like to see improved. All of that might give the impression that the X100s isn't a great camera in it's own right. It ain't so. If this were a stand-alone review of a brand-new machine, without a rich family history, the bottom line would be this: the X100s is the best rangefinder-style camera Fuji has made. It produces superb images, focuses fast, processes fast and breaks every meaningful barrier to working in low light. All-around it is all good. That said, my detailed review follows.
Take Time Out To Appreciate The Power Of Photography Today
These films that MediaStorm created for the ICP Infinity Awards this year are simply fantastic. Do yourself a favor and take some time today or this week to watch and appreciate the emotion and power of photography in the world.
Photo Project: Tattoo Machines
Portland Tattoo Artist Jason Leisge, owner of OddBall Tattoo asked me to photograph some of his hand built Tattoo Machines before he left for a convention in NY. Here are the results of a two hour shoot. I hope to continue this project with the title, "Machines of Ink and Blood: Images of custom built Tattoo Machines."
Photo nerd notes: Shot with a Canon 5dm2 with the 90mm tilt shift lens and lit with a few Dedolights. I love my Dedolights! Shot a few frames for focus stacking then made the background in Modo.
Sweep, gun block model and lights in Modo.
Composited it all together and there you have it. Fun stuff. If you build your own Tattoo Machines please drop me a line, I'd love to photograph them.
Adobe Creative Cloud: It is RansomeWare.
So with the news yesterday that Adobe is going to a Subscription model I find myself thinking that it is now RansomeWare.
“Ransomware (also referred to in some cases as cryptoviruses, cryptotrojans, cryptoworms or scareware) comprises a class of malware which restricts access to the computer system that it infects, and demands a ransom paid to the creator of the malware in order for the restriction to be removed. Some forms of ransomware encrypt files on the system’s hard drive, while some may simply lock the system and display messages intended to coax the user into paying. Modern ransomware attacks were initially popular within Russia, but in recent years there have been an increasing number of ransomware attacks targeted towards other countries, such as Australia, Germany, and the United States among others.”
So if I don't pay Adobe 50 bucks (or 20 just for Photoshop) a month forever I can kiss my 15 year old archive goodbye. Or whats that you say? "You can edit those files in the Gimp! Stop being so dramatic! You own your files!" Like hell I can edit them and like hell I own them. Adobe does now. All of our collective Archives are wholly owned and controlled by Adobe. Sure the flattened final tiffs are not but can I open PSB files in any other program? (No, I won't call Photoshop an "App" DIAF) Can I open a PSD in any other program with adjustment layers, smart objects and any number of other odd effects? Not without losing half of the effects that make up the look of that file. This is a horrible turn of events for anyone who is a serious image maker.
I find it really interesting that it is announced just after there was a call for a standard layered image format on May 1st. That article got my head to thinking of the, "What If's" and now here we are.
>Cue Godfather music<
"Hey there. Those are some really fine looking imagers ya gots there. That one of those fancy Panowhoramics? Nice, real nice. Bet that could be one of those 16 bit files too? You like those smooth gradients do ya? Ya, those are purty. Be a real shame if you could not, I dunno, let's say, open it. Maybe you want to print it? Maybe edit it down the road. Ya, hate to see something "happen" where you could not do that. O, hey buddy, why ya sweating? We ain't gonna hurt ya. Tell ya what. Pay me and Vinne here, I dunno, lets say 20 bucks a month and we will protect those files for ya. Oh, what's that? You have a Illustrator file as a Smart Object in there? Well, ain't you mister freaking fancy pants! Smart boy here Vinne! Well, we can help ya out for, eh, let's say 50 a month. Payable, let me think here... Vinne what sounds like a good payment plan to you? Forever you say? It does have a nice ring to it don't it? Forever it is then, It's our way of helping ya out, capice'? No, don't thank us, you are very welcome."
Adobe Jumps the Shark
Adobe has decided to focus its resources on Creative Cloud and will not continue development on its Creative Suite software, reports The Next Web. While Creative Suite 6 will continue to be supported in regards to bug fixes, there will be no further updates and no Creative Suite 7.Instead, the company has today announced several Creative Cloud apps at its Adobe MAX conference, including Photoshop CC, InDesign CC, Illustrator CC, Dreamweaver CC, and Premiere Pro CC.
There will be backlash for this, no doubt.
Adobe targets the same Pro and Pro-sumer community that Apple had the misfortune of knowing when it redesigned Final Cut Pro. Adobe’s decision to solely embrace a subscription offering could lead to mass protest if not handled correctly.
But before grabbing your torch, let us explain what, exactly, is happening — then we’ll get into why.
So this is just horrible. What if our internet goes down? We just pack up shop for the day and tell our clients sorry? What about those clients who let their subscriptions lapse? Now they can't open PSDs anymore to see the files and their decades old archive is "unreadable"? Pay a subscription to Adobe or your entire library is up for ransom? This is insane...
I'd say I'd just stick with CS6 but Adobe will not release new RAW camera support for older versions, trapping you in this upgrade cycle. Between Apple and now Adobe abandoning the WORKING professional markets where are we left to go? Someone smarter then me really needs to target working pros in creative fields not everyone can or wants to work off a damn phone people.
The Process.
The George Eastman House has done a series of videos about the major steps of the Photographic Process ending with the Gelatin Silver Print. Interesting to me that it does not go into Digital which I would consider the biggest, most important change to the medium since it was created.
The Dageurrotype, The Collodion Process, The Albumen Print, The Woodburytype, The Platium Print, and The Gelatin Silver Print.
Source: http://www.metafilter.com/
Focus Stacking Tut
Adventure photo journalist Jay Goodrich highlights how he overcomes diffraction issues with today's digital cameras and lenses by stacking multiple focal point images in Adobe Photoshop CS6 via Adobe Lightroom 4.
This is a very handy technique for all shooters IMO. I suggest using it on many shoots. At least shoot for and then have your post guy do all the mucky muck of the tweaking. Think of it all as information.
While I am on the topic, ALWAYS shoot plates. Always. Clear the set and take 5 steps back and shoot a clean set. My god people, almost every job the clients asks for more space on the left and we are trying to figure out how to recreate a airport / field / set / bar / gold course / stadium / you name it.
We Need A Standard Layered Image Format
Last summer, Adobe killed their image exchange format "FXG". The idea was to have a publicly defined XML based image format which could handle vectors, bitmaps, and layers, and could be read and written by any app that wanted to support it (as Acorn did for a while).I can't say I'm sorry to see it go. It was a horrible format. The goal is worthy, but the implementation of it was an incredibly bad idea. When you want to send someone an image you want to pass them a single file, not an XML file with a folder of assets. While there are technical benefits to this, it's an incredible burden on the customer.
There is of course PSD which is the native format for Photoshop, and over the years it has become the de facto standard for layered images. PSD is a crazy format and implementing a reader and writer for PSD files is non-trivial and nobody but Adobe actually supports it correctly. It's crazy hard (and I'm not blaming Adobe or PS engineers for this- extending a file format for 25 years isn't exactly an easy thing to do).
So what would be better?
Patrik Giardino for ESPN
Patrik Giardino asked us to get this kind of look for one of his ESPN shoots and here it is in print. Great shot Patrik and thanks!
Looks much better then the other shots in the spread by other shooters but I miiiight be biased. ;)
Project Live for Embassy Suites
A project we have been working on for Stewart Cohen Photography just went live for Embassy Suites. Thanks to Stewart, Liana and everyone else at SCP for the rather smooth project, always great to see them out in the world.