Dan's stupid tip of the week. In Photoshop when using a lasso selection tool, hit the "enter" key and it will auto close for you.
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Diesel Sweeties: Feet of Clay
CGI study
A study of particle effects and volumetric lighting I did last night.
New Work in the Wild- SolidFire
Jamie Kripke asked if I would help with a project for SolidFire's rebranded website that required a good bit of CGI and I do love me some CGI. Tricky bit was most of the server did not exist so we discussed the best way to shoot it to incorporate it into the CGI. He did a great job shooting for the end goal of the project and it all snapped together fairly easy.
AD was Randy Rogers at Grenadier.
You can see the making of in the Danklife Portfolio and on Behance.
Lytro changed photography — now can it get anyone to care? | The Verge
As I sit on a couch in the middle of Lytro’s office, alternately taking photos and seeing them displayed in 3D on a large TV, it becomes clear. This is the future. Not the Illum, necessarily, though it’s one of the more exciting cameras I’ve seen in a while. Maybe not even Lytro, though it’s built a huge lead in its nascent industry. But light-field photography — the notion that the future is about turning the complex physical parts of a camera into software and algorithms, that capturing beautiful photos is little more than a data-crunching problem — seems almost obvious. Why capture one photo, from one angle, with one perspective, when we could capture everything? When I can explore a photo, zooming and panning and focusing and shifting, why would I ever want to just look at it?Lytro’s first camera was a toy, but it made us think differently about what a photograph might someday be. Now it’s making those ideas truly achievable with the Illum, a professional-grade tool. If it works, if Lytro can convince just a few people that this is the future, I can’t even imagine what might come next.
Band Artwork in Progress
Working on some imagery for a local band called "Whiskey or the Concrete" here is one of my concepts that I was working up the past few days.
The Daily Routines of Geniuses - Sarah Green
A habit of stopping when they’re on a roll, not when they’re stuck. Hemingway puts it thus: “You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.” Arthur Miller said, “I don’t believe in draining the reservoir, do you see? I believe in getting up from the typewriter, away from it, while I still have things to say.” With the exception of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — who rose at 6, spent the day in a flurry of music lessons, concerts, and social engagements and often didn’t get to bed until 1 am — many would write in the morning, stop for lunch and a stroll, spend an hour or two answering letters, and knock off work by 2 or 3. “I’ve realized that somebody who’s tired and needs a rest, and goes on working all the same is a fool,” wrote Carl Jung. Or, well, a Mozart.
The Expert (Short Comedy Sketch) - YouTube
Oh man, I have had way to many of these meetings. I am laughing to stop from crying.
How to Make GIMP Work More Like Photoshop
For the reduced role that Photoshop now plays in many photographers' workflows, GIMP is surprisingly capable. However, transitioning to GIMP can be frustrating because the keyboard shortcuts, tools, and interface are different from Photoshop's. Hopefully these setup tips can help make Photoshop users feel much more at home in GIMP.
Getty Images makes 35 million images free in fight against copyright infringement » British Journal of Photography
Getty Images makes 35 million images free in fight against copyright infringement Getty Images has single-handedly redefined the entire photography market with the launch of a new embedding feature that will make more than 35 million images freely available to anyone for non-commercial usage. BJP's Olivier Laurent finds out more
Wow, that is a interesting line to take. I could see how they could make money if the embed flips to an ad every 30 seconds or so but to do it so it is not a flashing, annoying banner ad will be tricky. Also, once they monitize this will the photographer ever see a dime? Otherwise all the Getty shooters just created a huge content pool for Getty to dish out for free.
Way down at the bottom we see this, "As for Getty Images’ own photographers, the new embed program won’t have an opt-out clause. “If you’re a Getty Images contributor, you’ll be participating in this.”
So basically Getty went the Indie Music marketing route. Best it gets heard / seen then forgotten. Too bad they are a business and not a band though, could be the root problem of this model.
Zepp Featured on Behance Digital Art Served
Our project that we did for Zepp was just featured on Behance's Digital Art Served. Congrats to the team!
New Work posted to Behance: Nike Flynit
Ryan Unruh asked me if i wanted to make a 3d environment based upon the fabric on these shoes and I thought it would be a ton of fun to mess with. Here are the images we made with the Finals at the end. Once again, you can see where we started and where we ended up at after all the client feedback. I think it's more interesting to see the process then just the final imagery. Really enjoyed building up the materials on the landscape and figuring out the best way to provide layered delivery and the different colorways.
New Work in the wild: Zepp
New project for Zepp on the danklife Behance portfolio and here as well. Matt Davis and Kyle Wiley from NonBox came to me with a project for box illustrations for Zepp and I thought this would be a interesting project to show how the scope of the style can change and the problem solving that goes into it. The original concept was that since the Zepp reader would track data regarding your swing we would add data / numbers flying off the trails from the swings. It changed a bit from there. Athlete photography by Jelani Memory.
Oneonta George Hike
Went on a relaxing hike in Oneonta George over the past weekend and took a few snappies. Now we are back in sub freezing temps…. boo.
FX-Ray Skin Retouching Tut
Huh, this guy actually knows his stuff. This is pretty much the best way to do skin and clothing. I am rather surprised someone made such a good tutorial of it. Many props to FX-Ray.
New Flexible Paper Sculptures by Li Hongbo
Li Hongbo’s stunning, stretchable, paper sculptures, inspired by both traditional folk art and his time as a student learning to sculpt, challenge our perceptions. With a technique influenced by his fascination with traditional Chinese decorations known as paper gourds—made from glued layers of paper—Li Hongbo applies a honeycomb-like structure to form remarkably flexible sculptures.
An investigation into expression through one of the oldest mediums in history, Li Hongbo invites viewers to experience paper and sculpture in a revolutionary and insightful new way. Utilizing his expert knowledge of paper’s natural strengths and weaknesses, the artist has transformed the media to stretch, twist, elongate and retract as if it were a giant slinky. Through this juxtaposition of playful mobility and a traditional aesthetic, Li Hongbo breathes a unique life into his works that stuns and awes the viewer.
Via- This is Colossal
New Work in the Wild: Nike NCAA
Ryan Unruh had me do the post on these shots for Nike NCAA. It was refreshing how he took it past normal catalog "Lay down" styles. See more at Sole Collector.
A pro with serious workstation needs reviews Apple’s 2013 Mac Pro_Ars
“The Good
Impossibly quiet operation, even under load.
Power consumption at both idle and full load is amazingly low.
Space-saving design is a marvel of engineering.
Dual D700 OpenCL scores are incredible.
A good upgrade over previous Mac Pros for poorly multithreaded programs.
PCIe SSD is exceptionally fast.
Thermal temperatures are safely in spec for extended workstation-style usage and GPU operations.
Good pricing for workstation-class GPU options.
Affordable relative to similar configs offered by competing workstation vendors.
CrossFire enabled in Boot Camp so you can get very good gaming speeds.
The Bad
Drivers are to blame for some very low OpenGL results for the FirePro D700 in OS X.
Reliance on external devices for PCIe expansion increases cost and has some short-term compatibility implications for some.
Lack of Nvidia GPU option and CUDA problematic due to Apple’s lackluster OpenCL developer support.
If mid-life GPU upgrade kits aren’t offered for these machines, they will age badly for 3D and OpenCL work.
Despite the FirePro logo in the Windows AMD Catalyst utility, GPUs appear as Radeons in Boot Camp, so it’s not recommended for Windows pro apps unless a FirePro driver becomes available for these GPUs.
The Ugly
Lack of dual-socket CPU options means that the 8-core Xeon E5 v2 gets the same multithreaded CPU performance as the mid-priced dual-CPU Mac Pro from 2010. It’s bested badly by more recent dual CPU workstations, even for the 12-core.
If you are using programs that are poorly multithreaded throughout, then an iMac is frequently a better option due to faster clock speeds.”
The Death Of Expertise
This isn’t just about politics, which would be bad enough. No, it’s worse than that: the perverse effect of the death of expertise is that without real experts, everyone is an expert on everything. To take but one horrifying example, we live today in an advanced post-industrial country that is now fighting a resurgence of whooping cough — a scourge nearly eliminated a century ago — merely because otherwise intelligent people have been second-guessing their doctors and refusing to vaccinate their kids after reading stuff written by people who know exactly zip about medicine. (Yes, I mean people like Jenny McCarthy.
In politics, too, the problem has reached ridiculous proportions. People in political debates no longer distinguish the phrase “you’re wrong” from the phrase “you’re stupid.” To disagree is to insult. To correct another is to be a hater. And to refuse to acknowledge alternative views, no matter how fantastic or inane, is to be closed-minded.
...
Expertise is necessary, and it’s not going away. Unless we return it to a healthy role in public policy, we’re going to have stupider and less productive arguments every day. So here, presented without modesty or political sensitivity, are some things to think about when engaging with experts in their area of specialization.
We can all stipulate: the expert isn’t always right. But an expert is far more likely to be right than you are. On a question of factual interpretation or evaluation, it shouldn’t engender insecurity or anxiety to think that an expert’s view is likely to be better-informed than yours. (Because, likely, it is.) Experts come in many flavors. Education enables it, but practitioners in a field acquire expertise through experience; usually the combination of the two is the mark of a true expert in a field. But if you have neither education nor experience, you might want to consider exactly what it is you’re bringing to the argument. In any discussion, you have a positive obligation to learn at least enough to make the conversation possible. The University of Google doesn’t count. Remember: having a strong opinion about something isn’t the same as knowing something. And yes, your political opinions have value. Of course they do: you’re a member of a democracy and what you want is as important as what any other voter wants. As a layman, however, your political analysis, has far less value, and probably isn’t — indeed, almost certainly isn’t — as good as you think it is.
Interesting observations though I do not agree with all of it.
Abstract CGI Study
Here is a abstract study I did yesterday, rendered over night and printed out this morning. Loosely based on works by John Chamberlain, I wanted to explore some different finishes / materials and do a lighting study with brushed steel. Keeping the highlights smooth on the steel and placing the lights was fairly tricky to get how I liked. Slightly added a HDRi map of some clouds in a landscape to just give a hint of location to the reflection. Printed on Ilford Gold Fiber Silk.
