Thank you Dean Fleischer-Camp & Jenny Slate for creating this lovely sketch!
Winter is creeping it´s way in and I sometimes drift back to the thoughts Thira and the Aegan blues and proper long days. This moment takes me right back into the silver reflections over the deep blues of the ancient world. There might be days to get back to writing but my life has changed so drastically in many ways over the past months that I´ll be keeping it short.
Timelapses pull together an array of dynamic imagery wherever there are forces of motion. Landscape photographers seem to be embracing the technique with plenty of enthusiasm, and great compilations are being created indeed. I’ve stumbled across a good amount of highly dedicated films where filmmakers are making use of dollying to dramatize and create even more vivid imagery, and they do well at it.
First of all, Terje Sorgjerd launched a viral video about the aurora borealis, which was exposed to incredibly beautiful light dance and was able to capture it on sensor. It’s not surprising to see that someone spent a continuum of a roadtrip in Iceland; something Joe Capra did creating this beautiful film (and sharing useful hyperlinks, thanks!). Disregardless of known landscapes it is also all the more notable to be taken away by Tempest Milky Way from Randy Halverson. I suppose, the phenomena and territory we not often find ourselves in carries much of the value itself. It then requires a passionate mind to head of and pull it off with elegance.
Now much of their work speaks by itself. You have to give them respect for the time they have put into this, because it is a lot of work and patience.
A little dive into the equipment these guys are using led me to the manufacterers website – dynamic perception. The aluminium rail measures two meters and weights almost 7 kg. You can use it horizontally, angled, vertically & underslung. Those features cut off the boundaries to techniques hollywood crews stood alone with, if you ask me. One beautiful day… Madagascar myabe… There are plenty of opportunities to push this technique to new storytelling.. it’s up to your imagination.
A select of digital echoes have drawn eyes to a big new step in the world of digital photography. Point and Click the Shutter. A two-step photographer is created. Readjust the traditional considerations to any time of your liking. Now we have a very new camera out there.
With any new avenue of technological leap it takes time to understand what impact it will have on society as a whole. What we can know is that the Lytro will change our response rate and ability to capture high fidelity images with greater ease. I believe any of my reasons to receive this news with differing views is a purist appreciation of photography and its original mechanics – it is part of the challenge of a photographer to calculate the parameters in response to a visual trigger. Having that said, imagemaking can be made practical and due circumstances require and benefit this greatly, say – scientists, urbanists, criminologists, travel documentary. The list goes on. The fact is, it makes the act easier in the moment; although it may save you time in the moment you capture you’ll spend more post-time reconsidering how and what should be in focus. Or maybe there is no finalizing in the image at all, what there is, is an interactive visual of the moment.
The young founder of the Lytro – Ran Ng, mentioned a parallel to the technology with a multitrack audio recording, in which each instrument is recorded separately and mixed later.
Despite these perspectives, objectively – it is amazing that this is possible. The only mistake you seem to can make is not take the image, or simply be too excited to have used up all the memory and not capture the moment for that reason.
What I know nothing will cut off the constant stream of flux of digital images, given the access. We are all part of it. We might ask ourselves though, how much will the next generation share daily? How intense will it be, and how are we evaluating its effects?
The following breakdown shows the build of the camera; I think it’s a powerful tool with an aperture of f 2.0. Will they reach notcilux levels?
An example of lowlight captures and how you can be interactive with low grain cost. I remain curious to see and try one of these Lytro’s.
“The whole system is fairly technologically agnostic, but the current incarnation uses an Arduino microcontroller and an Adafruit Motorshield, along with a couple of stepper motors. The application that drives it from the computer is written in Processing. It decodes a bitmap and creates a map of the file using a polar coordinates system, recording pixel position, size and brightness. The hardware requests each pixel in turn, and renders it on the page using it’s own shading and movement algorithms.”
See it in work.
A few thoughts bouncing from this.
The wishful tomorrow relates better to location. I hope no day we get so accustomed to advancements in technology that we don´t admire the capability to know where you are in the world. It is quite an incredible feature of our times, if we can isolate it´s ambiguous effects.
This visual documentary compliments the launch of an application for apple products to re-experience Central Park according to your itinerary. It is very much the first scavenging tools I´ve seen be used in such a site-specific way for a single product. Now not being able to participate in it, I can only admire it and will remain optimistic that artists and designers can take this to the next step. It´s a very cool idea.
As a communication piece, it starts off very artistically and dynamically, although throughout gives the impression of just being a teaser, as the experience itself is not really part of it. I guess they overbring that to the autumn crowds of Manhattan.
City Scars is my Thesis Project in Interaction Design created during my Masters Degree at Umeå Institute of Design, in Northern Sweden. The film introduces the idea of a digital channel for location-based witness reporting with concern to urban damage & crime.
The film illustrates the various uses of the safety application in London, Berlin & Oslo. You can read more about it in my project blog and the project site. Some notable sources have shown interest in the concept, including Yankodesign & Gigazine (one of Japan´s largest websites).
Let them come. This is wonderful new ground. I dig the fact that there is this open sky in the distance, and some of the shots are so well matched with their color schemes of character and location.