Artsnova Digital Art and Space

One of the things I did on Christmas Day, besides eating and opening presents with my family, was to read through the January/February 2009 issue of American Photo magazine. It is billed as a special issue as it features the results of their "Images of the Year Competition". The photo competition is divided into the categories commercial work, nature, personal work, portraiture, student work, and photojournalism.

The Commercial Work category led off with a photo of Madonna by Steven Meisel for the Green Issue of Vanity Fair. This was the photograph that won the category. I’ve got to admit that I have to agree with the judges - it is a good picture. In the Nature category a rather spectacular dirt-colored tornado against a cloudy blue sky by Jim Reed caught my eye. I thought that the most artistic was a black and white photo of a lions head with offsetting negative space by Boza Ivanovic. In the Personal Work category, my favorite is a nude by Mona Kuhn, which also happened to be the winning image for this category. Portraiture was for me the most disappointing category as it contained nothing I liked. The winning image was one of Barack Obama.

I liked the Student Work category the best. An architectural image with unusual perspective by Chang Kyun Kim was the winning image in this category. Edging out this image as my favorite was an abstract of I don’t know what created by Samantha Mintio of Singapore. It looks like a multiple exposure image and creates the impression of an abstract city that would adorn the cover of a science fiction novel. It’s too bad that the printed image was so small.

The final category was photojournalism. A choreographed wave of women all in yellow by Mike Blankenship (a distant relation possibly) was pretty cool but my favorite was a black and white industrial scene by Fred Conrad.

The book review that caught my eye was "Inside Out" which was a review of the 224 page book X-Ray: See Through the World Around You by Nick Veasey. Mr. Veasey makes use of really really big X-ray machines to image all sorts of things. The review features an image of a city bus complete with passengers and a Boeing 777. The article also provides a very brief overview of the techniques used to x-ray these objects. There is something about x-ray imagery that has always fascinated me and I look forward to getting my hands on a copy of this book.

The most useful article for me was "Closeup: Photo Books On Demand" which reviews ten print on demand services. The article identifies Lulu as one of the largest self-publishing companies with 1.8 million members and 600,000 titles published. My experience with Lulu was to publish a pair of calendars several years ago that featured my images of Mars. While the quality of the standard calendar was disappointing with respect to price, the quality of the premium calendar was quite good. I recently returned to Lulu to make a new calendar but was less than happy with their new work flow.

To help photographers with choosing a publisher for their projects, the review article includes for each company a single comment on the company, an overview on price, color management, design options, papers, proofing, shipping and turn-around time, and general comments making for a handy reference.

Following is the list of companies reviewed along with the top level comment for each company.

• Asuka identified as having the most high-end professional options with an emphasis on producing high-end coffee-table books. Said to be a favorite of wedding and portrait photographers.
• Apple identified as having the most integrated work flow. I had no idea that Apple (yes that Apple) offered print services.
• Blurb identified as having the easiest user interface.
• Fastback Creative Books identified as providing the most personal attention.
• Embassy Pro Books - said to have the most sophisticated color management.
• Lulu identified as having the best book promotion which is logical as Lulu is geared towards using its web site to sell the products created by its content authors.
• Mypublisher identified as having the most deals offered.
• Pikto identified as having the biggest range of prints.
• Paperchase identified as having the most creative options.
• Sharedink identified as having the best special options.

Based on several of the top line comments, it does look like the reviewer wanted to have something positive to say about each and every pod (print on demand) service. The two services with the best general comments with respect to publication quality were Asuka and Pitko. One useful insight the reviewer provided was "if creating a small number of high-quality portfolios to impress special clients is your goal, a smaller company with an emphasis on color management and customer service might be ideal." Another tidbit was contained in the description of the Lulu service. With Lulu you can purchase an ISBN for your book as a part of the publishing process. An ISBN is the code used to categorize and identify books. If your book has an ISBN then it can be added to the various book publishing databases as well as Google Book Search. No mention was made as to whether or not the other nine services had this as an option.

My copy of American Photo magazine is now recycled. However, I have kept the pages for the "Closeup: Photo Books On Demand" article as a reference for the future.

The Illustration

I used a digitally manipulated photograph of a rose to illustrate this article. The original photograph was taken while on a trip to Arizona in 2007. I used Photoshop to extract the rose from the background and then applied a few filters on separate layers with different blending options to create the final image.

Ad Astra, Jim

STS-117 Atlantis and International Space Station Pass, June 20, 2007

It’s been many years since I’ve gone outside for the sole purpose of watching a satellite or the Shuttle pass overhead. Before there was the Internet, there was a DOS program called SatTrack I think. Or maybe it was STSPlus. I seem to recall that the author was from Alabama. Anyway I would feed in the orbital elements to see what was going over and head out for a look. Seeing the Mir space station was a favorite of mine. When I learned that tonight both the Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-117) and the International Space Station would be passing over, I decided to grab my digital camera and try to capture the moment, something I had not previously done.

Before heading outside, I reconfirmed the details of the pass using data from the Heavens Above web site. Following is the most pertinent data:

STS-117

ISS

The visual magnitude for Atlantis and ISS were given as -0.9 and -0.4 respectively. This combined with the pass times told me that STS would be in the lead as the pair moved across the sky from northwest to southeast and that Atlantis would be the brighter of the two. I grabbed my pager and set its alarm to sound about two minutes before the start of the pass.

Stepping outside, I quickly inspected the sky. While it was not the best of skies, it was clear enough that sighting the space shuttle and space station pair wouldn’t be a problem. Me and my youngest son Thomas then walked to a near-by soccer field, which has a good horizon line, about 10 minutes before the pass. I wanted to have time to get set up and to experiment with shooting images of the Moon using a variety of settings. The last thing that I wanted to be doing was fiddling with camera settings while the pass was in progress.

My son Thomas gets credit for being the first to spot the pair as they traveled over our site. I was able to take several shots while simultaneously trying to answer my son’s questions about what he was seeing.

Following the pass, we headed back home. My son was somewhat disappointed - he expected to “see” the shuttle and the space station. His disappointment diminished when I explained to him how much farther away the shuttle and space station were as compared to the commercial jets that we observed at approximately the same time.

In the picture shown here, Jupiter is the bright “star” in the lower left hand corner of the picture. The bright streak of light in the center of the picture is the Space Shuttle Atlantis and the slightly dimmer streak of light in the upper right hand corner is the International Space Station. The pair were about one second of time apart and were traveling from the upper right to lower left in the frame.

Following are the camera settings used for the above photograph:
Nikon D50
2007/06/20 21:02:54.5
Compressed RAW (12-bit)
Image Size: Large (3008 x 2000)
Lens: 28-80mm F/3.3-5.6 G
Focal Length: 28mm
Exposure Mode: Manual
Metering Mode: Multi-Pattern
5 sec - F/7.1
Exposure Comp.: 0 EV
Sensitivity: ISO 1600
Optimize Image: Normal
White Balance: Preset
AF Mode: Manual
Flash Sync Mode: Not Attached
Auto Flash Comp: 0 EV
Color Mode: Mode IIIa (sRGB)
Tone Comp.: Auto
Hue Adjustment: 0°
Saturation: Normal
Sharpening: Auto
Image Comment:
Long Exposure NR: Off

I believe that the best part of this photographic experience was taking the opportunity to use my digital camera in a way I hadn’t previously. Novel shooting situations should be sought out, not avoided.

Ad Astra, Jim

The other day I paid a visit to Shutterstock, a seller of royalty free stock photographs. I wanted to get a feel for the stock photography market. I have a large collection of photos, an unfortunately large number of which are still trapped in negatives and 35mm slides, and felt that selling some via a stock photography web site might be a good way to generate some additional income. It was chance that took me to Shutterstock first.

My first step was to find out what sort of photographs they were selling. I found that the photographs they sell are organized into 30 different categories. My primary areas of interest are astronomy, landscapes, abstracts, nature, and science and technology so these are the areas in which my collection is strongest. Based on my interests I found that the following categories are probably most appropriate for me:

• Abstract
• Animals/Wildlife
• Backgrounds/Textures
• Buildings/Landmarks
• Nature
• Objects
• Parks/Outdoor
• Science
• Technology

I then went to the relevant galleries to see what types of photos were being shown there. This is important because Shutterstock makes the call when deciding which of your submitted photographs to accept. If they know their business, then they know what is more likely to sell.

Shutterstock also has a web page that features their top selling images. Using a filter to limit the search to photographs, excluding illustrations, I was able to look over the Top 50 Images Ever. While I could understand the appeal of some of these images, I was quite surprised at some of the others. What this signaled to me was that what I thought would be good photographs to sell is not necessarily what people are looking to buy.

Now that I had an idea of what people were buying, I decided to check out what people were looking for. To do this I visited the Top 100 keywords for the past month. The top ten keyword searches were:

1. flowers
2. family
3. background
4. flower
5. vector
6. people
7. nature
8. abstract
9. fashion
10. beach

Fortunately, flowers, background, nature, and abstract are all keywords relevant to a number of the photographs that I have to offer.

My final step was to investigate Shutterstock’s submission requirements, terms, and what they pay. For payment, the photographer gets .25 cents for every download. Images being uploaded must be at least 4.0 million pixels, which works out to 2000 pixels wide by 2000 pixels high for square images. There are also content guidelines to be considered.

At first look, Shutterstock looks okay but I won’t know for sure until I have the opportunity to compare them with their competitors. My next step will be to visit some of the other online sellers of stock photography and undertake a similar investigation for each. Only then will I be able to make an informed decision on who to go with.

And no, that is not my camera in the picture. Rather it is a free stock photograph from FreePhotosBank.com.

Ad Astra, Jim

Did you ever start out doing one thing and get distracted by something else? I was asked by the Adler Planetarium to teach a class about NASA’s Project Gemini - the frequently overlooked program wedged in between the Mercury and Apollo programs. I happily agreed. For more info about the class, see Gemini: Stepping Stone to the Moon (ST1).

As a part of preparing for the class, I went to the Adler armed with my Nikon D50 to take photographs of their “Return to the Moon” exhibit. The centerpiece of this exhibit is the Gemini 12 space capsule. This was the final mission of the Gemini program and carried James Lovell and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin into space for a mission that lasted just shy of four days.

The lighting in the exhibit area was low, especially in the room housing the Gemini 12 capsule and flash photography was discouraged. Fortunately I had the foresight to bring my tripod with me so steadiness for long exposures wasn’t a problem. However lighting did present another challenge in that the spacecraft was housed within a large glass exhibit case. On the wall opposite the case were some brightly lit quotes. Unfortunately I did not notice the reflection that these quotations created on the glass case at the time. Last weekend upon a closer review of the photographs I took of the capsule’s interior, I was dismayed to discover the presence of these “backwards” quotes in a number of my shots. Fortunately I had taken photographs from a number of different angles and a few managed to come out clean. But I digress.

The real purpose of this story is to highlight the synergy of the camera and the computer. Synergy is the combination of two or more elements in which the net effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects, or the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The marriage of the camera with digital image processing is one of the best examples of synergy that I can think of. I had always been interested in photography at an amateur level and I have worked with computer graphics off and on going back more than 20 years. It was my move from film to digital that renewed my interest in photography. Combining my love of computer graphics with the image capturing ability of the digital camera has led me in a new direction graphically speaking.

An example of this synergy is seen in the image used to illustrate this story. Titled “Spaceship Under Glass” I took the photo only to serve as a reference image of the Gemini capsule. Following my initial visual examination of the photo in Photoshop, my first thought was to just adjust the image to lighten the underside of the spacecraft. One thing led to another and before I knew it I had multiple adjustment layers and an image that was looking increasingly psychedelic. The true power of digital image processing is that it encourages experimentation.

One thing that I found very annoying in the original photograph was that the upper right quadrant of the glass case was obscured by a movie projection screen which was showing a movie about the Gemini mission. I could have cropped out the top of the image to get rid of it but that would have entailed cropping out all the lights as well and I was determined to keep them. Instead I resorted to a combination of the clone stamp tool, the healing brush tool, the eraser tool, and segments of the image copied to another layer and then blended in with the underlying layer to remove the intrusive movie screen. A companion screen was also present at the extreme left of the image. However, it only intruded over the background wall, rather than the glass case, and was easy to digitally “erase.” Note that the left portion of the photograph was cropped out of the version of the image shown here.

In summary, I began just wanting to use the photograph of the Gemini capsule as a simple illustration in the Open Office Impress presentation I was preparing. Instead of just making minor image corrections in Photoshop, I began a digital excursion that led me to an entirely unforeseen result. On the bright side, I suddenly found myself with the perfect title slide for my presentation along with some new image processing techniques under my belt.

Ad Astra, Jim