See the World With New Eyes

That was the slogan of this year’s STARZ Denver Film Festival and I think it is especially appropriate for anyone who enjoys taking pictures. We are so often busy just trying to make it from morning to night that there is nothing else that we can do or take in. In a small way, this motto has been my motto for every event that I shoot. Most, if not all of the events I shoot, are very much public events and everyone and their mother has a camera there. So, the biggest challenge I have is knowing that every picture possible will be taken and I have to make sure my pictures stand out; how do I make sure my pictures are something that everyone’s mother didn’t just take. So I guess this is where my “vision” comes in.

Anywho, back to the festival. This was the second year I was able to volunteer as a photographer for the festival and it was an absolute blast. Everyone I met was incredible and had so much to talk about. I didn’t have any time to see films, but being able to sit in on nearly every question and answer session was well worth it. Hearing producer Zach Kranzler talk about No Subtitles Necessary, seeing how much director Bob Celestino enjoyed speaking about his film Yonkers Joe, talking with Bill Pullman about the Ellie Caulkins Opera house and seeing his look of amazement when he finally took it all in, all wonderful moments. My personal favorite had to be listening to cinematographer Wally Pfister talk about running around a junk yard following around Al Pacino while Christopher Nolan and the rest of the crew hid behind piles of dirt and junk. Leave it to me to find the best memory from one of the “behind the scenes” guys, but it certainly is a new way to see. So take a look around at the daily with new eyes and you’ll find something amazing. (PS for more check out my website. Yep, shameless plug.)

Saturday at the Movies where children have the opportunity to walk the Red Carpet.

Producer Zach Kranzler discusses his film No Subtitles Necessary

Bill Pullman on stage during an interview/question and answer session before he received the 2008 Casavetes Ward

Again, Bill Pullman.

Perhaps my favorite of the 10 day event. A fitting close to the film festival. For those that can't tell, it's a podium.

Apparently I have vision

If you’ll recall, I’m not a big fan of taking architectural photos. Turns out I’m rather impatient, which doesn’t explain at all how I can work on pretty much all of the toy shots. It’s weird. Anyhow, I was asked to take a look at Denver and see what I see. Well, even after explaining that I’m not an architectural photographer, it was settled upon that it didn’t matter. I was being given this task because “they” had faith in my skills as a photographer and they knew I had my own vision and that’s what they were looking for. Kinda humbling, as well as kinda scary. Still, I trekked out and these are some of the initial shots. I was pretty lucky that morning that there was a parade on its way: it meant I could lay in the street with less fear of being run over or arrested. You'll notice that there is only one in color. There is a very simple reason for that. I like it. We are rapidly approaching Holga season and I wasn't expecting a great amount of color, but as I did the post processing on this one, it simple worked.

Happy Halloween! Time to carve your seams!

I know you were expecting a nice shiny shot of some fantasticaly plastic do-dad. Hey, so was I, but alas, it was not to be. I'm a little behind. But on the upside, you get to see me go full force nerd.

By now you've probably heard about a little upgrade called Photoshop CS4. You may also have seen their content aware scaling (there are plenty of Youtube videos out there in case you haven't). I'll admit, when I saw it, I wasn't terribly impressed. Being more of a photojournalist than I like to admit, I didn't see any real application to it. It really screws with the old adage of capturing in camera. But, being the dork I am I became more interested in how it worked.

I once learned that elevators worked because giants used to push the building down or pull it up and the elevator stayed in the same place. Content aware scaling doesn't work like that. In the simplest terms, it literally removes (or adds) a "pathway" or "seam" of pixels from parallel edges (top/bottom, left right). Through this method, "seam carving" is able to rescale an image without distorting the content. What's even more impressive that it is able to do it in a non-uniform manner. Taking the seams in a uniform manner likely wouldn't generate too many artifacts, but the insertion would likely create essentially a poorly cloned portion of the image.

In short, the science behind the application is pretty impressive. I don't know if Adobe is using the same algorithms as is demonstrated here, but it can't be too far off. I'm sure they've upped the effeciency. I mean, it's what they do. So, to all of my computer science friends: you should consider applying to Adobe. I'm not just looking to score some free swag (stuff we all get), I'm looking out for you!

Anyhow, after seeing that little explanation, the whole application made more sense for use on webpages. And I suppose that it would apply to a lot of advertising projects. My only concern, remember that I haven't actually tried it yet, is how much artifacting is visible on a print resolution image that magazines, catalogs, etc would use. I'm sure it's minimal and results in little additional retouching, but if I don't ask the questions, I will not get a gold star.

And to close out, I did download and read the journal paper, but I also picked up The Ting Tings on vinyl. So far I'm liking it and I think it will grow on me, but it's not one that I would have rushed out to get. But who can say no to records on sale? Yep, I am surprisingly analog.