Archive for the ‘Inspiration’ Category

More Location Scouting

I hit the road on Sunday, and again on Monday, looking for locations to a few portrait sessions– you can view one of them here — as well as some personal work I’d like to pursue this summer.

For what I had/have in mind, I wanted to find a few abandoned farmsteads, and a couple of derelict vehicles, so I headed out to the prairies of eastern Colorado, where it’s not uncommon to find such things.

I guess I had luck on my side, because I stumbled onto a few locations that fit perfectly with what I was imagining.

Lens Whacking

A few months ago, I was browsing Vimeo and stumbled on to the beautiful, ethereal work of James Miller, who specializes in a filming technique known as “lens whacking”. The basic gist is to capture the video/film image with the lens physically detached from the camera body. The shooter essentially holds the glass in front of the sensor by hand, allowing for a gap between the lens’ rear element and the camera sensor– this creates an ever-shifting, highly unusual focal plane, and creates some wonderful light leaks and vignetting.

(photo of Mr. Miller in action, courtesy of philipboom.net)

Enormously inspired by Miller’s short films, I ordered a cheap Nikon e-series 50mm lens from the 1970s, and gave it a go this weekend.

I fell in love with the process, and the results, IMMEDIATELY.

The images that spring from this technique have a floating, dreamy, other-worldly quality that really can’t be replicated in post, or with specialty glass, like the Lens Baby Composer. The sheer randomness and singularity of almost every frame makes the footage look and feel incredibly human and organic — to me, anyway — and I don’t know if anyone could cook up the same esthetic in After Effects, or  another compositing program.

I don’t know if I’m any good at it yet, (I’m most likely pretty horrible; it’s not an easy technique to employ), but I had a BLAST practicing for a few hours this weekend.

I enjoyed it so much, I started putting together a short film from the footage I shot. For the sake of added learning, and an opportunity to experiment with motion-graphic, I also started adding some animated text elements and 3D camera tracking.

Here’s a couple short clips of lens-whacked footage, combined with motion tracking.

Mind-Bending Installation Art

I found this entry about Felice Varini tonight and had to pass it along.

Varini is a Swiss artist who creates some truly astonishing 3D, large-scale optical illusions  in public spaces.  I wasn’t familiar with his work before, but after looking at a few photos of his installations, I’m definitely a fan. It’s absolutely BONKERS.

I won’t show all the photos here, as the whole  article is definitely worth reading, but check out the last series of designs on the page.

INSANE.

That he manages to fuse such wild creativity with the rigid mental discipline, mathematical expertise, and spacial awareness it must take to pull these things off is nothing short of amazing. So unbelievably cool.

Original source: Derek O. Hanley, @ VisualRaid.com

Heart-Stopping Timelapse “Temporal Distortion”

Randy Halverson is incredibly good at making time-lapse films. Like, crazy, ninja good. Every time he releases something, I’m not sure whether to get all inspired and rush out the door with my gear as fast as humanly possible, or smash my camera into a thousand pieces and quietly rock back and forth in a corner, sobbing.

Watch for yourself. So, so beautiful.

You can check out more of Randy’s amazing work on his website at dakotalapse.com.