Surreal-ly into a Deep Dream

This was an accidental selfie. I was in my favourite spot for the afternoon light beside TheWindow. I stopped to finish my coffee, right in the shadow of the door frame, and didn't realize I set off the self-timer on my camera from my phone. The actual photo was lame but I decided to try it out in Google Deep Dream Generator, using a "modern art" style pattern.

I think the results are somewhere avant garde 1920ish.

Time for a coffee & creative ideas

Its later in the afternoon and not a daily photo taken yet. So I was finishing a coffee and contemplating what to do. I had an idea to try a series of my self looking at the camera and painting as if it was a self portrait, perhaps to make into a time series collage. So I set up my canon on my tripod and set it to take a series of images. I finished my coffee and then played with the brush.

However it was one of those session where nothing worked as planned. Just as the cameras started firing the sun came out, brilliantly, casting unfortunate shadows. The camera was still manually focused, and everything turned out  blurry. There where many other problems especially that I had other more urgent duties to attend to, so I didn’t get a chance to repeat the photos. All I had was 12 terrible exposures, normally they would be deleted BUT I often tell people to keep a few rejects to experiment on. These were terrible and thus perfect for an experiment. My first thoughts was to try some simple dreamscope transforms and build the collage, but the three initial images of me finishing my coffee told the best story. Yet the simple transforms didn’t exactly look creative enough.

I decided to build three layers, The painting ground I made by leaving the image blurry by increased luminance and saturation. Next I made a simple stipple pattern and used it back in dreamscope as my custom filter, and created some line work. Then I recreated the the final patterned overall with the watercolour cartoon filter. I finally I experimented with OnOne Layers and different blend modes to give a composite image, that was once a rejected photograph.

Experiments with the Long Black

I'm normally an espresso drinker (aka the Short Black), but over summer I've been getting used to larger coffee's still black but larger (aka the Long Black), Trouble is the quality from different cafes is very variable, and often undrinkable. So I've been experimenting with my own variation of the "standard" procedure, and I might have found a good and repeatable method.

Ontop of a small amount of hot water (not boiling) "float" a double espresso shot. 

That's all there is to it, and it keeps the crema & flavor of the short black without seeming diluted or heavy & bitter.

ThePatch :: Self Portrait with a Unique Perspective

My plan to do all self portraits for this months ThePatach themes, gives me a lot of scope to be more artistically inspired with the curly topic of a unique perspective. I had been experimenting with conical mirror projects for my “handmade” little planets of the Queenscliffe Observatory and immediately thought of MC Escher’s Infinite Reflection. Yes its all done with mirrors, a cylindrical one, and an anamorphic transformation to produce the image the mirror is sitting on. The resulting image you see in the mirror appears to magically floating above the otherwise very distorted drawing on the table.

I started with a very simple front on self-portrait, rather than a profile, as in Escher's drawing. I deliberately keep the background and table simple and pretended to sketch. Then with a minimal tonal tweaking and a basic conversion to a greyscale, I had my starting image to transform. Whilst I wanted colour in the final photo I felt staying in grey tones for the reflection would be truer to Escher's concepts.

Whilst I do have a neat anamorphic transformation utility, called Anomorph Me, I don’t have a cylindrical mirror. What I do have is a stainless steel milk frothing jug and a stainless steel espresso cup. Now a coffee association is much more me anyway. So the first job was to work out roughly the right sizes to make the transformations.  I managed to get close on the first attempt. So far so good…
The stainless steel is not as clear as a true cylindrical mirror and also the items don’t have straight sides so the reflected images are not as sharp as Escher's and more obviously distorted. So out with a polishing rag and  back to make a new set of transforms this time with some conventional perspective shift to allow for the cup surface leaving out and the jug surface leaning in. For the final photos I had the cup filled with an espresso shot and the jug with frothed milk. I liked the one with the coffee best as it is a better self portrait of me (I love my coffee, I’m from Melbourne!) even though the reflected image isn’t quiet as clear. I think Escher would understand.

A precious find in the desert

Sometimes it is the little things that you appreciate most like a rich roast, delicate brew and aromatic crèma of an Italian style espresso, as the sunsets.

This HDR was created with Picturenaut as a 16 bit image and tweaked with lightroom

Barista School

Making a good coffee is as much an art as taking a good photography. Having the best subject, best equipment is not enough you still need inspiration, experience and understanding of the medium as well. Even with the best beans and the best espresso machine you still need a dedicated barista's touch to appreciate the magic. As well as great coffee I had enough photos for firstly create a super wide panorama using autostitch then use mosaic maker to create a multi-image mosaic (you will need to click on the image below to appreciate the "detail").