Collecting Photographic Reference as an Artist

As an artist I must admit I seldom paint from my photos alone, I much prefer beginning with a sketch of two “on location”. Most often I just have time for a couple of pencil sketches and possibly a quick watercolour wash over some composition sketch. Further I seldom sketch from prints but rather I much prefer sketching and painting for a screen (can be computer, TV or projected image). This is for two important reasons

1. The colour intensity and dynamic range of tones is better. Its the old slides versus prints issue.

2. I can zoom in, and pan around or tweak the image a little, such as to alter the tone or play with the colour curves) to explore what I am trying to achieve in paint.

If possible I like to take the same scene at different times of the day, and under a variety of lighting conditions, sometimes a bracket set of exposures or a HDRi image can enhance the painterly feel. Also zooming in (on detail –see below) or out (on the broader picture – see previous panoramas) can help a lot afterwards re-establish what is important as characteristic of the subject and also get an overall feel for the place. All this means maybe 10 or more photos to support the one or two sketches.

So I must admit I am leaning more and more towards a reasonable smart phone with a camera (eg an android or IPhone) as being more than adequate for collecting photo reference for later painting. The cameraphones are certainly less bulky than any DLSR. The number of digital photos you collect is not significant as they are truly “weight less”. More room in your art kit bag for extra sketchbooks, papers and paints.

Street Music

Its Saturday and the sun is out so everyone is out on the streets, in the parks and markets. So are the musical music machines, The middle photo shows one that was even playing “pop” turns. Sorry no sound. The most interesting is the singing bike rider. He is the guy disappearing into the distance in the right hand photos. He has flashed past on several days previously always singing at the top of his voice. This is the only photo I has manage o get of him, albeit him disappearing in the distance.

The Full 360

Before proceeding I should warn that getting a full 360 degree panorama without a tripod and a fair bit of exposure calculation right is very difficult. Very, very difficult! The main trouble is that during the day the light is quiet variable according to the direction you are shooting. Hence the very old rule to shoot with the sun over your shoulder. In this direction, everything with well lit and their will be some detail in the shadows. in the opposite direct there tends to be very high contrast, the sky will be washed out and the foreground will be just a silhouetted with little or no detail in the shadows. Having set my excuses here is a bit of fun I had…

Using the 360 Android App

I had just downloaded the free version of the 360 app, and haven’t bothered to sign up to the web-site upload or community. I just wanted to try it out. I did patiently follow the instructions trying to keep te progress meter green at all times, but alas my phone keep jumping into the red, despite the slowest progress. So I was not surprised to get a result like this. Further attempts gave less satisfactory results and frustration. Ok it was fun for a while but I’m not convinced it is easy enough to use (perhaps without a lot of experiment and practice)

DSLR Multi-image Autostitched Panorama

I have made hand held 360 with my normal Pentax DSLR before, and I have found it best to let the camera choose the exposure between each shoot (it takes time, it not difficult) with enough overlap (20-30%) to let autostitch do its magic. This sequence is actually 48 photos in two bands (the upper skyline and the lower cobble stones). That is why there are so many truncated people.

If I really want to get a full 360 of the Grote Markt, I will need to do in the early morning or late afternoon, to get those golden hours of even lighting and with a tripod (with a panorama head). Maybe that’s not going to happen.

 

Flight of a Seagull

Grote Markt, Groningen

What is the Spiegel Tent doing at the top of Holland?

What is the Spiegel Tent doing in a park in Groningen? I am used to seeing it from time to time set up out the front of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia! Well its part of The Noorderzon festival. Here are a few photos taken at dusk on Day 2 of the festival. Day One was a bit of a wash out, with wind & rain keeping the crowds away.

* The top of Holland was a former catch phrase to promote Groningen.

Edible Art

The cafe at the Groningen Museum has a special cake, museumtarte & koffee  €4.00. To my surprise the cake was a work of art promoting the museum’s current exhibition  “Material World – Art, Design, Fashion”. The coffee (koffee) that went with the cake was pretty good as well.

Does this mean there must be a new cake each new exhibition?

Comparing Cameraphone & DSLR autostitches

These were taken at different times of the day, so the lighting may account for much of the differences in exposure and colour saturation. However in terms of clarity it is hard to see a distinct difference between the resulting photos after being autostitched.

Life of Frogs, as street art

The quay side along Hoge der A, which is the traditional mooring for “bruine vloot” (sailing ships) has some interesting sculpture on the footpath. It show tadpoles developing into frogs and the frog metamorphose into a very long nosed something or other.

The Golden Spires of Groningen

For PhotoFriday‘s topic gold

Scientific Eye Catcher

This two storey high construction marks the Qu3 entry in of the noorderzon.nl festival at Groningen. Naturally I needed a closer look at the mosaic tile used, and I’m not sure if there is any theme holding them together, other than they were all black and white. The festival is largely a music festival but it also has some performance art that focus on using new technology, like the augmented reality Noorderzon Layar.app. This both guides you to current events around the park and can also give you a bird's eye view of your current possition. I haven't been able to work out the grid (overlay) yet, but the technology is impressive.  Getting back to Qu3 they have been promoting creative aspects of science and technology at the festival for past two years, and this year.s theme is energy and healthy ageing.

Live Video app for Facebook by Ustream

Preparing for the festival

Less Stressful Uploading

One methods of uploading my photos as I travel that have proved much more reliable are Picasa's web album. I only have a small Toshiba netbook onto which I load my photographs, daily or more frequently if needed. The netbook works well with most Wi-Fi connections I have tried, even though most have been slow. I have Picasa on the notebook to organize the photos as I go and also daily make a copy of the photos onto a backpack style portable hard disk. I have also found that the Picasa's green upload button does reliably upload photo, albeit slowly, and it will also resize the file on the fly. I can also selected to upload by date or use a number of albums I have set up and control weather the photos are private or available to public view. The panorama album below is one of my albums

European Panorama

Waiting ….waiting

I have had a lot of trouble accessing flickr from low band width outposts on the net, especially getting access to groups. I am travelling in europe at the moment and I am finding flickr is so slow from the internet cafes and such that it is almost unusable. In fact I have completed this whole blog post (including screen capture and publishing) whilst watching the upload screen and had a coffee and orange as well.

The Castles Of the Rhine Gorge

I’m guessing I was very lucky to have a mainly sunny morning as we cruised down the Rhine Gorge, past all the famous castles.Only the very top Castle is in original condition. All the rest have been destroyed at some point by invading armies and renovated in the romantic period of the the nineteenth centaury.

Sometimes the mistakes look good too

This is an attempt at a autostitch multi-image panorama, made up of 52 individual photos that attempted to capture a full 360 view. My photos where taken hand held and not exactly in rotational order. So I’m not all that surprised that autostitch had a hard time with the matchups. I’m not sure how some of these images where used upside down but the resulting incorrect stitching has a certain abstract charm.

the more correct stitching is shown below (I have to eliminate some of my photos) and turn off auto straightening in autostitch to get this image. You can still see the shade banding due to unmatched exposures between images.

A Wonderful View

This panorama looking over Lake Constance to Austria & Germany, is based on just 3 photos.