After my mother’s passing and many losses in my life,  I found myself in an existential crisis. Daily there was a sense of bewilderment, grief and pain. What emerged was a year long journey making three dimensional mandalas and photographing them. Mysteriously, they started illuminating my soul, when the outward world appeared dry and confusing. The photographs came to represent a journey of loss and resurrection. I was using a few photo labs in San Francisco.  I kept passing The Image Flow, usually when stopping into Ace Hardware. I started to pop in as I passed by, and was always impressed with how easy Stuart was to chat with and how knowledgable he was. Finally I had some prints made, I believe they included flowers, work that was to become the Mandala series eventually.

At some point I remember being blown away by a conversation with Matt and Stuart. They had one of my finished prints ready and told me how much they liked the Mandalas (at this point I had started using black velvet backgrounds and the circular mandala structure). In the best possible way, they gave me a lot of technical feedback that would bring my pictures up to another level.What struck me as so unusual is that Stuart and Matt took their own time to really look at my work, at what they were printing and discuss how they could  best support this project. It was an incredible feeling to receive that sort of insight and care from my printers! I think it was at that point I tapped into the fact that The Image Flow had a huge amount to offer .

At the time I was shooting with an older Canon 5d, (I now shoot with the 5d Mark 3). I did  want the experience of shooting with a digital Hasselblad so I rented The Image Flow’s and rented the big studio too. I’ve done this a few times now. The results have been fantastic for me. I really enjoyed it on a few levels. Originally, my intention was to shoot the mandalas with flat over head light, to have the colors and images ‘pop’.  Eventually, I wanted more  sculpted  light (as  I was seeing the Mandalas and my relationship to them differently). So in the  big studio I was using side window light and the diffusion of the parachute material. It was fun while shooting to welcome people as they walked into The Image Flow…. shooting this kind of still life can feel like living in a bubble and takes all day to set up. So it was a nice change for me.

I am really looking forward to exhibiting and sharing the Mandalas. Its a colorful exciting show. They are truly a labor of love and a constant internal and external evolving process. There will be flowers and mini Mandalas to play with at the show for those who like to play,  so bring your  iPhones and you can snap your own creation.

Her show at The O’Hanlon Center For The Arts will be opening May 7th. Artist reception from 6-8pm.

Art Reactor is a digital art school for middle and high school students, created by Jennifer Fry and Josh Cardenas. They teach students how to be artists, not just computer users. By learning the basic principles of art and how to create with digital tools, students can produce amazing, original work! Incredible things like virtual 3D sculpture, vector art, interactive virtual worlds, projection mapping, VJing, and more. Jennifer and Josh strive to have their students become independent artists, developing the technical skill they need to express their creative vision.

Art Reactor will be offering week long digital art classes from June 10- Aug 12 for middle to high school age kids!

Last year, Goli Mohammadi of Make Magazine  interviewed Josh. Here is an excerpt.

What inspired you to start Art Reactor?
Art Reactor began about a year ago very simply: we, owners Josh Cardenas and Jennifer Fry, are passionate about digital art and felt that we could bring our professional expertise and love of teaching together to create a business that would fill an unmet need in the community. We believe that arts education is a powerful force to foster creative problem-solving, critical thinking, keen observation, innovation, and visual communication skills. While we are artists and believe in the arts as a foundation of culture, we also believe that providing a project-based arts education improves a student’s ability to learn in all aspects of his or her life.

Further, we see digital art as a medium for self-expression, as we do a pencil, paintbrush, clay, or any other art tool. We also see digital art as an important form of literacy in the 21st century. Current middle and high school students have to prepare for jobs that may not even exist right now, and one thing’s for certain: they will need to be excellent at visual communication through digital media if they want to be successful.

The classes offered at Art Reactor help students develop stronger visual communication skills, as well as the technical knowledge necessary to realize their visual ideas. In general, schools don’t have the resources to provide the technology and level of instruction we offer at our studio, and yet these things are incredibly valuable to our children’s future.

Describe the types of students you’ve gotten so far and who you hope to target (i.e. age range, background, interest).
Our program is designed for middle and high school students, ages 11 and up. We’ve found that students younger than age 11 are generally not developmentally ready to apply complex technical skills with art creation, which is why we target our classes to teens. We look for kids who already love art and are comfortable with technology, and who want to learn to use digital tools to create awesome artwork. We’ve been fortunate in that these are exactly the types of students we’ve attracted and retained since our program began.

We try to clearly describe our program as absolutely arts-focused, so if a student isn’t interested in art, then Art Reactor classes are probably not for him or her. Students also need to be motivated and willing to try new things. Sometimes we get kids who come in wanting to make a video game, for instance, but don’t understand the level of technical and artistic skill, nor the amount of work involved with developing something as complex as a video game. We start out all of students with the fundamentals: drawing, painting, color, composition, shape, line, etc. If a student is only focused on one particular project or technique, that typically isn’t a good fit with our program.

The average age of student we’ve had has been about 13-14, but we’ve had kids as young as 9 and as old as 19. We also offer adult classes that tend to have a more pragmatic focus, such as Graphic Design for your Business.

Tell us about yourself and your cofounder Jennifer Fry. What are your backgrounds and areas of specialty?
I have a bachelor’s degree in sculpture from Sonoma State University, and have worked professionally as a visual effects artist for movies and commercials. I’m widely skilled in studio art, digital art, and hands-on construction, and my personal artistic focus is on kinetic, audio-visual sculptural installations.

Jennifer is a credentialed art teacher with a bachelor’s degree in graphic design from San Diego State University. In addition to working as a professional web and graphic designer, she has taught visual and digital art at public and private schools in Marin County for the past seven years. Her artistic explorations include ambient digital pieces that incorporate photography, motion graphics, video, and sound.

Josh and Jennifer are enthusiastic about digital art, and about helping people learn how to use the computer to express their creativity. Their passion for the medium is infectious and kids love being in their classes. As do adults! Jennifer and Josh are offering two adult classes this summer as well: Digital Art Basics and Graphic Design for Your Small Business

They answered a couple of our questions:

What artists inspire you?

Jennifer: I love it when artists use unique processes to create their work – most recently I discovered Sienna Morris of Portland, Oregon, who etches her images into glass using numbers and symbols as her marks. Her work is incredibly meaningful, technically masterful and visually arresting. Those are the qualities of a great artist, in my opinion. Because of my background in graphic design, I also really love stark, graphic style artwork such as The Great Wave Off Kanagawa by Hokusai. And finally, I am inspired by artists who’s work truly makes you think, such as the surreal work of Rene Magritte.

Josh: Doug Chaing, Ryan Church and Feng Zhu. These are all talented concept artists that work in a variety of media. I think concept art or visual development is one of my favorite art forms because it’s the bringing to life of one’s imagination when reading a story. I strive to reach this level of skill and creativity in my own work.

Have you seen any movies lately that you found particularly interesting?

Jennifer: Most recently, I saw Life of Pi, which was both profound and aesthetically beautiful. The way the imagery portrayed Pi’s surreal experience of being lost at sea – wow. As a digital artist, I know just how difficult it is to create such stunning visuals, and the team that worked on that movie has my utmost respect. Another favorite of mine, from a perspective of impressive artistry and storytelling is just about anything Pixar creates. Though I didn’t think the story of Brave was as unique as others they’ve created, I was in love with Merida’s hair; it was a character in itself! And again, the technical and artistic team that puts together a movie like Brave are absolutely the cream of the crop in terms of digital artists.

Josh: I got the amazing opportunity to work on Neil Blomkamp’s upcoming sci-fi movie, Elysium. I worked with some incredibly talented artists and all I can say is the imagery in that movie took my breath away, and I’m looking forward to seeing it in the theater.

Jennifer: Running Art Reactor keeps me pretty busy, as does my other job of freelance graphic and website design. I am also a writer, I published my first young adult novel, A Part To Play,  last August, and I’m working on a second one. As part of my writing practice, I run a critique group here in Marin.

Josh: I’m working on an animatronic sculpture for a friend’s movie concept, designing a themed installation for the Mill Valley library fundraiser, and working with some collaborators to get a Maker Space started here in Marin.

Jennifer and Josh are impressive and their classes are fun and successful. Sign your kids/yourself up now!

–

The Photography of Hendrik Paul

Light From Within at The Image Flow

By Martin Lesinski

I’ve been to a banquet­ -  the photography of Hendrik Paul at The Image Flow.  It’s a show with crescendos of excitement and photographs that grant the viewer entry into the personal vision of an emerging voice.  There are some many faceted gems here.  As with any emerging photographer, about one third of the show consists of classic image making.  Though masterful, as classic uses of composition, light, tonal value, subject matter, etc., they are images that don’t add anything new to the vocabulary of photography and don’t clear his unique voice.  However, these are silenced by the majority of the show, which consists of images that not only add words and phrases to photography’s vocabulary, but also employ these additions to convey stories of genuine seeing.

For this piece, I’m choosing not to address the show overall, but rather those images that enrich photography’s vocabulary.  In essence, from the buffet, I’m creating a gourmet tasting menu.  The photographs on this menu each convey Hendrik’s unique blending of his favored ingredients of light, composition, restricted tonal scale and sizing.  Hendrik’s pantry of light is extensive - light of moon, light of darkness, light of tone, penetrating light, illuminating light, quiet light, light itself.  Light’s many tastes assert themselves throughout the show.  Though not discussed in detail, I’d like to point out photographs that are among my favorites: Lone Rock, Chapel Descention and Last Remaining Light for composition, Memories of My Childhood, A Tunnel in Prague, and Night Sheets for light, New Descent for light and composition, Venice Beach 1 and 2 and Moonlight for restricted tonal scale.  In common, they share a simplicity at times bordering on sparseness that underpins these photographs and strengthens their voices.

Separation is one of my top favorites, and it’s not at all surprising this was the first photograph in the show to sell.  It’s a land-seascape.  What raises it above being another “classic” landscape is its balance of forms, its contrast of opposites (mass and space, liquid and solid, etc.), and its metaphors of revelation, domination, convergence, etc.  Foremost among these is the exquisite balancing of the four main forms comprising the image and the placement of their intersection within the frame.  There is a deft hand at work in the placement of the junction of the left upper corner of the cliff on the right with the sky and the sea, and also in the inclusion of the triangle of sea against the right border of the photograph.  We’re treated to massive cliffs, vast sky and revealed ocean in a harmony of form and detail that resonates Hendrik’s voice.

The Dark Side of a Horse is another astute composition.  Employing contrast, juxtaposition, balance and edges, Hendrik presents a wintry landscape of greys punctuated by contrasting white and black placed in a corner of the frame.  The frame’s edges are used not to define the space but to enhance it.  The juxtaposition of the white and black horses coupled with the near silhouetting of the black horse generate a dialogue between horse solidly present and horse as metaphor- of opposites, of distinction, of presence and memory.  Two supporting details not to be overlooked are the parallel lines of the dark horses head and the tree, and the flat emptiness of the upper right corner, which provides counterbalance to the placement of the main subject in the lower left corner and maintains the spacial harmony of the image.

With the beautiful print Moonset in Leh, Hendrik again bypasses the ordinary, a moonlight landscape, to create a bold image.  Abandoning the middle greys for rich blacks and whites, Hendrik reveals a hyper sensitized world further amplified by its own reflection.  Such imaging sidesteps recording and rendering to reveal nature not as a place, but as an event -  dynamic, present, a story unfolding.

Hendrik makes excellent use of size in the last two photographs I want to comment on.  Beneath the Earth and Train to Krakow are the largest in the show (40×50) and this size seems just right.   In Beneath the Earth, the simplicity of its main forms and shapes easily expand into this print size.  If anything its voice strengthens, becoming still and specific.  Compositionally, the lines and forms of this photograph don’t guide the eye about.  There’s no around; nor are there cross trails for the viewer’s eyes to follow.  Instead there’s a dance of broad and narrow, of inward and outward.  Beneath the Earth pulls the viewer underground, then deeper still, even toward infinity in the left tunnel.  But the right tunnel is curved and shallow.  The two cannot link as binoculars peering into infinity and entrapping ones eye within the image’s center.  Rather they mirror yet counterpoint each other, bringing ones eye repeatedly back out to the large, dark arc of the wall that defines them; there for the viewer to savor the greys and surfaces of this underground until the tracks and diagonals in the walls direct one deeper again.  An alert and masterful eye first sensed then crafted this wonderful image for us.

If I could pick only one photograph from Hendrik’s show to live with, it would be Train Ride to Krakow.  Wow!  I love this photograph.  It’s a photograph that crackles with electricity, literally - the dashing light of the passing train, the lightning bolts, the power lines.  A two dimensional object, this photograph asks, “What is Surface?”  How does the skin of appearance convey solidity and connote identity?  How does perception move from appearance to shapes to forms to solidity to identity, i.e., from first notice to encountering an object of perception?  So that’s a mouthful. Yes. It’s not the question that comes to mind for most viewers standing before Train Ride to Krakow.  Theirs is more likely to be “What is this?  What’s going on here?  What am I looking at?”  Well, we’re not looking at things here; and here’s where this photograph, Hendrik’s seeing, expands the vocabulary of photography.  Train Ride to Krakow’s worlds of place and time are interpenetrating.  Each of its three main components - the train, the rush of light, the landscape - of this image contest each other claiming their space as the dominant reality.  Yet it’s their marriage that anchors this photograph as a world of mysterious energy, one sketched by of the movement of light as a force on a mission for its own sake interpenetrating scenes it normally just reveals.

Train Ride to Krakow does all this through the conventional print pleasures of rich blacks and pure whites parted by greys; but it employs them to make an event never seen before.  From the perspective of composition, this image is a dance between the solid grey of the rectangle forming the left edge of the frame and the radiant lines defining the bulk of the image.  The mirroring between white lines of energy, and the blacks of the power lines provides a metaphor of energy freed and energy contained, of pure energy and transmitted energy.  Not to be overlooked is the emotion added by the lightning bolts and the haunting presence of repeating house forms.

What a feast Train Ride to Krakow is.  It’s a photograph revealing the richness of a novel; and it’s a novel event created for all to experience by the instincts and craft and naked seeing of Hendrik Paul.  In his early 30’s, I can only happily anticipate the photographs Hendrik could be making in 15 to 20 years once he’s thoroughly washed photography’s known from his image making and is speaking to us with the bare voice of his own experience.  All I know is that the next time I go to one of his shows, I’m bringing along a knife, a fork and a napkin.

More about Hendrik @ The Image Flow

Light From Within through June

Dinner with The Artist: May 11, 7pm, Reservations needed, $55

Landscape Photography Class with Hendrik, Thurs May 23- June 13 and Sat June 1

About Martin Lesinski:

After over 30 years of personal and commercial work, photography continues to provide me with the means to explore life and reveal personal values and truths.  Its gifts are the joyful moments when all of my attention is focused through the viewfinder, when all of my being is engaging what the lens encompasses, and when I put the images up afterwards and listen to what they have to say about the contours of my world.  Website: martinlesinski-art-photography.com

Martin Lesinski offers his Advanced Composition Class at The Image Flow Fri April 26-  May 31

The Image Flow

401 Miller Ave

Mill Valley, Ca 94941

415-388-3569

Eric in action

In conjunction with PhotoAlliance, we are hosting Freestyle‘s The World of Inkjet Papers Seminar on April 7. This is going to be an incredible event that you don’t want to miss.

• Freestyle rep and professional photograher, Eric Joseph, will discuss the technical points and aesthetic differences of every inkjet paper available from the following brands: Arista-II, Arista Americana Collection Inkjet Fabric, Awagami, Canson, Hahnemuhle, Ilford, Moab and Museo.
•  The day will include a special inkjet printing clinic! Bring your favorite image on a flash drive and we’ll print it on a few different papers so you can see the difference of the papers with your own images. We will try to get to as many participants as we can in the time alotted.
• Learn how inkjet papers greatly influence the final result of your print!

Join us to learn first hand the differences between all these beautiful papers, and which paper is right for your particular project.

Free!

April 7,  10am- 4pm

Barbara Hazen is a passionate photographer who recently turned her hobby into a career. She has been working with Stuart one-on-one for the past few years, and had a solo exhibit at The Image Flow  in 2012. As part of  an ongoing goal to challenge herself photographically, she entered her work into a highly competitive, national juried portfolio review… and was accepted!

Here is her story of the review experience:

Last weekend I attended the PhotoAlliance  7th annual OUR WORLD PORTFOLIO REVIEW in San Francisco. The event started out with a lecture by Leo Rubinfien on ‘street photography’. In his discussion, Rubinfien questioned the need for some to define street photography all too specifically and criticize it as a lesser form of art.  Rubinfien showed a historical sweep of photographs taken in the past century including his own work and that of Garry Winogrand, while deconstructing these myths that have defined street photography. (The current exhibit of Winogrand at the SFMOMA was curated by Rubinfien.) It was a great kick off for all to begin a productive weekend of portfolio reviews.

Going to a portfolio review is not for the feint of heart. You must be prepared for all types of critic and comments about your work, both positive and negative, from people you may have never met. All participants received about 10 reviews from a variety of professionals in their field including educators, photographers, non-profit and commercial gallery and museum curators and directors, book and magazine publishers packagers and editors. Thom Sempere of PhotoAlliance carefully matched photographers with most of their chosen reviewers. In between the 20-minute reviews was an opportunity to meet other participants and see the large variety of work being presented from tintypes to scanned images and everything in between. We began to share our work, and help each other lick our wounds when a review did not go well. We began to form a new network of fellow photographers.

As a first time participant and a relatively new photographer I had allot to learn. I came well prepared with a manageable portfolio, leave behinds and business cards. Having my main portfolio was not enough however.  Every reviewer wanted to see more than one body of work, if not a few images shown at full scale for gallery viewing. Among other questions, they wanted to know my ‘story’ behind my portfolio and what I wanted from the review session. I quickly realized that I needed a tough skin to manage the indifferent and negative reviews, which in my case were frequent. Having an open mind and checking my ego at the door was key to a good meeting.  Understanding that these reviewers have seen thousands of images and portfolios before, I needed to be confident in my own work and take only the information that served me. It became apparent in the first few reviews, that my photography was not at the level that these professionals were expecting or hoping to see. I had to remind myself that the purpose of attending this review was to get out of the comfort of my local support, and see if my work resonated with a larger audience.  I was dealing with the big league, perhaps looking for a diamond in the rough. The best reviews came from individuals that respectfully looked at my portfolio, even if it was not a good fit for their venue, and then preceded to give me both criticism and encouragement, advise or suggestions on the direction of my work, or a person to contact.

It was actually the support and suggestions of my fellow participants, especially the seasoned photographers, that gave me the most encouragement and validation. We were all in the same position this weekend, presenting something new to these professionals, and hoping to get some traction in the larger art world. They had rejections just as I had, but recognized that this was common, shrugged it off, and went to the next reviewer.

Although the PhotoAlliance review was difficult in some ways, I view it as a positive jumping off platform for my future projects. I give myself credit for getting this far, and will use the advise and encouragement I have been given to enrich my work, while keeping my personal artistic bent my own. Next time I will come more fully prepared with multiple portfolios and a clear story to tell!  In short, this was a great experience, if not just the jolt I needed to reevaluate and push me forward as a photographer.

Barbara Hazen, March 2013

Join us Saturday, March 23 for Mill Valley Photographer Hendrik Paul’s Light from within art opening.  The exhibit includes stunning images of  the up and coming fine art photographer, from his travels through Germany, Italy, Scotland, Ireland, Croatia, Poland, India and his home state, California.

Hendrik’s first solo show showcases 19 framed gelatin silver prints and 13 digital images mounted on aluminum.

Printing 19 images in the Gelatin Silver format and 13 digitally was a big change for me. In the past I have almost

exclusively printed in the Gelatin Silver format. Printing 13 digital images for this show opened me up to a new side of

printing; the large print. Although my heart remains put with the GS process, it was fun and exciting working in such

large formats.

 In his own words, Hendrik describes his artistry and path:

My journey began some years ago in an ancient monastery tucked between the

mountain ridges of northern India. On a particularly dark evening, I noticed a

long staircase leading to a rooftop. Its dim glow caught me, and I felt compelled

to ascend despite its narrow, steep path. Moving closer, I saw each step as a new

period in my life. For so long I had resisted changing, climbing, yet the urge to

surmount some unknown summit drove me forward. As I crept up each step, the

voices of the past echoed, “you are not good enough,” “the journey is too hard,”

“you are not doing anything new.” But I reached the roof, and the voices faded,

and I understood. I had found a path.

My photography is deeply rooted in the conventional film format; silver gelatin

developed by hand and printed in the darkroom. The meticulous hand crafting of

each print is an integral part of my work. Sometimes I hear voices of disapproval

from my fascination with a historical process rather than evolving into digital, but

then I see an image appearing in a tray of developer under an amber light, and I

know I’m exactly where I should be.

Walking up the steps in the monastery I discovered the one true voice that I had

been waiting to hear: my own.

Saturday March 23, 7-10pm
Complimentary food and refreshments will be available.

Hendrik will be teaching a photography class here at The Image Flow this spring.  Stay tuned for details and dates!

Check out our online gallery or visit Hendrik’s website and see work from his previous show Meditative Landscapes, SFO (2012).

Margot Hartford

Born in Canada, Margot Hartford’s love of photography was encouraged while attended a photography poly-technical university in Toronto. After school, she worked as a full-time assistant for an advertising photographer learning more about the practicalities and business of being a commercial shooter.

Margot moved to San Francisco during the dot-com boom and started on the path of environmental portraiture, photographing people for business magazines and corporate websites.

Margot’s emphasis has shifted in the past few year towards photographing kids, families and fitness. She uses her training from the years in advertising to create beautiful lifestyle images.   Her lifestyle photography has been used for the Marriott Hotel chain, USCF, Hewlett Packard and all of the Club One fitness clubs.

A number of years ago, Margot began teaching. She loves working with students and helping them discover “aHA” moments with their photography. As well as teaching at The Image Flow, Margot teaches at The Harvey Milk Center in SF.

Margot helps her students with simple lighting, composition and styling tips as well as understanding their digital cameras.  She is well versed in Lightroom and Photoshop, using them both for her own personal and professional work. She incorporates use of these programs into her classes to help her students understand the benefit of working on their images to create those beautiful and memorable images. As one of her students said, “I’m finally getting pictures of my kids that I’m proud of!”

Last week, Margot shot for Magnolia Lane, a small custom pillow and drapery company that caters to interior designers. She was asked to shoot some of their products in a beautiful house for use on the companies website and brochures. She decided to add some children to the images to bring more energy to the products.

Margot Hartford

Margot Hartford

Margot’s next class starts March 13. There are still a few spaces left!  Call today and begin the journey of creating children’s pictures that you will be very proud of. 415-388-3569

Wind is a problem for the motion control gear because everything needs to be very stable except the motion provided by the motors and the weather or shadows.  So if the winds are gusting over 15mph I’m grounded.   (I’m able to stabilize shaky shots in post to some extent and I’ll cover that in a future blogpost, but if it’s too windy I just go home.)

When working on a weather-dependant project you have no control over your schedule.  In my case I waited until the wintertime because of the cloud potentials but this January and February turned out to be the least cloudy Jan/Feb on record.  I’ve had to be ready at a moment’s notice when the few clouds have come in.  Although it’s been frustrating, I’ve been diligent when the opportunities have arisen and I know I’ll get what I need eventually — but it’s a big lesson in patience and trust.   During weeks of continuous sunny weather I’ve had to keep myself busy with other projects (both personal and for clients).   One of my favorite January diversions was a short video study of my barber.  So when the weather gives you lemons, make a video about metaphorical lemonade!

Before wrapping up about weather it’s essential to mention one of the best tools ever invented for a landscape photographer… an iOS app call The Photographer’s Ephemerous.  TPE can project the sun/moon rise/set location based on anywhere in the world, for any day.  (It’s inexpensive, and there’s also a free version that you can install on your laptop.)  Using that you can enlist the help of our solar system’s major astronomical bodies to create shots with great emotional impact.  Here, for example, is a frame from a time-lapse sequence of the full moon rising behind the radome.  The final shot is quite extraordinary.

Full moon, Mt Tam Radome, Photo by Gary Yost

Regarding camera motion….  The simplest way do this with DSLR time-lapse is to shoot wider than your final shot and then (because your DSLR sensor is many times bigger than an HD frame) you can use LR Timelapse2 (described below) to animate an HD 1920×1080 crop window over the duration of the shot to simulate a motion-controlled camera pan.  You won’t get the motion parallax effects that I mentioned in my last post, but it can be very effective.  To create true motion-controlled shots I bring two complete time-lapse rigs and cameras with me up to the mountain for every shoot.  Each shot takes between 20-40 minutes to complete (remember, there are 30 frames in every second, and I’m creating 10-to-30-second-long shots each time so I have a lot of visual assets to choose from later).

Having two rigs means that while one shot is running I can be setting up another shot.  This makes the most efficient use of my time and doubles the number of shots I can create.  Rig #1 is based on a Nikon D4 with a 14-24mm f2.8 lens on the 2’ Kessler Crane motorized Pocket Dolly that worked so well for me on the Fire Lookout project.  And Rig #2 is based on a Dynamic Perceptions 6’ Stage One slider and eMotimo TB3 multi-axis control head.  This combination isn’t made to work together out of the box, but you can read about how to buy an additional stepper motor and get them linked up in this great post by Gunther Wegner (creator of LR Timelapse2).  I use that rig with a Nikon D800 and a 16-35mm f4 lens because that combination is relatively light compared to the D4 rig, and the lighter weight and lower center of gravity translates into less wobble during sequence capture.

The RAW files on the D800 are over 40Mb each (D4’s RAW are about 23Mb each) and so a 20-second shot requires over 24Gb of storage.  An 8hr shoot of 12-15 shots consumes between 200-300Gb of storage… just in one day!  Instead of buying a dozen very expensive 32Gb CF cards I use a Colorspace Hyperdrive with a 500Gb hard disk in it and just two 32Gb and two 16Gb cards.  While one is in the camera the other one is being backed up to the Hyperdrive and I use them round-robin style.  500Gb is more than enough for even my most ambitious day of shooting.  Back in the studio I have matched sets of 2Tb G-Tech FW800 external drives that I use in pairs for primary and cloned backup storage.  The Hyperdrive doesn’t get reformatted until I have two copies of every frame of each shot safely stored on the hard drives.

Once safely at home on mass storage, my workflow is to import all the hundreds of frames from a given shot into Adobe Lightroom 4 and simultaneously import them into my workhorse time-lapse editing software, LR Timelapse2.   I’ll cover this in more depth in a later blog post because LRT2 is the enabling software technology behind this process – providing for keyframed control of all RAW file parameters over the duration of the shot.  That means you can alter every parameter in Lightroom or Adobe Camera RAW as the shot’s exposure and lighting changes to bring out all of the detail that may be hidden within the frame, making creative decisions about color, depth, tone and clarity throughout the shot.  It’s what makes time-lapse sequences look so realistic, in fact almost hyper-realistic.   After keyframing the RAW file parameters the videos are actually rendered in the slideshow module of Lightroom using video output templates provided by the developer of LR Timelapse2.  You can output all the way up to 4k video, which is looking like it’ll be the next big thing in televisions of the future.    (And as I mentioned earlier, the 7k-wide D800 frame provides outrageous flexibility for cropping within the frame, and by cropping a 400mm lens on the D800 you can produce HD video that is equivalent to what cold be shot with a 1200mm f5.6 lens.  (Which, even if available, would cost over $10,000.  Crazy!)

Rendering HD videos from RAW files in Lightroom takes quite awhile.  Some of my most productive all-day shoots yield 12-15 shots (upwards of 5000 frames!) and take 18-36 hours to render all of the sequences.  I only get to see what I’ve made after everything is rendered to quicktime .mov files and brought into Final Cut Pro X.   It’s almost like the old days when we had to take our rolls of film home with us, develop them, let them dry and then print them the next day.  Since there’s a very long time between creating a shot and actually seeing what it looks like in motion, it’s very important to make a lot of tests with the equipment beforehand.  Thorough testing is the only way to know what you’re going to get in the field when you make changes to the various settings for the different motion channels over time.  And then once in the field you need to take that knowledge and previsualize how the movement of the camera, the clouds and the sun are going to affect the final shot.

In the next post I’ll get into how neutral density filters are essential to getting proper results, and what makes a time-lapse image look silky smooth and what makes it look choppy.

See more of Gary Yost’s work at GaryYost.com

SFJazz Center, Henrik Kam

Henrik Kam has been documenting the creation of the stunning new SF landmark, the SF Jazz Center!

SF Jazz hired  him to document the construction and progress of the SF Jazz Center over a period of 18 months. Among other things, Henrik  mounted  a web-cam to create time lapse sequences. Currently, he is in the process of making the final photos of the project.  You can see his work HERE.

Henrik will be working with another impressive SF landmark, the new SFMOMA addition, later this year.

We are happy to have Henrik teaching The Flow’s Architectural Photography  and Urban Landscape class again this year.  His knowledge of the San Francisco landscape, on the ground technical and artistic experience and thorough understanding of architectural photography will make for an amazing class!