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On this first day of the New Millennium (yeah,
I'm one of those), it's colder than a zombie's gizzard here in
sunny Florida. Thirty degrees to be exact and my computer booted
with a Finder error message which makes me wonder if the Y2K bug
was just postponed a year.
Snow At Milton Masur © Johnathan Hunt 2001
Since all we have to look at here when the
temp's that low is Ohio State fans turning blue on Clearwater
beach, I visited British digital photographer Johnathan Hunt's
web site at
http://www.xlcus.co.uk/photos/2000-12-28-miltonsnow/ to take
in some snowy atmosphere.
Johnathan's scenes of the village of Milton
Masur make for some lovely viewing.
Manipulating A Responsive Chord
Last week's column on digital photo manipulation
struck a responsive chord and thanks to all of you who sent
emails. The most intriguing came from John Holland of Jupiter,
Florida, who attached the self-portrait with his digital
doppelganger.
Me With Myself At The Dictionary © John Holland 2001
John's excellent Photoshop manipulation to
create this fascinating image began in the shooting process with
careful attention to detail. Using a Nikon CP990 on a tripod
with remote release, he set the AE Lock control to ensure
consistency in exposure and white balance. He also used manual
focus to obtain identical images on each exposure.
Keep in mind that had he used autofocus, the
camera could have shifted focus as he moved to a new position
for the second shot.
John describes his technique as using Photoshop
layers and "erasing parts of the top layer to expose the
underlying layer."
100 Cameras = An Interesting Result
A story about HP's 100 Cameras project in this
morning's newspaper piqued my interest and sent me to the web
site.
http://www.hp.com/100cameras
The company sent 100 digital cameras to a like
number of people from all walks of life – from Beat Poet
Lawrence Ferlinghetti to 11-year-old Calvin Ng, a Singapore
student. While many participants in the project were of a
creative bent, none seemed to be photographers. The web site
displays selections of all 100 "cameras" with brief bios of each
person.
Lips by Liza Donald / HP's 100 Cameras
The results run from mundane record snapshots to
highly creative work themed to the photographer's individual
imagination. Especially evocative is the collection of images
from New Zealand-born sculptor Eliza Donald who illustrates the
textures of natural objects with parts of the human body.
San Francisco Rabbi Sydney Mintz made a
collection of warm personal snapshots mixed with beautiful
images of the objects of her faith.
Windows Sydney Mintz / HP's 100 Cameras
This project is an innovative take on the old
"1000 monkeys: 1000 typewriters = Shakespeare" theme. It's a
site well worth visiting and an interesting PR/marketing
experiment from HP.
From Wrist Strap To Wristwatch: The
Casio WQV1-1CR
If you think dangling a digital camera (even the
Canon Digital Elph) is too much of a hassle, consider Casio's
latest offering, the Digital Camera Wristwatch.
CasioWQV1
This grayscale low-res camera (14,400 pixel
resolution) is available only for Windows users (alas, this Mac
user says) and cost $199.95. It has infrared transfer of its 100
maximum files plus an optional $49.95 adapter for downloading to
non-infrared computers. In-watch, er in-camera, the files are
proprietary converting to JPEG or BMP when downloaded.
Battery life is claimed to be 6-8 months with
one minute of operation per day. For more information, visit
here
Next week we'll get back to some nuts and bolts
stuff but for now, Happy New Year which promises to be a
digitally interesting one.
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