I think its fair to say my mind is tidal. Right now, there is no point in my trying to paint; its just a waste of time and of very expensive materials. I'll be back on track in a day or a week or a month, but for now its better that I go exploring, find new things, gather material, work on compositions and so on - anything involving rapid iterations, discovery or sudden changes of direction is good, anything involving slow and and careful thought isn't going to happen.
So I'm out and about, sketching, photographing, maybe I'll hit an exhibition or two but most of all I'm just voraciously consuming random information, following trails (I don't just mean figuratively, I followed a deer path earlier...) and seeing where I end up (in the case of the deer path, I ended up overlooking a bluebell glade talking to an inhabitant of a protest camp (which is trying to re-invigorate the old Digger movement) discussing the finer points of English law while being given a guided tour of the London landmarks visible on the horizon, twenty miles away. I warned you about the tangents). Intellectually, I have ants in my pants. Sorry, Ich kann den nicht zum Deutschen übersetzen; verwenden Sie einfach Ihre Fantasie (and blame Google translate if that doesn't make sense)
I found myself on the internet last night, looking up the finer details of the construction of high quality optics. As you do. From there I sauntered down a trail where people were accusing other people of being sloppy in the way they used the term "nodal point" and ended up looking at photo stitching software. I've been aware of this but not paid it to much attention; I didn't think it would live up to the claims. I stumbled onto a piece of open source and therefore free to use software called Hugin and reading about it and trying it has led to two things.
First of all, I thought I had a battered old 10 megapixel camera that can be picked up on Ebay for £150 and a stunning short-telephoto lens. It turns out, that given a little time and effort, I have a cutting edge 140 megapixel panoramic camera with stunning ultra-wide-angle lens instead. That's saved me about £7500! I made that software sweat today, starting simple then pushing harder and harder and just seeing what it could do. So far I have just left it on its auto settings, but with the camera mounted on a tripod and an hour of post-production I had a panorama that could have been printed out at photo quality that was two metres long! Here is the small version. Even the detail on the right is substantially smaller than the original. Its hardly beautiful but is good from a learning point of view. Question is, what to do with it? Such a strange shape will need specific compositions and a normal landscape approach will not work. The obvious thing to use it for is ultra-high resolution records of my paintings. I have some other ideas but I'm not going to steal my own thunder.
The second thing is far more interesting. One thing that comes in the software is a tool for stacking up digital photos and using the bits from each one that is in the sharpest focus. It is intended for macro (close-up) photography to allow far more depth of field than would otherwise be possible - follow this link for the instructions - I would encourage you for now to ignore the instructions unless you're into this kind of thing and just scroll down until you find the insects. I'm thinking though this is a waste. I could use this to get better focussed photographs but, speaking as someone obsessed with the games that go with spatial representation, there are some far more creative possibilities shouting at me. Again, I'll keep schtum for now. I've always owned a camera since my 6th birthday when I was given a Kodak Instamatic. This "Enfuse" gizmo has just lit an almighty fuse under me and may just revolutionise the way I use a camera. Watch this space.
No comments:
Post a Comment