Void

Most of my intentional camera movement photography is rather bold and colorful. This series, that I called Void, is a bit different. Even though they might look almost like black and white photos, they were taken in full color. It just so happens that the subject was rather monochromatic. What I like about these is that they have some subtle textures that you only notice when looking up close. Click on the "read more" link to see some more.

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[ STRONGER ]

A little experiment using the camera's built-in picture styles. For this video I created a very contrasty black & white picture style, instead of converting to black & white in post. As mentioned in an earlier blog post, this keeps things kind of raw and spontaneous and very much affects the way you shoot.

Another experiment was the "rasterized" effect you see in certain shots. This was created by exporting some of the footage to my iPhone, and subsequently filming those clips playing back on the iPhone screen. However, instead of just filming the screen, I filmed though a second lens (a Nikon 50 f/1.4 in this case) that was sitting on top of the iPhone. This produced an interesting kind of macro image, where the individual pixels of the iPhone are visible. Below is a image of the setup.

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Unintentional abstracts

As I'm about to release my latest short experimental video, I grabbed a number of frames and saved them as stills to post on Flickr. The above image is one of them. It turned out there were a lot of interesting abstract compositions in there, which you don't notice as much when you're just watching it as a video. I posted some more framegrabs after the link.

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Alien skyline

After the previous blog post I decided to experiment some more with the low-key monochrome look. Just like the previous one, this photo is also taken just a short walk from where I live. The domes in the foreground are part of a floating pavillion that houses an exhibition about climate and sustainability. It reminds me of artist renderings of a human habitat on Mars or some other extraterrestrial planet.

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Beyond the obvious

Sometimes it can be fun to think beyond the obvious when deciding on the look of a photo. The above image for example was taken on - believe it or not - a bright sunny day in Rotterdam. You can see the original here. While it was a nice architecture shapshot, I decided to see what else I could do with it.

Photography is often about leaving things out, and focussing on one particular thing. The original shot was quite cluttered, with lots of lines from the glass roof, the buiding, and the tree on the right hand side. So the first thing I did was crop the image to get rid of some of the distraction. A square format seemed to work well here.

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Super slow motion awesomeness

I came across this short film/commercial by Norwegian director Howie Arnstad for eco clothing label FIN Feline. It was filmed on the Phantom HD Gold camera, which can record a 1000 frames per second in full HD resolution. It makes ordinary things look somewhat surreal, especially with the color grading and the slightly underexposed look.

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More intentional camera movement photography

Usually when I'm doing intentional camera movement photography I take anywhere between a hundred and five hundred shots of one particular subject. It's not uncommon to get only one or two good ones out of a series of a few hundred. The majority always gets thrown out right away during the first pass of editing. After that, I'm left with around 10-20% of the shots.

At that point I have to walk away from them for a while, since I find it very hard to pick the best shots right after I took them. So they'll just sit patiently in their Aperture folder for a couple of days/weeks until I feel the inclination to look at them again. Only then I can quickly pick the ones I like best and, if need be, do a little post processing or cropping. That's what I did this morning with the above photo, one of a series I took a couple of weeks ago.

Normally I'll see if I can create a little series of at least three photos from the same set, but sometimes, like in this case, there's not enough shots that really grab me, or they're too similar. So I thought I'd just post this one...

Mercedes-Benz interactive films

Mercedes-Benz recently released a couple of interactive films on their website, featuring their SLK and C-Class Coupe models. Although they are sometime struggling to bridge the gap between creating engaging entertainment and communicating information about the cars, I have to say the films are cinematically quite beautiful. The C-Class Coupe film is modelled after Hollywood-style action thrillers, whereas the SLK film is a road movie featuring... you, the viewer, stuck in the desert, when a beautiful and mysterious stranger pulls up in her fancy SLK.

From a user experience point of view I'm always on a fence with interactive movies. It has to do with storytelling. A good story needs a storyteller, who skillfully guides you through the twists and turns of the narrative. Introducing user input always makes me feel I might not be getting the best experience, the best version of the story. The point-of-view style cinematography in the SLK movie on the other hand is interesting and does kind of draw you into the action, making the interaction aspect feel more natural.

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Keeping it raw

Sometimes you want lots of control, to be able to tweak, post-process and color correct every single image or shot until it's exactly how it needs to be. Sometimes it's nice to keep things raw. And I don't mean shooting RAW files. Au contraire, I've been experimenting with shooting video using the Canon 5D mark II's picture styles, allowing you to bake a certain look into your shot.

Whereas you would normally shoot using relatively "flat" low contrast settings, I dialed in a harsh, high contrast black and white look. This severely limits the possibilities in post production, but that's the whole point. There's some creative satisfaction to be had from just creating things in-camera and working with what you have.

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Beyond HD

Playing with RED test footage in REDcineX

I've been playing around with some RED test footage lately. RED has recently released their new Epic camera into the wild, and I'm curious to learn more about this type of imaging technology. To give you an idea of what this camera is capable of:

5K resolution - The epic features a massive 14 megapixels of resolution (5120 x 2700 pixels). Do we really need that many megapixels? Depends on who you ask. I've often found that, in order to get a nice, crisp high definition look, you need to start off with a higher resolution than what your output is going to be. It also leaves some room for cropping in post.

Shooting RAW - Imagine being able to color grade your footage with the same ease as editing a RAW photo in Aperture or Lightroom. In fact, each frame of video footage on the Epic is in effect a RAW photo. All this power comes at a price of course, in the form of huge file sizes.

Flexible frame rates - Up to 120 frames per second, for epic (pardon the pun) slow motion shots.

High dynamic range - The Epic has a built-in HDR more, in which a second, shorter exposure is made for each frame, increasing the available dynamic range.

Modular - The Epic is not so much a camera, it's a modular system. At it's core is the "brain" as RED calls it, in essence a box with a sensor in it. You can attach all sorts of storage, power, monitoring and other modules on the back and lenses on the front of the brain. This makes it extremely flexible and versatile.

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