Month: October 2013

Make Ol’ Timey RoundographsOn Your Phone
The Kodak No. 1 was the first camera available to non-pros. It let anyone document and share their day to day life.

It was the o.g. Instagram.

Uniquely, photos taken with the Kodak No. 1 were printed in charming 2.5″ sepia circles.

The National Media Museum just released a set of Kodak No. 1 photos and it turns out day-to-day life in the 1890′s was pretty cool. Boat rides, beach trips, and hats galore!

They inspired us to give our photos that Kodak No. 1 look. So, we cooked up this simple recipe:
1. Crop your photo into a circle. We used PicFrame.
2. Run it through a black and white Instagram filter but don’t post it. Put your phone in airplane mode before you hit “share” and when the upload fails, just X it out. (It’ll save the filtered photo to your phone.)
3. Run the photo you just saved though Instagram one more time. This time, use a filter with a brownish tint for that ol’ timey feel. (We like Hefe and Sutro best).
4. Turn off airplane mode and share away! (Whatever hashtag the first Kodak users used has been lost to history. But we’re using #Roundograph.)
It’s that easy! Give your photos that great 1888 look using just a couple of apps… Or invest in headwear (those folks seriously loved their hats).

Get Inspired by Ol’ Timey Roundographs via Gizmodo

p.s. Hey SF Bay Area! We’re having a Sony Smart Lens Party next week. Lenses on-hand to play with and purchase! RSVP or Find out more.

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Photojojo
October 11, 2013
A 16, A Southern Itallian Gem in Rockridge, Oakland

Tonight, along with mrsth, I finally decided to check out one of the highly regarded Oakland restaurant newcomers, A 16, in the Rockridge District of Oakland.

A 16 has been open for about 5 months now and is a sister restaurant to the popular restaurant with the same name in San Francisco’s Marina district. The restaurant took over the old Hudsons/Garibaldi’s space on College Avenue. Like their Marina counterpart, the restaurant focuses on Southern Italian Campania region food. A 16 is a highway in Italy that runs from Naples in Campania to Canosa in Puglia.

Unlike their Marina relative, A 16 Rockridge has a liquor license allowing it a full bar and cocktail service to go along with their menu.

Chef Rocky Maselli has put together a wonderful menu that focuses on pasta and gourmet pizzas, with lots of little extras worth exploring on the menu. Everything we had tonight was absolutely first rate. No dish disappointed. The fresh handmade pasta was the highlight.

Before beginning our meal we started out with two cocktails from A 16′s creative cocktail menu. I had the Hemingway Negroni, which was served over a couple of giant ice cubes in an attractive oversized tumbler. It was made with papa pilar rum and was delicious.

After cocktails we ordered the roasted beets and heirloom tomato salad. The salad was complemented with ricotta and generously dressed with olive oil. The beets, tomatoes and cheese, went well together and it was a refreshing end of a Bay Area summer salad.

After we finished the salad, our main dishes arrived. For our main dishes we decided to share the capunti — pancetta, chanterelles, cherry tomato, smoked caciocavallo pasta and the montanara rockridge pizza.

All three of these dishes tonight were recommendations of the very knowledgeable bartenders who took care of us at the bar. Mrsth and I always prefer sitting at the bar over a table and find that the bartenders frequently are the most knowledgable of a restaurant’s service staff. Tonight, especially, they did not disappoint.

The capunti pasta was my favorite dish of the evening. The taste of the caciocavallo cheese in the pasta gave it a wonderful smokey taste. It was a rich, full flavored rewarding dish. The montanara pizza, named for the local neighborhood, was also splendid. We added prosciutto and arugula to the burrata (again at the bartender’s recommendation) on the pizza and it complemented it perfectly.

Finally for dessert we decided on the fried apple turnovers which came alongside a rich caramel honey type sauce. Before serving us our turnovers, the staff brought us over a complementary plate of Italian cookies to enjoy. The three turnovers were the perfect amount of sweet to end our evening.

We didn’t have any wine with our meal, choosing to stick to more cocktails and a beer with the pizza. The restaurant does have a wonderfully full wine list though. You can also bring your own bottle (with corkage charge). The menu said that they would waive corkage charge per bottle brought with each bottle bought from their list. They offered both tastes and full pours of wines by the glass.

The ambience of the restaurant was very nice. The bar is large and oversized with plenty of room on a large marble slab. The restaurant is open and airy, and once the sun went down and they opened the shades, a rich, warm evening sunset sunlight filled the restaurant.

The service for our meal could not have been better. Two bartenders managed the bar, and even with a full restaurant, were able to give us the highest quality of service. The recommendations of our bartenders were all absolutely spot on. Meals were promptly delivered and dishes quickly removed. They allowed us to sample taste some of the liquors used in the cocktails when deciding on which drinks to order. I usually find that I get better service at the bar, which is one of the reasons why I prefer the bar over a table, and it was especially true tonight.

We were both delighted tonight with our A 16 experience and definitely will be back to this neighborhood gem to try even more dishes. The only downside to tonight was that they didn’t have a television set at the bar and so we had to rely on our cell phones to keep track of the A’s/Tigers American League Divisional Series deciding game. The restaurant also doesn’t have wifi service and cell service in the restaurant was spotty.

Lack of a TV and good cell service, however, are probably a bonus for many.

Hemingway Negroni, A 16, Oakland

A 16, College Ave in Oakland’s Rockridge District

MMMMM… Beets and Heirloom Tomato Salad

Cocktail #2, A 16, Oakland

Fresh Handmade Pasta, A 16, Oakland

Dinner at the Bar, A 16 Oakland

Fried Apple Turnovers with Caramel Sauce, A 16 Oakland

A Little Prosciutto and Arugula to Complement the Pizza, A 16, Oakland

Cooking Pizzas in the Open Kitchen of A 16, Oakland

A 16, Oakland

Fresh Cocktail Ingredients, A 16 Oakland

Cookie Time, A 16 Oakland

Cocktail Menu, A 16 Oakland

Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

October 11, 2013
How To Prepare For Successful Landscape Shoots [Before You Head Out]

One of the simplest ways to capture great photographs is to prepare yourself for success before you head out the door. I’ve used this process of preparing for shoots for the last few years and it’s worked great for me – I’d love to hear what else people are doing to prepare for their own shoots in the comments below.

How To Prepare For Successful Landscape Shoots: The Day Before

Virtually Scout the Location

Usually the night before a shoot I will open up Google Earth, Maps and/or various other apps to scout the location for things like parking spots, water features, sun angles and whatever else might be of interest to me for that particular shoot.

It can be helpful to look through Flickr or another location based photography service to get an idea of what other photographers have found interesting before your visit.

Charge Up

It should go without saying, but make sure you’re camera is fully charged before you go to sleep. The last thing you want is to be ready to head out the door and find out your camera’s got one bar of battery life left in it. On the same note make sure your SD/CF cards are empty and packed as well – that’s a mistake you’ll only make once.

This step doesn’t just include the camera though – you should make sure that your own body is fully charged as well. Have a good sized dinner and get to bed early, eat a healthy breakfast and pack snacks to take with you. If there’s one thing that will ruin your photos faster than anything it’s an empty belly – you’ll start to get frustrated easy, you’ll care less about what you’re doing, and ultimately you will make mistakes which is the last thing we want to do when we’ve gone through all the effort to get to this location in the first place.

How To Prepare For Successful Landscape Shoots: Before You Leave

Check the Weather Report

It’s easy to take for granted, but it’s important to get a weather report for the day and area you’re heading before you leave the house. If you’re planning to hike a mountain know that it will be chillier the higher you go and just because the weather is fair in your backyard doesn’t mean that it’s the same at your location of interest.

Dress Accordingly

Hiking boots are a must if you want to get into locations off-the-beaten path, but you can do fine in comfortable sneakers if you’re not planning traverse any serious terrain. That said you should plan to wear comfortable and breathable clothing – jeans and cotton shirts are rarely a good option as they don’t keep you warm and if they get wet they will take forever to dry.

How To Prepare For Successful Landscape Shoots: On Scene

Arrive Early

I can’t stress this enough! The last thing you want to do is show up as the sun is setting or after it has risen. If you arrive early you can set up the camera and capture many different locations with the light that you have.

As the light changes you may want to revisit your previous locations or continue looking for new ones, but as long as you’ve gotten there early, you should end up with a bunch of shots to process when you return home.

Take Your Time

Rushing around will not allow your mind to think properly. When you rush your shots the odds are increased that you’ll get home to find out that you left your ISO at some unusable number or your aperture was at f/2.8 when it was supposed to be at f/11.

Take each shot as seriously as the last one you took and make the adjustments that are needed to get the best image out of the scene before you. Sometimes I find it helpful to even simply get up and walk away from the camera and give myself a break. Of course, when I do that, I still end up taking photographs with my phone, but those are more for fun than anything else.

Returning Home

Processing the Results

After all is captured and you’ve safely made it back to your house it’s time to process your what you’ve recorded. This part is truly up to you and your creative style, but here is my workflow as a basis point.

I will start with import the RAW files into Lightroom and going through to clean out the ones I absolutely don’t see any use for. I’ll then make my selections of the ones that are first on the list to get process and do just that. On occasion I will do more processing and clean up in Photoshop, but with how powerful Lightroom has gotten over the last couple iterations of the software I’ve seen less and less need to do so. If you’re curious you can also watch me edit select photos every week on my Let’s Edit series.

To get even more information on landscape photography check out this amazing DPS eBook on the entire process.

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

How To Prepare For Successful Landscape Shoots [Before You Head Out]

The post How To Prepare For Successful Landscape Shoots [Before You Head Out] by John Davenport appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Digital Photography School

October 11, 2013
144-Year Building: 3D Animation Completes Famous Basilica

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

Started in 1882, the Sagrada Família basilica is one of the most famous buildings in the world, despite still remaining unfinished … at least for now. This amazing one-minute animation shows the final steps toward its near-future completion, officially slated for 2026.

Designed by Antoni Gaudí and set in Barcelona, the structure has been in the works for generations, a process continued long after the death of its architect nearly 100 years ago. The animation itself features real aerial helicopter footage enhanced with dynamic digital modelling.

The plan, in fact, is to celebrate its completion on that one-century anniversary of 1926. The project is scheduled to be finished under its new chief architect Jordi Faulí who is following in the plans and footsteps of Gaudí in finalizing this Gothic-inspired masterpiece.

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Public & Institutional. ]

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WebUrbanist

October 11, 2013
Edgy Art: Fore-Edge Paintings Hidden in Historical Books

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

Invisible at a glance, artists have long hidden fore-edge artwork in plain sight, resulting in works that are sometimes first spotted decades or even centuries after their creation. What looks like a plain gold-gilt surface on the shelf can unfold to reveal a rich and colorful surprise.

Via Colossal, the above examples come from Colleen Theisen and the Special Collections & University Archives at the University of Iowa. They are from a series of four books titled after the seasons (Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer shown sequentially above) published in the 1800s by Robert Mudie.

The art of disappearing fore-edge painting dates back hundreds of years, but (visible) edge painting on closed books goes back over a thousand years. Sometimes the scenes are made to match content, contexts and characters from within the book. In other cases, they are more broadly relevant, meant to set the stage or tone for the reader.

The fore-edge (found on the opposite side of a book’s spine) can be painted directly on the closed book to create a drawing that is immediately visible. Alternatively, the pages can be splayed out and painted on the front or back of the edge. In some cases, both sides are painted to create a double fore-edge works that are entirely different depending on which way you splay the sheets. Triple fore-edge variants are also possible, with two patterns or scenes that disappear and a third that is visible when the book is closed.

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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

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WebUrbanist

October 11, 2013
Converted Clock Tower: Ultimate Urban Loft with a View

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

At the top of a former cardboard box factory built in 1915, within a clock tower overlooking Brooklyn and Manhattan, is one of New York City’s most remarkable residences. The pinnacle of the Clocktower Building is a three-story penthouse measuring over 6,800 feet, with four 14-foot glass clocks – one on every wall of the top floor.

The clocks offer massive, unparalleled views of the city in all directions. Additional windows provide a look at the Manhattan Bridge to the Statue of Liberty from a soaking tub. Or, simply go on the sky roof cabana and enjoy it in the open air.

Transformed from its industrial past, the penthouse features a ceiling that extends from 16 to 50 feet in height, as well as a glass-enclosed, three-story elevator running up the center of the space. It entered the market in 2009 for $ 25 million – the most expensive apartment on record in Brooklyn by far – and has now been lowered to $ 18 million.

For a while, as it went unsold, the clock tower penthouse was put up for rent for a mere $ 50,000 per month. It’s also been offered up for various special events while it sits on the market, including a dinner for Esquire Magazine.

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A Million Times: Clock Wall is a Moving Art Installation

Put 288 clocks on a wall and what do you get? One design group did just that, but in a new and completely mesmerizing way.
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Quintessential Conversion: The Ultimate Warehouse Loft

A warehouse space in a historic Neo-Gothic building in Melbourne is transformed into a beautiful modern apartment with brick walls, archways and high ceilings.
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[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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WebUrbanist

October 11, 2013
The City is a Playground: 15 Interactive Installations

[ By Steph in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

Art installations that invite or even dare passersby to join in on a fun activity transform even the most stiff and boring urban environments into public playgrounds. Musical swings on the sidewalks of Montreal, a giant red ear in South Korea, a massive Monopoly game in Chicago and a submarine erupting from the middle of Milan are among the cool interactive projects that bring out the kid in all of us.

Massive Submarine in the Middle of Milan

Pedestrians in Milan were puzzled to see what looked like a massive deep-sea voyager bursting from the pavement in the middle of Piazza Mercanit. A Smart Car appears to have been caught up in the eruption, barely escaping. Of course, it’s an art installation – actually, a marketing stunt for an insurance group’s ‘Protect Your Life’ campaign. A ‘scuba diver’ at the scene told onlookers about the importance of insurance in safeguarding your possessions – probably a little less exciting than what they were hoping to hear.

Escape Machine

Where do you want to escape to? Press the red button on this strange black cube in the middle of a French public square, tell it your desired destination and something really, really unexpected will happen.

Urban Shopping Cart Merry-Go-Round

In the middle of a municipal theater square in Portugal, a merry-go-round of shopping carts beckons kids and adults alike to interact. It’s a parasitic addition to a lamp post, made to attach to any such structure in a public place. “By counteracting the freedom of movement that normally characterizes these carts (ironically moving in circles) we are reminded that consumerism does not take us anywhere… or in the best case scenario to the starting point.”

Whisper a Message to ‘The Big Ear’

Called ‘Yobosayo,’ the Korean word used when calling to get someone’s attention, this interactive sculpture records voice messages from passersby and shares them with others. You speak into the big red ear, and people inside the adjacent Seoul Citizens Hall listen. It’s even more interactive than that, in fact; sensors on the hanging speaker units monitor how much time people spend listening to each message, so the ones people pay attention to remain in the playlist, while the unpopular ones are transformed into music by an algorithm that amplifies and distorts the sound.

Knitting the Andy Warhol Bridge

A project called Knit the Bridge brought 1,800 volunteers onto the Andy Warhol Bridge in Pittsburgh to cover the sides, towers and main cables in rectangular panels individually knitted by each artist. It’s a fitting tribute to the only bridge in the United States to be named for an artist.

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In Orbit: Transparent Suspended Net Playground in the Sky

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Interactive Light Art Installation Operated by Smart Phones

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The City Is A Playground 15 Interactive Installations

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In Orbit: Transparent Suspended Net Playground in the Sky

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[ By Steph in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

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WebUrbanist

October 11, 2013
3D Printer Bot Creates Perfect Replicas of Classic Paintings

[ By Steph in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]

You can’t really get a feel for a Rembrandt painting by looking at a flat print – there’s just so much detail missing in the texture of the brushstrokes, the physicality of the paint. But just like it’s revolutionizing so many other areas from medical devices to full-scale architecture, 3D printing is making it possible to experience some of the world’s most valuable classic paintings as they were meant to be seen.

Dutch researcher Tim Zaman has built a photographic scanning system that uses two cameras and fringe projection to scan the surface of a painting. An exact reproduction is then generated with a high-resolution 3D printer. That replica maintains all of the surface texture of the original, revealing paint build-up and every little brushstroke.

In fact, extreme close-ups captured with the digital scans show the paint from angles in which it’s never been seen before, even on iconic images like Van Gogh’s sunflowers. “Paintings are not unlike sculptures, paint as a material has a huge impact on the way a painting looks. By illuminating a painting with light, it automatically gives highlights and shadows that form the way we see it,” says Zaman.

The 3-D imaging method used to create the prints yields an enormous depth map while also capturing exact color. The resulting print has a resolution of 50 microns, easily fooling the average observer into thinking it’s an original. Look closely and you’ll see the tiny drops, painted mechanically with the nozzle. “We noticed that things like glossiness and transparency that are in each painting are very distinguishing in the original, and we are not yet able to reproduce.”

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Action Figure Booth: 3D Printer Creates Custom Figurines

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New Tech Meets Old World: Paintings in Ultra High-Res

An Italian project called Haltadefinizione gives us an unprecedented, practically microscopic look at renowned works of art including Leonardo’s Last Supper.
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[ By Steph in Gadgets & Geekery & Technology. ]

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WebUrbanist

October 11, 2013
Secret Graffiti: Railings Reveal Art Only at the Right Angle

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

Railings, shutters, sun shades and other surfaces with separate-but-repeating elements are all potential canvasses for this unique semi-secretive approach to street art.

Zebrating is the German artist group behind these pieces, carefully calculated, printed and glued onto surfaces with a balance of color and simplicity that lets them stand out but seem also like part of their environment.

Though sometimes seen in process and stopped by the cops, this crew continues to paint their lenticular-style pictures both on public urban surfaces and in more sanctioned venues like museum galleries or approved architecture.

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Secret Graffiti Railings Reveal Art Only At The Right Angle

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The Ultimate Banksy Art & Graffiti Image Gallery

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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

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WebUrbanist

October 11, 2013
Canon EOS 70D Dual Pixel AF: for better or for worse?

Canon’s latest enthusiast digital SLR sports a radical new sensor-based autofocus system, where nearly every pixel is dedicated to phase-detect autofocus. As we come close to completing our review of the Canon 70D, we’ve run the new AF system through a battery of tests to see what, if anything, it means for the enthusiast shooter. Click through for the whole nine yards, as well as new information about the camera’s movie autofocus and Wi-Fi functions.

News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

October 11, 2013