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Posts Tagged ‘Photos’

Curiosity Rover Photos, A Landscape Photographers Perspective

16 Oct

Landscape photographers are often striving to photograph new places, but imagine being the first person to ever photograph an alien environment. Some time ago I wrote about his in relation to the landing on the moon in my blog post Isolation and Discovery. My day dreams of photographing landscapes of distant, if not alien environments, has been revived by the recent stream of images from the Mars Curiosity Rover.  The rover is equipped with 17 cameras so there will be plenty of photos to come over the next year. The main Mast camera (MastCam) has begun snapping a series of lower resolution (by consumer dSLR standards) images that can be stitched together to create larger high resolution images. Neat, but what is really cool is NASA is making all the images from the rover available on their web site in high resolution (see the Curiosity Rover Multimedia page). If you have the inclination you can stitch and process the images yourself. I had a few minutes the other day to do this and here are the results:

Mars Curiosity Rover Pano Color Corrected Comparison (Top RAW from NASA & Botom My Version)

View the large color corrected pano comparison (2954 x 1000)

View the large color corrected pano (2954 x 500)

Mars Curiosity Rover Pano Color Corrected Comparison Zoom

View the large corrected version of the pano with the uncorrected section (2975 x 500)

I thought it would be interesting to take the RAW uncorrected images from NASA and color correct them as I do with my landscape photos. I have my very own recipe of edits that expand on the basics of finding a black, grey and white point in a scene including mid-tone contrast adjustments, edge masks and more. Relying on the “auto” curves or levels feature in Photoshop may be good for a quick fix, but it’s not always an accurate correction. The biggest challenge obviously in color correcting NASA’s images is that  I don’t have a firsthand experience of seeing the scene with my naked eye and the lighting scenario/time is unknown to me. I can only make educated guesses and fly blind by referencing the data in the RAW file.  While my effort to color correct these images is not perfect it’s easy to see the difference.

Mars Curiosity Rover Pano Color Corrected (NASA vs Mine) Comparison Zoom

Above is the color corrected version from NASA placed atop my version of the scene. I have to trust NASA on this one, but it still seems like it has room for improvement. It would be interesting to learn more from NASA what the Earth equivalent “time of day” these photos were taken on Mars and possibly get a better understanding of the air quality & atmospheric differences. With this additional knowledge Earth-bound landscape photographers who have a great feel for the quality of light at different times of day on Earth might be able to help create a more accurate rendition of what these scenes actually look like.

For now I’ll be waiting patiently for the next batch of  images to be downloaded from Mars. The images above are part of a larger panoramic. It should be pretty amazing to see what it looks like as a whole not to mention see what other amazing images make their way back to NASA.

Additional Info on Mars Color Correction
On this trip NASA included a color calibration target . This is great, BUT it’s only going to help for situations when there isn’t a natural tint of color in the atmosphere (sunset, sunrise, impact from particulate matter, etc.). Here on Earth if you if you use such a color calibration target at sunset or sunrise the golden hour light is completely neutralized even though it’s a naturally occurring color phenomenon. Unfortunately on Mars it may not be known what the naturally occurring hue in the atmosphere  is in general or at different times of the day. I’m hoping that NASA is able to provide information about the angle of the sun in the sky in relation to the photos relayed from the rover. While it may be impossible to know what the average natural hue of the sky is (less a spectrophotometer focused on the sky) it might allow for some modeling to make an educated guess. For purposes of geological study the neutral coloring will likely help study rocks better, but in giving the average person a view of what Mars actually looks like the color calibration target on the rover may not help that much.

Mars Curiosity Rover Color Correction Scale Target

Technorati Tags: Mars, Curiosity Rover, Photo, Landscape, Astrophotography, Color Correction

Copyright Jim M. Goldstein, All Rights Reserved

Curiosity Rover Photos, A Landscape Photographers Perspective

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Nice Visual Art photos

16 Oct

Some cool visual art images:

SC2012: Art Exhibition – The Reception
visual art
Image by Steve Welburn
sc2012 hosted an exhibition of interactive and audio-visual art at The Art Pavilion in Mile End Park, East London.

SC2012: Art Exhibition – The Reception
visual art
Image by Steve Welburn
sc2012 hosted an exhibition of interactive and audio-visual art at The Art Pavilion in Mile End Park, East London.

 
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Nice Visual Art photos

15 Oct

Check out these visual art images:

SC2012: Art Exhibition – The Reception
visual art
Image by Steve Welburn
sc2012 hosted an exhibition of interactive and audio-visual art at The Art Pavilion in Mile End Park, East London.

SC2012: Art Exhibition – The Reception
visual art
Image by Steve Welburn
sc2012 hosted an exhibition of interactive and audio-visual art at The Art Pavilion in Mile End Park, East London.

 
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2011 Photos of the Year: Pete Erickson

28 Aug

Bulletin staff photographer Pete Erickson discusses his favorite photos of 2011.
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Nice Visual Art photos

25 Aug

Check out these visual art images:

NYC: Metropolitan Museum of Art – Auguste Rodin’s Burghers of Calais – Jacques de Wissant
visual art
Image by wallyg
Les Bourgeois de Calais (The Burghers of Calais) is one of the most famous sculptures by Auguste Rodin. It serves as a monument to the heroism of six burghers in Calais during a siege by the England in the Hundred Years’ War in 1347.

After a victory in the Battle of Crécy, England’s King Edward III besieged Calais, an important French port on the English channel, and Philip VI of France ordered the city to hold out at all costs. Which it did for a over a year. Philip failed to lift the siege and starvation eventually forced the city to parlay for surrender. Edward offered to spare the people of the Calais if any six of its top leaders would surrender themselves. Edward demanded that they walk out almost naked, wearing nooses around their necks and carrying the keys to the city and castle. One of the wealthiest of the town leaders, Eustache de Saint Pierre, volunteered first and five other burghers–Jean d’Aire, Jacques and Pierre de Wissant, Jean de Fiennes, Andrieu d’Andres–soon followed suit. Though the burghers expected to be executed, their lives were spared by the intervention of England’s Queen, Philippa of Hainault, who persuaded her husband by saying it would be a bad omen for her unborn child. Rodin depicts a larger than life Saint Pierre leading the envoy of emaciated volunteers to the city gates, prepared to meet their imminent mortality.

The monument was initially proposed by Omer Dewavrin, mayor of Calais, for the town’s square in 1884. Unusual in that monuments were usually reserved for victories, the town of Calais had long desired to recognize the sacrifices made by these altruistic men. Rodin’s controversial design echoed this intent–the burghers are not presented in a heroic manner, but sullen and worn. His innovative design initially presented the burghers at the same level as the viewers, rather than on a traditional pedestal, although until 1924 the city, against Rodin’s wishes, displayed it on an elevated base.

Other casts stand around the world–the garden of Musée Rodin, the Victoria Tower Gardens, in the shadow of the Houses of Parliament in London; the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, the Brooklyn Museum in New York City, the sculpture garden of the Smithsonian Hirshorn Museum in Washington D.C., the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, the Rodin Gallery in Seoul, and Glyptoteket in Copenhagen, to name a few. Some installations have the figures tightly grouped with contiguous bases, while others, like this one, have the figures separated. Some installations are elevated on pedestals, others are placed at ground level. At Stanford University’s Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, null, concealing the bottom few inches of the bases, and spaced such that viewers can walk between the figures. The museum claims this is how Rodin wished them to be displayed.

**
Designed as a classical French garden and opened in 1990, the Carroll and Milton Petrie European Sculpture Court serves as a framework for the presentation of large Italian and French sculptures, originally intended for the outdoors, dating from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century. The arcaded south wall of the court was inspired by the Orangerie of Versailles, and the north wall incorporates the Museum’s 1888 Italianate facade and carriage entrance of granite and red brick.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s permanent collection contains more than two million works of art from around the world. It opened its doors on February 20, 1872, housed in a building located at 681 Fifth Avenue in New York City. Under their guidance of John Taylor Johnston and George Palmer Putnam, the Met’s holdings, initially consisting of a Roman stone sarcophagus and 174 mostly European paintings, quickly outgrew the available space. In 1873, occasioned by the Met’s purchase of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriot antiquities, the museum decamped from Fifth Avenue and took up residence at the Douglas Mansion on West 14th Street. However, these new accommodations were temporary; after negotiations with the city of New York, the Met acquired land on the east side of Central Park, where it built its permanent home, a red-brick Gothic Revival stone "mausoleum" designed by American architects Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mold. As of 2006, the Met measures almost a quarter mile long and occupies more than two million square feet, more than 20 times the size of the original 1880 building.

In 2007, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was ranked #17 on the AIA 150 America’s Favorite Architecture list.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was designated a landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1967. The interior was designated in 1977.

National Historic Register #86003556

Scratches in the kitchen
visual art
Image by Roberto Giannotti

If I run naked?
visual art
Image by Roberto Giannotti

 
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Windows 7 – Don’t Like How Songs, Photos, Videos or Webpages are Opened?

22 Aug

Tired of webpages opening in a particular browser, or movies in an old multimedia player you no longer use? Change these associations in Windows 7.

When installing and uninstalling software on Windows 7, you may note that files that used to open in one program now pop up in other software. For example, install a new text editor or notepad replacement tool and you may notice that text files open up in said tool instead of Windows Notepad. Install a multimedia player and your songs and videos may not open in Windows Media Player anymore. Run a new web browser and your web pages may appear differently than how you remembered.

While many applications ask you before making such changes, you may accidentally gloss over such screens when installing them. Plus, some software may just make the changes for you. Thus, if you want to open files in different software packages, do the following:…

Read more at MalekTips.
New Computer and Technology Help and Tips – MalekTips.Com

 
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Nice Visual Art photos

16 Aug

Some cool visual art images:

California: Stanford University – Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University – Gay Liberation
visual art
Image by wallyg
In 1979, pop sculptor George Segal was commissioned by the Mildred Andrews Fund, a private Cleveland-based foundation that supports public art, to create a work that would commemorate New York City’s Stonewall Rebellion, the 1969 riot that marks the beginning of the modern gay liberation movement. The result was the first piece of public art commemorating the struggle of GLBTG people for equality, predating Amsterdam’s "Homomonument" by some seven years.

The sculpture, a life-like, life-size bronze group, painted white, depicts four figures: a standing male couple and a seated female couple. One of the men holds the shoulder of his partner; one of the seated women gently touches her friend’s thigh. The poses are non-dramatic, but quietly powerful, suggesting depths of love and companionship.

The idea for a sculpture to honor the gay and lesbian rights movement on the tenth anniversary of Stonewall originated with Bruce Voeller, co-founder and first executive director of the National Gay Rights Task Force and the founder of the Mariposa Foundation. The plan was to create two castings–one for New York City’s Sheridan Park, near the site of the Stonewall Inn, and one in Los Angeles. However local residents opposed the plans for the installation. Instead the sculpture was installed at Stanford University, where after just a month it was attacked with a ball-peen hammer. After being repaired, it was reinstalled only to be spray painted with the word AIDS, and vandalized again in 1994 with splattered black paint. In 1992 New York City finally agreed to place the statue in Christopher Park, where it was dedicated on June 23.

California: Stanford University – Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University – Gay Liberation
visual art
Image by wallyg
In 1979, pop sculptor George Segal was commissioned by the Mildred Andrews Fund, a private Cleveland-based foundation that supports public art, to create a work that would commemorate New York City’s Stonewall Rebellion, the 1969 riot that marks the beginning of the modern gay liberation movement. The result was the first piece of public art commemorating the struggle of GLBTG people for equality, predating Amsterdam’s "Homomonument" by some seven years.

The sculpture, a life-like, life-size bronze group, painted white, depicts four figures: a standing male couple and a seated female couple. One of the men holds the shoulder of his partner; one of the seated women gently touches her friend’s thigh. The poses are non-dramatic, but quietly powerful, suggesting depths of love and companionship.

The idea for a sculpture to honor the gay and lesbian rights movement on the tenth anniversary of Stonewall originated with Bruce Voeller, co-founder and first executive director of the National Gay Rights Task Force and the founder of the Mariposa Foundation. The plan was to create two castings–one for New York City’s Sheridan Park, near the site of the Stonewall Inn, and one in Los Angeles. However local residents opposed the plans for the installation. Instead the sculpture was installed at Stanford University, where after just a month it was attacked with a ball-peen hammer. After being repaired, it was reinstalled only to be spray painted with the word AIDS, and vandalized again in 1994 with splattered black paint. In 1992 New York City finally agreed to place the statue in Christopher Park, where it was dedicated on June 23.

 
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Posted in Photographs

 

Nice Visual Art photos

09 Aug

Some cool visual art images:

Still Life with light scratches
visual art
Image by Roberto Giannotti

Unexpected without a profile
visual art
Image by Roberto Giannotti

Still Life with light scratches
visual art
Image by Roberto Giannotti

 
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Nice Visual Art photos

03 Aug

Check out these visual art images:

Scratches on film human
visual art
Image by Roberto Giannotti

Elee’s Tail
visual art
Image by cybertoad
Featured as the Houstonist Flickr Group Photo Of The Day for May 25th, 2006.

The Irish Museum of Modern Art is housed in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham
visual art
Image by infomatique
The Museum wishes to advise visitors that, owing to essential and extensive refurbishing works, the main building at IMMA will be closed from 1 November 2011 until 31 December 2012.

The Irish Museum of Modern Art is housed in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, the finest 17th-century building in Ireland. The Royal Hospital was founded in 1684 by James Butler, Duke of Ormonde and Viceroy to Charles II, as a home for retired soldiers and continued in that use for almost 250 years. The style is based on Les Invalides in Paris with a formal facade and a large elegant courtyard. The Royal Hospital in Chelsea was completed two years later and also contains many similarities in style. The Royal Hospital Kilmainham was restored by the Government in 1984 and opened as the Irish Museum of Modern Art in May 1991.

The Museum’s mission is to foster within society an awareness, understanding and involvement in the visual arts through policies and programmes which are excellent, innovative and inclusive.

The Irish Museum of Modern Art is Ireland’s leading national institution for the collection and presentation of modern and contemporary art. The Museum presents a wide variety of art in a dynamic programme of exhibitions, which regularly includes bodies of work from its own Collection and its award-winning Education and Community Department. It also creates more widespread access to art and artists through its Studio and National programmes.

 
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Katy and Jodan’s Wedding Photos at the Japanese Friendship G

03 Aug

What a perfect day for a perfect couple! Katy and Jordan got married 4/7/12 at the Japanese Friendship Gardens at Balboa Park in San Diego. Thanks so much for having us do your wedding photos! It was such an amazing day and so fun to photograph!! Holly Ireland Photography www.hollyireland.com
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