HDR Photography

Friday, October 19, 2018 8:32 PM

For our last assignment I experimented with HDR photography. I used my CHDK-hacked Canon camera to take the photos and Luminance HDR to create the HDR photos and perform the tone mapping from HDR to regular LDR photos.

I did quite a bit of experimenting with my camera and the software to understand how all of this works. I also read all of the Luminance HDR documentation. The documentation clarified a lot of details about HDR photography and helped me understand all of the steps to making photos like this.

All of the below HDR photos were created with 8 photos with exposure settings ranging from -3 to +4. The HDR photos were created using the Debevec model with a Gaussian weighting function and a Gamma response curve. I used Mantiuk '08 to tonemap the HDR images to the LDR JPG image format. There were other possible choices for these settings and although I did experiment with them I don't claim to have a full understanding of what they are or what they do. I used these settings because I was happiest with the results. I will have to look for other online resources provided by professional photographers to get better guidance and intuition about how to use these tools.

Final Field Guide and Topic Two

Sunday, October 14, 2018 5:39 PM

The final-final version of my Field Guide is finally(!) available. I made some improvements to it based on my thoughts from my previous Field Guide Reflection post. Most importantly, I made it more clear who the intended audience is. In the introduction on the inside page, I added this:

Jumpstarting home ownership in low to middle income communities is an important component of community development that you as a community leader need to recognize. As you read this guide, consider how government policy can encourage home ownership and make it accessible to people who don’t have the resources to pursue it on their own. Critically, people need access to fairly priced mortgages and financial literacy information. Additionally, think about how government policy can confer the same benefits to renters and other people who don’t or can’t buy homes.

I think this improves it quite a bit because I make it more clear who I am addressing and that the content is intended for the development of low to middle income communities. Improving high income communities isn't something the people living there need help with beyond what they can accomplish on their own.

Tripod with Black and White Photo

Friday, October 12, 2018 1:18 PM

Recently I bought a small tripod for my camera. In class we learned about the importance of camera stability to achieve maximum resolution. Happily small inexpensive tripods are available on amazon.com.

While using the camera mounted on my new tripod I noticed that the camera would move a bit as I pressed and released the shutter button. To manage this issue and achieve maximum stability I added a 2 second timer so I could push the shutter and give the camera a moment to recover from the force of my hand.

Field Guide Reflection

Tuesday, October 9, 2018 11:23 AM

Last week we presented our completed field guides to the class and listened to feedback on our work.

Overall I now feel pretty disappointed about the field guide I made. I worked very hard on this, both on the actual research part and the making of the finished product, but I don't think that hard work is perceivable in the final result. I am happy with what I accomplished, but those accomplishments are internal to me and are not something other people will perceive or appreciate.

Field Guide

Tuesday, October 2, 2018 11:29 AM

At last, I have completed my Home Ownership field guide. I am pleased with the end result.

The final version is similar in look and feel to the Draft Field Guide. I made some improvements to the text and futher developed the illustrations. I did all of the illustrations using Adobe Illustrator, with some inspiration drawn from Noun Project.

White Balance and Exposure

Sunday, September 30, 2018 12:33 PM

Building on last week's assignment, this week I took several photos with proper white balance and exposure. To accomplish this I installed the Canon Hack Development Kit (CHDK) on my ancient Canon PowerShot SD1300 IS camera. What a difference it makes! Years of crappy photos could have been avoided if I had known about CHDK.

Homeownership Illustrations

Saturday, September 29, 2018 2:16 PM

In class we have been studying Semiotics, which is the study of meaningful communication through signs and symbols. The final version of my Homeownership field guide needs meaningful signs and symbols to help the reader process and remember the information.

Adjacent Illustrations

Tuesday, September 25, 2018 10:04 PM

Recently I was asked to create a few illustrations for Adjacent, the online journal published by ITP.

Draft Field Guide

Tuesday, September 25, 2018 12:23 PM

Building on my reworked taxonomy and field guide entries I created a draft version of my field guide. I'm pleased that this is coming together in a way that makes sense and that I'm comfortable with.

Visual System

We need to use some kind of visual system to employ metaphor or metonymy to organize and communicate information. A visual system will provide context to help people process and remember information.

My field guide title is "Homeownership: Powering a Community." I would like to relate a home to energy. My vision to achieve that is to start with a silhouette of a typical house, shaped like the green monopoly houses most people are used to. Then I will add a power cord coming out the side of it to relate it to energy and power. I then reuse this in images for each entry in my field guide.

White Balance

Sunday, September 23, 2018 1:47 PM

Our first assignment is to explore the camera's ability to properly set the white balance.

The camera I'm using is an old Canon PowerShot SD1300 IS 12.1 MP Digital Camera. I've had this camera for years but I stopped using it for the most part when I got a phone that could take decent pictures. I used it for this assignment because Eric Rosenthal got me to believe that I could take great pictures with this if I learned how to properly take control of the camera.