I’ve been massively influenced by a number photographers over the past year or so, and none more than Zach Arias. His photo critiques, blog posts, and teaching sessions have been a great source of inspiration and learning, and have helped shape my ideas about what I want to do as a photographer. More recently, I’ve been reading David duChemin’s “VisionMongers: Making a Life and a Living in Photography”, which nicely compliments Zach’s ideas. David’s book makes you really focus on what you’re about as a photographer, and it both inspired and shaped this recent portfolio update.
This week, I spent some time moving my music studio into a new space in our house. I know it seems like I just reorganized my studio, but this time it was different – my family has a renter coming to stay with us for a few months, so I’ve temporarily relocated.
Along with moving into the new studio space, I spent some time working on updating, editing, and cleaning up some tracks that have been in progress for quite a while now. Here’s a set of 3 snippets from upcoming new tracks. I have not yet decided on how I’ll be releasing this, but it’s getting closer…
Here are some photos from the process of moving into the new space:
One of the things I wanted to make sure of is that I put some artwork on the walls, so I took 2 pieces by my friend Shawn Johnson, and 3 of my photographs, and quickly put them up. They’re not framed, but at least they’re there.
On Saturday, July 31, I will be speaking at the Maker Faire Detroit, giving a 5-minute Ignite presentation about my 52 things project. This week’s project, in a meta turn, was preparing my presentation for the event.
Ignite is a chance for people to get up and speak about their passion for 5 minutes. Each talk is timed, with an automatically-advancing slideshow that accompanies it. Each slide is displayed for 15 seconds, for a total of 20 slides. You can read more about the Ignite event if you’re interested.
I hope you can come and see the Maker Faire Detroit, and hear me present about this great year-long experiment!
This project is one that has been in my “to do” list for well over a year: a servo-powered pan/tilt camera mount!
My intention in making this is to have something that I can use for several purposes. First, it seems like it would work great on my DIY Camera Crane (although I haven’t tried it yet, just having finished the pan/tilt mount today). In addition, I love the idea of being able to put a camera on this and having it either randomly or programatically panning and tilting while I’m doing something else (like playing music).
I was definitely inspired by this build, featured in Make Magazine, Volume 19, entitled “MIDI Camera Control”:
I liked the pre-made brackets they mentioned, but figured I’d try my hand at fabricating my own first, partly to save money and partly because it seemed pretty straightforward.
To start out, I decided to build a quick prototype out of Lego, powered by a Lego Mindstorms NXT motor & brick. Because Lego is so easy to work with, I was able to make a quick prototype in an evening:
Once I had that done, it was time to start the real build. I had a couple of servos already, as well as an Arduino board, and my plan was to use the Arduino to control & power the servos. Servos (formally “servomotors”) are small electric motors whose position can be controlled, so they’re perfect for this project.
I wasn’t sure what to build the bracket itself out of, but I quickly settled on using Erector, as it bridged the gap nicely between “fast to build with” and “durable enough to support a camera”. The physical build came together pretty smoothly. Here are some photos from that process:
After I’d assembled the bracket and servos, I connected them to the Arduino and started trying to figure out the code to drive them. I’m embarrassed to say that I wasted a day trying to drive the servos from the Arduino’s analog in pins (doh!) instead of the digital output pins. After a few hours down the drain, I gave up and started afresh the next day, and quickly found this helpful video from Make Magazine, which described using servos with the Arduino:
I got the servos hooked up, and did some quick coding in the Arduino environment, along with building the necessary circuit to hook the servos up to the Arduino itself.
Before too long (and after much consulting of the arduino.cc website, especially this SingleServoExample page), I had the Arduino controlling the servos and moving the camera around!
Unfortunately, I had chosen to use continuous servos at first. A continuous servo can spin infinitely in either direction, whereas a standard servo has a limited range. The difference in programming these is that you can tell a standard servo to move from 0 degrees to 180 degrees, where with a continuous servo, you only have control over the speed and direction the motor is turning.
I quickly realized I needed to swap my continuous servos for standard ones, which I luckily had a pair of as well. Once that was done, it became much easier to tell the pan/tilt mount to point in a particular direction.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any video available yet from the updated bracket, as I’ve just finished it. I’ll get some together and update this post once I do. However, I’m quite excited by the progress I made on this project!
My next steps are to get some good controls built and in place for the pan/tilt bracket – either physical controls (like knobs) or computer-based controls, likely built in Processing. That way, I can either manually control it or automate it to pan and tilt while I’m doing other things. Also, the Erector is a bit wobbly, and it would be great to replace it with a bracket made from flat aluminum stock, or something similar. MicroRax might be perfect, but it’s expensive.
This week, I attended the ASM Materials Science for Teachers workshop, and produced a few interesting little pieces of physical artwork. That’s unusual for me, but it was a nice change of pace.
The main piece I worked on was an aluminum casting of the chromedecay logo. In order to make this piece, I first traced the chromedecay logo onto a piece of paper, then carefully cut that out and traced it onto a piece of XPS foam (the kind of thing used to insulate houses).
After that was ready, it was off to Joyworks, an art studio and metal foundry.
John Keough, CEO of Applied Process and owner of the Joyworks studio, graciously hosted our workshop’s members, and guided us through the process of turning our foam pieces into cast aluminum, using a lost foam casting process.
In the end, I wasn’t entirely happy with how my piece turned out, and I still have some work to do with a drill press in order to clean it up, but it was a fun change of pace from my usual music and photography artistic endeavours.
For this week’s project, I decided to give my personal online presence a complete refresh, in order to pursue some new opportunities. I’ve maintained billvanloo.com for many years in order to have an online presence for the other things I do besides running chromedecay. This week, it got a total overhaul and refresh.
The first part of this refresh involved upgrading to WordPress 3.0. I had been running WordPress 2.9 for quite some time, and was excited to hear that 3.0 had been released. It is a great new release, and upgrading was quite simple. The automated upgrade process ran smoothly, and before long, I was happily running WordPress 3.0.
The next step was moving all of my static content into WordPress, taking advantage of its Pages capability. As with chromedecay (before its own refresh at the beginning of this year), I had been using my own custom PHP-and-HTML solution for maintaining static pages, but I was eager to move all of this into WordPress in order to make content maintenance easier to do.
At the moment, I’m using the new twentyten theme that comes with WordPress. I did some modifications to the theme, like tweaking the CSS and suppressing the title on the front page, but for the most part it works great right out of the box.
One of the biggest reasons I wanted to refresh the site was to focus on my burgeoning photography pursuit. I’ve had some successful photoshoots over the past few months, and I have several more lined up in the future, including my first paid work. I needed a way to showcase my photography and show a focused portfolio.
After a quick look at PhotoShelter, I decided on using the NexGEN Gallery WordPress plugin to power my photography section. It has a pretty nice administration interface for uploading photos, and includes an elegant lightbox-style popup for viewing photos full-size.
One thing I realized I needed to do was start watermarking my photos, so I wrote a quick Photoshop action to open a file, add the watermark, add a 10-pixel black frame, and resize it. I can now point that action at a batch of files and have it automatically produce resized & watermarked images, ready for upload to the site.
I also started a Twitter account specifically for my photography pursuits. You can follow me @billvanloophoto. This is my first foray into Twitter, so having it limited to a focused aspect of my work is nice. My plan is to use it to follow photographers I like, post interesting links to my own work and that of others, and (once I start getting more clients & paid work), offering promotional offers.
I’m excited to launch this new chapter of my story as an artist!
This week’s project for 52 things was a pair of projects, both photography-based. The first is a set called “vacation colors”, the second is a set of portraits I shot for friends of mine.
The second set of photos was a self-assignment, where I asked friends of mine to model for me and help me improve my portrait photography. My friends Jeannie and Rex graciously agreed.
Here’s one of Jeannie, with a CTO’d flash helping out the golden light of the sun setting.
Before I went into the shoot, I had an idea of a shot I knew I wanted. Rex is quite a character, and he owns an old police cruiser. I wanted a shot of him with the cruiser that made him look like the long arm of the law, and here’s what I ended up with:
Setup shot:
Finally, a couple of simple black-and-white portraits. One flash behind them to act as a rim light (you can really see this on Jeannie’s hair), another in front to light the face.
52 things is now at its official halfway point. Not coincidentally, here’s what my studio looked like at the beginning of this week:
After 26 weeks of weekly projects, my creative space has been in pretty active use! For reference, take a look at what it looked like after a similar cleanup in May 2009. This week’s project, then, was to clean it up, organize, and take a few deep breaths in order to be ready for the second half of 2010 and the next sets of projects!
One place that was especially disorganized was my photo supplies. I have a metal crate that I keep small items in – old film cameras, gels for my flashes, spare parts, etc. This crate had gotten pretty out of control:
My philosophy for cleaning is to first empty everything out:
After sorting, throwing away, organizing, and generally cleaning, here’s what the crate looks like now:
Much better! Here’s a photo partway through the process. The studio desk is mostly cleaned off, but there’s still quite a bit of work to do:
Finally, I finished. There’s still a lot to do (old gear to list on eBay or craigslist, things to donate or get rid of, etc) but it’s much better than it was.
It’s nice to have a clean space to start out the second half of the year in.
This post is set to automatically go live on Friday morning, by which time I will be deep in the woods of Northern Michigan, on a much-anticipated camping expedition. Looking forward to the second half of 2010!
This week’s post has been sitting in WordPress as a draft for almost 6 months – that’s how long I’ve been planning this one. This week, I did a photoshoot for Vertical Ambition Dance Company, a group of extremely talented dancers who are rooted in breakdance, hip-hop, ballet, and modern.
I first approached Jared, one of the VADC founders, about shooting photos of the company back in December of 2009, and it finally worked out to do a shoot this Monday evening. I knew I wanted to do this for free, as a creative collaboration (for a great read about this way of working, read this Strobist article about working for free).
I was lucky to have had a great chance to watch 3 or 4 hours of the “Studio Photography with Zach Arias” workshop on Creative Live as it was re-aired on Sunday night, so I was extremely inspired going into the shoot. I’ve been a big fan of Zach’s photography for a long time, as well as the sharing and teaching he does.
Before I ever picked up the camera, I looked at Flickr months ago for inspiration. Here are a couple of shots that I dug:
(PLEASE NOTE: The two photos above were NOT taken by me – they are photos from others on Flickr!).
Several things I noticed right away about many of the breakdance photos were extreme wide-angle shots, dramatic poses, and lots of low and close shooting angles. I knew I wanted to nail some of these, but also wanted some nice portraits of each dancer. I decided to shoot these basic portraits first as a way to get to know each of the dancers and get some easy shots in first. Here are a few of those portraits:
Here’s a setup shot showing the basic setup for these – one flash for the main key light, and another tightly-snooted flash to focus light directly on the box.
Here’s a “photo aware” shot showing both Jared (the main subject) and Shane (one of the VADC dancers who did a GREAT job of assisting me with lights & reflectors!).
These were all taken at Frog Island park in Ypsilanti, on the concrete stage that sits on one end of the park. This was a great location – the concrete worked as a great texture, and it was a nice, level surface for the dancers. The mosquitoes were a bit of a pain (summer nights!) and we all sweated a bunch, but it was worth it in the end.
Here’s another setup, showing how we were using the location, and a few of the resulting shots:
The final big shot of the night was a group shot where most of the crew dove to the side while Jared launched Shane up into the air. I never ended up with a shot I completely liked, but it turned out well enough.
Here’s the setup:
And the result:
After we’d packed up and headed back to the parking lot to leave, I remembered that I wanted to get a quick photo of me with the crew, so I set a single flash down on my minivan’s roof, popped the camera on the tripod, and jumped in the frame.
Overall, I had a fantastic time on this shoot – it’s maybe the most fun I’ve ever had taking photos. The main reason I’m going these photoshoots is to improve my skills (along with having fun!). I believe a big part of getting better is reflecting on what worked and what needs to change.
Here are the things I felt I did well:
I brought almost all the gear I’d need (stands, clamps, ladder). A
second mic stand adapter would have been good (so I could use my mic stands for the flashes instead of having to use a tripod for one of them). For this shoot, a pushbroom would have also been helpful (lots of debris on the concrete stage).
I had a vision/plan and executed it well.
I engaged with the crew well – I gave pretty good directions, had a
series of shots in mind & got all of them that I wanted to.
I remembered to get setup shots and a self-portrait with the crew at the end.
I shot good angles and compositions
Here are some things I’d change:
I’d shoot in RAW instead of shooting JPGs – since I have to wait for my flashes to recharge anyway, the slight extra time required for shooting RAW files would be well worth it. There were times during the post-processing that I wish I’d had the flexibility that a RAW file can provide.
I need to pay more attention to the histogram and LCD for fine-tuning exposure,
especially in body details. There were some shots where the highlights were too hot, and some where there was too much shadow.
I’ll always bring extra batteries from here out – I had a flash die part-way through due to dead batteries and was reduced from 3 flashes to only 2.
I’m going to try shooting tethered to my laptop for my next session. It might not have worked well on this shoot (lots of movement around an outdoor set) but I’d like to give it a try.
I need to remember that light temperature/color is controllable via gels on the flashes – I got too caught up in light placement/exposure and forgot about color temperature.
I need to build a pair of DIY variable power controls for my Vivitar 283s in order to get more flexibility out of them. Luckily, there are easy-to-follow plans available (look for these as a future 52 things project!).
This week’s post is a look inside my music rig for my church. I spent some time this week getting things set up the way I want in order to expand my musical capabilities, so I thought I’d document and share it here for this week’s project.
Here’s the overall rig, once it’s assembled:
My main role is as a guitarist, the main focus of this rig is playing guitar. You can see my guitar on the left – it’s an Ibanez Artcore A73 semi-hollowbody. It plugs into a Line6 PodXT Live, which in turn runs to a Fender Blues Junior amp. Both the PodXT and the Fender belong to the church, and stay there & are plugged in at all times, so setup is easy – plug in my guitar, turn things on, and I’m ready to play. A mic stand & wireless Shure mic are also set up full-time, since I sing as much as I can (sometimes I’m too busy strictly playing guitar!).
In addition to playing guitar, however, I’m also starting to slowly bring some electronic elements into the mix. As a solo musician, I typically play strictly instrumental electronic music, and finding an appropriate and musically valid way to integrate that part of my music into what I do at church has been a long, slow process. I feel like I’m finally making some progress, however!
On with the rig! As you can see, there’s a shelf under the amp that’s gaff-taped to a keyboard stand, to form a wide, shallow table.
Here’s a closeup. 2 USB cables and an Apple power cord also stay gaff-taped to the shelf, along with a custom audio cable I made up. It’s a 1/8″ stereo miniplug on one end, and stereo 1/4 plugs on the other end. The 1/8″ stereo end plugs into my MacBook Pro’s audio output, and the other plugs into 2 separate DI boxes that run into our sound system. One of the USB cables runs to the left-side of the shelf, and is used to connect an M-Audio KeyRig keyboard (a small, lightweight 25-key USB keyboard controller). The other USB cable runs into the PodXT Live, so it can be used as an audio input into Ableton Live.
Having all this set up permanently means that setup is extremely fast. I pop the KeyRig out of my bag, plug it into its USB cable, set my laptop on the shelf, plug in 2 USB cables & the audio cable, then connect my power supply to the cord. Done!
The bottom of the rig is a little messy. On the top left, you can see two separate DI boxes, which run my laptop’s signal to two separate channels on the mixing board. You can also see the way the PodXT Live fits into the space of the keyboard stand. This is important because it helps my rig take up a smaller amount of space, and keeps everything together nicely. We don’t have a lot of room on the platform (lots of musicians plus choir) so every inch counts!
Now that I have my 1/8″ to stereo 1/4″ cables, I’m able to split the stereo audio output from my laptop into 2 discrete channels. The left channel strictly carries a click track (metronome), while the right channel carries everything else, which might be loops, programmed drums, electric piano sounds, or whatever I choose to play from my laptop.
Here’s a look at my screen setup in Ableton Live:
As you can see, the rhodes electric piano channel (which is currently selected) is panned hard-right so it shows up separate from the click track. The advantage of this is that the click track can then be sent to the rest of the band’s monitors (via a send on the mixing board) without going to the main sound system, while anything else from the laptop gets sent separately.
I’m really looking forward to getting a chance to use this rig over the next weeks and months. The ability to drop in programmed elements, live electronics, and use a click track to lock in tempo will be a dynamic new element to our church’s worship music.
