Light Simulation

Systems and Methods For the Real-time and Realistic Simulation of Natural Atmospheric Lighting Phenomenon. Link to Patent Pending. www.freshpatents.com

"Using the techniques, the present invention can provide images and simulations having visually realistic representations of sunlight at any time of day, including from dawn to twilight, along with accurate shadows. Additionally, the present invention can simulate a visually realistic representation of a wide range of cloud formations, resulting cloud cover over the landscape of a scene, and shadows cast by clouds on elements of the scene. Furthermore, the present invention provides a realistic simulation of the visual effects from light scattering by the cloud cover, and also provides visually realistic simulation of water including accurate reflections, refractions, and turbulence. "-Agent: Choate, Hall & Stewart LLP - Boston, MA, US
Inventor: Matthew P. Fairclough 

Searching for some information on natural atmospheric lighting, I stumbled upon a bit of information which may or may not be useful to me in the near future.  The document I found was a form for a pending patent on some type of system that allows for the realistic creation of atmospheric lighting and "related phenomenon that are visually realistic and that can be computed in real-time to render frames of a scene at real-time frame rates per second. The techniques consider the light scattering effects due to sunlight and ambient light in relation to objects, atmospheric particles and other scene elements represented by the image."  This statement is pretty abstracted, and its difficult to tell whether or not this will be usable for still imagery and moving, but I'm anxious to find out.  I think it would be awesome to have some type of atmosphere generator that can be altered accordingly.  This may just be wishful thinking, but I'm interested in the idea at least.

Anderson Gallery Submission

At 1:10 PM I submitted 3 framed 20"x30" photographs to the Anderson Gallery Student Exhibition 2009. Two out of 3 were selected to be in the show.

Shai Kremer

Bio:

• Born in Israel in 1974
• 2003-2005 School of Visual Arts, New York. M.F.A - Photography and Related Media
  
• 1998-2002 Camera Obscura School of Arts, Tel Aviv Israel. B.A. - Photography
  
• SOLO EXHIBITIONS
  2009 Infected Landscape Israel, Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX
• 2008-09
  Reality Check: Truth and Illusion in Contemporary Photography, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
  
  

About the Work:

• "This project is a seven year metaphoric portrayal of the military disfiguration of the Israeli landscape. To describe the complexity of this ever-changing and multi-layered terrain, I chose to keep a distance. The aesthetic, orderly and beautiful compositions parallel the defense mechanism that Israelis have developed in order to protect themselves from the painful reality of the current political situation. The wounds in the landscape correspond to the wounds in the Israeli collective consciousness. My goal is to reveal how every piece of land has become infected with loaded sediments of the ongoing conflict. "- saul gallery, artist statement
  

Shai Kremer Website

Julie Saul Gallery

Review type thing by Amy Stein

Safety Forum Lecture 3/25

Previous to this panel discussion, VCU students submitted questions about campus safety to be answered by some of the VCU administration, including the Senior VP for Administration, Head of the VCU Police, the Vice Provost, and about 5 others.  Questions asked by students included  things like .."How large is the VCU Police, and how do they compare to the Richmond Police?" and numerous inquiries about the "undesirables" around campus.  Most of the questions asked, were mainly "resolved" by the head of the VCU Police stating that "you shouldn't put yourself in harms way," and other comments of that nature.  The Senior VP for Admin. was full of statistical data, which he used to answer his portion of the questions- for instance, I did not know that there are over 300 emergency phones around campus, and that 56% of all criminal act reports are larceny.  

Warp Command

Evening, Martin.  Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers. Pages 397-98.  Focal Press, 2009.  

This particular section of the book discusses Free Transform methods used in Photoshop.  I often use these tools to adjust  how large a piece of my image will be, to rotate, distort, stretch out specific layers, or the warp tool which can change the image dramatically to add movement, depth, or perspective.  

A problem that I have when constructing one image from multiple images is that sometimes when you take an element from one photo and put it with another it can become flat.  Most of the time, when I work I have the issue if making foreground objects look like they were shot at the same point of view as the background shot.  The warp tool is helping me immensely with this adjustment that I have previously not had access to with my old version of Photoshop.  The image can be adjusted at numerous points which allows for your manipulations to be more controlled and specific.  

Images from
Web Designer Wall

Dr. Olivia Judson Lecture 3/23

Born in the UK, Olivia Judson moved to the US at the age of 10.  Judson is now an evolutionary biologist at Imperial College London.  She graduated from Stanford University, got her doctorate from Oxford, and worked as a journalist before beginning research on a fellowship at Imperial College London.  It was interesting to find out that she had participated in the television show "Animal Pharm," which she described as a "science documentary musical."- strange?  She mainly spoke about her book, Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation. "Written in the style of a sex-advice column to animals, the book details the variety of sexual practices in the natural world and provides the reader with an overview of the evolutionary biology of sex." All of this was pretty intense, and the lecture style itself was very stiff and matter of fact. Interesting to say the least, but I felt really out of my element.

Emma Livingston

Bio

• AGE: 32
  
• BORN: Paris
  
• RESIDES: Buenos Aires
  
• EDUCATION: University College, London
  
• EXHIBITIONS: RO Galería de Arte, Galería Riva Zucchelli, Buenos Aires
  
• AWARDS: London Photographic Association; Px3 Prix de la Photographie Paris
  

About the Work

"Emma Livingston's studies of the natural world play with scale, distances and context. In her photos of the moonscape desert of Northwest Argentina, boulders look like pebbles. Trees burst through the sidewalks of Buenos Aires.

What drives her is her desire to photograph nature in its varied forms, "a need to record something that is so fragile and ever changing," she says. "Some of the trees I photographed have since been chopped, run into or left to die."-PDN

A quote I read from Emma Livingston explained that she shoots pictures of leaves, branches and flowers so close up that they became abstracted, they looked like imaginary landscapes.  This gave me an idea to experiment with shooting extreme close ups to come up with a base for my images, it make look a little to abstract for my series but its worth a try. Hmm..

Artist Website

PDN Gallery

Interview