Tilt-shift photography is how you create the illusion of looking upon a miniature world. Done first with special lenses, now it’s easily done in software like Photoshop.
Someone recently tried this with drone footage of Portland and came out pretty well
Manual Cinema does shadow puppet shows in Chicago. They do some amazing shows such as Frankenstein, A Christmas Carol and many others. They use combinations of puppetry and live acting. Here’s a video on how they produce some of their effects and shows.
Here’s another video of how they create their effects:
Here’s an example of what they can produce in a short film called Eighth Blackbird
Fast Company did a fantastic job collecting images that represent all the amazing work going on in the space industry. From 3d printed rocket components, to new battery development methods, to innovative star tracking navigation units, etc. Give the article a look to learn more.
My favorite season is fall. The air turns cool, there are hay rides and pumpkin patches, one curls up with a good book in front of a fire, reading scary tales, and, of course, watching the leaves change.
Japan has some very good, live updating of fall colors on a few websites.
The folks over at this website have a nifty little tool that predicts when fall colors will change this year. How do they predict the trends this year? With a little bit of data (and possibly a touch of pretentiousness):
The company uses a model that ingests a multitude of data sources including historical precipitation, NOAA precipitation forecasts, elevation, actual temperatures, temperature forecasts, and average daylight exposure to develop a baseline fall date for each county in the continental United States. Next, the model consumes hundreds-of-thousands of additional data points from a variety of government and non-government sources and layers this data over its own historical data from past years and, finally, with a high degree of accuracy, the algorithm produces nearly 50,000 date outputs indicating the progression of fall for every county in a graphical presentation that is easy to digest.
How to create an artificial daylight/sun effect anywhere and any time.
I worked with a little bit of early lightfield photography back in the day. Looks like they’ve expanded and possibly found an interesting VR application. These researchers present a system for capturing, reconstructing, compressing, and rendering high quality immersive light field video.
Here’s the Siggraph paper and some more examples:
https://augmentedperception.github.io/deepviewvideo/
Watch this great video on how the Unreal game engine and a nearly 360 degree LED stage/video wall has transformed how special effects are done for films like The Mandalorian. It’s a complete game changer because it solves almost all the problems relating to green screens and digital effects.
Update: I recently listened to a talk at PAX 2021 that included A J Wedding from Orbital Virtual Studios that worked with Robert Rodriguez on the LED studio setup.
Wes Anderson’s movies have a very unique look and feel to them. One of my favorites is Grand Budapest.
This fascinating little analysis shows how he uses his camera in unique ways to create that look and feel – and how it’s changed/refined after his animation movies.
This guy mounted a 1000 watt LED light bar under his drone and creating some pretty amazing shots. Check it out. Opens some interesting photography ideas up for me. The ability to turn a spot location from night into day has some interesting implications…
With something that looks right out of BladeRunner – German photographer Tom Hegen recently traveled to the Netherlands to document the country’s LED greenhouses. The greenhouses were developed as a response to the small country’s growing need for food both within its own borders and to the international market. Dutch exporters are second only to the U.S. industry for global food exports as measured by value. Although the greenhouses offer incredible efficiency in their design, cultivating food year-round through high temperatures and humidity levels, their round-the-clock use also gives off a great deal of light pollution.
