Monthly Archives: February 2022

“Fiat Lux”

An incandescent labor of love:

There are 686 light painting photographs that make up the 11-scene project. Each of these long exposure light painting photographs are straight out of the camera and arranged side by side to create motion.

[Via Russell Brown]

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Valley of Fire

My son Henry & I were super hyped to join Russell Brown & his merry band last Monday at Nevada’s deeply weird International Car Forest of the Last Church for some fire photography featuring pyrotechnic artist Joseph Kerr. As luck would have it, I had to send Henry on ahead with little notice, pressing my DSLR on him before he left. Happily, I think he did a great job capturing the action!

Russell of course caught some amazing moments (see his recent posts), and you might enjoy this behind-the-scenes footage from Rocky Montez-Carr (aka Henry’s kindly chauffeur 😌🙏):

Death Valley 3D

Last year I enjoyed creating a 3D dronie during my desert trip with Russell Brown, flying around the Pinnacles outside of Trona:

This year I just returned (hours ago!) from another trip with Russell, this time being joined by his son Davis (who coincidentally is my team’s new UI designer!). On Monday we visited the weird & wonderful International Car Forest of the Last Church, where Davis used his drone plus Metashape to create this 3D model:

And yes, technically neither of these locations is in Death Valley, where drone flying is prohibited. Close enough! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

“Why are NFTs so ugly?”

I swear to God, stuff like this makes me legitimately feel like I’m having a stroke:

https://twitter.com/hapebeastgang/status/1450431456216588290?s=21

And that example, curiously, seems way more technically & aesthetically sophisticated than the bulk of what I see coming from the “NFT art” world. I really enjoyed this explication of why so much of such content seems like cynical horseshit—sometimes even literally:

Snapchat introduces new AR lenses to celebrate the lunar new year

As I’ve noted previously, I’m (oddly?) much more bullish on Snap than on Niantic to figure out location-based augmentation of the world. That’s in part because of their very cool world lens tech, which can pair specific experiences with specific spots. It’s cool to see it rolling out more widely:

The first Lens is a new AR experience that takes users through the story of Asian-American businesswoman Lucy Yu, the owner of ‘Yu & Me Books’ in NYC, which is an independent bookshop that’s dedicated to showcasing stories from underrepresented authors.

And for one that’s more widely accessible,

Snap’s also added a new Year of the Tiger Lens, which uses Sky Segmentation technology to add an animated watercolor tiger jumping through the clouds.