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]
Honestly, I don’t know whether these movie tributes are made with really good CGI or really good brick work, but either way I love ’em!
Clouds & clouds of drones, specifically. It was fun to watch the Verge Aero team wow the audiences & judges alike with their choreographed aerial light show:
My team is working to build some seriously exciting, AI-driven experiences & deliver them via the Web. We’re looking for a really savvy, energetic partner who can help us explore and ship novel Web-based interfaces that reach millions of people. If that sounds like you or someone you know, please read on.
———-
Key Responsibilities:
Must Have:
Slot cars & CGI FTW:
And here’s a peek behind the scenes:
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 😌🙏):
OMG—fantastic. They had me at “ouroborosian.”
[Via Steven Johnson]
Lately I’ve been drawn to bold lighting of the face & body, both for black & white and stunning color:
Therefore I really dig this music video from Lusine, which leans into the myriad possibilities inherent in moving lights around a face:
[Via Cameron Smith]
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)_/¯
Neat work from my old teammates: search for “periodic table” to rotate elements in 3D thanks to the <model-viewer> component:
I swear to God, stuff like this makes me legitimately feel like I’m having a stroke:
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:
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.
If you’re passionate about making artificial intelligence work fairly & responsibly for everyone, and if you’re considering taking a new role, check out this job listing in case it’s a good fit:
———–
The Office of Ethical Innovation (AI Ethics) drives organization-wide ethics related activities and develops processes, tools, training, and other resources to ensure that our AI solutions consistently reflect Adobe’s AI ethics principles: accountability, responsibility, and transparency. AI is critical to our Adobe products, and we continue to see AI leveraged in more innovative ways. AI Ethics needs to be top of mind from research to product release.
Some 20+ years ago (cripes…), 405: The Movie became a viral smash, in part thanks to the DIY filmmakers’ trick of compositing multiple images of the busy LA freeway in order to make it look deserted.
Now (er, 8 years ago; double cripes…) Russell Houghten has used what I imagine to be similar but more modern techniques to remove car traffic from the streets, freeing up the concrete rivers for some lovely skateboarding reveries:
I’m headed out to Death Valley on Friday for some quick photographic adventures with Russell Brown & friends, and I’m really excited to try photographing with burning steel wool for the first time. I’m inspired by this tutorial from Insta360 to try shooting with my little 360º cam:
“Just don’t be horrendously disappointed if it doesn’t turn out quite like this,” advises Henry, my 12yo aspiring assistant. Fair enough, dude—but let’s take it for a spin!
If you’ve ever shot this way & have any suggestions for us, please add ’em in the comments. TIA!
“I’m like, ‘Bro, how much furniture do you think I buy??'”
I forget who said this while I was working on AR at Google, but it’s always made me laugh, because nearly every demo inevitably gets into the territory of, “Don’t you wish you could see whether this sofa fits in your space?”
Still, though, it’s a useful capability—especially if one can offer a large enough corpus of 3D models (something we found challenging, at least a few years back). Now, per the Verge:
Pinterest is adding a “Try On for Home Decor” feature to its app, letting you see furniture from stores like Crate & Barrel, CB2, Walmart, West Elm, and Wayfair in your house… According to the company’s announcement post, you’ll be able to use its Lens camera to try out over 80,000 pieces of furniture from “shoppable Pins.”
As the article notes,
Of course, this isn’t a new idea — Ikea’s app lets you drop virtual furniture into your house in 2013, and in the almost decade since, companies like Target, Amazon, Shopify, and even Etsy have introduced ways to let you see how certain products will work in your house. Other companies, like Walmart, have gone even further, imagining (and trademarking ideas for) entire virtual shopping experiences.
To me the progress here is access & ubiquity, making it commonly possible for shoppers to try these experiences. I’m glad to see it.
Hmm—I always want to believe in tools like this, but I remain skeptical. Back at Google I played with Blocks, which promised to make 3D creation fun, but which in my experience combined the inherent complexity of that art with the imprecision and arm fatigue of waving controllers in space. But who knows—maybe Shapes is different?
I was really pleased to see Google showcase the new Magic Eraser feature in Pixel 6 marketing. Here’s a peek at how it works:
I had to chuckle & remember how, just after he’d been instrumental in shipping Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop in 2010, my teammate Iván Cavero Belaunde created a tablet version he dubbed “Trotsky,” in mock honor of the Soviet practice of “disappearing” people from photos. I still wish we’d gotten to ship it—especially with that name!
Update: Somehow Iván still has the icon after all these years:
