Graveyards of Burlington Vermont

Some people think I spend too much in cemeteries. Well, maybe. I always have since I was child and it still fascinates me now. I drove around with a friend to quite a few this past weekend and we had a grand time looking around and taking photos. It wasn't without incident, as I lost somewhere in our travels my 18-55mm lens. So my cheap weekend with friends wasn't so cheap after all. I quickly replaced the lens when I returned before I could freak out about the money and not buy one. It's the lens I use most often so I really can't be without it.

macro

feuille

expanding on some techniques

In my work, I often have to retouch photos for video and sometimes turn those photos into something that actually moves in a 3d space or has animated elements. Though I am not trying to take a single photo and turn it into a full blown 3D animated scene, I am trying to get more bang for the buck by giving a single photo more 3D space to move around in and by adding more traditional 2d animation in addition to the 3D to try and bring more life and interest. Years ago, just panning across an old photo was considered enough... not anymore!

My goal is always to keep the integrity of the original photo, which is usually an old one, but add enough to it to keep a modern viewer's interest.

Some new photos

Been out and about to Mont Royal and cimetière Notre Dame des Neiges

3 Emmy Awards for Freedom Riders

While I had only a small job doing some re-touching in this project, it's just another reason I was proud to have produced some work for a very worthwhile documentary.

Firelight announcement

Google + (and minus)

I have been using Google + for a couple months now and, since I am not a fan of «social media» sites, I was dragged kicking and screaming to it. I have been working on a large video project and after rejecting several other solutions, my partner on the contract with me decided to use this new service to communicate.

Setting up this service could have been a lot more intuitive, it wasn’t clear what functions there were nor how to use them. When they were sorted out, we found several very helpful, however. Being able to insert images, links and movies (which are re-formatted via Youtube) let us put what we were working on in one place with our comments and questions. Setting up a «circle» for us to comment on and another for the client to access gave us the ability to freely comment between ourselves and to have «filtered» comments the clients can’t see. This is essential on a big project in case there are disagreements and on a more practical level, to talk about technical stuff that, frankly, the clients wouldn’t understand.

Problems were many, and quite serious. The most damning one is that the notifications when a comment or response is left in a circle, the email was often either not sent or sent a fairly long time after the comment was made. Some comments also never appeared on the site at all. This makes it unreliable for serious conversations.

As for the «social» aspects like video conferences etc, I can’t speak to them as we didn’t use them and frankly, like all social site gimmicks, they don’t interest me. Google also insisted I give them my phone number to use the service, which really bugs me and makes me very suspicious as to what my personal info will be used for.

Big MA 2011

When my mother asked for DVD version of the documentary "Big Ma" about her mother, I thought it might be a good idea to redo many of the graphics and tighten it up a little. A big plus was You tube had a message telling me I can now upload films longer than 15 minutes so I didn't have to split it into parts!

Just for fun and practice

a little rude but it's a joke between Yvon and us.

Pour une blague, j'ai décidé pour faire une copie du générique de téléséries... "Grande Ourse". Je n'ai pas très content avec les résultants. Quelques transitions n'ont pas très subtile.

stacked photos

I have been hoping to try stacking photos to get more depth of field in my macro photography for years. I finally had a chance to try it out. As it turns out, the last few versions of Photoshop have the ability to do the job. There are a few separate software that do the same thing, but I am not sure they are actually better.

Stacking involves (in my case) taking a series of macro photos with different areas in focus and literally stacking on top of each other on different layers then telling photoshop to blend the layers. While blending, photoshop determines the areas in focus and masks out the blurred areas. This can give you an incredibly in focus detailed image not possible with normal macro.

While not perfect, it does make for some interesting images, even with this first try. This particular mage took a bit of additional manual manipulations and alignment to get it looking ok.