A long exposure image of the carnival midway at the 2007 Saint Anthony's Italian Festival. The center ride is the Zipper. The shot was 10 seconds @ f22 with a 50mm standard lens. Contrast and exposure were adjusted, cropped and resized in Photoshop. The JPEG image is 1920 x 1200, perfect for widescreen monitors.
The banana tree is going to bloom!
The banana tree in the back yard is going to bloom this year. It was planted there three years ago and has been protected from cold each winter up to the top of the stalks. This will be the first time it has bloomed. It's definitely an odd plant to have in this location.
Here's a website with some pictures of the snow banana bloom. Link. It's very alien looking indeed.
Click for a larger view.
Funnel Flickr Images into an iPhoto Photocast
This service allows you to convert Flickr images matching a series of criteria (user, tags, etc) and funnel them into iPhoto as a photocast. This goes one step further than the Flickr RSS feeds already available in that it gives you the high res versions of the images rather than the low to medium res versions.
Hey! Nice Park Job
This is what I was treated to coming out of the grocery store (click for larger picture).;)
Please note the “mercan” flag trailer hitch plug– it's the American way!
NIN Releases four tracks from album “Year Zero” in Garage Band format
NIN releases first four tracks from the new album “Year Zero” for free as Garage Band compositions, perfect for remixing. Thanks Trent.
Apple and Modest Mouse Video Contest
Apple and Modest Mouse have created a contest open to students to create a music video for the single “Missed the Boat.” Provided on the site are 13 videos of various angles of the band playing the song shot in front of a green screen. The footage is great if for nothing else than archiving it to look at on a rainy day but will cost you 9.4 GB of disc space. Contest ends May 22, 2007.
Photo booth: the result
The party is over, the cheering gone but everyone is going to remember this one. The photo booth turned out to be a smashing success at the birthday party where I unveiled it.
We discretely set it up shortly after dinner in a quiet corner of the house where the party was. Last minute preparations and it was officially open for photos. We seeded a couple of people with the knowledge of what and where it was. The rest evolved on it's on over the course of the night, landing us with a total of 248 VGA-resolution monochrome images in about 3.5 hours.
The sound of people in the booth laughing & shrieking and the sound that the software Photo Booth made filtered through the house. Away from the action, I discretely left my laptop on, open and with a custom Quartz Composer composition that would poll the photo booth machine few it's pictures, displaying the most recent 16 images. This too drew a crowd of on lookers waiting for the next image to appear. One guest said it best, “The sound of the photo booth counting down causes a Pavlovian response to see what the next picture will bring!”
Equally amazing to me was the use of the curtain to enter/exit the booth. I figured that no one would close the curtain once they were inside but the curtain was slung closed by every person that entered. You really get a sense of being private (even though just down the hall everyone would see your picture in about five seconds).
Tim Hunkin’s photo booth project
Tim Hunkin, writer of the series The Secret Life of Machines is also a bit of a tinkerer and engineer. He created his own photo booth with a PC, webcam, printer and custom controls designed to illicit certain reactions from people (i.e. blowing a puff a air to get a surprised look).
The making of a photo booth, part 4
For the structure of the photo booth, I need something that is light weight, easy to carry, comes apart easily, is sturdy and packs very flat. The obvious choice for this is always the adult version of the erector set– PVC pipe.
Thanks to P. for suggesting PVC for this project and for also introducing me to it a long time ago as building materials for use in photography (hold lights, backdrops, etc).
We chose to go with 1″ schedule 40 pipe for this project because of the weight of the fabric and to improve overall stability. The size of the booth will be 6' tall, 2.5' wide and 4' long. We tested the size and it “feels” boothy.
The fabric will drape down 4' from the top but will not cover completely. All photo booths leave the bottom open so you can see if the booth is occupied.
Inside the booth we plan to use a simple chair or a stool for seating.
For lighting, we plan to use simple clip lamps attached to a dimmer so we can control intensity and get good exposures. The iSight doesn't reveal exposure settings, opting to do it automatically.
The making of a photo booth, part 3
To control the photo booth (i.e. the “shutter” button) I decided to use the I-Pac VE. It's original intent was to use for another arcade cocktail table. It's a small breadboard with two rows of screw terminals that sends a keystroke when the pins are grounded. It's powered via USB and sends the events as “keyboard” strokes. I've wired a switch to the player 1 start button (sends a “1” key).
In order to make the application Photo Booth take a picture, I've had to modify the shortcut key of the “Take Photo” menu item. This is accomplished by using the developer tools (Interface Builder) to modify the .NIB file. Now whenever I press “1” on the keyboard or close the switch on the I-Pac, Photo Booth takes a picture.