These photos are of the Enlighten projections which were past of the Canberra Festival this year. The projections were impressive, high powered with some animation. and I shot a lot of video content on the night. These are stills from the XA10. Enlighten featured projections on the National Library of Australia, Old Parliament House, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and Questacon. It was the Questacon building that had the most dynamic and animated projections.
This is a fake job, but makes for a pretty cool demo. I spent a bit of time photographing and filming one of the Crystal head Vodka bottles and after some experminentation ended up with some good footage. We have been making this ad in class as an exercise while learning Final Cut Pro this year. The skull was set on a lava lamp light that eliminated the head. The Camera (Canon XA10) was set very close, set manual to a large aperture the the lens as wide as possible fixed to a camera slider rail for the moving shots. Music is Classics VI’s version of Spooky which gave the piece some charisma. There is also footage of a lava lamp overlaid on the final edit for a splash of colour.
This is a time-lapse experiment of a heart shaped ice block melting that has been captured in real time on video and then sped up 1000% to give the final time-lapse effect. A heart shaped has been used as this is a client experiment for an MIC electronic music project which my students are preparing artwork and video. I used a hardware shop halogen light that pulses and fluctuates with the time lapse effect so next time I will try a different light source that is more constant and stable. The final movie does illustrate the effect so it serves its purpose as a demonstration file. This movie was shot with a Canon XA10 video camera as HD and prepared in apple motion.
I have been experimenting with time lapse photography for a while and decided to build a motorised slider for motion time lapse shots. The idea is that while you are doing a time lapse sequence of photos you are also slowly pulling the camera along a rail so that when the images are played back you have a time lapse view from a moving position. I bought and intervalometer for my SLR that just triggers the camera to shoot a set intervals and a Opteka camera slider rail. The camera needs to be pulled at a slow rate along the rail perhaps 1 or 2 RPM so I used two Tamiya Planetary Gearbox kits together to step this 9000 rpm motor down to 1 rpm with a huge amount of torque – powered by 2 AA batteries. The whole unit sits in a wooden frame I made to keep the tension between parts. The Camera is fixed to the slider with a ball head mount and the motor slowly pulls the camera down the slider with fishing line wound to a spool on the end of the drive shaft. Camera is used in full manual mode – with white balance NOT set to auto. When the collection of shots are played back as video at a normal frame rate you get the benefits of SLR lenses – particularly depth of field as video. I am using Apple Motion 5 to construct the videos at full 1080p.
Here is my first videos from the rig in the garden at home – day 01
I was all set to photograph the Lunar Eclipse on Saturday night, this shot was from 11.20pm as I was testing my set-up. Not long after the clouds rolled in obscured the view of the Eclipse. That is as close as I can get with my 300mm zoom on the SLR. I’ll have to wait another 4 years to try again.
This is a VR panorama of Booroomba Rocks in Namadgi National Park in the ACT. This is a popular rock climbing area about 40km from Canberra. Suzie and I went out for a drive and ended up walking up the mountain – probably a reckless decision as she is very pregnant but we eventually made it to the top. There is an amazing view of the the Brindabella ranges with Canberra City off in the Distance. There is still evidence of the 2003 fires where the area was badly burnt but the area is starting to recover. The panorama is 36 shots stitched together making a seamless 260 degree view.
This image is an interactive panorama – click and drag inside the image to view the scene
Another rainy spring day in Canberra, I took these experimental shots quite early in the morning as the water beading on the long grass (which always needs mowing) looked really interesting and was catching the first light of the day. I used a Canon G9 in macro mode mounted on a gorilla-pod with 2 second timer to avoid any shake. The shots are as close in the cameras lens would allow and I think a bit better than my SLR zoom macro could get. The images were tweaked in Adobe Lightroom and a colour filter added to alter the green values.
These images are close-ups of some Australian birds taken with a 20omm zoom macro. I love how this lens reveals the detailed feather patterns and interesting eyes on the animals.
I have setup this blog to be an archive of my work in the creative arts. I teach Digital Media and Graphic Design at the Canberra Institute of Technology and live in Belconnen in the ACT. You can find me on Facebook here Roy Boy
