Capture by A photoblog

There's an ice rink in Aotea Square.  Seems a simple thing to say, but in fact it is quite an achievement.

While this is a temporary fixture as part of the Winter Showtime programme, it gives a sense of what New York, London and a few other major cities enjoy, and is helping draw a happy crowd of social sliders into the 'heart of the city'.  Making a pleasant change from... well, other activities.

Last night I was lucky enough to attend the media event, which included an impressive performances by The Imperial Ice Stars, who are here for another show in the programme, The Nutcracker on Ice.

I also went for a little skate myself, but I'm hoping the cameras were off for that bit.

We are late to this party, but why not make this our 'Winter Activity' thread?  Anyone playing in the snow, or taking wintery beach walks, or capturing the cold crisp night sky, show us what you got.

Capture away.

John Dobrée Pascoe (1908-1972) was a writer, documentary photographer, historian, pioneer archivist and mountaineer. Born and educated in Christchurch, Pascoe studied law but was happiest when tramping and climbing. In 1938 he was employed as the illustrations editor of Making New Zealand, a series of historical publications marking the 1940 Centenary, and worked alongside the historian John Cawte Beaglehole. Pascoe’s reputation as a photographer, explorer and mountaineer was secured by his first book, Unclimbed New Zealand, which was published in 1939 shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. Turned down for military service in 1941, Pascoe was then appointed official photographer for the Department of Internal Affairs, and instructed to record aspects of wartime life in New Zealand. Pascoe travelled widely in New Zealand between 1942 and 1945. Amongst his assignments he recorded the lives of miners on the West Coast, munitions workers in Hamilton, Maori in Ruatoria and the East Cape, and US Marines based near Wellington. He also recorded the scenes of celebration in Wellington as the Second World War ended.

These photographs have been selected from the period 1942-1945, and are reproduced on Capture with the permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library and the National Library of New Zealand. The extensive resources from these institutions that are now available online add so much to our cultural history. I can also recommend Chris Maclean’s 2003 biography John Pascoe which tells the definitive story of this remarkable New Zealander, and is extensively illustrated with many of Pascoe's photographs.

Introduction and selection by Jonathan Ganley

To mark her forthcoming exhibition of photogram portraits, we welcome Auckland photographer Jocelyn Carlin to Capture. Known for her features and photojournalism work, Jocelyn has also spent the last ten years working on humanitarian and environmental issues in the Pacific region. For this series of photograms, entitled To Be, Jocelyn was inspired by the photograms of Len Lye. Working from her Auckland studio, where she maintains one of the city's few remaining high-end black & white darkrooms, Jocelyn describes the works as "a re-discovery of the craft of photography reveling in the mysteries of a seemingly archaic darkroom, combining technique with observation, and pairing artistic intent with uncertainty of outcome. These portraits are a new way of seeing ourselves, but being reminiscent of the 18th Century silhouette, they are anchored in the past ... More than a simple record of a human profile like the Self, they are subtle and complex, layered, textured, flawed and beautiful."

The To Be : Portraits exhibition opens at the Photospace Gallery in Wellington on June 29th 2012 and runs until  July 14th 2012.

Photospace Gallery is located on the first floor at 37 Courtenay Place. See their website for more details, and the gallery opening hours.

Welcome to the World of Light Field Photography

A few months ago I was alerted (thanks again Simon) to the development and planned launch of what was reported as a potential game-changer in photography called the 'Lytro'.  If you follow the @CaptureNZ account, or read the side columns, you may already know that on Monday I got one, via that well known 'delivery only to an American address' route. (Cheers to my cousin's hubby and family also.)

The box sat on my desk for a bit while I contemplated what might come out of it.  Truly new technology has this tendency to create a sense of expectation that the actual product is hard pressed to live up to.  Would it have arms and make me coffee?  Well, maybe this is just me.

Background

The Lytro Camera was the result of research by a team at Stanford University headed up by Ren Ng, who is now the founder and CEO of Lytro, advancing work on the Light Field (Plenoptic) Camera technology first proposed by Gabriel Lippmann in 1908. The technical details take some time to come to terms with, and if you are serious about getting into the depths of the technology, I recommend you read first the abbreviated Tech Report, then Ren's Dissertation on the subject from 2006.  All 203 pages of it.  If you could write me a summary and send it to the email below, that would be great.

Here's the abstract from the tech report;

This paper presents a camera that samples the 4D light field on its sensor in a single photographic exposure. This is achieved by inserting a microlens array between the sensor and main lens, creating a plenoptic camera. Each microlens measures not just the total amount of light deposited at that location, but how much light arrives along each ray. By re-sorting the measured rays of light to where they would have terminated in slightly different, synthetic cameras, we can compute sharp photographs focused at different depths. We show that a linear increase in the resolution of images under each microlens results in a linear increase in the sharpness of the refocused photographs. This property allows us to extend the depth of field of the camera without reducing the aperture, enabling shorter exposures and lower image noise. Especially in the macrophotography regime, we demonstrate that we can also compute synthetic photographs from a range of different viewpoints. These capabilities argue for a different strategy in designing photographic imaging systems.

Basically, it does magic stuff.  Try clicking on the 13 below which is out of focus and see what happens. 

You can also double click to zoom in, and move the photo around to see close ups of different areas or objects.

Clever, huh? 

Similarly, if you didn't already try it, the ship in the top photo will become clearer, and the glass will go out of focus. 

In reality I can see (mostly) how they do this, but the fact it stores the focal points of every object in the photo, and then refocuses at the position you click is really a level of cleverness that may indeed make this the game-changer it was said to be.

In terms of usability, right down to its packaging, the Lytro seems to draw heavily from an Apple style 'out of the box' design ideology.  You can turn it on and start shooting immediately.  Mine came with an already half-charged battery.  The software (Apple Os X only so far) installed easily, and does all the processing and so on you might want.  Including connecting you to the Lytro gallery. (Where all images are stored for sharing purposes using their proprietary software, through either Facebook or a new account.)

Once you've taken your photos, just load them on the computer, review them in the Lytro viewer and then share the ones you want to on the Lytro gallery.  Through this they have handy share links for Facebook, Twitter, and fortunately for us at Public Address, HTML friendly embed scripts.  I only had to fiddle with it a tiny bit to make it expand to full column width.

Yep, it works.

Moving past the squee...

However, I have to admit I was expecting a bit more.  Perhaps this is the unfamiliarity of the technology making it a challenge to get the best out of it. Or maybe it is the fact that even in the brightest of conditions, the images have some limitations with regards to depth of field and genuine sharpness of the different objects.  The statue above seems quite crisp when it comes into focus, but the trunk at the front was obviously not quite in the light field.  No doubt I'll get better at it over time.

Also the 2.5cm sq screen and viewfinder is at the back of an 11cm long box, and as soon as you get an unusual angle of attack on a shot, this is a little hard to see.  Not to mention the ratio of thumb to screen being somewhat ridiculous in my case.

The other features such as on-screen viewing and editing are limited, but work well enough.  At 16.1mb per image though, if you take more than 10 photos at a time, you will want to go mow the lawns, have a shower and make a cup of tea, while it processes them.

Finally, I can't help thinking I'd have paid a bit more, maybe even several times as much, for something that is more like a DSLR with a Light Field lens attachment.  This first consumer version is perhaps intentionally a bit Lytro-lite, and will be great for Facebook users and people running pretty blogs (cough), but for serious photographers there is a danger they will look at the technology and go 'Great, but why put a Hasselblad idea in an Instamatic?'

Last words

For all that, you couldn't take my Lytro away any more than you could my Kodachrome, so while the shine is still on, here's some more images to play with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The whole collection is available through the CaptureNZ page on Lytro, and I'll be adding to it as the opportunities, and ideas, present themselves.

Capture away.

Remix the Orchestra - Auckland Town Hall, 31 May 2012

Last night the full Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra (APO) and several established and up and coming Hip Hop artists got together to perform a show that culminates four years of collaboration under the Remix the Orchestra banner.  They brought the house down. 

Five APO musicians played as featured orchestral artists: Miranda Adams (violin), Eric Renick (percussion), Brent Grapes (trumpet), Ingrid Hagan (bassoon) and Bridget Miles (Clarinet).

On the Hip Hop side, the artists where as diverse as they were talented.
 
DJCXL, Frisko (aka Alphrisk), Tyree and Ermehn all performed along with longstanding members of the Remix crew JEM and Anonymouz and an assortment of other musicians, including the opera singing rapper Chess Countess.

At one stage during the concert Slave (Mark Williams) conducted a battle between the Hip Hop artists and the APO.  For the record, everybody won.

Rather than using up to many words trying to explain it all, this video provides a good introduction.

APO Remix the Orchestra

I was very fortunate to be invited along to Capture both the rehearsal and the performance.  A very big thanks to Richard and Kendra from the APO for a wonderful evening and the opportunity to capture such a special occasion.