Now lets say we didn’t think to take 3+ images when we were out shooting but we still want a beautiful HDR image of the scene.  That’s were this Lightroom technique for fake HDRs comes in to play.

Lets start with the original image:

As you can see, the image is fairly drab, the colors are not vibrant, and the front of the gas pump is under exposed compared to the rest of the scene.

The image to the left illustrates the Lightroom settings I used to obtain our effect.  The first step is to get everything properly exposed, you can do this by fidgeting with the “Fill Light” and “Recovery” settings in Lightroom.  Add more fill light to brighten up dark areas, and more recovery to restore details to over exposed areas.

Personally, I’m a contrast junkie so I like to bump my clarity all the way up and add contrast to taste. This will create a sharp, crisp image.  And lastly, you will want to bring your vibrance and saturation up.  This will help make those colors bright and vibrant just like you see in many HDR images.

And that’s it, you have your High Dynamic Range image. You can download the lightroom preset I created to make this image right click on this link and choose save as.

Not only did this exhibit involve a series of touch screen kiosks, but also needed to include a large version of the map that would be projected from the ceiling onto a table in the middle of the exhibit. Many ideas had been tossed around for the best way to approach this unique kiosk design. The approach we eventually decided on was to build a single interface that could accommodate both the projection and the touch screen displays. The screen shot below depicts the final interface design.

Working with projectors

Projecting the map onto a circular table provided an entirely new set of challenges. To accommodate this we came up with a two step approach.  For the interface itself we leveraged features of HTML5 to create a circular overlay of the Google map and the data overlays. The second problem was the projector itself. In order to perfectly project our circular map, a physical mask was needed to effectively block out the rest of the interface that did not need to be displayed onto the table.

Populating the Map

The Atlanta History Center provided geographical data that was out of this world. Not only had they plotted out all of the civil war battles in the Atlanta area, but the data also included detailed information on who and what was destroyed in Atlanta during the civil war. Much of this information has never been presented to the public at large.

To plot the data onto our Google map, two open source projects were utilized.  All of the data is stored in a format called “shapefiles”. The shapefiles are stored and managed by a custom module we developed for the Drupal content management system. This module stores the data, and produces a dynamic configuration file for our tile server that tells it about the data that should be presented.

Getting this data to a Google map requires the implementation of a tile server. In a nutshell, the tile server takes the shapefiles and turns them into standard images that can be added as an overlay to a Google map. For this task, it was Mapnik to the rescue. Mapnik is essentially a toolkit for working with geographic information systems (GIS) data and functions as a tile server for our kiosk.

The Map Interface

To the left of the map, a map legend is provided. This allows visitors to distinguish battle lines, defense lines, attack movement, areas that were destroyed and so on. The top right side of the interface provides a few choices so that visitors can toggle between features of google maps such as hiding or showing streets, as well as switching from street, satellite, and terrain style maps. Below this is a “Map Features” menu, that provides buttons for the 5 major civil war battles in the area, as well as downtown Atlanta in 1864. By simply tapping any of these buttons on the touch screen display, a visitor will be centered in on the area they chose, and presented with dialog about the battle they have selected.

Conclusion

The development of this kiosk provided many new challenges and allowed us to break into new and cutting-edge technologies. By leveraging these technologies, museum visitors are provided with an informative and new way to interact with an import part of Atlanta history, which might be right in their own backyard.

So yesterday I decided to hop on down to the park and take a boat ride myself.   If you have an opportunity, I highly recommend checking it out.  The island is pretty neat.  Just make sure the flag is up and you bring something to trade.

Here is the generator they built for electricity on the island.  I was told it takes about 2 and a half hours of pedaling to generate about an hours worth of electricity.

Jessica was enjoying some much appreciated sun tan lotion as acquired in a trade.

Jessica making trades with the family that rode the boat in with me:

This weekend’s weather forecast is looking pretty fine. If you visit the islanders, what do you plan to bring along to trade?

With that, we are pleased to announce the new and improved online Shop Section:

With the launch of the online shop, users (that’s you) will now be able to purchase tickets and memberships right along side any books, cards, or jewelry you may decide to buy.  Whether you’re shopping the IMA Store, the Design Center, or the Greenhouse Shop, you’ll immediately receive a 10% membership discount on items when you are purchasing a membership.  If you already have a membership, you will just need to login to take advantage of the discount.

The shop also received a dramatic visual overhaul, bringing featured products and categories to the front.  And all based on the 960 grid system as previously discussed by Matt. Happy shopping!

So back in March as the snow began to recede I would regularly peer out into the drab naked trees with great anticipation of watching them green up and return  to the former glory of last summer.  As luck would have it someone shared this link with me around the same time.  It’s the Timelapse group on vimeo and there are some breathtaking videos created via time lapse photography

Here is one example that blew my mind.

This all got me thinking.  What if I stuck a camera facing out of our window for a month and took a photo every half hour?   Well, sounded like there was only one way to find out.   So here is 1 month of spring as taken every half hour, condensed into 23 seconds.

Watch as the gardens go green.

Something that could easily be over looked about the IMA’s web presence is the amount of social media the museum is creating on a weekly basis.

So in the process of the redesign, the IMA Stream was invented.  What is the IMA Stream? You might ask.  Well the idea behind the stream was to create a single consolidated “stream” of all the content that is being produced by the museum.  The stream contains up to the minute updates from Flickr, Twitter, the IMA Blog, press releases, YouTube, Del.icio.us, and Artbabble.  This allows visitors to quickly browse thru the latest internet offerings from the museum in one convenient spot.

The system was made possible utilizing a common internet standard known as RSS.  In a nutshell, RSS is a standard for sharing and syndicating content across the internet. Leveraging the power of RSS feeds we are able to programmatically aggregate all of our content from multiple sites into a single feed which is what you see when you visit the IMA website.

I highly recommend watching this in fullscreen mode.

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

The snow came down this weekend, and the grounds of the museum made perfect conditions for doing such a panoramic.   So I grabbed my tripod and headed out to the grounds to finally work on my shot.  I wanted to do something slightly different, so instead of using a single 360 degree shot, I took 2 and put one inside the other.  And this is the tutorial on how I did that so that you can make your own panoramic as well.

Step 1.  Take a series of shots for your panoramic

Grab your trusty tripod and find a good spot.  Pan across the scene taking a shot every 15 degrees or so.   Make sure your photos will merge together well on the left and right sides.  And you also want to pick something with a neutral top and bottom portion of the scene.  This will make cleaning up areas later on much easier.

Step 2. Stitch your photos together

In Photoshop goto “File” > “Automate” > “Photomerge”.  This will present you with a dialog to select all of the individual photos that you want to make up your panoramic image.  The defaults should work just fine for what we want.

Step 3. Merge and Cleanup

Each image will be an individual layer in your newly merged shot.  Hit Ctrl + E (windows) or Apple + E to merge your layers into 1 single layer.  This will make working with your image more manageable.

You will most likely have some blank space in the corners and around the edges of your photo.  Select the Rectangle Marquee tool, right click on your image and select “Free Transform”.  Now right click again and select “Warp”  Use this tool to pull out the corners and fill the entire canvas with the image.

Step 4. Stretch and invert

In order to polarize your panoramic, your image needs to be a perfect square.  Goto “Image” > “Imagesize”.  Uncheck “Constrain Proportions” and set the “Height” to the same value as your width.  You should end up with something like this:

Step 5: Invert

If you are only using a single image and not merging 2 images, you would always complete this step.  In my case I am only going to invert the number sculpture as I want to put one image inside of the other.

Click on “Image” > “Image Rotation” > “Flip Canvas Vertical”  and you will get:

Step 6: Polarize

Yup, this is where you start to see your panoramic take shape.  Click on “Filter” > “Distort” > “Polar Coordinates” and make sure you select “Rectangular to Polar”.  Now your images will look like this:

Step 7: Merge the 2 panoramics

Now we need to put one image inside of  the other.  Copy the first image to your clip board.  Then open up your second image and hit paste.  Drag the new layer so that its below the larger image.  Use the Rectangle Marquee Tool to re-size and rotate your image so that it fits nicely in the middle of the larger image.

Step 8: Cleanup

Chances are you will have some empty space where the circle meets itself.  In my photo this happened at points with trees which tend to be really easy to fix.  I just used the lasso tool, Selected part of the trees and pasted those into the blank areas to fill in the space.  You could also use the clone tool to touch up these areas as well

Step 9: Fill in the blanks

Our final step is to fill in the rest of the whitespace.  In my photo the background is solid white so this one is pretty easy.  We’ll just add a white background to fill out the area along the edges.  If you have a textured background you could utilize the clone tool to fill in these areas as well.

And thats it!  Now you have created your first Polar Panoramic Image.  Make sure to share your panoramics at the IMA Flickr Group.

In the interview, curator Shervin Shahbazi speaks of the many pieces that should have made it to the exhibition but where stopped by Iranian customs agents.  And most were held because they contained the color green and/or other political statements about the current regime in Iran.

Green happens to be the color of the opposition party that was lead by presidential hopeful Mir-Hossein Mousavi in the heavily debated election of 2009.  This election lead to rioting in the streets of Tehran and conspiracies that the election was rigged by the ruling party.  So it goes with out saying why the Iranian government would have a problem with the world at large getting their hands on these pieces.

The censorship of Iran is so strong, that none of the artists where able to even give their real names out of fear of retaliation by the government.

But despite the difficulties presented to these artists, many of their works still made it to LA, and are being snatched up at a very fast pace.

All images provided by the Crewest Gallery’s Flickr Page

Scream-FRZ

Gun VS Cameric-icy

Election-SOT

COLORFUL FACE-ICY

Scream - SOT

BOMB is a TOY - SOT

Peace Face - ICY

For more images from the Crewest Gallery Click Here

Throughout the works, you can see an obvious cry for change from a society that has been long oppressed.  The imagery depicts the pain and suffering of people long oppressed by threats of war, religious oppression, and potential nuclear warfare and only hoping for the basic civility that many people across the world already enjoy on a day to day basis.

This comes as no surprise as the headlines this week have been dominated with reports on Iran’s missile tests, a secret uranium enrichment facility, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad down playing his opinion that the holocaust ever existed, and the UN beginning to engage in talks with Iran to resolve any potential threats of nuclear armament with the country.

Throughout time war and political upheaval has had an impact on the arts.  As far back as man has been creating art, we have depicted the effects of war in our artworks.

Here are a few excerpts from the IMA’s collection of works that I found depicting war and social upheaval.

Sock it to me - by William Weege - 1967 - Vietnam Era

War - By William Gropper

Making Soldiers: In the Frontline Trench - By Eric Henri Kennington - 1917 - World War I Era

Doing All You Can, Brother? Buy War Bonds - 1943 - World War II Propaganda Poster

Given that I don’t consider myself much of a writer, it seems practical that the rest of my blog contain photos, as this is a little more up my alley. Photography is a great passion of mine, and I’m sure as time goes on, I will share many more pictures on this blog.

photo by Rumi Sakuraeda

During my time at NUVO I had a few opportunities to take photos of some familiar faces here at the museum. I also took some time to get some snapshots of our little neck of the woods, quaintly nestled behind the library.

What geek habitat is complete with out a Rubik’s Cube?

Seriously…You can’t have just one

Most comfortable chair ever

This is the center portion of our office and the general gathering area for MIS meetings

And here are a few that I took while working for NUVO:

Max Anderson, Click here to view the original NUVO article

R Craig Miller, Click here to view the original NUVO article

And of course the beautiful fountain in HDR (High Dynamic Range)

View the IMA on NUVO's site