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Spring has sprung!

2007-05-12T12:08:00.000Z

Well the blossom was actually a couple of weeks ago, but I have started a process of cleaning and moving...

From now on, new posts will be at jakemessenger.com!

And in anticipation, I've redesigned the look of the blog to match the new style. I fiddled about with the CSS for the template in the astoundingly elegant Coda by Panic. Excellent program for making CSS styles clear.

Apologies for the nerd-talk. More pictures soon at the new site.

France 2006

2006-07-15T17:31:00.000Z

I took my Panosaurus with me on holiday to my parents' home in the South of France in June, and have posted the results to my site.

click here to see the results.

The pictures are around and inside their home, as well as up by a hill top church in a nearby village.

Upware and RSS

2007-03-04T16:47:00.000Z

Here is a new panorama. Had to blow the cobwebs off the Panosaurus.

Also, I've fixed the RSS feed on this blog, so if you want to be surprised by intermittent postings, please subscribe...

iWeb... Aperture

2006-11-15T11:51:00.000Z

I'm exploring making websites the quick and easy way in Apple's iWeb and Aperture applications.

Here's a front page bashed together in iWeb. The Vegas and Fitzwilliam galleries are done in that app, the sheet and Autumn ones are done in Aperture. Both are really easy ways of getting pictures onto the web.

Scattr

2006-11-14T12:00:00.000Z

Once again Brendan Dawes has come up with something special.

Look to the top of the page...

I've embedded the latest pictures in my (rather underused) Flickr photostream, using his free ScattrLite flash thingy. I'm feeling flush, and now I've got it figured out, I might just get the $9.99 version to customise.

To play around with it, click on the white part of a picture to move, or click on the image itself to see. Fun!

I also want his Analog In, Digital Out book.

Thetford Forest Panoramic Movie

2006-04-06T20:45:00.000Z

I've just added a QTVR of the large Thetford Pano.

Click here

Thetford Forest

2006-04-05T19:37:00.000Z

I've uploaded a series of panoramas taken in Thetford Forest in Norfolk. Click here to view them.

The software I've settled on for the moment is PTMac by Kekus. It uses the open source Panorama Tools, and has a range of automated tools. It costs money (there are free uses of Panorama Tools, such as the excellent Hugin, but it is worth it for the time saved and the great results.

Without a tripod...

2006-04-05T19:20:00.000Z

I went to Trinity College in Cambridge with great plans of a panorama under the Christopher Wren designed library. However... I wasn't allowed to use my tripod, and I wasn't allowed access to the library! So above is what I managed.

Panorama site

2006-03-30T10:34:00.000Z

I'm finding the Panosaurus is a great way to make you think when taking photographs: not just what's in the frame, but what's behind you, and how it will work as a 360 degree strip. I really like the way the shapes get distorted.

To that end, I've put together a site to display my ongoing explorations with panoramic photography.

Click here to visit the site.

Cambridge Crown Court

2005-07-06T17:10:00.000Z

to view the images click here

Panosuarus

2006-03-21T10:42:00.000Z

Stourbridge Common, Cambridge
click here for a larger version

I've been interested in panoramic and joined-up pictures for a long time (see my 'Orford Ness' project), and prompted by a colleague at work I've bought a Panosaurus panoramic head for my tripod. The unit itself takes a little initial setting up, but once it's done you've got an inexpensive and efective way of taking multi-row panoramas around your camera's nodal point (i.e. no parallax errors) (thorough description here)

The above panorama is taken on Stourbridge Common in Cambridge, by the river(google earth link here). Now it's just an open common area with the Museum of Technology and housing along the south and west sides, and the railway line to Ely along the east. Stourbridge Fair used to be held on the site - although it's a grazing common now, it used to be Europe's largest fair, and is where Isaac Newton bought his prism.

I had been thinking about how digital photography tends to make photography a bit more disposable and throwaway, and how it would be nice to slow down a bit more; this sort of photography does just that, standing in one place turning the tripod head incrementally around, repositioning the camera's vertical angle. It also makes you think in a different way about composition - I deliberately placed myself in the middle of a path to get the distinctive sweeping 'W' shape: the areas to the extreme left and right of the image are actually directly behind the area at the centre of the image. It produces an impossible perspective.

Museum of Technology

2005-06-19T17:22:00.000Z

I was getting my car serviced one beautiful day recently, and while waiting for the work I popped through the gates of the Museum of Technology in Cambridge and took some pictures. The museum, a former pumping station, and after wandering about a bit I found that the main gates were bolted too. I climbed over the fence...

click here to view the pictures

flickr and flash

2005-06-26T19:09:00.000Z

...and following on from last week's post about flickr, at the top of the page you'll see my 12 most recent photos in my photostream. This has been very slightly adapted from Brendan Dawes' implementation of the flickr api wrapper by Kelvin Luck.

I'll keep fiddling, and seeing what else I can do with it - see Brendan Dawes' front page for some excellent work.

flickr

2005-06-19T17:32:00.000Z

I've just opened a flickr account to see what can be done:

click here for flickr

I'm getting into tags, sending directly from iPhoto using a plugin, and will try experimenting with Flash and flickr (see Brendan Dawes' website for a great implementation of it.)

Watch this space...

Christ Church, Spitalfields

2004-11-27T19:38:00.000Z

I've always wanted to visit the interior of Hawksmoor's amazing church in Spitalfields, but for many years it has been closed to the general public. However, recently the interior has been restored and the doors are open. Inside is airy and light, wide open space with bright white walls and dark honey-coloured wood. It feels very far from the grime of Commercial Road just down the front steps.

click here for a larger version

Orford Ness

2004-11-17T18:55:00.000Z

Over the summer of 2004, created an interactive work called Orford Ness as my final project for an MA in New Media Production at ICDC in Liverpool. The project explores the spit of land off the Suffolk coast which was used as a secret military site for most of the 20th Century, conducting tests on a variety of weapons including atomic bombs.

Creating the project involved visiting the site on three occasions, and taking around 500 still images, half on a digital camera, half on film. These were brought into Flash to create a variety of explorable panoramas linked by walks along the routes between them. Sound was also recorded in each of the main parts of the site as well as along the routes.

The original submitted version of the project weighed in at over 60 Mb - too large to put online, so I have optimised it as much as I can to bring it in at around 13Mb which is fine for broadband, and requires patience on dialup...

Orford Ness can be accessed here

There is also a smaller (1.5Mb) stills-only version here