D'Arcy Norman dot net » photography

Aperture 3 Faces is magic

dnorman — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:01:07 +0000

I just ~~wasted~~spent the evening training the Faces feature of Aperture 3. Wow. It can’t put a name to a face automatically, but as you teach it, it’s spooky how well it does finding photos of people. I’ve been sitting here giggling at all of the photos I’d forgotten of people I care about. Great stuff.

What amazes me is how few pixels it seems to need to be able to recognize a face. It’s finding faces in group shots (of course), in crowds at hockey and football games (even if the shot is a wide angle photo with hundreds of people in it). It even finds faces in photographs pinned to the wall in the background of photos. Fun with recursion. It could also be a bit scary as a latent crowd identification system – but The Man has this stuff already…

The image of Cole above was found in this photograph of my laptop. Cole is only visible in a small iChat window. On an angle. Amazing.

2009/365photos

dnorman — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 07:48:55 +0000

2009/365photos from D'Arcy Norman on Vimeo.

direct link to the video, for RSSites.

2009 photos of the year

dnorman — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 03:23:29 +0000

I’ve been trying to pick one photo taken in 2009 to be the “photo of the year” but can’t seem to do it. I’ve narrowed it down to 4 photos. So, here are the 4 2009 photos of the year:

one way – February 10 – while riding my bike over an overpass on the way to visit the dentist, I noticed the symmetry of lines just as a snow squall hit.

longview – June 27 – Taken during day 1 of the 2009 Ride to Conquer Cancer, at the last rest stop of the day before reaching camp. The sky in southwestern Alberta is astounding, contrasted with the lush green grassland.

start of day – November 5 – taken along the 32nd avenue entrance to the northeast corner of the University of Calgary campus, showing the activity of morning commuters, and the construction site for the EEEL building.

dalhousie station – a cold and wet c-train platform.

It was a fun year in pictures. I did the 365photos project again, joined the @dailyshoot project, got published in a photobook of local Calgary photographers, and had a bunch of photos published. Fun stuff.

I’m really happy with how 74 photos turned out – here’s my 2009 5 stars gallery – and am really glad I’m learning so much about photography (both technical and philosophical) and still having a blast doing it.

The Bike Blur Photo – behind the scenes

dnorman — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:10:23 +0000

I was asked to share how I got that Bike Blur photo yesterday. It’s really simple, once you know a couple of tricks.

(in case the video doesn’t show up in the RSS feed, here’s the link)

UofC Kickoff 2009

dnorman — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 04:08:12 +0000

Today was the annual Kickoff event – the home opener for the U of C Dinos football team, combined with a party welcoming students to campus for another year. This year, the whole family went to the game, and we had a blast. Also, this year was different because it was the first time in a long, long time that I was able to score the free tickets offered to students…

We had to leave at half time, because it was just too much sun for The Boy™ to endure, but the first half of the game was a great one. When we left, the Dinos were ahead 10-8 over the Golden Bears. Sounds like the second half was exciting, too, with the Dinos holding onto the slim lead to win the game. Whew.

video from the 2009 Alberta Ride to Conquer Cancer

dnorman — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 23:57:29 +0000

I lugged my camera and Flip on the Ride to Conquer Cancer, to document some of the ride. It was a pretty epic bike ride – the hardest thing I’ve ever done – but was well worth it.

Thank you to everyone that supported me in any way – it definitely made the pain of the ride easier to push through.

Full resolution photos are available on Flickr, and I apologize for my severe lack of video production skills…

happy earth day

dnorman — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:15:20 +0000

a wonderful way to celebrate earth day.

Now, please excuse me while I go warm up the Hummer and crank up the furnace…

2 photographs printed in Alberta Views magazine

dnorman — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 01:06:08 +0000

I love Creative Commons. Because I tagged my photos with a CC license, a small and local magazine found some of my photographs, and was able to use them in a recent issue. I didn’t make a penny, and it didn’t cost them a penny. But they were able to find good images for what they needed, and I get to say my photos are in a magazine. Win/win.

5 Card Photo Stories

dnorman — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 04:59:56 +0000

Alan’s working up a 5 Card Flickr Story project to show at Northern Voice, and it’s a really fun little application to explore simple visual storytelling. Any photo on Flickr tagged with 5cardnv is sucked into a pool, where 5 photos are chosen at random and presented as a mini story. You can “keep” any of them, or roll the dice for a fresh batch, until you’re happy with the frames of the story.

Nancy White’s been playing, and saved a screenshot of the output of her mini story. Which she then uploaded to Flickr, and tagged as “5cardnv”. Where it is then placed into the pool of photos for random selection for new stories. Recursion in visual storytelling. Gotta love it.

I’d upload my 5-card-story containing the recursion to Flickr and tag it as 5cardnv, but I’m afraid something would implode due to excessive recursion.

photographing light, and pilsner

dnorman — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 19:26:49 +0000

Taking a photograph is more about capturing light than documenting a subject.

A simple bottle of pilsner, when placed in the bright morning light, comes alive with refractions, reflections, and shadows. It doesn’t hurt that the bottle is so beautifully designed in a clean and strong 50’s aesthetic with thick green glass and a stylized painted label.