mattpettengill.net

Fall is over, and another class is under my belt. This semester I took a class in Photoshop at UMA here in Augusta. It was a fun class, very helpful, and I got to see the work of some very talented people who were also in the class. This was a valuable experience for me, as I learned how the features in Photoshop can be used by photographers to simply make photographs look better, or create works of digital art completely from scratch.

I had some experience with Photoshop at U-Maine as an undergrad, but that was more graphic design focused, and the classes in which I used it did not go into the level of detail that this class did. My my self education in Photoshop was, I came to find out, quite limited; the direction the class provided pointed me to many tools that I will now be using quite often.

Thanks to Sarah Sutter, the professor of the class, for showing us a little but of everything, answering questions, and giving us some fun assignments.

Here are a few of the images I created or worked on as a part of the class. Click for a larger view:

You can see my photo set for class on Flickr here:
ART 232 Set>

As I was browsing around the web today, I found a really amazing video (below) that’s gotten some attention on blogs in recent days. It was created and produced by a team of Dutch artists known as lichtfaktor. I found this video to be incredible, not only for its beauty, but also for the amount of time and effort that must have gone into producing it.

Light graffiti in still images is a reasonably simple concept. You set you camera up for a long exposure (at least 10 seconds, but more is better) and move a bright light source around the frame to “draw” on the exposure. All you need are some flashlights, glow-sticks, or LEDs and a camera capable of performing long exposures. When done for fun, you can get some very creative and abstract images. When done with some skill and forethought, one can create spectacular images.

Lichtfaktor has taken this to a whole new level, by combining multiple still exposures of light graffiti, and combining them into cohesive animated shorts. It’s also important to note that these videos would have been prohivitibly expensive to create even just a few years ago. Using a digital SLR and a laptop, 1000s of images can be taken, downloaded, and merged together in a matter of hours; imagine doing that with film. The amount of time, planning, and coordination that goes into creating these videos should not be overlooked. These guys are truly amazing, and very creative, which is why they have received so much attention in the past few weeks.

Find out more about lichfaktor and see more of their work here (sorry, it’s in german): http://www.lichtfaktor.eu/
They also have many of their still photographs on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lichtfaktor/

This is my inaugural post on my WordPress blog. I’ve finally had some time to work out some of the technical details and work on the layout.

Please check back in a few weeks as I anticipate adding more content, including a photography portfolio and some more information about me and the work I do. Until then, please use the links on the right to see my photography on Flickr, or contact me on FaceBook and MySpace.

There are also some issues with Internet Explorer rendering my CSS that I’m trying to work through. Please view this page using any browser other than Internet Explorer to experience my blog as it was intended. (note: Internet Explorer does not comply with web standards set by the W3C; every other web browser in existence does. Go figure…)

See you again soon.