Catch the entire series here.

View the entire gallery here.

OMG RLY????  Nice!

The release of the LEGO structures coincides with the real Guggenheim Museum’s “From Within Outward” exhibition, which is a celebration of 50 years of Wright’s continued influence after his passing.

The first of the sets was released on the 15th to coincide with the opening of the exhibition, and are part of LEGO’s LEGO Architecture line of sets, made to “inspire future architects, engineers and designers as well as architecture fans around the world with the LEGO brick as a medium.

[via designbloom]

Holy crap!  Please file this under DO WANT!  I haven’t pulled out the LEGO collection in years, but something like this just might do the trick.  Throw some Charles Renie Mackintosh furniture sets in there, and I’m more than sold.

Speaking of tricks, this reminds me of a clever one I managed to pull while in college.

I managed to get myself a private tour of the Edward E. Boynton house in Rochester, NY, by way of convincing a real-estate agent that I was a photography major at RIT.  While I was in school (mid to late 90′s) the house was for sale.  Being a huge lover of all things FLW, I hatched a plan to not only get in, but to spend some time with the spirit of Frank.

I casually called the real-estate agency representing the property, told the folks that I was a student at RIT and was traveling to the Pennsylvania that summer to shoot Falling Water, had already shot the Darwin D. Martin house in Buffalo, and wanted to shoot the Boynton house.  I remember them apologizing that the house was empty, but if I’d be fine with shooting a bare structure, they’d arrange for it to happen.  We set a time and date and I snagged an ID from a friend at RIT that looked absolutley nothing like me.  Luckily, they never asked for credentials, and I spent almost 3 hours shooting the entire house.  Needless to say, these are in the days before digital (well, at least on a college student’s budget), but I still have the prints and negatives…maybe it’s time to get them scanned?

Les Feuilles magiques by darkpatator

1. Shutter Speed

Leaves are a part of nature, which means they’ve a natural tendency to be in motion.  We’ll get to framing a picture perfect still in a moment, but let’s look at leaves in motion first.  Playing with the shutter speed on your camera is a great way to capture ‘in action’ shots.  For leaves in motion, you’ll need to crank that speed up to at least 1/500.  This is a particularly useful and effective technique while shooting a subject that is behind or blocked by the falling leaves.  While there is the alternate option, setting a slow shutter speed to emphasize the motion and movement, I’ve found that this only works well when your background is relatively plain and subject free.

2. Put a filter on it

If you’ve not yet started playing around with filters, Autumn is a great time to start.  Warming filters will add a slight warm glow to your image and add a shade of orange to the leaves.  A circular polarizing filter will cut the glare from any mid-day foliage you might be snapping.  It will also improve the visual range of all colors, and can be particularly handy when using levels and saturation in Photoshop.  A polarizer will also kill any glare bouncing back from water you may have in the foreground (think reflections).  The Autumnal workhorse filter is a B+W 491 Enhancing filter.  An enhancer will really push those red, orange, and yellow tonal ranges and improve your fall foliage shots 10 fold.

Leaf in grass by Jeff Kubina

3. Get down baby

While out on a leaf peep you’re bound to get a number of great shots of tree lines, groups of trees, leaves in motion, leaves on the ground, leaves on the rocks etc.  Most of these shots your took with a tripod, standing, or taking a knee.  But how about taking a stomach?  A what?  Right.  One of the most interesting ways I’ve found to shoot foliage is to get right down to it.  Literally.  By changing your perspective and associated lens angles, you’re right in the thick of the action: on the ground.  Try shooting a solitary leaf or groups while lying on the ground with them.  Conversely, lying on your back and shooting straight up into a red, orange, and yellow canopy can produce excellent results.  Just be sure to meter off the leaves and not the sky to avoid overexposure and poor white balance.

Stages by Clearly Ambiguous

4. Paint with Mother Natures’ brushes

Mama Nature may put on one heckuva display, but that doesn’t mean that you always have to settle for her arrangement of the canvas.  Luckily, she’s left us countless swatches of colors to make our own arrangements with.  Try collecting a variety of leaves and different shades and colors and lay them out in an arrangement of your choosing.  Play with light and exposure along with different angles.  Raising a leaf up to the sun and shooting through it can produce some stunning leave structure images.  When arranging different leave and colors, keep your background in mind as well.  The green of grass is too similar to the original color of the leaves, so think about something in a neutral color with naturally occurring patterns.  Stones for example make a great setting.

Water Droplets on Leaf by Jason Means

5. Give that man a drink

Leaves and water can be one of the best combinations for outstanding pictures.  If you’ve got access to a body of water surrounded by trees, chances are you’ve already got 3 or 4 outstanding pictures on your hands.  Play with different locations around the bottom of water, but also keep in mind your position in relation to the sun.  Shooting into the sun can be tricky, so be sure to use a bayonet and meter not once, but twice before opening the shutter.  If the sun is at your back, be sure to check your entire frame and make sure there aren’t any distracting shadows in the foreground (i.e., make sure YOU’RE not the distracting shadow).

In addition to photographing landscapes with great reflective colors, don’t overlook the leaf already in the water.  For some reason, I find bright colored leaves floating on water to be a form of zen meditation, and are always great images in my mind.  Capturing the solitude and sense of peace can be quite a challenging task, but the benefits are well worth it.  On the opposite site of the coin, shooting a leaf on water with a few ripples surrounding it can add a feeling of motion.

Another trick I use is watering leaves down.  Carry a common household plant mister with you when out on a shoot, and give those reds, oranges, and yellows a spritz.  Water is a natural magnifier, and when combined with some close up shots, a splash of H2O can lead to some highly creative results.

Autumn Cycle by moriza

6. Leaves and the City

Shooting fall foliage isn’t just an ideal setting for those living somewhere out in the middle of nowhere.  In the concrete jungles that I’ve called home, most were decorated in a variety of non-ceremonial shades of grey.  Cast against this drab background, Autumnal reds, oranges, and yellows can stand out even more than next to a green field and blue sky.  When shooting in urban environments don’t just simply head to the local park, but take advantage of this unique setting.  Freeze some leaves in motion blowing across a busy intersection.  Look for leaves floating in small puddles on the street, and try to capture interesting reflections in the water.  Fall colors that have been caught in a rainstorm and find themselves stuck to unexpected objects can also provide some great shots.

Autumn is one of the best times to get out there and get shooting.  By applying some of these tips, your fall photographs are going to make the leap from snapshot to artistic work.  Enjoy and keep shooting!

Right.  Let’s get down to brass tacks here.  Considering that I was previously working on a Samsung SC-X300, the Vixia HF10 is like stepping into the director’s chair on a Hollywood set.  In addition to the obvious difference in quality of an SD camera vs. an HD camera, the Vixia has already allowed a number of variable shot lighting conditions, effects, shooting modes, etc.  One of the main factors that attracted me to the Vixia HF10 is the lack of tape.  I’ve never really worked with tape before, and with the advances in solid-state storage media, I don’t really see a reason to start now.  The Vixia HF10 features a 16gb built in flash media drive.  The Vixia’s less-expensive little brother, the HF100 is exactly the same camera, but without the internal memory, and a slightly less attractive silver paint job as opposed to the HF10’s sleek black finish.  Because I’m slightly anal retentive, I also purchased an additional SDHC 16gb drive that simply slides into the side of the camera.  So in total, I’ve got 32gb or approx. 4 hours of non-stop shooting time on this little wonder.

Size is also another key factor in my gear selection.  I wanted something small enough that could easily be slipped in a large pocket, or not going to take up much space in a backpack.  Weighing in at only 15.1 ounces and measuring 2.9 x 2.5 x 5.1 inches, it a fair statement to say that this junior packs senior power into a small package.  While I did read a few reviews prior to the purchase that complained about the size vs. usability issue, I find the camera incredibly easy to use, buttons are well place, and the joystick navigation just to the left of the main LCD display is nothing but smooth sailing.  The one and only minor gripe I have is with the power button.  It’s located over on the left side of the top of the camera, and it does take a bit of juggling to turn the camera on.  On the other side of the coin, perhaps this is done intentionally by Canon in order to prevent accidental on/off.

Moving up to HD video has presented a bit of a learning curve.  The VH10 records in AVCHD format at a maximum of 17 mb/sec.  At this capture rate, you can shoot in full 1920 x 1080 resolution.  True HD.  AVCHD is a new format to me, and I have to admit, I did have to check a few final cut forums in order to figure out exactly what to do with these files, and how to import them.  On the Samsung, videos were encoded in mpeg4 format, and once plugged in, the camera showed up as an external drive and I was able to drag and drop the files on to the desktop.  With the AVCHD files, I’m required to select the ‘log and capture’ option in final cut in order to bring the files on board.  However, one of the benefits of this method is that I can preview the files in final cut and decide which files I want to bring over, and which can simply head straight to the bin.  While even with my macbook pro with 4gb of memory, large HD files do take a while to move over from the camera to the machine.  I don’t have a point of comparison, but my first guess is that even though taking a few minutes, they’re still transferring via the supplied USB cable faster than a traditional tape method import.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s some test footage that I uploaded to Vimeo.com. Vimeo is one of the few video sharing sites that supports HD footage. The above footage has been resized by Vimeo, as HD is not supported via embedding. To see the full HD version, check it out over here.

The optically stabilized f1.8-3.0 12X zoon lens is slightly longer than most of the Vixia’s 10X zoon lens competitors, and really, who doesn’t need more zoom?  The SuperRange optical image stabilization works well all the way out to the 12X zoom range, and focuses quickly in both bright and dim conditions.  This is going to come in particularly handing while filming live musical performances.  Other than the slightly bigger zoom, most of the features on the Vixia are industry standards for this price and model class.  On video these features include:

• Aperture and shutter priority modes
• Three fixed, one variable zoon speed options. (I personally leave it on variable, as I believe it offers the most amount of control)
• Video light
• Instant AF
• Windscreen filter (on the built in microphone)

Image Taken with the Canon Vixia HF10

A nifty little feature that I’ve played around with a bit is the ability to record in 24 frames per second as opposed to the ‘normal’ 30 fps, and the ability to shoot in 60i.  When hooking the Vixia up to an HD monitor via a mini HD jack, the 24 fps footage really does have a ‘cinematic’ look and feel to it, but sadly, I discovered that editing 24 fps footage in final cut is more or less next to impossible.  It is entirely possible that I haven’t yet found the proper conversion setting, but I’ve also not been able to find much info on the internets about 24 fps editing.

As with 99.44% of video camcorders on the market today, the Vixia HF10 also functions as a digital camera.  In photo mode some nice features include:

• Metering
• Flash
• Burst and exposure bracketing options

Another perk that sealed the deal for me was not only the additional shotgun microphone via Canon’s new ‘mini-hotshoe’, but the microphone and headphone mini jacks located on the backside of the camera.  This comes in particularly useful when doing interviews and is an increasingly rare feature in cameras in the price range.

As is usual with compact designed cameras, the Canon Vixia HF10 ships with an 890mAh battery with a rating of about 55 minutes time.  I’m not exactly sure where Canon is getting these numbers from, as I managed to pull of a full day of recording (over 80 minutes of footage) on a single charge.  Maybe it’s better to underestimate the charge time and over deliver?  If that is in fact the case, well-played Canon – I’ve yet to come up short on juice yet.

All in all, the Canon Vixia HF10 has met and exceeded all of my expectations thus far.  It’s even pushed my boundaries in respect to the way I look at video and video editing, and am looking forward to growing with this camera.

After spending a sun filled week on the island of Hvar off the coast of Croatia, near Split, all I can say is if there was a war raging there a 13 years ago, you’d never know it now.  The people, the food, the beaches, everything was just about as close to perfect as you’d want it to be.

We started our journey from Vienna to Split at around 6:30am.  Driving south from Vienna to the Slovenian border was a piece of cake.  Once in Slovenia, things started to get interesting.  It seems as though the Slovenians aren’t exactly building highways at the same rapid pace the Croatians are.  Needless to say, we had to follow some two lane roads the headed through the countryside.  All I can say is, the people that live along those roads must absolutely hate the summer and relish the winter, as every second car has a German, Austrian, Czech, or Polish license plate.  While the Slovenia countryside looks a whole lot like the southern Austrian countryside, once we hit the Croatian border, we were back on track (read: highway) and movin’ right along.

I’m not sure geographically where it happened, but at one point the entire landscape began to change before my eyes.  In the course of 15-20 minutes the green pastures dried up and the view was one of rocks and brush.  And when I say rocks, I’m not kidding.  If the Croatian Government ever found a financial value in (I think it’s sandstone?) rock, they could quite possibly be one of the wealthiest nations in the world.  Everywhere you look, rocks sticking out of the ground, rocks strewn across the ground, massive rocks that have been blasted aside for the motorway, and even bigger rocks that have been blasted straight through (tunnels).

In our inevitable fashion, both of us managed to miss the gigantic sign that read: To Ferry Boat, and had a small tour through Split’s adjoining suburb.  We got back on track eventually, and made our way down to the Jadrolinija ferry line with about a half hour to spare before the next trip to Hvar.  Pretty good timing I’d say.  The wife was driving, and I have to say, she managed to shoehorn the car in the ferry and up a ramp to the second parking deck.  Nice work babe!

A short 1.75 hour ferry ride across the Adriatic to Hvar gave way to my first sunburn of the trip.  Note to self: buy sunscreen BEFORE arriving.  Once on the island, you can pretty much throw the map out the window, as it’s completely unnecessary.  In other words, while not tiny, the island is small enough where getting ‘lost’ would be only half the fun.

Instead of staying in Hvar, we actually traveled over to the other side of the island and stayed in the unbelievably quaint village of Vrboska.  Vrboska is a former fishing village, not stocked with cafes and restaurants.  There is of course a marina, with plenty of flags from all over Europe moored in Vrboska’s natural harbor.  Let’s get one thing clear here, neither one of us knew about Vrboska, and full credit goes to a former work colleague of the wife’s.  Michael knew of the village and highly recommended it.  With her knowing just a little about Croatia, and me thinking it’s still a war zone (joke), we were up for pretty much anything.

We did drive over to Hvar for a day, as the wife’s need to shop had to be satisfied, and to be honest, getting up and going to beach everyday can be a bit grueling ?, so a morning trip to Hvar was a welcome distraction.  I might put it like this: if you’re up for people and cafes and a town square with million dollar boats moored along the harbor, Hvar is your place.  On the other hand, if you’re still interested in some cafes, can forgo the town square, but still want to drool over something you’ll never be able to afford, Vrboska is your place.  That and take about 90% of the population away.

The beach.  Talk about peace and solitude.  One thing I was unaware of before our trip is that there’s no sand in Croatia.  No joke, the beaches are not made of sand, but rather rock.  Ok, maybe not the best for lying around on, but I tend to get forced back in the water by Greenpeace activists every time I lie around on a beach anyway.  What the lack of sand DOES however contribute to is 100% crystal clear water.  It’s a fantastic sensation to stand on a rock ledge with water at your feed and be able to see directly down to the bottom so that you know what you’re jumping into.  We had our own rock each day, but to be fair, we did have to rent bicycles to get there as this wasn’t an ‘official’ beach, but rather just a place to be alone and go swimming.  A good book, beautiful water, and my favorite woman on earth?  How can you go wrong?

I must also mention that should you get the chance to make it to Vrboska, head directly to Restaurant Mediteran.  The food at this restaurant was so good, we didn’t even bother with any other restaurant after trying only a few.  Maybe there were better ones, but really, I’d be hard pressed to match one that can deliver a 50 pound tuna to your plate, accompanied by freshly grilled local vegetables.

Sadly, as all good things do, our trip to Hvar came to an end with a 4am wakeup call.  Yep, 4am.  The first ferry off the island leaves at 5:30, and it’s recommended to get there at least 45 minutes before.  I can’t say that our trip home was uneventful as it included losing the car in the dark while buying tickets for the ferry and almost not making it on the boat, and my not so smart ‘Oh, I’ll just put some regular gas here in the Diesel fuel tank’ moment.  Fear not, it was only 5 litres in a 70 litre tank, so, as the wife’s father said, “Meh…just makes it go a bit faster.”

But in the end, everything worked out for the best, and hey…getting up at 4am, DOES lead to an amazing sunrise over the Adriatic.

Not that it comes up everyday, but there are a few occassions when you’ve got a page, a document, a passport, etc. that you want to digitize either for archival purposes or sharing.  These are the times when I say to myself, “Hmmm…now who do I know that has a scanner, or where is ther nearest place where I can get this scanned”?  Sound familiar?  So I do what most of you out there have done, which is grab ye old digicam set the focus to near objects, turn the flash off, try to frame the doc to the best of my ability, and then chop the rest off in photoshop.  Good, but not great.

Enter Snapter.

Snapter is a tool that converts your snapped documents into readable PDFs.  It will automagically resize, crop, stretch, flatten and process documents of any kind.  But what about other info that you might not have in hand?  Think about the whiteboard at the front of a business seminar workshop, or college lecture hall.  With Snapter, you can take a picture of this data, process it, and have a fully portable PDF to take with you and store for the archives.

Snapter comes in a variety of pricing options and includes a timed Trial Version, a Lite Version, and a Full Version.  If you’re archiving a lot of material, and still don’t want to commit to a full blown flatbed scanner, even at $50 for the full version, it’s a great deal.

Sadly, Snapter is currently available for overly bloated and more or less useless operating systems, but hopefully as the product develops and evolves we’ll see a Mac OS version soon.

Chanda Vanderhart is a fantastic pianist that achieved her undergraduate degree from the Eastman School of Music, studied opera coaching in Milan, and then moved to Vienna where she collected two more graduate degrees in vocal accomaniment and chamber music.

She’s also a co founder of a musical production company by the name of Talespin.  Talespin is an endevor which seeks to combine elements of story telling, music, graphic design, and multi-media.  Together with her partner Anna Lea Stefansdottir, the duo commissions original works from various composers to set relatively unknown fairy tales from around the world to music.  Performances are conducted either in English or German, depending on the dates and schedules.

It was my great pleasure to photography one of these performances about a week ago.  Not only is Chanda a seasoned pianist, but I recently learned that she modeled for Kodak while in Rochester.  Needless to say, she does very well in front of a camera.  The entire performance was very well done.  Obviously focusing on a childrens market, the Talespin crew packed 3 fairy tales (none of which I knew of prior to this session) in an enjoyable hour.  When dealing with children, it must be mighty difficult to engange, retain and entertain them, so the hour long program was perfect.

Anna Lea and Chanda share a remarkable connection while on stage together, and there simply wasn’t a ‘missed note’ anywhere to be found.  Both cue off each other brilliantly and I sometimes wondered if they even needed to look at each other at all.  The music and visuals fit very well together, along with a variety of various percussion and wind instruments that are handled by the narrator.

All in all, I was quite honored to do the shoot and have been asked back to take some more performance photos along with some new headshots.  Thanks Chanda and Anna Lea!

To view the entire series, visit the Photo page.

I know for example that he has (had?) a band.  Apparently the band was pretty darn good, as he vividly described a festival that the band played at in Slovenia (i think?) a few years ago.  From the sound and imagagry of his description, it didn’t sound like some 10 person festival in a field somewhere, but rather, a 10-15k person festival organized in a field just outside Ljubljana or Maribor.  I also know that Knef is the kind of guy that will (and is planning on) starting out in Upper Austria, and walking/hiking cross country and arriving somewhere in Salzburg.  All the while, never desending below 1000 meters.  In other words, 2 weeks alone up in the mountains, never coming down into the valley.  Likewise, I know that Knef is an avid mountain and rock climber.

I’m not exactly certain what Knef does to pay the bills.  I know he’s a radio DJ, but I’m not certain if that’s an everyday gig, weekends only, or what?  Somewhere in a former lifetime, I’ve heard stories that he was also a cameraman for ORF, the major television network in Austria. And so…it didn’t surprise me when he sent an email my way the other day and asked for my help both as a friend and as a photographer.

It appears that RedBull is now starting up an ‘arte’ format television program.  Knef is applying to be one of the hosts of this network.  These photos should serve as his ‘headshots’ and overall appearance.  Of course I wanted to make him look his very best, but I also wanted to try to get a bit of that enigma that I see in him in these photos as well.  I think I did a pretty ok job….what do you think?  Leave me some comment love below.

To view the entire series, visit the Photo page.

Oh, and if some super stunning pictures weren’t enough for you, Knef’s music video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I live in the 15th district of Vienna, otherwise known as Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus. It’s really a combination of two small districts, and while I’ve never found the official border between the two, something tells me it’s the train tracks the head west from the Westbahnhof. It’s literally the case of depending on which side of the tracks you live on, you either live in Rudolfsheim or Funfhouse.

All of these images were taken in Rudolfsheim, as I didn’t have the time to cross the bridge and get some shots from Fünfhaus. I’ve had the idea of magazine layouts in my head for the past few days, and as you look at these images, try to imagine text filling in the blank blue areas.

Favorite image from the shoot:

with a close second: