A. Aronsson's WeBOLLog

It appears I am following a theme with my Christmas cards. This year I picked some suitable pictures from Pixar’s latest movie Up, again supplied by /Film, and I did a similar job as last year. The final picture is actually my second montage this time around. I made the first montage with photos taken in my apartment. I was not satisfied with the end result so I swapped the background and started over the next day, then outside.

On december 13th, a Sunday, I went to my parents place and placed my DSLR on a tripod on the roof of their garage and had my younger brother trigger it via an RF-remote. It was chilly outside, around 0°C, though the days after the temperature went down to -8°C so I was lucky to get it done the day I did!

After thawing my hands and looking through the pictures to ensure I would have something usable I went home and started working on fitting myself into Up. First I extracted myself from reality and put myself in the background. I decided my hand would not fit so I extracted one from another photo and transplanted that onto my arm. I adjusted colors and sharpness, added shadows and clouds and finally the text. I also decided to add some glow to make the image seem more genuine, to soften up the edges between me and the background.

The editing was actually spread out over two days, Monday and Tuesday, this because working full time sadly leaves me with little time to spare for my creative activities. The Swedish mailing service had the 16th of December as their deadline for mail that should be delivered before Christmas Eve. This had me frantically print the cards and write a personal message on each after work that day. Then I ran off to the store to buy stamps and drop them into the red Christmas mailbox, they had not emptied it yet so I was in luck! I actually got to send some of the cards the day after as I had not gotten my hands on all the addresses on time, but they also made it in time, interestingly.

Ever since I stumbled upon anamorphosis I have wanted to make one for myself, to decorate my home with, and especially something that would spook visitors. This specific idea formed in my head about six months ago, but it was not until recently that I got to realizing it.

To keep this simple I will not try to retell my entire thought process, as it spans over months and months, but instead what I ended up doing and why.

Planning

I made up my mind to put the anamorphosis in my bathroom, so it would be visible when sitting on the toilet. This because the picture only looks correct from one specific viewing angle, and as I have such a small bathroom you have to sit down no matter what you need to do.

The print would go on the wall next to the seat, opposite the door. Because I wanted the picture to be highly distorted face on, which almost is the whole point, I wanted the real observation point to be almost from the side. This meant putting it on the wall would be perfect. To make things even more interesting, you actually look at the wall through the mirror above the sink.

With the help of masking tape I quickly deducted that the image could be 67×67 centimeters and still fit into view. I made it perfectly square for easy editing later on.

The motif would be myself visible through a window in the wall holding a camcorder, as to make the experience not only wondrous, but also a bit traumatic. This picture would also look like it was an actual hole in the wall, with the right perspective in the image. A fun detail is that I did not own a camcorder when I decided this, I got one just before summer this year, for general purposes mind you.

Execution

I positioned the camera where I thought people would most likely have their heads while sitting down and took a picture of my tape square, this is required for the editing later. To be able to recreate the camera angle and lighting of the scene I measured the position of the camera in relation to the wall and ceiling, as well as the position of the only light source in the room.

When I happened to have a friend over and nothing else was planned, I used him for the photo shoot. We went into the cellar and looked up a nice spot. With us we brought the following:

• A work light with breaker – to see what we were doing
• A detatched desktop lamp with bulbs – for lighting the scene
• Frosted glass from a ceiling lamp – to dim the light
• My DSLR including a cable remote
• The camcorder
• Extension power cords and a power strip

At the location we rigged the camera, measured the position, tried out the lighting and snapped a bunch of photos. We actually got it wrong the first time and had the camera looking into the corridor instead of facing the wall, so we had to redo it. The second time we emptied a storage room just inside the corridor and crammed my friend and the camera including tripod in there, a tight fit! This way we could get the correct angle while keeping the right distance.

Back at the computer we picked out the best photo, being the one with the least blur even though I had better faces in some of the others, and distorted it so it would fit the marked area in the bathroom. I had to clone a part of the wall to fill out a corner, nothing too complicated. See the below representation of the steps to get an idea of what I mean.

To get the anamorphosis to work while looking at it through a mirror I had to mirror the image before printing. I used my B&W A4 laser printer to try if it would actually work, and it did!

You need to have your head at the right place, but then it looks quite convincing! It is a bit more sensitive to your viewing angle than I expected, this due to the short distance between you and the picture, but hopefully it will startle at least someone :)

Below you have a short video depicting the process, also available at Youtube!

This is my graduation picture from 2002.

I made this after graduating from my gymnasium studies (senior high school). In Sweden it is a tradition to wear a white hat when ending your studies and escape into the free(?) world of grownups. Taking the photos involved carrying a whole car-full of furniture into a photo studio and close co-operation with the photographer.

Something I have been asked quite a few times is how we made the water pouring. It is really quite simple, I poured the water into a bucket and then held the glass where the photographer said I would. He compared the picture he just took with what he saw in the camera. In the end it looks like I held my glass under the stream of water.

This summer I was asked if I could help out with a graduation photo for a friend, and I was happy to oblige. The idea was to make something along the lines of my own graduation picture, seen above, with clones of oneself.

We spent some time sketching out a few concepts and quickly decided what to do. As she loves her car, and the fact she graduated in health care, a montage of her running over herself while trying to save herself with her own car seemed like a good idea.

To stop the car from leaning this way and the other, due to its’ suspension, we elevated it with three carjacks. She then posed for all the different characters while I snapped the pictures via a radio remote. People were constantly biking or walking past us, between the camera and the car, but we managed to take the last shot just before the clouds broke up and we had full sunshine. Phew!

The work in Photoshop went very smoothly. After correcting the gamma and position of all photos I simply cut her out from the different layers. There are hardly any overlays where she covers herself in another picture so it was a straight forward process. The slightly more challenging part was the heart massage, and the very funny part was to add the blood splatter… which surprisingly was accepted for the final version which was used for printing!

In the end all parties were happy with the result, I think :) hopefully this little project made the experience of graduating even more fun, I enjoyed it at least!

Back in March, the 25th, I implemented a contact form on this blog, namely Contact Form 7. A splendid plugin I have to say. I did not expect it to get used much, but I had always missed that specific feature myself, as it is what I look for at a site when I want to contact the author.

About ten days later, 5th of April, I got a message through the form from Paul Baars of Paul Baars Design in the Netherlands. It was a request for using my art in a calendar project! The calendar would contain a separate piece of art for each day of the year (2010), with the art being optical illusions. Among the artists whose work was already included were M.C.Escher, Ars et Mathesis, Oscar Reutersvärd, Dmitry  Rakov, Sandro del-Prete, David Macdonalds, Istvan Orosz, Scott Kim, Jos de Mey, Mathieu Hamaekers, Norman Parker, Igor Achkasov, Zenon Kulpa, Peter Raedschelders, Hop David, Jeroen Henneman, Vlad Alexeev, Bruno Ernst, Ken Knowlton and Vicente Meavilla Segui, which is quite a respectable list… I was intrigued.

After a bit more communication I happily accepted the request, prepared the high resolution images needed and credit information to go with them, and that was it!

As compensation I would receive a couple of calendars for free; which suited me perfect as just the opportunity to get published in any way at all is reward enough :)

This Wednesday I picked up a package at the post office, and was happily surprised to find four calendars in it! The print quality sure is spectacular, and I eventually found my own pieces in there. They are at May 1st, Juli 26th, August 17th, September 22nd and November 20th, 2010.

I will have to mark down those dates to check if the link included in the calendar affects blog traffic, it will be interesting!

Very awesome :) Thank you Paul, for including me in this project!

If you want an ILLUSIES & OPTISCHE FENOMENEN SCHEURKALENDER 2010 of your own, you can access the order form at Paul Baars Design directly, if you live in the Netherlands or Belgium that is; here is a PDF (in Dutch) with detailed information. Or, you could look for a Dutch book store, not sure if they ship world wide though.

When I installed the WP plugin Contact Form 7 on the 25th of March I did not expect to get any feedback through it very soon, but to my surprise I got a message five days later from Jossie of Zumbakamera.com (check out their videos) regarding my impossible figures!

To support and finance an animation project called Bendito Machine (which I think is awesome!) they were looking for artists to collaborate with to get illustrations for their online Giclée service named Printastic. I was very happy to become a part of this, so I quickly agreed to supply the figures they wanted :)

As both parties were plenty busy with other things the time slipped away, but now I have finally gotten a page on Printastic! They will add more of my art in the near future; currently I have supplied them with a bunch more than there are on the page right now.

On a side note, since installing the contact form I have received two more requests about using my art (more about that later) and a very nice appreciation email :) Shocking!