Wyoming in 3D

Terri and I just got back from a wonderful road trip through Nebraska to Wyoming and back. We took several stereoscopic 3D pictures along the way. As usual, each image is posted as an red/cyan anaglyph and a stereo pair.

Buffalo Bill's Scout's Rest Ranch in North Platte, Nebraska

 

Terri enjoying the morning at Scout's Rest Ranch

Grand Teton through the trees

Horses grazing in front of the Grand Tetons

Old Faithful at Yellowstone was right on time!

These buffalo were roaming right next to the highway in Grand Teton National Park.

This buffalo in Yellowstone was careful to stay in his lane!

We drove our 350Z so we could enjoy the fresh mountain air.

We had a great time and are looking forward to our next road trip.

Where are you planning to vacation this summer?

Forty Two

Near the end of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams describes how a race of hyperintelligent pandimensional beings decided to build the greatest computer in the history of the universe to solve the question of Life, the Universe and Everything. They named their supercomputer Deep Thought, and despite its enormous processing power, it required seven and a half million years to determine the answer.

Generations later, on the Great and Hopefully Enlightening Day, the Day of the Answer, Deep Thought surprised the scientists, philosophers and religious leaders by revealing that the answer to the question of Life, the Universe and Everything was Forty Two.

If you want a useful answer, chose your questions carefully!

A Different Peter Principle

Image by Holly Hayes at Art History Images

In 1969, Dr. Laurence J, Peter and Raymond Hull published The Peter Principle in which they observed that competent people in an organization tend to get promoted until they reach a position that is above their skill level. When they rise to the level of their incompetence, they are no longer promoted and remain in that position. The logical result is that most people are incompetent in the position they hold.

The argument is compelling and may be accurate in some instances, but I have not observed it often in my experience over the last 30 years. Perhaps The Peter Principle no longer applies in today’s highly competitive global economy. With flatter organizations, fewer people are promoted and companies are careful about who they promote. And incompetence isn’t tolerated for long. Those who don’t succeed quickly are moved into a different position or out of the organization.

I want to propose a different Peter Principle based upon a much older book. In the Gospels, there were many people who encountered Jesus and followed him with blind devotion from that point forward. But Peter was different. One of the first followers, he did not follow blindly. In almost every story, Peter was the one saying the wrong thing, asking the wrong questions.

In many ways, Peter’s character was a perfect literary device for the Gospel writers. When Peter made an inappropriate statement or asked a difficult question, it was the perfect setup for Jesus to respond with something profound and mysterious.  But the end of the story makes me believe that Peter’s questions had a more important purpose.  In the end, it is Peter that Jesus puts in charge of leading the church.

My Peter Principle is “If you want to lead, you have to ask the difficult questions.”  It is through questioning and struggling for understanding that we gain the insight required to lead our organizations into the future.

What questions do you ponder?

17+17>34

Beautiful card from Charta Design.

I have written before that creativity is often as simple as blending two older ideas together to create a new one. We seem to be right at the center of one of those types of creative episodes at Convertible Solutions.

As I have also mentioned in earlier posts, my company Convertible Solutions pre-converts paper for use in digital presses. Through a combination of cohesives, scoring and die cutting we make a variety of press sheets that can be used to create complex direct mail pieces, Panoramic books and double thick postcards.

Last fall, when we rolled out our 12 point Double Thick Impact Card stock for making 24 point postcards, we targeted direct mail and marketing applications. The paper we selected was nice, but economical, and is visually stunning when coated with a high gloss UV coating. It will drive up your direct mail response rates, but you probably wouldn’t sent out a wedding invitation on it.

Earlier this year, I began working on a different project with a group of young women who greatly appreciate art and design and are constantly on the hunt for pretty, inspirational things to share on their blog. They are particularly passionate about paper and printing and even named their site PaperMusePress.

This project and similar ones have heightened our awareness of the look and feel of traditional letterpress printing and focused our attention on creating that kind of elegance in the visual and tactile impact of our digitally printed products. We rediscovered a beautiful old paper stock that has been a favorite of high end printers for decades.

Mohawk Superfine Eggshell is the perfect surface for beautiful stationery and cards that invoke the richness of the letterpress era. The 120lb cover weight yields a respectable 17 point flat or folded cards. That's a nice thickness, but what if we used our Double Thick Impact Card process to create a 34 point card? That would be really impressive.  What if we put our cohesives on both sides of a center insert and stacked it between the other two creating a triple thick or quadruple thick card?

We haven’t formally announced a stationery-quality double/triple thick card product, but the test samples we have shown to selected clients have created quite a stir. It feels like there will be an impact on the market far greater than simply adding two or more 17 point sheets of paper together.

The product should be announced soon, but if you can’t wait to see a sample, let me know. I will make sure you get one.

Rainy Days and Mondays

There is a persistent myth that highly creative people are mentally ill or emotionally disturbed. It doesn’t take much effort to remember individual examples across many disciplines: John Nash, Vincent Van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Syd Barrett, Brian Wilson, Kurt Vonnegut, Virginia Woolf, and Woody Allen come to mind. However, despite these high profile examples, most creative people are not mentally ill and most mentally ill people do not create great art.

Personally, I believe that there can be great inspiration during the times when we are in emotional pain. I am a fan of Bob Dylan’s music and my favorite album is Blood on the Tracks which was written after the breakup with his wife Sara. While Dylan claims the songs are not autobiographical but based upon the short stories of Anton Chekhov, I don’t believe he could have captured the pain of a breaking and broken relationship so accurately if he hadn’t been feeling that pain at the time.

There is a deep seated need in most of us to experience art that shows real emotion. While it can be invigorating to share the confusion of Lady Gaga when she loses her phone or the joy that Rebecca Black feels on Friday, we long to hear from those with deeper issues.

My life has been strongly influenced by decisions made during periods of depression. Most of the time I am an expert at execution.  Set a sales target - I will find a way to hit it.  Want a new product - I can write the specs and organize the team to get it done. Ready to launch the product with a multi-channel media campaign - no problem. These tasks require far too much concentration on the how and now to leave time for asking why.

Then the questions begin to creep in.  Why am I doing this? Who is this helping?  Who is this hurting? Is this really what I want to be doing? What if I have to do this for the rest of my life? Is this what I want on my tombstone?

Now that I am past 50 and some of my parts seem to be wearing out, there are new questions. How much longer will I be here? Will I ever be able to “x” again? How much longer do I have with the people I love? What’s next?

I used to hate the questions. They were a distraction from the tasks at hand and greatly resented. I blamed external factors, usually the company where I was employed. So I changed jobs and sometimes moved to new cities. Life’s been good to me so far, so most of those decisions turned out pretty well.

I have sometimes laughed to myself that my carefully crafted resume masks the real reason behind some of the changes. In reality, in those periods of depression and reflection, I was more aware of systemic problems and where they would lead in the future. I will never know whether the depression made me more aware or the awareness made me more depressed. But it was not coincidence that the decisions turned out well.

I no longer fight the feelings. I can recognize them now and welcome them like an old friend. I let them wash over me and wonder where they will lead me. Since I have a very supportive family and a wonderful employer, it is senseless to look for external triggers. So I try to identify habits and thought patterns of my own that need adjustment.

They are my feelings.  I will take responsibility for them.

I don’t know if my experience is universal, but I suspect it is. Everyone must experience periods when they ponder the existential questions. Those are the best times to reset your compass bearings and sail off into new adventures.

What brings you down?  How has it impacted your life and your creative decisions?

While you ponder the question, I am going to strum a few chords from Tangled Up in Blue.

The Dark Side of Social Media

Today I would like to identify a new form of mental illness. Although it is not currently on the list of proposed modifications to the DSM-V* scheduled for publication next year, Social Media Stress Syndrome (SMSS) is a new and pervasive disorder that could easily turn into a pandemic.

The essential feature of Social Media Stress Syndrome is a pervasive pattern of grandiosity and  a need for admiration that begins upon joining Facebook and expands across a variety of social media platforms. Individuals with this Syndrome have a grandiose sense of self-importance which often shows in the superior tone of their blog posts. They may feel that they can only be understood by, and should only share posts from other people who are special or of high status.

Individuals with this order are obsessed with their Klout score, SEO rankings and monthly page views on their sites. They believe their knowledge and understanding is special and must be shared on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and when images are involved, Pinterest.

Vulnerability in self-esteem makes individuals with Social Media Stress Syndrome very sensitive to “injury” from criticism or a lack of retweets. Although they may not show it outwardly, a Facebook post without any likes may haunt these individuals and leave them feeling frustrated, hollow and empty. Sustained feelings of incompetence and the attendant self-criticism may be associated with social withdrawal, depressed mood and Dysthymic or Major Depressive Disorder.

Individuals with SMSS traits are encouraged to engage employment in the field of Social Media Marketing where their symptoms can be allowed to flourish full time. Those who find that they can no longer keep up with their Twitter feeds and need to spend more than an hour a day reviewing their Facebook news feed need to take the following steps:

Remember that you will receive no hate mail if you don’t tweet today!

Turn off the podcast on Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders and listen to some music!

Do not check your page views today!

Put down Steve’s biography and read some fiction!

Understand that you will never save Apple or start Facebook and that’s OK!

Keep your sense of humor about life, the universe and everything!

Don’t Panic! 

Don't Break the Window

Stereo 3D photography requires a different approach to composition and framing than traditional two dimensional photography. Generally, the best subjects are those that have natural depth that will be highlighted by the stereo effect. However, the 3D photographer must always be aware of the stereo window and take care not to break the stereo window.

When you look at a two dimensional image, you are looking at the scene. With a 3D image, you are looking into the scene as if you were looking through a window. The edges of the image form the boundaries of that stereo window. Just like a real window, there can be things to see through the window and there can be things to see in front of the window. But if there is something at the left or right edges that projects forward, the stereo window is violated and the stereo effect no longer works.

This 3D image of an Orchid has a severe window violation.

In the stereo pair it is easier to see how the green bud on the right breaks the stereo window.

These images of orchids from the St. Paul Winter Carnival are examples of severe window violations. The green bud on the right is placed significantly in front of the viewing window but violates the window by projecting beyond the right edge. There is a significant difference between the left and right views at that edge which is confusing to the eyes and prevents a good 3D effect. There is also a window violation on the left with the yellow flower.

This 3D image of an orchid has good depth and no window violations.

In the stereo pair, you can see that no part of the orchid crosses the stereo window.

You can avoid window violations by framing scenes to keep anything that is closer than your primary subject away from the left and right edges of the image. Generally, this means shooting scenes at a wider angle than you might for a 2D image. The second set of orchid images show good 3D depth without any window violations.

Have you tried capturing any 3D images yet?  If so, please share the links.