The Future of Photography is Synthetic

 

A commercial photo shoot has traditionally been a complicated process. You needed the product, props, a set designer, lighting and a skilled professional photographer. Apparently, all of those things can now be synthesized in a browser based virtual design studio from Zerolens.

In a presentation at Virtual 1st last month, Nik Redl, Co-founder and CEO of Zerolens, explained how their site can be used with 3D product models to allow the creation of photo-realistic product shots in less than three minutes. The site is preloaded with a library of  customizable 3D models and they can build models of your products in a few days.

Zerolens recommends their tools to create images for e-commerce, social media and A/B testing. By simplifying the process of creating images, it should be possible to create a much wider variety of images for specific use cases.

In a conference filled with exciting photographic applications for artificial intelligence, Zerolens stood out enough to win the Best in Show Award.

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Find Something Interesting in People, Always!

 

Photo by David Hume Kennerly

Pulitzer Prize winning photograph David Hume Kennerly spoke last Thursday at the University of Missouri and revealed that he began in photography at the age of ten by photographing his cat with a Kodak Brownie camera. Moving on from cats, he went on to a career in news photography that has bridged fifty years and allowed him to capture images of every President of the United States from LBJ to Joe Biden.

Kennerly won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 based on a set of images including powerful scenes from the war in Vietnam and Cambodia. Licensing restrictions prevent including any of those here, but you can find them at https://ccp.arizona.edu/kennerly/galleries/vietnam-cambodia.

President Ford by David Hume Kennerly

In 1974, he was appointed official White House photographer for Gerald Ford and was given exceptional access to the President and those who visited the President. At the end of the Ford administration, Kennerly returned to Time Magazine where he continued to photograph Presidents and other world leaders.

When asked how he manages to capture so much emotion in his images, Kennerly responded that he works to "find something interesting in people, always, and the camera shows that."

Kennerly also discussed his work in war zones and disaster areas explaining that "he and his colleagues go to the places you don't want to go to show you things you don't want to see." By doing so, he gives us a deeper understanding of what is really happening in the world.

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Time to Return

 

After six years, I have decided to return to regularly updating The Creativity Paradox. As before, it will cover an eclectic set of topics involving creativity in business management, photography, printing, print finishing, additive manufacturing and other arts.

I have been surprised that these posts have continued to have several hundred page views per month, even without any updates. Since there seems to be interest in the old posts, I have tried to repair or remove any broken links and fix anything else needed.

Originally, this blog began as a serialized version of a presentation on Creativity in Business Model Development for Graph Expo in 2011.  Most of the ideas presented are just as valid today as they were ten years ago.  You might find it interesting to return to the beginning.

I also want to acknowledge my debt to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who passed away on October 20th. His research on creativity and flow states contributed greatly to the understanding of creativity and have heavily influenced my writing on the subject.

At the end of this year, I will be retiring from my full time employment with Imaging Solutions which will give me more time to research and write.

What topics would you like to see covered?

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Taking a Blogging Break

In recent weeks, I have struggled more than usual in creating interesting content. I feel it is time to take a break from blogging for a while.

Living the Trends

In December, in a photo gifting fulfillment plant, you don't just study trends in the photo industry. You live the trends. And you do whatever it takes to get great products to your customers in time to be given as Christmas gifts.

The two biggest long term trends that I see in our Black River Imaging plant are a shift toward increasingly premium products and a compression of the peak manufacturing season.

The products that are in demand include lay-flat photo books, ultra-thick greeting cards on richly textured paper, cards with die-cut shapes, metal prints and large format prints mounted to the back of acrylic. These are all items that require extensive finishing operations after the printing is completed.

While the products are more complex, they still need to be produced quickly. Every year, a higher percentage of the total orders for the entire year are produced in the month of December. We are always happy to see the peak season begin and relieved when it is over.

How is your December going so far?

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Perfection with 14 Sides

One of the primary advantages of additive manufacturing is the ability to build structures that would be impossible to create using traditional subtractive machining. This can be particularly important for aerospace and automotive applications where reducing weight while maintaining structural integrity can generate substantial fuel savings.

Weight reductions can be accomplished by using titanium and other lightweight materials which are easier to print than machine. It can also be accomplished by replacing solid structures with partially hollow structures.  The key is removing as much material as possible without compromising the strength of the part.

To create the internal shape of a strong, lightweight part, a truncated octahedron may be the world's most perfect shape. A fourteen sided polyhedron composed of six square faces and eight hexagonal faces, a truncated octahedron has edges which are all the same length. A truncated octahedron can be created by joining two square pyramids at their based then cutting off all six of the corners to remove one third of the edge length.

One remarkable feature of truncated octahedra is they stack together to completely fill a three dimensional space without any voids. An object constructed of hollow truncated octahedra is lightweight and strong enough to resist shearing and buckling. The strength and weight can be varied within a single part by varying the thickness of the walls or the size and quantity of the octahedra.

What is your favorite shape?

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Thankful in 2015

The First Thanksgiving 1621, oil on canvas by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris

As I ponder the year that is almost finished and the year ahead, I am thankful for many things.  Here are a few:

• I am thankful to be spending today with my family who are loved and loving.
• I am thankful to be living in a comfortable home and sharing a wonderful meal together.
• I am thankful to work with thoughtful, talented and dedicated people.
• I am thankful to be living in a country where freedom of expression and freedom of religion are such an important part of our legal and social framework.
• I am thankful to be living in an age where so much knowledge is instantly available.

What are you thankful for today?

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