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Overview
An overview of my interest in photography and some of the work that I've done in this area.
For many years now, I've had an interest in photography. What has really struck my fancy though, is digital photography. A growing collection of some of the favorite photos that I've captured can be found in my Flickr profile .
Early years (1970s, 80s and 90s)...
Growing up, I was always exposed to lots of interesting things. With respect to both my love of gadgets and photography, perhaps I take after my Dad.
It was a regular occurrence around our household to have a new batch of photos come in either from the grocery store where Mom and Dad would have photos processed and printed, or in the mail. Often, the packages in the mail would contain slides which had to be sent away to Kodak for processing. Upon their arrival, the slide previewer would appear on kitchen counter to be loaded full of slides for display. There was never enough space on the previewer to see all of them at the same time, so they would go in little batches for us to see.
Of course, along with all of these photographs also came the equipment which was used to take the photos. Dad's closet was always a treasure trove of gadgets: little tiny cameras, larger more complex ones, lenses, film and other bits. I used to love ripping apart Dad's neatly organized piles of stuff. There was always something new to discover and then experiment with. On occasion, I would come across a batch of old Polaroid film and the camera that went with it. Then, after some instruction on how to load and operate the camera, I would venture outside to see what there was to capture. Unfortunately though, as the film was so old, the pictures often didn't turn out. But it was still neat.
In later years, I would buy disposable cameras in order to try my hand again at photography. These worked much better, but it was expensive to buy them, then pay for processing and printing of the photos. Especially when you're only making a few bucks a week from cutting lawns.
A first taste of digital photography (1995)...
Around the time that I was beginning college, digital cameras started to become available on the consumer market. The first one that I actually had the opportunity to use was from Apple. It was an Apple QuickTake 150 camera, on loan to the travel business that I was working for, from a shop that shared the same building with it. I was instantly enamored. But the experience was bittersweet, as I could never afford to have one of my own. At least, not quite yet.
Getting paid to "play" (1997 to 1999)...
Upon graduating from college, I was hired for a job at Bayer in Sarnia's chemical valley. As it turned out, Bayer (at the time) owned Agfa. Agfa was renowned for its film and high-end image scanners, among other things. However, they had also ventured into the digital camera market. As a result of this relationship between the two companies, the cameras could be purchased by Bayer and it's employees at a discounted rate. The department that I worked with ended up buying a few of them, as did many others.
Naturally, I just had to find a way to make use of them in a practical fashion that would be considered "work". As luck would have it, there turned out to be a few opportunities for me to do just that. It was around this same time, Volkswagen's use of panoramic images in the form of QuickTimeVR files drew my attention. There were two types of images that they used: panoramas and object movies. The former being a way to capture a 360° view of an environment (with the camera pointing outward) and the latter for views of an object from multiple perspectives (camera pointing inward). The resulting image provided the effect of either placing a camera into a scene which could be spun around in all directions, or to view an object which itself could be spun around in the same fashion (but from the other perspective). The Volkswagen site used both types of QTVR images to display panoramic views of the interior and exterior of the (then newly re-released) Beetle. This completely blew my mind and there was no question that I needed to learn how to capture such images. After taking time to research the available tools, I settled on Live Picture PhotoVista (now called iseephoto™) and had Bayer purchase a copy for my workstation.
So how was it that I was able to convince my boss that this would be a useful tool? Well, I worked in the Process Control Systems Engineering department. They were the folks that were in charge of designing all of the systems that controlled the various processes in each of the plants which produced synthetic rubber (among other things). At the time, there were several projects underway which provided opportunities to leverage the benefits of digital imaging. I manged to demonstrate the value of using the cameras to assemble panoramic photos (using a trial version of PhotoVista). Among the projects that I was able to get involved with were two of particular interest.
The first one involved a new chemical plant which was still under construction. It was the H.C. Starck Spherical Nickel Hydroxide Plant (map); the end product of which is used in the production of Nickel Metal-Hydride (NiMH) rechargeable batteries. We had the unique opportunity of being able to get into places that - once in production - could not easily be entered again. Places like reactor vessels, and other production areas which under normal circumstances would be too dangerous to go poking about with a camera. So, myself and one of the senior managers at the plant set about photographing and assembling virtual tours and panoramas of the facility. The results of our work would be used later for training purposes, to provide production staff a glimpse into the places that we'd gathered images of, thus helping them to gain a better understanding of the entire production process.
The second project was a result of upgrades to the Butyl II production unit (map) which were taking place. At the time, the distributed control systems which ran the entire plant were slated for an upgrade. It was decided that there would be value in taking both regular and panoramic photographs of each of the areas which would be affected. This included the operator control rooms and the computer rack rooms. What was unique about this upgrade though (and part of the reason why it was important to document the work) was that rather than removing all of the old equipment in the rack rooms - where all of the wiring for the numerous actuators, sensors of the control systems eventually made their way back to - the racks would be retrofitted with special card cages. These cages allowed the old racks from one manufacturer, along with existing wiring, to remain in place while allowing new interface cards from a different manufacturer to be installed.
The end result of this work was a valuable collection of images which documented the original state of the equipment, the upgrade process and the finished state of the plant's distributed control system. These images were later used as reference material for subsequent upgrades to the infrastructure, aiding both the plant engineers and the manufacturer with their work.
Of course, the most exciting part (to me) of all of this was the fact that I was able to develop my skills with a new tool in an environment which was, honestly, quite fascinating. And it did so in a way that was both artistic and highly technical at the same time.
In my time at Bayer, I alternated between 3 particular cameras: the Agfa ePhoto 307,ePhoto 780 and ePhoto 1280. My favorite was the latter, on account of the (for the time) high resolution and its pivoting lens and display. All of the cameras, however, had a voracious appetite for batteries.
A digital camera of my own (2002 onward)...
Skip ahead a few years to Toronto. After a couple of years being limited again to disposable cameras for capturing images, I finally was in a position to afford a digital camera of my own. After much research, I settled on the Canon PowerShot G2. It was fantastic. Still is.
With this camera, I was now able to begin to capture the world around me, to an extent that I had wanted to for a very long time.
The G2 was put to good use for both personal and work projects. At this point in time (between 2000 and 2004), I was working for Kaval Wireless Technologies Inc. (which since then, has been acquired by Powerwave Technologies) in the Software Engineering department. During my final year there, I had offered to assist with updating the assembly and test documentation for a couple of products. The photographs in these documents left much to be desired, so in conjunction with the overhaul of the written portion of the documents this marked my first forray into the realm of product photography. And so, with my trusty G2 I set about photographing each of the steps involved in the assembly and test for the LNK-GM1000 and LNK-GM1000e modules. The completed documents displayed a marked improvement in quality (both in the written procedures and the photographs) over their respective previous versions.
One other thing that was included on the installation CDs for the G2, was a copy of Canon's PhotoStitch software. This was a much appreciated step forward with respect to the tools that I had available to me for stitching together panoramic images. And it was this program that I would use for the next few years (from 2002 to 2007).
In June of 2004, another tool was added to my collection: a Magellan Meridian Gold GPS unit. Shortly thereafter, the two of us were inseparable as it proved quite useful in its capacity as a "VCR" for my geographical location. Not long afterward, while searching curiously on the Internet, I came upon a site called the World-Wide Media eXchange (WWMX) project and through that, a tool called the WWMX Location Stamper. This was the tool that I had been dreaming of for several years now, as it was the key to storing information about where a particular photo was taken, inside of the photo (within the EXIF metadata). Using GPS track data (the time-stamped location data collected and stored by a GPS) the WWMX Location Stamper is able to determine where a photo was taken by comparing the timestamp from the image with the location data provided by the GPS track for that specific point in time.
The end product is a set of geocoded photographs, which is to say that they have latitude, longitude (and if available) altitude information encoded within them. The WWMX site is then able to take these images and plot them on a map. Flickr is also quite happy to work with these images. In fact, my entire collection of photos on Flickr can be viewed via the map interface.
New environments (2005 onward)...
In 2005, I added a PowerShot SD300 to the collection, then eventually a PowerShot SD600. Both of them are fantastic little cameras and due to the fact that they are so small, I am able to keep one on me wherever I go.
This opened up a completely different world to me though. One that I had experimented with only once before: underwater photography.
In preparation for a trip to Mexico, I decided that it would be a good idea to purchase the AW-DC30 underwater case for the SD300. At the time, I had no idea just how significantly this would impact my ability to use the camera. The result, was that this camera was able to go literally everywhere with me, without worry of damage from sand, moisture or submersion. Needless to say: I came home from that trip with a fantastic collection of photos and videos. Since then, I've used it many times to produce some very interesting and fun work.
The Creative Commons licenses (2006 onward)...
On August 30, 2006 I began uploading some of my favorite photos to Flickr. All photos posted on Flickr include a copyright notice. The form of license is chosen by the user, but defaults to the standard Copyright notice. After some consideration however, I decided that I'd prefer to use a Creative Commons license for mine instead. Hence, after learning about the different licenses which are available, I settled upon the Attribution Share Alike license.
Although some might argue that I could be limiting my ability to make money from my work, I believe that it actually helps me in the sense that it enables it to be more easily discovered. In fact, there have been a few occasions now where my images have been used precisely because of the fact that they're made available under a Creative Commons license. One image in particular which received much attention when it made it to the #1 spot in Flickr Explore has appeared in many locations since. And when it is used correctly (per the license), the image includes a link back to the original image on Flickr, along with text crediting myself as the photographer.
Among the places where the image has been used, is on the cover of a discussion paper prepared by the Economist Intelligence Unit and titled IFRS: Coming to a Canadian Company Near You.
It was a great pleasure to see how the cover image is attributed in the paper. On page 1, in the preface is the following text:
The cover photo(1) is by John R. Southern and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License(2).
- (1) http://flickr.com/photos/krunkwerke/267608325/
- (2) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/url
As a result of this, it came as no surprise to me that on the day that the paper was first presented (September 23, 2008) and for a few days afterward, there was a spike in the number of views for that particular image on Flickr.
The point here: using a Creative Commons license for my materials on Flickr enhances an already great discovery mechanism (the Flickr site) and increases the chances that they will be incorporated into other (potentially interesting) works. And when used correctly (again, per the license) these works in turn become another discovery mechanism for my own work. In my opinion: this is a very good thing.
Improved tools for stitching (2007 onward)...
On June 4, 2007 Adobe hosted a 1-day Creative License Conference in Toronto, at The Carlu. This was part of their marketing campaign to promote Adobe Creative Suite 3. I was in attendance that day and it was during the demonstration of Photoshop CS3 that my eyes lit up. It was during the demonstration of the new Photomerge feature, whereby Adobe Bridge CS3 in conjunction with Photoshop CS3 Extended makes it possible to select a set of images to combine into a single (larger) panoramic image automatically. Although this is something that I'd been doing with other tools for a while, what stood out was the quality of the resulting images in combination with the fact that during the stitching process Photoshop would automatically adjust images of varying exposure values such that colour tones and levels remained consistent across the image. Without this, images would appear patchy, with odd wavy gradients at the borders where images overlap.
Shortly after the conference, I upgraded from Creative Suite 2.3 to CS3. With Photoshop CS3 Extended at my disposal, I set about stitching images that I wasn't able to in the past and others which I had, but didn't look as good as I'd have liked.
I've posted a few of them on Flickr, in the Panoramas and Graffiti Stitches sets.
The above image, is an example of the results which are possible. For this image, I simply walked along the alley where the mural was located and snapped photos every couple of feet. Then, upon arriving home and using the above mentioned tools, I set about stitching the images. It took a few minutes to complete the first pass and after some minor adjustments the above image was the result.
Unfortunately, however, it cannot combine images into 360° QTVR panoramas. That being said, I'm still very happy with it though. (The newly released Photoshop CS4 is capable of doing this, however.)
