yamahito

I mass-emailed this a while ago, but in case I missed anyone:

Drive By Shooting

My mate Stef (hi St3f) and I do this thing, occasionally with some other people, that we call Drive-By-Shooting.

The idea is pretty simple: it’s an excuse for those of us who don’t make enough time to go out and take photos, as well as a chance to share knowledge and ideas between some of you awesome photographers (hi st3f) and us talentless amateurs (hi me).

We’ve done a few shoots when I was living in Oxford, mainly location based, often just the two of us, but sometimes joined by a few others. Now that I’m settled (kinda) in Cardiff, I’m hoping that I can persuade a few more people to join in.

Anyone’s welcome to organise a drive-by anywhere in the country(ies) that you can persuade 1+ people to come along to. Currently I’m thinking of doing some beach photography on the Gower at some point in May…

If anyone’s interested, please let me know (either about joining in with the drive-by events, or in the May event). It’s supposed to be free and friendly, so anyone’s welcome, just bring a camera (or beg one off one of us)

For apparently, that’s what those average faces are called: Facial Prototyping

It looks faffy. Basically, to get clear outlines you need to morph all of the pictures to the same shape. Interesting though.

So SilentBob has posted over on EverythingEverything about this picture I showed him:

which is made up from a fairly large equal number of women and men. To me, it’s a teenage boy, but to Rob, it’s a fairly attractive girl. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not dissing Rob on this one - I think it’s very androgynous whatever it is, it’s a tough call.

So when I came across this tool that applies transformations to faces, I had to have a play. Part of the way it applies transformations is by comparing the images to the average images for a rough ethnic/sexual type that you define at the start: in our case either a caucasian male or female (hispanic would have been closer, I think, but not available). So here are two very obviously different routes to take - both older adults, one male one female. Which do you think looks more realistic? (images are clickable)

Macro Spherical Panorama

It wasn’t that long ago that spherical panorama were relatively unheard of. Not the case any more, but I think relatively few people have done it the way this guy does. He takes macro pictures of tiny hemispherical mirrors, and gets some amazing shots.

It inspired me to take shots like this one:

Which I really must make 3D at some point…

The Face of Tomorrow was the one I was thinking about: the photographer takes about 50 male and 50 female headshots and overlays them to find an ‘average’ face. The averages tend to be attractive - they blur out blemishes whilst retaining an astonishing amount of detail:

Technically, most of the challenge is aligning the features - particularly the eyes. I must have me a go at this at some point. I mean with my own photos.

If you can’t wait for that, why not have a go yourself?

I’m probably waay behind the times on this, but…

There are others (and some spoofs):

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc_PU3D3QNE
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55YYaJIrmzo
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pxar6SSOko
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7dnGo_2tZA