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Sunday, October 18, 2009

Filed under: Technique •

Project Icarus: Near-Space Photography for Under $150

Chris Meyer | 10/18

A balloon story that isn’t a hoax.

For those who have made the move to digital cameras, an inevitable consequence of the relentless march of technology is that we end up with cameras that are “obsolete” (because the new model has more pixels, less compression, video capabilities, etc.).

So what do we do with those old cameras? How about using them to get a shot we otherwise wouldn’t consider going for, because we might lose the camera in the process?

imageOne such project was recently undertaken by MIT students Justin Lee and Oliver Yee, who wanted to take photos of the earth from space. To do this, they used a weather balloon to fly a used Canon A470 to an altitude of over 17 miles. The camera was modified with CHDK open-source firmware to take a picture every 5 seconds. Skiing handwarmers were used to keep the electronics warm enough to keep functioning at those very high altitudes. A Motorola Boost i290 prepaid cell phone with extra batteries and an external antenna was used to provide GPS coordinates of where the camera landed after the flight. Total budget: $148.

More details can be found on the CNN web site (make sure you look at the photo gallery), in the CNN video below, and on the project’s official web site 1337arts - make sure you explore the links down the left side, such as Flight Pictures, Hardware and Pre-Launch.

Lee and Yee are not the only amateurs to photograph the earth from space; recently, a crew of four Spanish students pulled off a similar feat, and 1337arts has a page with links of other launches.

What stuck with me (aside from the sheer audacity of the project) was the aforementioned idea of using old cameras to get “impossible” shots - such as going over a waterfall etc. On the video side, when inexpensive DV video cameras first started appearing years ago (which were aimed at consumers, yet shot video good enough to broadcast), some crazy people such as Scott Billups started treating them as disposable cameras to situate where you would never place a human camera operator or an expensive camera - such as in the path of a monster truck.

Just sayin’…

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The Object

Chris Meyer | 10/05- 08:29 AM

One of most recent works was the cause of serious soul-searching over the nature of my art.

Ever have one of those pieces that you put in a drawer for a couple of years, pulling it out periodically only to shove it back in because your head wasn’t in the right space yet to deal with it? That’s the underlying story behind this piece, The Object. In this case, it wasn’t just the image I was having trouble with - it was also the text I decided to attach to the image to give it a story. But sometimes, you just have to challenge yourself.

In this article, I want to share both the technical details of how this piece came together, as well as my internal conversation over the nature of abstract art and how it relates to photography.

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Seeking to Understand

Chris Meyer | 08/20- 08:06 PM

My process for creating a mixed media piece about knowledge systems.

It’s been awhile since I walked through the creation of one of art pieces that started life as a photograph, so I thought I’d pick one of my favorites: Seeking to Understand. Although it was created a couple of years ago just after I moved to New Mexcio, the process is similar to that of many of my current works.

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