Findingviews
Picture sales and an open notebook of thoughts from Orginal Robart
Why Pirating Creative Software is not a good idea:
Stealing creative software may bring you more problems than solutions, worse still it may not help you be more creative
Creative 366 Project:
A nicely done photo a day project. A good use of Google+ too. Combining a good many of Google+’s features to create a really nice project blog.
This piece of beautiful, which I also find somewhat moving, captivating and ethralling hsa been placed on Vimeo as part of the Adobe Reel Challenge Group which exists to showcase work being created using Creative Suite 5.5. You’ll find plenty other highly creative work in the showcase. It might be and advertising ploy, but its is also finding some really special artists
Please Fund Us:
I recently discovered pleasefund.us via Twitter and had to take a look at their web site and Facebook page. They are British crowdsourcing platform designed to help creatives crowd source funding for their projects. The idea is simple - you list a project that you want funding for and please fund us will help you promote the project and gain your funding.
The link above is for the web site and below is a link to the Facebook Group
https://www.facebook.com/PleaseFund.Us?sk=app_106878476015645
Over the last few years there has been a trend towards the sale of orchids as house plants. It struck me that the beauty of the orchid is a classic photography target, that has now entered a great many homes. No need for hot houses, or treks to out of the way areas to see the fragile beauty of British orchids. They are here in our living rooms.
Time to take some photographs.
I too have orchids in the home. However photos in the home can often have rotten backgrounds. What looks good to use when we set up house rarely looks good in the background of a photograph. To get around this I set up a white reflector and some really bright pink lilies behind the orchids. This way I could fill up my viewfinder with colour or reflected light. No naff background – just something I could work with to create the right picture. If you don’t have a reflector don’t worry any bright or white cloth as a background will create an interesting effect. Try to get a colour that matches or contrasts well to your orchids. This will give the picture better balance.
Now that I had a set-up it was time to take photographs. I set up the camera for a close up, then varied low F numbers and a variety of flash angles and strengths. The important point here is that after each photograph I reviewed the picture and used to create a setting for the next. If I found it blurred I tried to steady things out with a gorillapod. I also could not help but noticing that I was getting good results by moving the camera position considerably. So a tip for taking this kind of photograph is to use a small tripod so that it can steady you when necessary but not restrict mobility so that those good angles can emerge. On saying that my 3 favourite pictures were taken at a similar angle. That though is the difference between the fun of the shoot and reflection on the finished article.
Here are 3 of the finished photographs. I hope you enjoy them and remember that some sterling photographic subjects can be found around the home.
This week I took a walk in the snow. Well actually this week there was little but choice – it was walk in the snow or not walk at all. The nice thing about snow is that we don’t see a lot of it where I live. That does not mean I am against snow, what it means is that snow transforms what it falls on and it is nice for these sudden changes in the world to not become routine. If I had a lot of snow I may not notice the subtle changes it brings to the world around me so readily. So I welcome snow. It gives me a chance to review my world with a fresh set of eyes. This is a good thing to do and a recommend exercise for anyone. Take a look at something you see regularly and try to review as if you had never seen it before. Its a good creative exercise and may help you come up with some good ideas.
Near me there is a park that I sort of do not use a lot. Its mostly an open space used by people playing football. During this walk I entered it and noticed that the snow was untouched and perfect. I also could not help notice how snow changed the light, shadows and contrast. In this park there is a line of trees so being a sucker for perspective shots I started to take a series of photographs, playing with focal point and light as I did. So far so good.
When I reviewed my photographs I noticed that with a bit of cropping and a bit of adjustment I could create a series of images that went could expand along the view and also move from mono to colour in a near painted style.
So I worked up the images.
Then noticed that they would make a good set and maybe even a T-Shirt design.
All this from a walk in the snow.
The first image (part 3) is already up on m gallery and is available now. Over the next couple of days. This is the one that I feel is the strongest of the 3. It has a touch of snow other worldliness and also the ordinary creeps in too and I like this balance. When I finish the final compilation and T shirt design I’ll talk about the process behind these too.
In the meantime I hop you like Aspects of Winter. Click here to view it.
I started Findingviews some years ago as an experiment in producing a linking website that took me to my various web presences and things I was interested in. It spawned a web gallery of digital art work and hosted a number of other websites. In time in turned into a blog. Eventually it died way as other projects took over. Most notable amongst these has been Alpha Technical Solutions , Shared Creation, and Original Robart.
Findingviews is now back, in its 2nd blog incarnation. I’m going to take a few minutes to say why and what to expect.
Shared Creation is evolving into a useful and fun magazine, its surfing the wave of social media and growing nicely. Alpha Technical Solutions is also doing well as a business and is working well. Original Robart is gaining assignments.
So why if things are good do I need to bring back Findingviews? The reason is artistic freedom. Alpha Technical and Orignal Robart are businesses and Shared Creation has an editorial point of view. Personally I’m doing more with photography and digital art. This is good for my company and good for Shared Creation, but it also leads to a lot of thoughts that perhaps deserve being written about or that may be interesting but which do not fit into the framework of either Alpha Tech or Shared Creation. This means I need a venue for publication and that is Findingviews.com.
You can expect Findingviews to have links to new artwork, thoughts in tech and movies, random thoughts and meanderings. In other words this is a personal blog. Its personal publishing. Sure it supports my art, but that is personal. Seeing as this is personal you’ll find more thought and less fact here. Alpha Technical has facts – especially about Microsoft Training, Shared Creation has facts about digital creation and Original Robart has the facts about my professional photography. Findingviews is an opinion repository, a place for debate, to question and to have fun.
Findingview is a the weekend house of a serial creative, and I’m hoping it will build into something a little bit special.
Reasons Not To Steal Software
I was recently talking to someone who has to constantly reinstall Windows on his PC. After a bit of chatting it emerged that the root cause of his problems was the downloading of pirated copies of state of the art music production software. Something he wanted to learn but could not afford. The pirates had done the pirate thing and used the software installs to place their own nasties on his PC. The result was a system so unstable he wasn’t really getting any where with it.
I’m not going to talk about the fact that software piracy is wrong (it blatantly is) – but rather on the problem that comes with the perceived need that only the biggest and best software is worth having. That if you are going to be digitally creative you have to have to top of line software in order to succeed.
Here are the problems.
If you steal software you run the risk of your computer being attacked – stopping creativity.
If you go straight to the super pro software you run the risk of not learning the fundamentals and also – and this is the real kicker – you learn the risk of not learning how to creatively push software to get something really cool out of it. You see the power of top end software is not just the gee whiz features. It is the way in which you can combine functions to create something truly original. If you only use the features as are and do not learn how to push the software – what you create will be limited. Ultimately what you make will not be of the high standard needed to truly stand out.
So the message is – start by pushing consumer or open source software. Do great work, get it noticed and then upgrade and upgrade and upgrade. Each time you upgrade you do better work and you succeed.
So don’t pirate. Learn instead to be original.