Explorers on Horses near Geyser

Three men and their horses, checking out a geyser in Yellowstone, circa 1915.  No idea which geyser it is.

More Tilt-Shift Photography

Here are some more tilt-shift style photos. It is interesting to play around with this technique, as I am currently developing a working method of introducing depth of field into the Audi R8 render, which uses the same post-processing tools.

The University of Utah, looking at the Psychology building and towards the football stadium.

Suburban Salt Lake City. How more ticky tacky / cookie cutter / etc. can you get?

On the left, a more-recently abandoned mine in Utah, in the mountains above Park City. On the right, below, a farmhouse near Park City, Utah.


Detail of the farmhouse.

Walking in the fall.

Below, a small herd of cows gathered at a watering hole.

A suspension bridge near Lava Hot Springs, over the Pourtneuf River, as a trail sails by.

Tilt-Shift Park City Downtown Panorama

A detail from a massive tilt-shift panorama of downtown Park City. The photo was taken in 2007 as part of a collection of aerial photography over Salt Lake City, the Wasatch mountains, and Park City. It works well for tilt-shift photography (created in Photoshop, as I have no tilt-shift lens). In tilt-shift photography, depth of field is kept in a very shallow slice through the scene. Additionally, the lens (and plane of focus) can be tilted away from parallel with the film plane. This effectively creates the illusion of miniature photography, as your brain has no real-life correlation with such distortion of depth of field over a large expanse (such as a city) but accepts it fully at the smaller scale. Real (non-photoshop) tilt-shift images also have additional shifts in perspective from tilting the lens away from the film plane, and is often used to shoot tall parallel things, like buildings, from the ground and still maintain the sense of the parallel. Below is the full image, zoom in and explore. Or download the image as jpeg here (2.85 MB).

Audi R8 Test Animation

More to come.  For now, the Audi R8 model is rigged and ready for animation.  Here is a test render with some simple animation.  The headlights still need some work for this particular shot.

Oyster Mushrooms on Tree

A beautiful set of oyster mushrooms growing out of an old stump, somewhere in a forgotten section of Salt Lake City.  Oyster mushrooms are edible, and considered tasty, although I will not personally be eating these.  I liked these images quite well; below I have included a slideshow of more photos of the oyster mushrooms.  Also, there are some slime-capped brown mushrooms that were sharing the space, although I have not identified them yet.  Any help would be appreciated.

Audi R8 Exterior Render

A final render comp of the Audi R8, modeled and textured in Maya using primarily NURBS for the model, and mostly procedural textures.  The exterior of the car is modeled to the detail necessary for a thirty second spec ad I am working on.  The above image gives a sense of the style.  Still to come:  rigging and car lights, and maybe a simple interior if necessary.

Below are two straightforward images of the front and rear of the R8.

And one more of the Audi R8 model, rendered in Maya using Mental Ray.

Day of the Dead Altar and Montage

University Guesthouse website (WIP)

Recently completed, the new website for the University Guesthouse and Conference Center at the University of Utah. As with most these sites, I was responsible for all design and layout, media manipulation as necessary, and some of the underlying code (ColdFusion, javascript, etc.)

Liberty Park, the last day of fall colors

The pond at Liberty Park, looking northeast.  The last day of pure fall colors, after which trees started to loose their saturation.  As a bonus images: