lun.r.007
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
s c i e n c e f i c t i o n s
2022
E C L I P S E
From its beginning, the definition of photography has continuously expanded through intertwined innovations in technology and artistic vision. Beginning with the light reflected by objects in the physical world, a photograph today can become almost anything — from a document that records a true physical phenomenon to a completely fabricated document of nothing but imagination.
A B O U T T I M E
Passing in a quick series of flashes, the relativity of time is demonstrated by the splicing and compression of more than a week’s lived experience into a single minute. But the media of that experience matters. What screens come between my experience, my interpretation, and that which you ultimately see?
Photography is the extraction of light from time. Time based photography, moving pictures, at first seem an endless expansion of the photographic moment to a wider context. From a viewing perspective, however, time-based media has its own limitations. Rather than a moment extended indefinitely, explored and considered at the viewer’s pace, the auteur’s montage, sequencing, duration and embellishment control the pace and comprehensiveness of the visual experience.
\ lun.r.007.13 \ 2022 Planetary Alignment: My Last 8 Days at 44 \ 2022.06.18-26 04:50-05:01 AM EDT \
Leading up to to my 45th birthday, all the planets of our solar system shared the sky in the last few minutes before dawn, a beautiful 100 degree panorama from the eastern to southern sky. Centered on the summer solstice, eight panoramic collages are constructed from a series of exposures averaging a total of 48 seconds, and spanning an average 3m 36s window between 4:45-5:01 AM EDT. These are then sequenced and combined with textual overlays and musical accompaniment to provide an interpretive sensory experience.
\ Planetary Alignment panoramic collages \ June 2022 \
O N T H E S P E C T R U M
Despite application of the modern scientific method providing a very clear understanding of how color works physically, chemically and biologically, as well as studies of the perceptual and psychological aspects of color relationships, color remains an important concern of the visual arts. But how does color work in relation to a particular subject? And how can technology be used to manipulate color and reveal its imaginary quality?
Blood Moon
\ lun.r.007.25 \ Partial Lunar Eclipse \ 2022.05.16 12:57:16 AM EDT \
HexaLunar
visual representations in the history of color theory
\ lun.r.007.26 \ Lunar Eclipse [color wheel remix] \ 2022.05.16 12:57:16 AM EDT \
The shadow of a lunar eclipse provides an opportunity to photograph the moon as a spheroid, and image stacking allows the rendering of details difficult to see in a single frame. But the unique color of a blood moon is perhaps its most alluring quality, hence this time based color wheel exploring the visible spectrum of light through the earth’s shadow across the face if the moon.
T E C H N O L O G Y A N D
I M A G ( I N ) I N G
Scientific study inevitably leads to technological development, but advancements happen iteratively. There are occasional leaps in understanding, but most advancements are less noticeable, tweaks insinuating themselves into our cultures in tolerable bits and bites. So the larger the time displacement between the familiar and the novel, the more jarring the technological state and the more freedom to imagine a multiplicity of outcomes. In 2022, artificial intelligence (AI) provides a path to exploring this relationship. Image generating AIs are manipulated iteratively to nudge them towards certain elements and away from others, and it does not take long to make massive shifts in content. If a generative AI can be so easily manipulated, what does that portend for the other AIs that are building our future world?
\ MidJourney AI \ August 2022 \
Following on from (photo)illustration and infographics, my exploration of strategies in visual effect finds me moving into yet another approach to image making in this cycle of lunar images. I still want to relate it to photography, but if so, it must be the ultimate expression of camera-less photography available today. Creating imaginary photographs using an image generative AI bot to render a pixel set that can be altered and refined. First by the bot itself through tweaks to the prompt, image references, variations and upscaling. Then processed in Lightroom and/or Photoshop just like camera-based image files and exported as a final rendering digitally and in print. Altered by hand, rephotographed, and processed again. Working iteratively, again and again…