Digital Twin-Lens Reflex

 Added to June 23, 2018
Jun 232018
 

My dSLR is currently at Nikon for a good cleaning, and so I have been shooting with my dTLR instead. The Bonzart Ampel is a toy camera made in Asia that resembles an old Twin-Lens Reflex camera but made digital. It has an LCD screen on the top, two lenses (one being a tilted for effect), and the film winding knobs actually change the color settings. Of course, you can’t expect much from a silly 5 megapixel foreign camera, but I actually really love shooting with it.

I had this idea years ago, to create a digital TLR camera, and so I had to buy this. Obviously, this is not meant to be professional, but wouldn’t that be amazing? A really good 24 megapixel, metal-body dTLR, with great glass and a powerful LCD screen (or just reflected like the old ones). I would buy that product and use it all the time. Nothing like shooting with a Twin-Lens Reflex.

Lunar Solar Department

 Added to June 12, 2018
Jun 122018
 

Over the past few weeks, I took part in a virtual reality sculpting contest held by MasterpieceVR, sponsored by Microsoft and Samsung. The theme was to imagine a city of the future, sustainable and high-tech, which I feel is a truly important subject in today’s world… I created a few different pieces for the contest including the “Communal Smart Farm” (a robot-run field that produces food for multiple families), the “Cloud Irrigation Drone” (a flying device that creates rainclouds to save lands in drought), and even “Tech Town” (a group of residential and business buildings with a playful architectural design that looks like a circuit board).

Today I attended a virtual awards ceremony. The other artist’s work was simply amazing. Although I did not win, I was pleased to see that one of my entries, the “Lunar Solar Department” (a multi-country development project to build a solar panel grid on the moon, providing the entire planet with free energy), was added to the sky of the conceptual city we all built together. What a great positive contest by Masterpiece.

Virtual Graffiti

 Added to June 5, 2018
Jun 052018
 

While exploring the creative side of virtual reality, I stumbled upon a program called KingSpray. This is not really my kind of style but I must admit it is brilliantly developed software and incredibly life-like… I put on my VR and I was suddenly on the rooftop in a city. In my hand is a can of spray paint (which even makes the clinking sound when I shake it). You can cycle through various colors, nozzles, and pressures, then walk up to a wall and start spraying. The details are amazing! The paint sprays out like vapor, goes on shiny and wet, then dries. This in combination with the texture of the wall, and the detailed surroundings is just breathtaking… So for fun, I painted this little tribute to old-school gaming.

The Dreaming State