H+ Magazine, Issue 3

I promised readers here they would be first to know, should anything come of my talks with H+ Magazine. Well, for issue #3 I received my first assignment. I’ve actually been a little tardy with my update— it’s been out for several weeks (I have been very busy).

I was asked to contribute an “Art” article. After considering various artists, and presenting Ken with some options, I eventually interviewed Christopher Conte (whose work some may recall I covered here once before at GigantiCo). We met over dinner at Yaffa, and at a later date I had the unique pleasure of photographing a couple of Mr. Conte’s pieces. A really swell guy too, I might add. I was given four pages to layout to my liking (only some minor font changes were made for the final edition, to better integrate my layout with the rest of the magazine).

Ken Goffman (aka. R.U. Sirius) has pulled together a great team and the whole process was a really good experience. I’m now discussing further assignments from H+ and hope to be an ongoing contributor.

Oh, and did I mention? They used one of my photos of a Christopher Conte sculpture for the cover.

You can download the Summer 2009 issue of H+ Magazine from here.

FotoWoosh your family album

While researching another story, I came across an item worthy of it’s own quick post. FotoWoosh is in an application that transforms your 2D photographs into relatively believable 3D models. It cannot let you see around corners, it can only work from the information that is actually there but, at least with their sample images, is able to do quite a lot with the 2D data that is seen. The software is in Alpha release, and you can sign up to be notified of the Beta release. It basically constructs a 3D model with a texture map, but the modeling/mapping is automated— the software apparently makes some intuitive calculations about the geometry of the environment in the photo, and then maps the image information onto it, so you can make slight perspective tilts on X, Y, and Z axis, within limited constraints, and zoom in, dependent upon the resolution of your starting image. It will be fascinated to see how well this does in real-world application. Kind of a one-trick-ponny gimmick, but a fun one.

Attaching the NYT Spire

Jeff Callow of Thornton Tomasetti Inc. took this photo of iron workers attaching the final section of the spire atop New York Times Tower, that made it into the Engineering News Record Images of the Year collection.

While the nearly completed building looks a bit more primer gray in appearance than the bright white of the pre-construction 3D renderings, the Renzo Piano designed building still makes a stunning addition to the New York skyline.

The Renzo Piano Building Workshop, in collaboration with Fox & Fowle Architects (now FX Fowle), won the competition to design the new corporate headquarters for The New York Times Company in 2001. The newspaper is expected to take occupancy of the building in early 2007.