I’ve been doing some technical tests with panoramas and HDR lately, and before you say “Oh no! HDR!!!”, I’ll explain my intentions.

Most people will think of over-sharpened, over tone mapped, surrealistic images when HDR photography comes to mind, and while some people do like it, I don’t think I’ll be doing too much of that. I just want to have it compliment my existing work flow instead of having it replace my work flow, and I wouldn’t want someone looking at one of my pictures to have their first thought be “well, looks like someone maxed all the attributes in photomatix again…”.

While I am just starting to try it, I have been observing the battles that have been going on in regards to HDR photography for a while now. Most people love it or hate it. My viewpoint is that subtlety is the best way to go. My current tests are more on the extreme side of what I’d like to accomplish, but I think that using HDR while still keeping a more natural feel is something that is overlooked, but in an obvious way. Works that employ that style are simply not noted as being HDR by viewers, and that is a good thing.

To see the tests just follow the jump!

Read More »

I’ve been sitting on some new music and decided that I should finish them up and put them online. So, Here they are!

The first track is a remake of one of my favorite songs, which is “The Death of Optimus Prime” by Vince DiCola. It was featured in the 1986 Transformers movie, and I think without the movie connection it is still a good song. In my version, I recreated everything to be more of an orchestral version compared to the electronic stuff in the original.

The Death of Optimus Prime – Orchestral

The Second track is an original song that is my first to feature only orchestral elements, so I supposed the recreation of one song allowed me to be able to come up with something of my own. For this song, which is named “Worlds Apart”, I tried to combine admiring something beautiful yet at the same time not being able to have it. Not sure if I succeeded, but I like the end result.

Worlds Apart

While these are both on the orchestral side, I have a feeling my next few songs will be more on the rock side, so stay tuned for that!

It all started while I was searching for a picture of me when I was younger with my Big Wheel. I was asked if my Big Wheel had brakes, and I was pretty sure they didn’t but I looked for the picture just to make sure (You can view that picture here.) While searching, I found a notable image from 26th of June, 1991. In that photo featured my first piece of digital art.

I was in Kindergarten then, having been lucky enough to have a home computer at that time. The Apple II gs was responsible for many hours of games like Thexder, Police Quest, and also trying to answer the questions that allowed you to play Leisure Suit Larry with my brother. I think I created the art in Print Shop Deluxe or Paintworks Gold.

As you can see, it was the work of a genius, with my my appropriately styled glasses, very correctly sized shirt, and perfectly done clip-on tie. That genius is only amplified when you look at the printed work itself, which is a self portrait of me wearing the exact same clothing. Apparently I was a fast worker then as well!

While it may not be much, it’s still cool to look back eighteen years and see the first thing you ever created on a computer. Too bad I haven’t improved at all!

In another effort to show you, my billions and billions of fans, the way I go about creating works, I bring you the dissection of my creation “Henrik Lundqvist – All Alone”.

The main ingredients were a photograph that I took of Henrik Lundqvist that I took during warm-ups when the Rangers faced off against the Bruins on November 1st, and the background setting that I put him into.

This piece was an update to an image I created about two years ago, which also featured Henrik Lundqvist in a dark foggy setting (Check out the original). I wanted to make something that captured the feel of the original, but also improved upon it.

Now that we’re ready, lets get to the start of things!

First, I grabbed a suitable photo to work with, which features Henrik Lundqvist in his “crouched focus” pose, as he does before he takes shots in warm-ups.

Read More »

As I sit and look above my monitor at the Canon 7D Product photos that I printed and put on my wall (You could call it my dream board), I have been pondering the possibilities that will be realized the day that I have one in my hands. There are constants that I am aware of; the still-photo-taking improvements over my current 20D will certainly be a joy to experience, and all of the late and great features in that respect will be nice, but expected. The one realm of uncertainty is in relation to the HD Video capabilities, which is an area I have not exactly dabbled in before.

I have had a bit of experience when it comes to video, but I’ve never had a camera to myself to try to complete a project of my own. In the past, the equipment available to me to perform such tasks would either be too expensive, or of lower quality than my vision demanded. Now that SLR cameras pack the punch that not only satisfies my inner photographer, I can think about endeavors of the video graphic kind.

While looking at example work that people have been sharing on the internet, I realize my first priority. Sound. It’s to be expected that the camera will deliver good results as far as looks go, as long as the person behind the equipment has an idea what they want to do. However, it seems like many of the nice looking visuals are matched by very poor sound, which in turn gives the overall product an incomplete feeling. Another issue is relying on audio that is not copyrighted by the creator, but that is a separate debate that plenty of other people can have for me. (See here.)

I understand that not everyone will spring for an external microphone, and that most people, including myself, won’t get a super duper video rig to attach their camera to. Read More »

In this little look into how I approach and execute my work, I’m going to show how I created the photo manipulation you see to the side here.

First off, the goal. I wanted an image of me sporting the uniforms of the Gem City Aviators that I designed. There were three things in the real world holding me back. I am rarely photographed, especially while playing hockey, I needed something high res, and I had no physical version of the uniforms (no jersey, matching gloves, matching pants, and socks). So, I had to think about how I could manipulate an existing photo to be a photo of me. Most people would just slap their face on a player photo and edit the uniform to look like whatever they wanted, but I wanted it to match very closely to me by having the same equipment that I used in real life.

The first order of business would be finding a suitable photo to work with. I figured that the New York Islanders uniforms had a somewhat similar design scheme to the one I made for the Aviators, so I started looking for photos of Islanders players (don’t start fellow Ranger fans :p) that I thought had good poses for me to work with. Read More »

Now that I’ve got a bit settled in, I can get back to the original matter at hand that was in my forefront before all of my site issues.

I have had a Canon 20D dSLR for a little over four years now, and it has certainly served me well. It was the first generation immigrant from the land of digital to grace my country of film photography, and it was definitely a good ambassador. To keep the theme going, you could say that I operated with a dual citizenship to both the digital and film nations for a time. However, it became difficult for me to afford film and the processes that film required, so I ended up becoming a full citizen in the domain of digital photography. After so many tens of thousands of exposures later, here I am today.

The camera that did everything I asked is now a great-grandparent in the line of Canon ##d cameras, and it has started to fade. The shutter has been failing, as a shot will be framed and focused yet a pushed button will result in no action. Am I disappointed? Yes. Am I surprised? No. I’ve put the camera through a lot so I expected it to start to act this way. However, the timing is terrible, given my financial situation. Read More »

Well, it took a little longer than I wanted, but I’m finally back.

To make a long story short, BMGFX.net, the site which I called home for many years, was hit by a server exploit hack which caused a lot of my files to be infected. Before this happened, I was developing a site re-brand, as I thought that the look and feel of BMGFX was too one dimensional. I thought I needed something that could encompass all of the stuff I did a bit better, so iamBrian.net was the end result of that. Now, I wasn’t planning on switching so soon, but after the hacking took place I thought to myself, “Well, you could replace all the files, and spend a bunch of time cleaning up the db and all that fun stuff, or you could just go forward with iambrian,” and that is where we are today. At the time I only had the design of the site done in PSD form, so I had to create the site as fast as I could.

If you were a visitor to BMGFX.net, you should know the general idea behind the site. If you are a new visitor, I will be providing you with what’s going on in my life, and what kind of art or music or writing am I creating. I’ll also throw in my views on topics that interest me, such as the New York Rangers, technology, and hockey equipment.

Since this new format is new, the site still has to grow into itself a bit, but I feel this is a good starting point. As far as I know, I worked out the bugs but you never know what may happen, so I’ll be keeping tabs on that. Any questions, comments, or suggestions, by all means throw them my way!