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December 1, 1998
(Editor's note: One of the strangest requests I have
ever received was from this company. After being in this journal for nearly
5 years, they have asked to have their name removed from our site. Go
figure?)
It's been quite a while since I've had a journal entry and it feels like
seeing an old friend again for the first time in years. I'm glad to be
back and will hopefully catch up on some things over the next few weeks.
With my wife being 5 months pregnant now (with a little girl), things
have been very hectic and I've had several irons in the fire. Hopefully,
some of these will be panning out over the next several months and I hope
to be writing about all of them soon.
At my work, I normally take care of the imaging that is for one reason
or another beyond the scope of normal engineering work. This means that
I can take pictures, redraw, render or anything else that's required from
our images. The results are at times a little unpredictable and sometimes
we even surprise ourselves with what we have been able to do. Most of
what I do is very predictable, but sometimes, you just have to trust your
gut instincts and fly by the seat of your pants..
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(Name deleted by company request) doesn't normally build houses. It's not really in our area
of expertise, so generally we stay away from this type of work in
favor of building paper machines for paper mills or other similar
project. But, about a year and a half ago, a man named Jon Warner
brought these plans to our owner, Leroy (Name deleted by company request) and asked him to
build the house. The structure is designed with an oriental style
and is to say the least, stunning. As far as houses go, it's extraordinary
for several reasons- the price of the structure is into the millions
of dollars and the house is completely quality from the granite
and hardwood floors to the clay tile roof (which we have been told
should last several hundred years...). The architect is a man named
Reiner Gros, who is the head architect for Mercedes Benz in Germany
and who designed the visitors center for the Mercedes Benz plant
here in Tuscaloosa. If you're passing the plant on Interstate 20/59,
you'll see this gleaming giant, which in my mind is a true masterpiece
and shows the genius of Reiner's work.
My involvement in this project was initially to show the house
as a finished project. This meant that I'd have to find out what
materials were being used and incorporate them into the CAD drawings
and make the final images look as life-like as possible, including
shadows, reflections and light that would show all of the details
of the structure.
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(Image deleted by company request)
A
rendered view of the entire house from the far side of the lake
area. I like this view simply because it shows off many of the nice
features of the house- the rounded porch, the winding stairs, lake
and roof-top patio.
Real
Video Tour of House
| Format |
Connection
Speed |
| Real
Player |
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ISDN |
56
k modem |
28.8
modem |
|
Video
Plugin
|
|
|
 |
|
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click
to see the interactive feature of this project[requires Netscape
or Internet Explorer versions 4.0 or greater]
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| About a month ago, my supervisor, (Name deleted by company request)
, called me over to his desk and started asking me questions about
photo chemistry and darkroom layouts. I answered the questions and
had a few that I asked him while we were talking about this and
found out that Jon Warner's wife was a trained photographer and
wanted a nice, walk in darkroom in the house. So, my job was to
research the equipment and turn in a layout plan for all features
and include suggestions for equipping the room. Wow...I actually
got a blank piece of paper and was able to design something...
So, by this point, you're asking yourself "How is THIS
related to photojournalism"? And the answer to that, my friends
is PLENTY. You see, this is what we as photojournalists will be
doing in the not so distant future. We will work not only as photographers,
but visual storytellers collecting information and then packaging
it into presentable form for our viewers (on the internet...). Not
only will we need to know lighting, composition and other technical
aspects of photography (which, by the way, is identical in the animated
world. Don't believe me? Look and the convergence on the darkroom
timer- an image "shot" with a 20mm lens...) we'll need
to be graphic artists, video editors and web publishers too. All
of the skills used to create the images that you see on these pages
will be the same ones that will be expected of tomorrow's photographer.
It's a time in both technology and photojournalism that I look forward
to.
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(Image deleted by company request)
By
using a program like Studio Max, you can duplicate items as they
are in the real world. Qualities such as softness of lighting, hue
of light, reflectivity, textures and color can all be adjusted to
give the viewer a more realistic sense of how things will really
look. This particular shot shows several things. The timer face
was made in Photoshop and then "bitmapped" to the face
portion of the image. The texture on the remainder of the timer
was also made in Photoshop using "Alpha Channels" and
was actually placed under the color to give the black a
more bumpy feel. Reflectivity was also added to several select areas
that are important to the image, such as the ceiling, timer and
enlarger area.
click
to see the interactive feature of this project
[requires
Netscape or Internet Explorer versions 4.0 or greater]
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| (Image deleted by company request)
This
is a view from the doorway of the room. I wanted to make sure that
the customer had a good feel for the entire layout of the room,
so I created several camera views to allow her to see the entire
room. The boxed area on the far side of the room in this view is
good old pegboard, which is great for holding reels and tanks while
not in use. I also placed shelving on both sides of the sink. The
shelves in this view are for wet chemistry while the opposite shelving
can be used for holding prints or other "wet side" equipment.
One addition that was made after this images was rendered was a
light table built into the dry side counter top.
click
to see the interactive feature of this project [requires
Netscape or Internet Explorer versions 4.0 or greater]
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In my mind, a darkroom can be a very personal thing. And what you
like in yours' isn't always what someone else would like in theirs,
so I called Jon's wife, Sheila to talk to her about her darkroom.
I found out that Sheila was trained at some very fine art schools
and her main interests are in art photography and particularly in
Black and White images. Right now, she's using 35mm equipment (Leica's
and Nikon's) but is migrating more toward large format images. I
also found out that she had no set ideas for her darkroom and I
was basically told "if you could build any darkroom you wanted,
what would it be?".
The room itself is 8'X16' and needed to include a sink, a film
dryer, electrical fixtures, water piping, water drains (in the sink
and on the floor), and ample storage space. In a darkroom, you can
never have too much storage space...Another consideration was the
layout of electric receptacles in relation to wet areas, such as
the sink. The idea is to design it with a maximum amount of convenience
while keeping safety of the person using the facilities at the forefront
of the design work. Since (Name deleted by company request) has the ability to fabricate stainless
steel, I'd assumed that we would be building the sink. I'd also
assumed that since we had carpenters too that some if not all of
the cabinet work would be done in-house.
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One of the things that I learned while drawing this project was that
Studio Max, the program that I use to draw my 3-D images, is also able
to draw "to scale". This means that if something is ten feet
long in real life, I can draw it ten feet long on the computer as well-
literally drawn to "life size". This makes planning much easier.
Another advantage to using Studio Max is that I can match the lighting
exactly- showing the customer what the darkroom will look like using the
lighting that I recommended- even in the dark. So, this is what I did.
I made a drawing with normal room light and duplicated the file and then
added the lighting from the safelight. By the way, the safelight is a
Sodium Vapor one and if you're still doing traditional darkroom work and
want a really great light to work by, a sodium vapor light is not only
the most energy efficient light source available, but is very bright in
the darkroom too. Infact, so bright that you can easily read the Kodak
"poop sheets" while "dark". They cost about $350 and
are available from most larger photo outlets. I'll never forget the first
time I used one- I was sure that the paper would be fogged from this bright
light, but it wasn't.
I also designed the sink from scratch, which is turning out to be the
single most expensive part of the darkroom (one company quoted a price
of over $12,000 for the sink and most of the fixtures). The sink is 8
feet long and almost 3 feet wide and 8 inches deep- large enough to hold
almost any size tray. It's also designed with a cyclonic print washer.
The washer is round with three spraying jets spaced 120 degrees apart,
which will move the water from bottom to top, giving a very efficient
washing for each print.
The final images were made and shown to Sheila. I found out later in
the day that she loved the design and didn't change anything about the
plans, which really surprised me. So, another first.
The darkroom isn't finished yet either. There are some structural considerations
that need to be completed on the house first before the darkroom can be
finished. But, I expect that I'll be spending a lot of time at the house
when things get to this point.
December 10, 1998
Mark Lent
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