Idaho Airships, Inc. is a technical and aerial imaging company. Our customers and subjects include Walt Disney World, The NFL Super Bowl, the PGA, Sea World, Major League Baseball, The Olympics, Turner Broadcasting, NFL Films, ABC's Wide World of Sports, and some of the most notable Casinos, Theme Parks, Resorts and residences in the nation. Perhaps our most interesting work-night aerial video of Shamu's performance, with our blimp. Shamu might have thought it a relative-she didn't complain a bit. Idaho Airships, Inc. was a top 100 finalist as The Most Entrepreneurial Company in America, as identified by MailBoxesEtc. in 1998, our first full year in business. Idaho Airships, Inc.'s national exposure includes the December, 2004 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine.
Idaho Airships, Inc. has performed digital work ranging from the scanning of archival 4x5's of the original Lewis & Clark Expedition's Journal to restoring an image of Abraham Lincoln's inauguration. In 2006 we restored a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II for our rightly respected friend Paul Hosefros.
Idaho Airships, Inc.'s compositional predispositions are objective. Our equipment and processes are calibrated. Our products are technically correct and forensically defensible.
Few photographers engage the science underlying their craft, and most of the deep and weighty Photoshop tutorials I've seen don't directly address issues necessary for the effective preparation of technical, forensic, and aerial images. I recently used Adobe's Captivate to prepare a series of tutorials for the Professional Aerial Photographer's Association, but even with an Athlon 64 x2 running at 2.6GHz (an overclocked Toledo core with the 1MEG L2's, ~"5000+"), recording operations on files that can easily range to the dark side of 500MEG became clumsy...and the presentations far too large for FTP distribution. So, let's try it in a blog format...
The days of a static image doing the job (rising above the noise to communicate persuasively) are coming to an end. Contemporary graphics need to sing and dance...literally. Interactive animation and audio far beyond the capability of classic video are rapidly developing to be the new standard. Photoshop, Flash, and CG-they're the future, at least for the present, of visual communication. They're the disciplines we'll be exploring on this forum.
L
Leo - I'm an aerial and occasional architectural photographer in the Chicago / Milwaukee market. What do you mean by animation as the future of this business? Which business is 'this' business? What kind of animation? What would change in what I deliver to my customers? Curious to see your vision / an example.
Curt Waltz
Aerialscapes Inc.
www.aerialscapes.com
Posted by: Curtis Waltz | April 21, 2007 at 02:32 PM
Greetings from Boise, Curt!
By "this business" I'm referring to professional photography in general, at the risk of being very sloppy in my taxonomy. I'll ramble a bit, and then you can tell me if you think I'm out of my tree!
Our "business" is the production and provision of aerial images. Our product is something much different, and distinguishing between business and product is fundamental. Our product is typically the effect of our images-the comprehension and emotion our images produce. It's not common that a Litigator will purchase an image simply because he wants an aerial view of something, but he'll surely covet the cognitive impact that image will produce in the jury-if he feels it will substantiate his argument and extend the half-life of his rhetoric.
I submit that our product is an effect. Animation potentiates that effect.
I consider animation to be the dynamic/active manipulation of a normally static object. With a still photographic print there is little opportunity to animate...you can tilt the image and draw it toward you to simulate flight, but it's simply not that elegant or convincing. People nearby might think less of you.
Video goes a step further by rapidly sequencing static images to fool the viewer into sensing dynamics, and adds audio, but it's still not particularly refined.
Consider the megatrend of cel phones and PDA's. Video and animation are now convenient just about anywhere, anytime, via the internet. Certain species of productions for those devices can be shockingly interactive and engaging.
Interactivity makes for some very strange terminology: "Static animation" and "dynamic animation." Static animation is animation that plays, straight through, period...like an old Popeye cartoon. Everything is prescribed.
Dynamic animation allows interruption, input, contingent output, etc., as in computer games where you input the aim of a weapon, input the trigger pull, and watch the gargoyle or terrorist drop if your aim was true. The characteristics (health, speed, sensory perception et. al.) of your alter ego may be situationally varied. You might even cleverly cheat and affect the game outcome in ways the developers did not intend. Very naughty!
We'll develop the particulars of how these capabilities might be applied to professional imaging, particularly aerial and technical imaging, over the next few months in this forum.
L
Posted by: Leo A. Geis | April 21, 2007 at 06:53 PM
Hi Leo,
Is there any way to tell CS2 to save the current image I'm working on in
the same directory I saved the last image when using "Save As..."
Every time I save an image with "Save As..." I have to re-navigate to
the folder in which I'm putting these images and since that folder is several
layers deep,there are a lot of clicks involved. Just trying to save a little time if possible.
Posted by: Brian Matz | April 24, 2007 at 07:53 PM
Greetings from Boise, Brian!
I know of two solutions.
First, you could (if you are familiar with Visual Basic, JavaScript, or any COM language, or can find access to someone who is), write a script (a programming file) to control the processes you desire. Such scripts are typically placed in your scripts folder within your PS directory. To access scripts, you navigate File>Scripts, and you do have the option of Browsing for scripts you elect to keep in nonstandard locations. This selection process itself may be automated in Actions (as a Menu Item), and it has the most potential for customization of my two options.
Else, you might just build an Action to save files in a certain format into a certain directory. For example, you might set up an Action to save the current image as a .jpg, with compression 10/12, into a "working b" (or whatever...) folder.
Actions are very easy to automate, and they most certainly deserve their own post, so I'll put that on the agenda. For now, assuming you're already familiar with Actions, I'd recommend building the Action/s and using it/them in Button Mode. It is easy to automate Actions ("Batch Processing") in your File Browser or via the File>Automate menu, but a point that can cause some confusion is the "Override Actions 'Save As' Commands." Make certain that one is unselected or you'll lose your control over the process.
L
Posted by: Leo A. Geis | April 25, 2007 at 06:52 AM