Our new toy arrived last week! It felt like forever that we were hearing rumors of a complete remodel of the Mac Pro system, and we almost gave up and made the switch to PC (which is a quite common system in the CGI world but shunned in the Photoshop/retouching world). It took nearly two months to come since we first ordered it, but we’ve got it up and running now and the system is great.

It’s strange to me over time how our perception of a computer can change. It seems so fast at first, but then the software demands and our overall expectations change so dramatically that the computer seems to slow down over time. New cameras with bigger files, more CGI processing, and more tasks happening concurrently all put a strain on the system. Well, hopefully we can enjoy this beast for a few years, and then onto the next one…. Sure is fun at the moment though!

The above shots show the shiny new case and the guts of the computer. This is quite the radical re-design, which is in place because of the central cooling system the machine uses.

This photo show the addition of the 3rd party RAM we added to the machine (saved about $700 off of Apple’s prices). We now have 64GB of RAM! Here are the full specs:

3.0GHz 8-core with 25MB of L3 cashe
64GB of 1866MHz DDR3 ECC RAM
1TB PCIe-based flash storage
Dual AMD FirePro D500 GPUs with 3GB of GDDR5 VRAM each

Cinebench is a software application made by our CGI software program, Maxon’s Cinema 4D. It’s a measurement of your system performance compared to other systems running their software. Looks like our CPU and GPU are 2nd and 1st on their list, respectively. Yay!

It’s a sweet machine that will certainly be pumping out a lot of great imagery! Now, back to work…..

Dramatically altering the look and feel of an image for our clients is pretty commonplace at this point, so sometimes I forget just how much people are wowed by what we can do. Here is a before/after of a shot I took for Foundation for the Carolinas. It’s a teaser image for the upcoming unveiling of a new glass deck they are opening on the 4th floor of their uptown Charlotte building. Needless to say, the client was very happy!

Here is a building we built in CGI using Zip System and Advantech products for Huber’s marketing materials:

Remember in the early days of the 1990s when people questioned the validity of Photoshop and the practice of retouching in general? Many thought there were ethical issues with manipulating photographs, technical hurdles to overcome, and an inertia existed that kept us thinking we’d continue doing things the way they’ve always been done. Of course, many of the ethical issues of retouching still remain, but we’re long past the days of trying to capture everything in one click of the camera. It’s probably just me, but the absurdity of trying to create the best art without using the best tools for execution is silly. Sure, the process is important for the artist, but when creating imagery for the commercial world we must surrender to notion that the final quality of the photo is of paramount importance.

The idea that one could avoid retouching and simply capture everything in one click reminds of me of Salvador Dali’s portrait by Phillipe Halsman, shown here before the strings were removed from the floating objects:

And those technical issues? Well, the computer geniuses at Adobe and across the greater-computing world have grown our ability to tweak pixels by leaps and bounds. The abilities of Photoshop and retouching to expand our imaginations, create new worlds, and accomplish feats of image-making that are more grand and far less expensive than ever before is here, and has been here for a couple of decades now. Old news right?

Well, now there is a new kid in town – CGI and 3D technologies. CGI = Computer-Generated Imagery. Luckily, the likes of Pixar, Toy Story and other heart-warming animations blazed a path of acceptance towards the use of these technologies in everyday use. That car commercial you saw on TV last night? Probably was created via CGI. That movie you watched? Yeah, CGI too. In fact, CGI is being used in simple ways to drastically change a scene that you’re probably not even considering. Take this behind-the-scenes footage of The Wolf of Wall Street to see how CGI imagery was used to enhance the landscape, change a doorway, or improve a beach scene:

Here’s the good news: the technology that is literally being invented for Hollywood movie productions is trickling down to other boutique creative firms (like Sean Busher Imagery!). We can now implement the same character animation or landscape generation into our work with relative ease (now that we’ve overcome the monumental learning curve it takes to become proficient). For instance, hair rendering has always been a bit of an issue with CGI. That’s because hair is very detailed, reflects light and moves in very particular ways that our brains are very accustomed to recognizing. Recreating that through computer software has proven difficult, but as usual, a pressing need is all it takes to push our limits just a bit further. Disney’s Tangled, a movie about the story of Rapunzel, was one of those pressing needs which pushed the technology behind hair animation even further (see WSJ article here).

In the past, when capturing the final image in one click was necessary, it took gobs of money for advertising imagery to be created properly. Take, for instance, this Chevy commercial from the 1960s:

They literally gutted that car and used a military-style helicopter to fly the car and model to the top of that monument. It took a lot of planning, permitting, people, a helicopter, etc, etc – that video didn’t come easy. (I learned about this commercial before ever seeing it during a very cool Native American camping experience with my wife in Monument Valley in southern Utah. It was on that evening while going to sleep that I saw more stars, by far, than I have ever seen at any other time in my life!) Today, there are lots of different ways that commercial could be made, both completely digitally or a mixture of photo/video and CGI. And that’s really the beautiful part – there are so many tools at our exposure now that photography and video can utilize, that it really comes down to budget, timing, and the best execution for the creative vision. Today, that car and the entire landscape would have been CGI. The girl would be spliced in during post-production and the entire project, though still potentially complicated, would be far simpler and more affordable.

The point? Our team saw the writing on the wall early, we knew that CGI would be of growing importance and expectation in executing commercial photography and video and so we adopted early. We want our clients (and potential clients) to know that anything they can imagine in their heads we can likely make come alive. In fact, after working with us once, we have art directors that suddenly feel free to use their imagination with limits because they know our team will deliver.

-Sean

Our team feels that it’s important to give back to our community, both in Charlotte specifically and the larger photographic community as a whole. That’s why we spend a great deal of time offering our time, energy and money to The Light Factory. The Light Factory is 40-year-old center based in Charlotte that focuses entirely on photography and film. Sean has been serving on the board for the past few years, and plans to continue that support well into the future. That’s because The Light Factory is so beneficial. With the barrage of visual stimuli in our society it’s nice to have an institution that can help sort through the madness and offer curated exhibitions to expand our understanding and appreciation of photography, classes to develop and grow our application of photography, outreach to provide artistic opportunities for all people, and a community to learn from and grow with as this ever-changing and exciting medium. This video does a great job of showcasing what The Light Factory is all about:

As some of you may have read in the news, The Light Factory had to suspend operations in October 2013 due to a funding crunch. It’s been a tough road and a lot of work, but I’m happy to say a dedicate group (including several original founding members) has picked up where the previous staff left off and are taking the center to it’s next iteration. The Light Factory is again conducting classes and exhibitions are in the works. The auction, ShootOut, and other events are also in the works, as well as some fundraising campaigns that should get the center kicked off in the right direction. Also exciting, there have been several individuals that have stepped up with challenge grants of $10,000 in matching funds for what we’re able to fundraise in the coming months. All good things!

We also have a new building we’re working out of, complete with gallery space, a classroom, a darkroom and a couple of small offices. The space is at 1817 Central Avenue, Charlotte, NC 28205 – right in the heart of the Plaza Midwood commercial/arts district. Here’s a map of the location (it’s right across from the new Harris Teeter):

There is a new website that’s just launched too, which can be found at the usual location - lightfactory.org.

Sean plans to continue The City Block Project, a 24-hour photography competition that centers on a different block of Charlotte each year, and is hoping this year’s event will take place at the Charlotte Knights’ new stadium or at the new Bearden Park uptown. To learn more about the project visit www.cityblockproject.com.

Stay tuned for more updates down the road as The Light Factory continues to grow and re-emerge as the go-to destination for Charlotte photography.

The Arts & Science Council has commissioned our team to create the visual imagery for their Vision Plan coming out in May 2014. We are quite honored to have been selected for this project and look forward to sharing the very creative final concepts with the public next year!

Huber and their ad agencies keep requiring more and more creativity in the images we provide them, and we’re having a blast stepping up to the challenge!  This CGI photo is the latest in the ad campaign to showcase their Zip product.

Huber Engineered Woods needed our CGI skills to showcase their newest product, Radiant Barrier, which helps reduce heat trapping in the summer while also providing the usual benefits of their Zip product.

We created a fine art project about GMOs for a gallery show at Gallery Twenty-Two, who is hosting a Charlotte photography show during the month of November. Our image shows a Monsanto-like company pumping chemicals into the roots of the man-made corn growing on the surface level.  The many background elements are all showcasing various products that are created using corn.  For instance, oil drilling requires a corn-byproduct that keeps the drilling fluids from spilling back to the surface.  GMO corn feeds many people throughout the world because we grow so much of it, which is why we featured a helicopter air dropping food onto a village.  There is an ethanol gas station, cows eating GMO feed, and people lining up to get their fill of high-fructose corn syrup.  The photo also features FoodBabe, a mega-blogger who investigates our food supply and is very against GMOs in our food system.  Learn more about her pursuits at foodbabe.com.

The final image, as usual, is a combination of photography and cgi.  The corn cob, the lab, the landscape, the village and various smaller elements (such as the wooden stand and feeding troughs) are all created via 3D artistry and CGI.  The sky, people, ambulance, gas station, and corn are all photos.

We tried not to make a judgement call on whether we as a society should be using GMOs.  On one level, they can be supremely beneficial.  For instance, scientists are working to change the genetic makeup of sweet potatoes so they can grow in the desert.  Can you imagine if suddenly a new food crop could spring up in Africa and wipe out that continent’s food supply problem?  Of course, the downfall is how untested these foods are.  Several of our friends are doctors, including one who is a doctor/Chinese medicine practitioner specializing in autoimmune diseases, who claim that genetically modified wheat is causing a huge host of problems in the patients they treat.  Sean is currently reading a book called Life at the Speed of Light by Craig Venter, a synthetic biologist who led the Human Genome Project, and it’s obvious from the book that science is quickly heading towards the creation of life forms to serve us.  It’s a fun and exciting topic to discuss, which is why we used our CGI photography skills to create this fine art image.  We hope you enjoy!