Looking for a good (stills) photo academy
 

Hi!

For a friend (young talented lad) I am looking for a good (stills) photography academy in the English language, in the US or UK.
Any tips? Know about prices?

Thanks,

Dan.

Dan

I wrote you a rather detailed response and then my computer crashed...before I had posted, so.....check these three out

http://www.brooks.edu/

http://www.artcenter.edu/

http://www.rit.edu/

They are all highly recognized for their photo programs...If I had to do it all over again, I would probably choose Art Center because of the level of students and the variety of creative disciplines that are offered (and cross pollenated).

Barry

Happy Father's Day
 

Hey Everyone.

Just wanted to say Happy Fathers Day to those dad's of ours out there.

THANKS AGAIN FOR EVERYTHING YOU HAVE DONE FOR US!
(my dad too...)

- Aaron

To frame or not to frame
 

<<This is a continued thread from "Lady X" that got a bit off track...onto the subject of using frames in web sites.>>

Basically, it surprises me how people are so anti-frames. They're really useful for doing one thing...controlling flow. Imagine telling all your friends to stop by your house any time...but only one or two uses the front door. All the rest climb through windows, back doors, through the chimney...just wherever they can get in. And when they get in they don't see everything--just what they want to see. The guy who climbed in the back bedroom window doesn't even know about your prize Lion fish collection in the den, because he never took the full tour of the house (the Lion fish are visible when entering the front door).

Non-frame sites are great for "hit and run" visitors...where "info" is the main content and by having non-frames you can catalog and archive that info, search for it, and have people access it directly...rather than going through a series of clicks to get to that info. "News" sites...and sites like "DVInfo.net" that are crammed full of info are great for non-frames design.

But in a site where you want people to at least see the full menu of what's inside, especially in a "gallery" type of site (not an archive site), then having everyone come in through the front door increases those odds.

As for the Lady X site, I didn't want a situation where the family and friends of a certain filmmaker go to the direct link for his/her episode page, then ignore the other filmmaker's pages. By coming to the front page, they at least see the long list and are perhaps motivated to watch other episodes.

So if you need controlled flow, using frames (or Flash...which is also based on a frames priniciple) is a good way to do it.

Just recommending to web developers out there not to rule out the use of frames.

I feel there are several reasons for frames, some you have touched on.
1, Branding- Your logo, name, whatever, is always poised right where they will see it.

2, Easy menu- It's also always right there.

3, Design possibilities- I have done some really cool, yet highly fuctional sites in frames, none of them were "Run of the mill".

4, You decide what gets seen on the front page, whether they want to see some other page or not. Instead of missing relevent info by jumping into the middle of the mix, they get to see the whole bill of fare.

5, Individual pages load faster when they don't have to keep loading the same stuff over and over.

i agree frames are great for info sites, but a pain to deal with when working with datadriven sites, so biggies like cnn, nytimes don't use them...

Thanks Barry!

They look real good on the web. I have passed the info on!

Dan.

Best Buy, "WARNING"!!!
 

There is an email circulating from a fictitious Best Buy Fraud Department. It tells you your credit card information has been stolen, and you need to go to their secure website to verify your card information. You can read the handwriting on the wall for that one. Best Buy confirms that this is a scam. Don't go there.

Thank you for the warning, Harry!

3d help
 

Hey All,

I have a few questions about doing 3d work.

1. Is it possible to take an object from either lightwave or 3dstudiomax into after effects and do all your animating in after effects using 3d layer tools?

2. I need to create 2 things for a uni project, the first one is like a view of brain nuetrons firing off and those tree light structures when you delve deep into a cell, king like this

http://www.jackals-forge.com/bodysto...situ_brian.jpg

The second bit is more of the simple circular look of a cell when not as closely magnified... like this

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/193000...97_cell300.jpg

And i need them to be spliting them swarming around, like a comets tail.

Now, for this project it really only requires that these look monocromatic, kinda like when you look through the magnifier... but probably with a blueish tinge to it instead of straight grey scale, but with a very high level of detail, photo realistic.

How ambitious is it to create something like this, are these super super difficult things to model then animate?

There is only around 10 seconds of the video where these will be upclose and very visable, as they start to multiply they will move further back from the active camera.

Anyways thanks for your help.

I have access to either 3dsmax or lightwave... but i am only really confident with animating cameras and views with after effects, so it would be 1000x easier if i could pop these models into after effects and do them in there. Alsa compositing these are say alpha or chroma mattes or similar could actually create more work for me than just doing all the movement, keyframes and camera moves in after effects.

Anyways..

Zac

I don't think the first one is possible, but more progress has been
made in exchange. I have read some things on this somewhere
once, but have forgotten where.

Usually what you do is one of the following things:

1. export a frame sequence for the 3D effect and have this sequence
on a polygon or background in a 3D package (very easy to do
in LightWave!). Then in the package you create and integrate
the 3D effect in/over the footage and render it back out as a
movie/image sequence.

2. render your effect with an alpha channel so that it can be
composited back into your footage in something like AE

My big trip today
 

We'll gang, I'm off. In a few hours I leave for a 30 day trip across American and eastern Canada. I am hoping to shoot about the small off beat attractions on the side of the road, grave yards, and the St. Lawrence Seaway.

You guys have been a grat help helping me choose my gear. When I come hope I'll let you know how things went.

If I can get to a computer on the road, I'll let you know how it is coming.

Thanks to all and talk to you soon.

B&H changes shippers
 

B&H switched to UPS for shipping. The scourge of international shipping with their rediculously high brokerage (and other fees).

It's so very hard to find a good Vinten dealer, now my #1 choice won't save me much money afterall....

but you cant argue with thier products

Hit for good funny ideas.
 

Sorry for having to resort to this, but all of a sudden that some more people seen a video of mine, they want to do a video with me. They want to do it this weekend, and I am all cool with that, but I told them to get a good idea first, and write it out, but it seems everyone is broke on ideas.

Anyone care to help out? (Mark Moore, didn't you mention you had some good ideas that you would share over email or something?)

Whatever it is, it needs to be stupid, but funny. It also has to be something that we can easally do with no budget or anything, so we can't like blow up a building or anything like that. The reason I put that last stupid video I did online (instead of keeping it to put it on a future hour long video I hope to put together) was because it wasn't really funny.


Thanks.