I’m guessing that most of you who took pictures during the venus transit on Tuesday (see my modest effort here) did not get something quite as good as the one above. Wow. It is by the JAXA/NASA Hinode craft that is in orbit.
From the NASA site: Click to continue reading this post
The last several sessions on The Project have been an exercise in revisiting some older pages. In fact, in the sample you can see to the left the subject is the very first page that I started experimenting with seriously for developing and learning production techniques.
Back then I was doing my inking digitally, and I ended up with work that I did not like the look of. I hate the clean straight lines that resulted. Also it was too slow on the computer to control the brush with the fidelity I wanted…various other things bothered me as well, which I won’t trouble Click to continue reading this post
Just as I left for my shooting trip last week, I had a moment of indecision. I wanted to take something to read during airport and airplane downtime, but wanted to travel light. The books I wanted to take felt a bit big in my bag, somehow, largely because I could not decide what I was in the mood for and so was in danger of bringing more than one. Then I remembered that I was behind on New Yorkers, and was taking my iPad anyway. So I made sure the New Yorker was updated on it, and what did I see waiting for me to delve into on the plane? The special issue on Science Fiction!
It is an excellent issue, with contributions from lots of authors, including several short reflective pieces from legendary authors like Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, and William Gibson and newer authors like China Miéville and Karen Russell talking about things like how they found their way into fiction and science fiction, and its role as a gateway to the larger literary world. Of course, there are also the usual reflections about the snobbery and separation into high and low culture that existed in the early days (and that still persists today) for literature as well as film and TV when it comes to science fiction (see a related discussion here), many of which are humorously done, and will be familiar to many readers from their childhood…. I strongly recommend getting that issue if you do not already subscribe. It may well still be on magazine stands…
In related news, Ray Bradbury died on Monday, I heard on the radio yesterday. This is Click to continue reading this post
I set up some simple 10×50 binoculars on my tripod, and after a tiny bit of fiddling, out pops the transit in progress from the other end, projected on to the back of an envelope! (The envelope was helpfully held still by a friend so that I could take the photo.) (Click for larger view.) Click to continue reading this post
Hot on the heels of the annular eclipse of a few weeks ago, we’ve another giant body passing in front of the sun tomorrow. Venus! This time the giant body (roughly the same size as the earth…just a bit smaller) is much further away from us, and so is dwarfed by the sun. It’ll be a tiny dot on the disc of the sun that takes several hours to pass across. This’ll give you plenty of time to look. (In the US, for example, it’ll start at about 6:06pm EST and about 3:06pm PST…) You won’t get another chance (at least, not from earth…) until 2117, so have a go!
In fact, you’ll be doing something that is vital for modern astronomy right now – observing the effects of a planet on the light of its parent star as seen from afar. This is the principal method for detecting planets moving around distant stars, the “extra-solar” planets you hear so much about in the news from time to time. Here, we’re seeing it happening for a familiar planet around a familiar star. Although both objects are quite familiar, this transit is still worthwhile to study, since it helps planet hunters learn more about how such processes can help deduce things about the planet doing the transit. So study it many will, I’m sure.
You can just look at it for fun, but remember to be careful. Do not look directly at Click to continue reading this post
No, not some geometrical artifact of immense power… It is the containment for my next batch of compost. Click for a larger view. I made it last year out of PVC pipes and chicken wire, and it was a huge success (see recent posts with pictures of the produce that has been appearing from that compost batch…) with one design flaw: It was a bit high so that digging in it to turn the forming compost over and so forth was tough on the back – I put my back out for days one time. So I’ve cut it down to a smaller height and now it Click to continue reading this post
I got a little sketch practice here and there where I could during the trip. On the return journey for example, I found a nice opportunity as we were preparing to land after the short flight from Aspen to Denver.
Bob Melisso, my co-Producer/Director was reading a magazine, and so was still for long(ish) moments at a time – enough for me to do a quick sketch of him in profile. It was reasonably successful. It was his birthday recently, so this made a sort of present. He seemed to like it…
-cvj
This was an incredibly busy visit, but worthwhile. We pulled 12+ hour days in getting
everything needed for the film (about the Aspen Center for Physics), with lots of backup, and oodles of great footage. So much that I fear we have so much great material we can make five completely different short films instead of the one that is supposed to be delivered. It is going to be tough. I’m so excited about some of the things that we’ve shot. A number of ideas I had for the arc of the film, the feel and tone, and the opening moments, look to be falling together almost _exactly_ as I envisioned them months ago.
Ouf excellent DP, Dave Gaw, (an accomplished filmmaker in his own right) seems to almost immediately get what I’m trying to do when I explain something I’ve visualized, or when I draw it, and so the shots work out quite nicely, and sometimes he’s gone and filmed some sequences that look very much like ones I’d been imagining, sometimes without us even having had a discussion about it! It has been a great collaboration among the three of us – Dave, Bob Melisso (my co-Producer/Director), and myself – as we exchange ideas about how to best implement something or other to make it tell part of the story…
Anyway, while preparing for getting some nice outdoor shots of physicists doing Click to continue reading this post
I’m at the Aspen Center for Physics for some time this week. It is a big week. You will perhaps recall that I’m involved in making a short film for the 50th Anniversary celebrations of the ACP (see some earlier posts) and now we are doing another batch of shooting. Not just interviews, as we have been doing so far, but much of the other footage we need, such as the lovely grounds, the various physicists using the center, in myriad ways, and so forth. We’ve had a super long day today, which Click to continue reading this post
One of the key things I keep trying to maintain and improve by drawing regularly is speed. I’ve shown you drawings of various sorts here, but maybe not enough of the experiments I try to do relatively quickly. When things are working well and my eye is in, so to speak, shapes and lines jump out at me and beg to be put on to the paper, and a convincing form appears, giving a sense of the pose that was being done at the time. This can be someone on the train, or it can be a model in a studio I’ve dropped in to draw for a while.
I sort of love incomplete drawings that are a mixture of schematic structures, implied flow, more finished forms, and so forth. The results can be quite fun to look at. Above is a bunch I did last week. Click for a much larger view. (I apologize for the copyright watermark in everything, but I’m tired of the business people have on the Click to continue reading this post
Some of the bounty from the garden mentioned in the previous post. (Click for larger Click to continue reading this post
This is actually a picture from Saturday (click for larger view)… Several plants in the squash family are going crazy in the garden and producing fully mature tasty vegetables already! A friend of mine has suggested that the compost I produced in the last cycle (that everything is planted in) is somehow super-great for them. Maybe that has indeed helped. (See earlier posts, e.g., here and here, for more on making your own compost, how it works, and so forth, by the way…)
I’ve been running a bit late on posting things, so since then I’ve harvested some of these, and I took a few pictures. I’ll show them to you tomorrow!
-cvj
My modest contribution to the photos of the eclipse from Sunday. Modest indeed… Click to continue reading this post
Don’t forget the annular solar eclipse on Sunday! You get get all the detail about it at the NASA eclipse site here. According to the site:
“An annular eclipse will be visible from a 240 to 300 kilometre-wide track that traverses eastern Asia, the northern Pacific Ocean and the western United States. A partial eclipse is seen within the much broader path of the Moon’s penumbral shadow, that includes much of Asia, the Pacific and the western 2/3 of North America”…
I’ve put a snap of the graphic they provided on the right for decoration, so you can go to the site for more detail and explanation. This includes precise times for your city, and so on and so forth. Be sure to exercise the usual precautions in viewing (do not look directly at the sun with your eyes, and certainly don’t look at it through any optical instruments… project the eclipse onto something else… there are many sources that can tell you more about that…)
Enjoy!
-cvj
