Author Archives: Brian Lawler

About Brian Lawler

Brian Lawler is an Emeritus Professor of Graphic Communication at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and was a Guest Professor at Hochschule München from September, 2021 to September, 2022. He writes about graphic arts processes and technologies for various industry publications, and on his blog, The Blognosticator.

Godspeed, Scott Carpenter!

Posted on October 29, 2013 by Brian Lawler

If you have followed this blog for more than a couple of years, you know that I am an Eagle Scout. I earned that honor at the age of 15 in Troop 206, Oakland, California. I was one of the … Continue reading →

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More textures – from aloft

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Brian Lawler

I have a great hobby – hot air ballooning – and I get to practice it occasionally. This year has been a pretty good year for my ballooning adventures, including this last weekend when I flew with my good friends … Continue reading →

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Out damned spam! Out I say!

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Brian Lawler

I don’t use Gmail. I have nothing against Google or their e-mail offering, but I just don’t use it. I use the Mail application provided as part of the Macintosh operating system. I have done this for years (decades?). Several … Continue reading →

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Details on scanning film with the Epson scanner

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Brian Lawler

In two earlier blogs I described how I set up a large tabletop arrangement to scan historic panoramic negatives on my Epson Perfection scanner. When using the Epson scanner with the Epson Scan software (you can control the Epson scanner … Continue reading →

Posted in Adventures, Art, Color Management, History, Photography, Photoshop techniques, Scanning, Software | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Taking a nuclear plant tour (and how it relates to scanning historic film)

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Brian Lawler

Last Friday I was privileged to be taken on a tour of San Luis Obispo County’s nuclear power plant. This tour was arranged by the local Chamber of Commerce leadership training group, and I was included by being related to … Continue reading →

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More on scanning film
with the Epson scanner

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Brian Lawler

Last week I wrote about my immersion into scanning 19th century panoramic film. These negatives kept me up nights for about ten days. My total output of scans was 26. I carefully sorted through over 150 pieces of film, selected those … Continue reading →

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Scanning Kodak Cirkut film

Posted on October 4, 2013 by Brian Lawler

A dear friend of mine, now deceased, handed me a box of film about 30 years ago. The film had been in a flood in the garage of his friend who obtained the film from the original photographer who died … Continue reading →

Posted in Adventures, History, Panoramic Photography, People, Photography, Scanning, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

A textural photo assignment

Posted on October 2, 2013 by Brian Lawler

I occasionally find myself walking down a street of booths at a farmer’s market or a community fair. I attended one a week ago in Clovis, California. There were all the usual vendors – kettle corn, corn dogs, frozen lemonade, … Continue reading →

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The last offset press at PRINT?

Posted on September 19, 2013 by Brian Lawler

I was trying to figure out how many times I have visited Chicago to attend the GraphExpo and PRINT shows. I think it’s nearly 40. I wasn’t able to attend for a few years because of travel conflicts, and I … Continue reading →

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These two caught my eye

Posted on September 15, 2013 by Brian Lawler

At last week’s PRINT13 convention I saw a lot of machines. Most of these machines were incremental improvements on machines I have seen before, and some were not of interest to me because I have limited my bandwidth recently to … Continue reading →

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