Category Archives: Art

These are blogs that relate to art, art photography, artwork reproduction, and fine art in general.

A refined approach
to repositioned panoramas of Munich street art

Posted on October 16, 2021 by Brian Lawler

Four years ago I was teaching in Munich, and during that time I photographed a number of pieces of street art on Tumblingerstraße in the city. You can read that story and its associated comments here. The photos were taken … Continue reading →

Posted in Adventures, Art, Panoramic Photography, Photography, Photoshop techniques | Tagged Brian Lawler, Graffiti, Munich, Photoshop Automerge, Repositioned Panoramic images, Street Art, The Blognosticator | Leave a comment

AppleScript solves my grid mask challenge in Adobe Photoshop

Posted on August 21, 2021 by Brian Lawler

I pride myself on being a competent user of Adobe Photoshop. I know how to make my photos look good by sliding sliders and pushing buttons and applying filters and adding Layer Effects and all sorts of visual things. Occasionally I need … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Imposition and Pagination, Photography, Photoshop techniques, Software | Tagged Adobe Photoshop, AppleScript, AppleScripting Photoshop, Bishop Peak, Bishop Peak Portrait Project, Brian Lawler, Cal Poly, Image collage technique, O, The Blognosticator | Leave a comment

From variable-frequency drives
to hand-bound books

Posted on March 20, 2020 by Brian Lawler

It’s been about a month since I wrote my last blog. It was about variable-frequency-drive high voltage motor controllers and a 1935 book sewing machine. The relevance of that is cloudy, but suffice it to say that I have been … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Bookbinding, New technology, Printing and Printing Processes, Typography | Tagged Brian Lawler, Making a slip-case, slip-case, Slip-case making, The Blognosticator | Leave a comment

Running the five-color
Pearl press postcard

Posted on October 21, 2019 by Brian Lawler

Last year I began the restoration of an 1895 Pearl press, a treadle-powered letterpress that was donated to the Cal Poly Shakespeare Press Museum. That press was a rusty machine when we took delivery of it. I took it to … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Printing and Printing Processes, Software, Technology, Typography, Uncategorized | Tagged Brian Lawler, Heidelberg Windmill, letterpress printing, multicolor printing, Pearl press, precise printing, Shakespeare Press Museum | Leave a comment

Reminiscences of a prepress guy

Posted on September 12, 2019 by Brian Lawler

I am an old prepress guy. I owned one of the first PostScript service bureaus in the U.S. I was there at the beginning. It was painful, but overall it was a great business. We had been traditional typographers, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Color Management, History, Photoshop techniques, Printing and Printing Processes, Software | Tagged Antique press, Cal Poly, Color separation files from Illustrator, Golding Pearl restoration, Shakespeare Press Museum, Spot-color separations from Illustrator | Leave a comment

A tale of Burning Man dust and light

Posted on September 8, 2019 by Brian Lawler

I pulled my bike up to the rack at Center Camp, poking its front wheel into the wooden slats that would hold it there. On the other side of the rack was a man taking his bike out of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Adventures, Art, Panoramic Photography, People, Photography | Tagged Black Rock City, Burning Man, camera cleaning, Playa | Leave a comment

An EOS R follow-up:
two months later

Posted on August 3, 2019 by Brian Lawler

I bought the Canon EOS R camera in May after considerable research and a one-week rental test of the device. I am the photographer of the Festival Mozaic, a classical music festival in San Luis Obispo. Each year I shoot … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, New technology, Panoramic Photography, Photography, Technology | Tagged Blognosticator, Brian Lawler, Canon camera, Canon EOS R, EOS R, Festival Mozaic, Grace Park | Leave a comment

Photographing the portrait-in-stone

Posted on July 29, 2017 by Brian Lawler

In April, my students and I visited the Landesamt für Digitalisierung Breitband und Vermessung in Munich (Read that story here). In English, this is the state office of digitization, broadband and surveying. Among the things they do is to … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Education, History, Photography, Printing and Printing Processes | Tagged Alois Senefelder, Blognosticator, Brian Lawler, Landsamt für Digitalisierung und Vermessung, LDBV, litho stone, lithography, Munich, Senefelder, Solnhofen | Leave a comment

Papierherstellung in Deutschland

Posted on July 9, 2017 by Brian Lawler

On Thursday we took a tour of the Gmund Paper factory in Gmund, about one hour south of Munich. Gmund is the maker of some of the finest papers in the world. In their shipping area I saw pallets marked … Continue reading →

Posted in Adventures, Art, Bookbinding, History, Printing and Printing Processes, Technology | Tagged Brian Lawler, Fourdrinier, German paper making, Gmund paper, Gmund Paper Company, paper making, paper making machine | 4 Comments

Unwrapping the light fantastic

Posted on July 4, 2017 by Brian Lawler

Part 3 in a series on panoramic and slit-scan photography In my recent blogs I have discussed how a mechanical panoramic camera works, and how a photo-finish camera works. Today I would like to turn the tables, so to speak, … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Panoramic Photography, Photography, Technology | Tagged Blognosticator, Brian Lawler, experimental photography, Gary Stine, roll-out photography, rotational photography, slit-scan photography | Leave a comment