Category Archives: Art

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

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 , , , , | 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 , , , , , , | 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 , , , , , | 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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 , , , , , , | 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 →

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Spinning time into gold with slit-scan images

Posted on June 20, 2017 by Brian Lawler

  My blog of day before yesterday told of the process of recording things that move in front of a photo-finish camera (also called a slit-scan camera). This is an S-Bahn train coming into the station. Its speed was constant, except … Continue reading →

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Difference of opinion makes a horse race

Posted on June 17, 2017 by Brian Lawler

In a recent blog I introduced you to the rotating panoramic camera, a complex mechanical device dating from the early 20th century. The heart of that camera is the roll of film, moving at a constant speed through the camera, … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Gadgets, Panoramic Photography, People, Photography, Photoshop techniques, Scanning, Software, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments