Category Archives: Art

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

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 →

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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 →

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Panoramic cameras and images, Part I

Posted on June 3, 2017 by Brian Lawler

The first true panoramic camera was patented by William J. Johnston in 1904. Century Camera Company brought that camera to market in 1905 as the Century Cirkut Camera. The company later became a part of the Eastman Kodak Company, which … Continue reading →

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Alois was here

Posted on May 23, 2017 by Brian Lawler

Several of my students joined me and my colleague Prof. Martin Delp today for a tour of the Landsampt für Digitalisierung, Breitband und Vermessung, the Bavarian office for digitization and surveying. Here, the government creates maps, collects and distributes digital geographical … Continue reading →

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The Bishop Peak Portrait Project – complete!

Posted on May 15, 2017 by Brian Lawler

Thank you all for your patience while I built the Bishop Peak Portrait Project, a series of thousands of photos of San Luis Obispo’s most prominent mountain. I started the project in November, 2015 with the construction of a weatherproof … Continue reading →

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Street Art provides an opportunity
for repositioned panoramas

Posted on May 9, 2017 by Brian Lawler

My wife and I traveled today to see a neighborhood in Munich that is famous for its street art. It’s called the Tumblingerstraße area, and it features some very sophisticated works of graffiti – much better than graffiti – that … Continue reading →

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Van Gogh’s Père Tanguy in perspective

Posted on May 5, 2017 by Brian Lawler

Museums often have no-photography rules, depending on their policy about allowing visitors to take photos, or the legal arrangements they have with art owners, copyright holders and other things that go beyond my pay grade. In the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, … Continue reading →

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Once a bitmap, always a bitmap

Posted on March 4, 2017 by Brian Lawler

In my recent series of blogs about reproducing line art from 19th century copper engravings (and similar line art) using modern digital technologies I showed how scanning as grayscale and converting to bitmap format (with the 50 percent dither option) … Continue reading →

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