This image, which was completely created via CGI and 3D modeling, won a Silver ADDY! A big thank you to our client, Huber Engineered Woods, for working with us on such a beautiful advertisement.
Photographer's Journal
CGI for The Light Factory
The Light Factory has just launched their Kickstarter campaign to help raise $20,000 to help build their new darkroom, classroom and gallery space in the heart of the Plaza Midwood neighborhood in Charlotte, NC. Check out the campaign and donate here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1541056846/re-light-the-light-factory. Once The Light Factory hits the 50% mark we plan to send out this CGI image our team created to help visualize that we're halfway towards our goal. Pretty cool visual, huh?
New Mac Pro
Our new toy arrived last week! It felt like forever that we were hearing rumors of a complete remodel of the Mac Pro system, and we almost gave up and made the switch to PC (which is a quite common system in the CGI world but shunned in the Photoshop/retouching world). It took nearly two months to come since we first ordered it, but we've got it up and running now and the system is great.
It's strange to me over time how our perception of a computer can change. It seems so fast at first, but then the software demands and our overall expectations change so dramatically that the computer seems to slow down over time. New cameras with bigger files, more CGI processing, and more tasks happening concurrently all put a strain on the system. Well, hopefully we can enjoy this beast for a few years, and then onto the next one.... Sure is fun at the moment though!
Here is the ram slot on the new mac pro.
This photo show the addition of the 3rd party RAM we added to the machine (saved about $700 off of Apple's prices). We now have 64GB of RAM! Here are the full specs:
3.0GHz 8-core with 25MB of L3 cashe 64GB of 1866MHz DDR3 ECC RAM 1TB PCIe-based flash storage Dual AMD FirePro D500 GPUs with 3GB of GDDR5 VRAM each
Cinebench is a software application made by our CGI software program, Maxon's Cinema 4D. It's a measurement of your system performance compared to other systems running their software. Looks like our CPU and GPU are 2nd and 1st on their list, respectively. Yay!
It's a sweet machine that will certainly be pumping out a lot of great imagery! Now, back to work.....
Retouching for FFTC
Dramatically altering the look and feel of an image for our clients is pretty commonplace at this point, so sometimes I forget just how much people are wowed by what we can do. Here is a before/after of a shot I took for Foundation for the Carolinas. It's a teaser image for the upcoming unveiling of a new glass deck they are opening on the 4th floor of their uptown Charlotte building. Needless to say, the client was very happy!
How to Use CGI in Advertising Photography?
Remember in the early days of the 1990s when people questioned the validity of Photoshop and the practice of retouching in general? Many thought there were ethical issues with manipulating photographs, technical hurdles to overcome, and an inertia existed that kept us thinking we'd continue doing things the way they've always been done. Of course, many of the ethical issues of retouching still remain, but we're long past the days of trying to capture everything in one click of the camera. It's probably just me, but the absurdity of trying to create the best art without using the best tools for execution is silly. Sure, the process is important for the artist, but when creating imagery for the commercial world we must surrender to notion that the final quality of the photo is of paramount importance. The idea that one could avoid retouching and simply capture everything in one click reminds of me of Salvador Dali's portrait by Phillipe Halsman, shown here before the strings were removed from the floating objects:
And those technical issues? Well, the computer geniuses at Adobe and across the greater-computing world have grown our ability to tweak pixels by leaps and bounds. The abilities of Photoshop and retouching to expand our imaginations, create new worlds, and accomplish feats of image-making that are more grand and far less expensive than ever before is here, and has been here for a couple of decades now. Old news right?
Well, now there is a new kid in town - CGI and 3D technologies. CGI = Computer-Generated Imagery. Luckily, the likes of Pixar, Toy Story and other heart-warming animations blazed a path of acceptance towards the use of these technologies in everyday use. That car commercial you saw on TV last night? Probably was created via CGI. That movie you watched? Yeah, CGI too. In fact, CGI is being used in simple ways to drastically change a scene that you're probably not even considering. Take this behind-the-scenes footage of The Wolf of Wall Street to see how CGI imagery was used to enhance the landscape, change a doorway, or improve a beach scene:
http://vimeo.com/83523133
Here's the good news: the technology that is literally being invented for Hollywood movie productions is trickling down to other boutique creative firms (like Sean Busher Imagery!). We can now implement the same character animation or landscape generation into our work with relative ease (now that we've overcome the monumental learning curve it takes to become proficient). For instance, hair rendering has always been a bit of an issue with CGI. That's because hair is very detailed, reflects light and moves in very particular ways that our brains are very accustomed to recognizing. Recreating that through computer software has proven difficult, but as usual, a pressing need is all it takes to push our limits just a bit further. Disney's Tangled, a movie about the story of Rapunzel, was one of those pressing needs which pushed the technology behind hair animation even further (see WSJ article here).
In the past, when capturing the final image in one click was necessary, it took gobs of money for advertising imagery to be created properly. Take, for instance, this Chevy commercial from the 1960s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvKvP4r4i2o
They literally gutted that car and used a military-style helicopter to fly the car and model to the top of that monument. It took a lot of planning, permitting, people, a helicopter, etc, etc - that video didn't come easy. (I learned about this commercial before ever seeing it during a very cool Native American camping experience with my wife in Monument Valley in southern Utah. It was on that evening while going to sleep that I saw more stars, by far, than I have ever seen at any other time in my life!) Today, there are lots of different ways that commercial could be made, both completely digitally or a mixture of photo/video and CGI. And that's really the beautiful part - there are so many tools at our exposure now that photography and video can utilize, that it really comes down to budget, timing, and the best execution for the creative vision. Today, that car and the entire landscape would have been CGI. The girl would be spliced in during post-production and the entire project, though still potentially complicated, would be far simpler and more affordable.
The point? Our team saw the writing on the wall early, we knew that CGI would be of growing importance and expectation in executing commercial photography and video and so we adopted early. We want our clients (and potential clients) to know that anything they can imagine in their heads we can likely make come alive. In fact, after working with us once, we have art directors that suddenly feel free to use their imagination with limits because they know our team will deliver.
-Sean
The Light Factory - update
Our team feels that it's important to give back to our community, both in Charlotte specifically and the larger photographic community as a whole. That's why we spend a great deal of time offering our time, energy and money to The Light Factory. The Light Factory is 40-year-old center based in Charlotte that focuses entirely on photography and film. Sean has been serving on the board for the past few years, and plans to continue that support well into the future. That's because The Light Factory is so beneficial. With the barrage of visual stimuli in our society it's nice to have an institution that can help sort through the madness and offer curated exhibitions to expand our understanding and appreciation of photography, classes to develop and grow our application of photography, outreach to provide artistic opportunities for all people, and a community to learn from and grow with as this ever-changing and exciting medium. This video does a great job of showcasing what The Light Factory is all about: http://vimeo.com/21496181
As some of you may have read in the news, The Light Factory had to suspend operations in October 2013 due to a funding crunch. It's been a tough road and a lot of work, but I'm happy to say a dedicate group (including several original founding members) has picked up where the previous staff left off and are taking the center to it's next iteration. The Light Factory is again conducting classes and exhibitions are in the works. The auction, ShootOut, and other events are also in the works, as well as some fundraising campaigns that should get the center kicked off in the right direction. Also exciting, there have been several individuals that have stepped up with challenge grants of $10,000 in matching funds for what we're able to fundraise in the coming months. All good things!
We also have a new building we're working out of, complete with gallery space, a classroom, a darkroom and a couple of small offices. The space is at 1817 Central Avenue, Charlotte, NC 28205 - right in the heart of the Plaza Midwood commercial/arts district. Here's a map of the location (it's right across from the new Harris Teeter):
There is a new website that's just launched too, which can be found at the usual location - lightfactory.org.
Sean plans to continue The City Block Project, a 24-hour photography competition that centers on a different block of Charlotte each year, and is hoping this year's event will take place at the Charlotte Knights' new stadium or at the new Bearden Park uptown. To learn more about the project visit www.cityblockproject.com.
Stay tuned for more updates down the road as The Light Factory continues to grow and re-emerge as the go-to destination for Charlotte photography.
Arts & Science Council
The Arts & Science Council has commissioned our team to create the visual imagery for their Vision Plan coming out in May 2014. We are quite honored to have been selected for this project and look forward to sharing the very creative final concepts with the public next year!
Gallery Twenty-Two Showcases "GMO Corn"
We created a fine art project about GMOs for a gallery show at Gallery Twenty-Two, who is hosting a Charlotte photography show during the month of November. Our image shows a Monsanto-like company pumping chemicals into the roots of the man-made corn growing on the surface level. The many background elements are all showcasing various products that are created using corn. For instance, oil drilling requires a corn-byproduct that keeps the drilling fluids from spilling back to the surface. GMO corn feeds many people throughout the world because we grow so much of it, which is why we featured a helicopter air dropping food onto a village. There is an ethanol gas station, cows eating GMO feed, and people lining up to get their fill of high-fructose corn syrup. The photo also features FoodBabe, a mega-blogger who investigates our food supply and is very against GMOs in our food system. Learn more about her pursuits at foodbabe.com.
The final image, as usual, is a combination of photography and cgi. The corn cob, the lab, the landscape, the village and various smaller elements (such as the wooden stand and feeding troughs) are all created via 3D artistry and CGI. The sky, people, ambulance, gas station, and corn are all photos.
We tried not to make a judgement call on whether we as a society should be using GMOs. On one level, they can be supremely beneficial. For instance, scientists are working to change the genetic makeup of sweet potatoes so they can grow in the desert. Can you imagine if suddenly a new food crop could spring up in Africa and wipe out that continent's food supply problem? Of course, the downfall is how untested these foods are. Several of our friends are doctors, including one who is a doctor/Chinese medicine practitioner specializing in autoimmune diseases, who claim that genetically modified wheat is causing a huge host of problems in the patients they treat. Sean is currently reading a book called Life at the Speed of Light by Craig Venter, a synthetic biologist who led the Human Genome Project, and it's obvious from the book that science is quickly heading towards the creation of life forms to serve us. It's a fun and exciting topic to discuss, which is why we used our CGI photography skills to create this fine art image. We hope you enjoy!
Food Babe
We don't often showcase our retouching, especially for a rather simple project such as this. But we really want to give a special shout out to our friend Vani Hari at Food Babe (foodbabe.com). She's doing amazing things with investigating what's going into our food supply and has a massive online following. Check out her great site and learn how we can all make the world (and especially our bodies) a better place.
FYC campaign spotted again
Charlotte Center City Partners has once again used the original Find Your Center imagery, which we created about 6 years ago or so. This time the art can be spotted in uptown Charlotte on EpiCentre's video boards at the corner of 4th/College. Looking good!
Can CGI Look Better than Real Life?
This is how we created the latest visual for Huber Engineered Woods' "Zip It Up" advertising campaign. Back in December 2012 Sean went to Washington, DC to shoot a major project being built using Huber's Zip products. A Walmart Supercenter was being built 7 blocks from the Capitol Building, which, of course, created a huge outcry. To appease the neighborhood/city, Walmart had to disguise the shopping center in an urban development with certain architectural features that included a parking deck and condominiums atop. After we photographed the project for various marketing needs, Huber decided they also wanted the Sean Busher Imagery team to use the project for their Zip It Up ad campaign.
Here is one of the original photos Sean took of the site under construction:
Here is the comp that was provided to us at the beginning of this project:
Peter Godshall, our team's Digital Imager (CGI Artist and retoucher), started blocking in the basic shapes and then adding layer upon layer of detail.
Here are two views from within Peter's Cinema 4D software:
Once we added the CGI cars, better texturing in the cement and other materials, stormier clouds, changes to the window installations, plus other bits of detail we provided this to the client for review:
But the client decided they wanted to see the scene go dark and stormy to further accent the all-weather capabilities of the product. So we added the clouds, changed the lighting and added the streetlights to help with the foggy atmosphere:
Most of the atmospheric effects were created via the 3D software, including the volumetric lights for the fog and the air particulates. However, the rain, water drops, extra reflections, and global toning were all done in Photoshop. Here is the base render and the same image after the toning, rain and water drops were added:
Here is the final image:
Here is the final print advertisement:
seanbusher.com v4.0
We have launched a new website with a much better user experience. Now the galleries can be viewed as thumbnails or large images, and all the information needed to get to know our team is in one easy to navigate section. We've been in business for almost 12 years and this is already our 4th website - it's amazing how fast our expectations of a quality user experience change. Please visit www.seanbusher.com and let us know how you like the new site. Enjoy!
2013 City Block Project - recap
Thanks to all the Charlotte photographers that participated in the 2013 City Block Project featuring Plaza Midwood. As usual, the artwork was fabulous and the winning entries were deserving. For those that don't know, the City Block Project is a 24-hour photo contest where photographers rub elbows with each other to capture the best image. As long as the image shows something within the block (it changes each year) then it can be submitted, and any retouching or special effects are allowed. For each entry submitted, a participant gets two votes towards the winner, and they can vote for anybody but themselves - truly a jury of your peers!
Here are the winning entries:
1st place - James Dancy
2nd place - David Huff
3rd Place - Tie - Steve Smith
3rd Place - Tie - Tim Henderson
5th Place - Tie - Joel Lassiter
5th Place - Tie - Nick Macek
A special thanks to Gallery Twenty-Two for hosting the Winner Reveal Party and for displaying the winners in the gallery for a couple weeks following the party.
The past locations for City Block Project were: 2010 - EpiCentre 2011 - NASCAR Hall of Fame 2012 - NC Music Factory 2013 - Plaza Midwood 2014 - Look for an announcement in Spring of next year. The project usually takes place in late April or May.
To learn more about the project visit http://www.cityblockproject.com. This project is hosted by Paparazzi, the affiliates group of The Light Factory and was created by Charlotte photographer Sean Busher. To learn more about becoming a part of other fun projects or educational and exhibit opportunities visit http://www.lightfactory.org.
Charlotte Photographers: The City Block Project winner reveal is tonight!
Thanks to all the great Charlotte photographers that braved the rain and participated in the 2013 City Block Project featuring Plaza Midwood. As usual, The Light Factory Paparazzi team has been amazed at all the great imagery. For those that don't know, the project takes place over 24-hours at a designated block each year somewhere around Charlotte, NC. The participants are allowed to retouch and manipulate their images however they see fit, and the submit them to the contest for a low fee that acts as a fundraiser for The Light Factory. Best of all, the participants get to vote on the winners themselves. For each one entry made to the contest, you get two votes. Check out all the great work here: http://submissions.cityblockproject.com/Voting/2013/
Join us for the reveal tonight, here are the details:
Light Factory Paparazzi's 2013 City Block Project winner reveal:
Tonight! Thursday, May 9th
1500 Central Ave, Charlotte, NC 20205
7:00-9:00PM
2013 City Block Project
I created the City Block Project along with Paparazzi, an affiliate group of The Light Factory, as a friendly competition among photographers in the Charlotte area and the results in past years has been phenomenal. I look forward to seeing what people can come up with in the Plaza Midwood blocks this year. Come out and have some fun April 27th. Learn more at www.cityblockproject.com.
NEW FINE ART PROJECT - Power of the Mind - Image #1
For most of my life I based my worldview on science alone, but over the past few years I have developed an appreciation of spirituality too (quantum physics helped me merge these two viewpoints). In an effort to share what I’ve been discovering with the world, I have created a fine art project called Power of the Mind. Each image in this project will focus on a scientific experiment that stretches a commonly held perception about the power of our beliefs. By looking at one of these images alone it might be challenging to see a spiritual connection, but hopefully over the course of showcasing many experiments I'll be able to provide insight into my understanding of the underpinnings of our reality.
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This first image is about a 2007 Harvard University experiment called Mind-set Matters: Exercise and the Placebo Effect. The experiment consisted of telling hotel maids (in the non-control group) that the work they do everyday fulfills the Surgeon General’s requirement for a healthy lifestyle. They were told, for instance, that vacuuming for 15 minutes burns 50 calories, cleaning the bathrooms for 15 minutes burns 60 calories, etc. Each maid was put through a bevy of health tests and lifestyle surveys at the start of the observation, and then again four weeks later. As a result of their new mental constructs alone, the informed maids had statistically significant improvements in weight, waist-to-hip ratio, blood pressure, body fat and body mass index.
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I believe that what we focus our minds on is made material in real world experiences, though it can be our nature to perceive such manifestations as coincidence. To me, this experiment helps to shed a bit of light on the true metaphysical nature of our minds. The maids were able to change the physical makeup of their bodies - not by any lifestyle changes, but by new mental constructs and the Power of the Mind.
Thanks to Crystal Reike, who recently won 1st place at Nationals and thus earned the coveted International Federation of Body Building pro card, for modeling for this project.
I'm a daddy!
I hadn't shared the news yet on this blog (let's be honest, I've been a bit busy), but I'm now a daddy! Mirabelle Lark Busher was born on June 17th and is a happy, healthy baby girl! Now at 6 months old and we're having a blast. I'm truly experiencing a new kind of love.
Behind-the-Scenes of Heels.com campaign
Here is the behind-the-scenes video from the Heels.com campaign. Watching this video is a great way to get to know our team and how we work.
We have a new agent!
We’re excited to announce a new partnership with Nadine Kalmes of NKreps. Nadine, based out of Berkeley, CA, will be taking our work across the country and we look forward to a long and mutually-beneficial relationship. Check out her other photographers at www.nkreps.com.
And a special thanks to our former rep, Melissa Hennessy, who worked tirelessly on our behalf and was a great business partner and friend. We wish her the best going forward!
The Corbis Interview
Cobris, who represents our stock portfolio, interviewed us about our image production process and how we got into the world of CGI. To view this interview on the Corbis blog click HERE.
