Balloon Popping Via Remote

Here's a quick video of how I popped a ballon via a remote (you can also hear a delayed scream from Hannah from http://hjassim.blogspot.com/ at the end of the video!!) I aim to write up an instructables for this so I will post it up once i've done it.

Balloon Cam Prototype 1

Here's what Balloon Cam 1 looked like. It took 6 9" balloons filled with helium to lift a web cam which was attached via cable to my laptop as it captured images. The next step is to let the balloons go higher (but not too high, I don't want to loose my camera!!)

Balloon Cam Prototype 1

Here's some images that were taken from my first balloon camera prototype. The images are not very hi resolution but this may be a unique aspect of the final product.

The Idea!!

Thought that it would be time to post what my final idea is to make sense of what my play posts are about.

So here it is, the initial idea for my final year project!!

The balloon rises up with a camera inside it. This is then popped, the camera falls to the ground caturing images as it does so.

The idea is to bring back a sense of fun in photography. With digital making photography easy and clean, everyday photography is being taken granted of and the fun and magic that it used to have is being lost. Capturing images that you're not in control of and at various angles, will also capture the manipulation of light as it falls to the ground. Potential uses for this type of product would be at festivals and funfairs.

So the next couple of months I will be playing with this idea and see where it takes me.

The Balloon Project

In 2005, Ira Mowen and Luca Antonucci had an idea to capture an aerial view of their fair city of San Francisco. After, only a few days of planning, they strapped a video camera to 30 red, helium-filled balloons and let it go from the highest point in the city, Twin Peaks. As this Eye-in-the-Sky slowly lingered over the city, the co-conspirators stood spell-bound. Quite suddenly, a gust of wind blew the camera south and the adventure started.

That day something clicked for all of the participants: they were moved by this image and began to realize how important it was to retrieve that camera; that they were in a sense, chasing beauty.
Ira and Luca took the project to Berlin, Germany where upon retrieving their first aerial footage realized the beauty and potential of the project.

Upon uploading "Berlin By Red Balloons" to Youtube, they received a huge and immediate response. Over half a million views, interviews by CNN, and other news organizations as well as numerous features and awards. It was evident how much people loved the idea. Both Balloonists (as they came to be called) immediately created a website, built a loyal Youtube following, and began planning for a Balloon Project Tour.

The Balloon Project comes with no strings attached: just wind, gravity, and a mad chase to discover the balloon-lifted camera’s final resting place.

Ira and Luca are currently seeking sponsorship for their Balloon Project Tour. The tour is all inclusive, as Ira and Luca, intend to reach out to as many diverse communities, across the world, as possible.

The Balloon Project’s arrival in New York drew out twenty participants and yielded two successful launches; one in Times Square on New Years Eve and a week later in Central Park. As more people joined in, Luca and Ira realized The Balloon Project serves a dual purpose: it is both a community-building event as well as experimental, Do-It-Yourself, filmmaking radicalness.
As the Balloonists began posting more aerial camera footage online, they found the reaction noteworthy. Simply through word-of-mouth, friends began telling friends about this “balloon project" and thousands began logging on to follow The Balloon Project and see where it would go next. Many viewers asked when a launch would come to their own town. Thus, the tour was born.

A great project for some excellent inspiration for my final year project. Take a look at one of their many videos in an earlier post or even better, check out their website http://theballoonproject.org/table.htm

Making an LED Throwie

Filling a Balloon With Vinegar and Baking Soda

Exploding Balloon Wall

Berlin Balloon Project

Furniture Font

Orientation Aware Camera

Check out this video at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amagill/2610193676

Just Amazing Inspiration

Kite Camera

Awesome High Speed Cameras

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSg8cwXqJn8

Mousetrap High Speed Camera

Quotes

Edwin Land: "Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible"

Unknown: "What good is a digital photo if you cant find it on your computer?"

Ernest Haas: "There is only you and your camera, the limitations in your photography are in yourself"

Stop Motion Photography

et cetera from jacattack on Vimeo.

Mannequin Madness

Shadow Art

Cat and The Camera

Capture 180

I really like the music used for the video, so dramatic

Timeline Of The Camera

Cultural Probes: Say Something

A quick cultural probe in the form of a questionnaire for my current project. Questions asked were about the meaning of taking photos, how people store their photographic memories, what they think of instant photography and what their last photo would be of.

Sony Introduce The First Commercial Electronic Camera 1981

Kodak Instamatic 1963

The First Motion Picture 1888

Disney's 'Flowers and Trees'

The first full colour technicolor movie made by Disney in 1932

Kinemacolor

A demonstration reel from DeBergerac Productions showing how the effect of Kinemacolor can be achieved synthetically, using Kinemacolor film shot in Atlantic City and New York, c. 1913, plus what looks like a dance scene from an unidentified drama.

Temporary Printing Machine

By Random-International

Sonogram Cufflinks

"Sonogram Cufflinks ~ could this be the creepiest way to break the news to a unsuspecting dad to be?"

Wear Your Dream Home On Your Finger

By Jeweller Philippe Tournaire

How To Make A Scanner Camera

I really want to do this at somepoint to see what sort of effects and results it can produce.

Fortnightly Polaroid

A polaroid photo taken every 2 weeks for 12 years

Polaroid's "The Swinger"

How The Polaroid Works

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8223139.stm

92 Must See Creative Photographs

Obviously most of them, if not all, have been Photoshoped.

See the rest at: http://justcreativedesign.com/2008/04/08/creative-photographs/

More discussions on photography

Digital Memories and Meaning:
http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=165361

Instant vs Digital Photography: http://www.flickr.com/groups/polaroid_/discuss/72157622270562229/

What Does Photography mean To You?

With so many different ways to take photos these days and so many people taking photos, from the amateur to the professional, from the young to the elderly, what does taking a photograph mean to you?

Join in the discussion at: http://www.flickr.com/groups/10millionphotos/discuss/72157622439205996/

Or at: http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=1911761#post1911761

100th Post

Just because!

Scanner Camera, Bus Ride Animation

Bus Ride (Scanner Camera) from Michael Golembewski on Vimeo.

Pop Up Cardboard Furniture

"Cardboard furniture offering flexibility as well as sustainability to the manufacturers and users has emerged as a popular material of late. Designed by Liddy Scheffknecht and Armin B. Wagner, the “Pop Up” is a unique furniture unit that folds flat for easy storage and transportation. Measuring 94 x 275 x 200 cm, the furniture when unfolded pops out of the flat cardboard sheet. Though I’m not too sure about its workability, still the Pop Up gives a new dimension to portability and sustainability of the home furniture."

Sappy Polaroid Ad 1989

Ansel Adams

"At one with the power of the American landscape, and renowned for the patient skill and timeless beauty of his work, photographer Ansel Adams has been a visionary in his efforts to preserve this country's wild and scenic areas, both on film and on Earth. Drawn to the beauty of nature's monuments, he is regarded by environmentalists as a monument himself, and by photographers as a national institution. It is through his foresight and fortitude that so much of America has been saved for future Americans."

http://www.anseladams.com/index.html

Steel Velcro

"Totally wicked: The Metaklett strips you see above are essentially steel Velcro, developed by German engineers at the Technical University of Munich and intended, like the regular stuff, to be fastened and unfastened without the use of tools.
The steel strips, "one kind bristling with springy steel brushes and the other sporting jagged spikes," are only 0.2 millimeters thick, but a square meter of the stuff can hold "a perpendicular load of 7 tonnes." Developer Josef Mair foresees the stuff being used for building facades or automobile assembly. And it will withstand temperatures of up to 800 degrees Fahrenheit, so you could even use it in Arizona in July."

Via core77

Microsoft's Digital Shoebox

"Most current digital storage is provided by hard disks hidden away in PCs and laptops, its content arranged in a complex hierarchy of folders. Pictures stored in these hidden devices are rarely seen around the home unless they are printed out. Shoebox aims to challenge both the visibility of typical storage devices in the home, and the ease with which users can surround themselves with their digital memories, by providing a container that is intended to be on display, and that is also intended to be used to hold images from specific events or people, rather then all the users images."

What Is Design?

Also from John Heskett's 'Toothpicks & Logos'

'Design' has so many levels of meaning that it is itself a source of confusion.

The End Of Design!!!

"These changes are part of a repetitive historical pattern. As described earlier, the evolution of a new stage in design does not entirely replace what has gone before, but, instead, is layered over the old. This had been a recurrent pattern throughout the history of design. It not only helps explain why there is such a diversity of concepts and practices about what constitutes design in contemporary society, but also raises a question about what extent to which similar changes will confront us in the future. Exactly what will transpire is uncertain, but the signs are unmistakable - new technologies, new markets, new forms of business organization are fundamentally altering our world, and, without doubt, new design ideas and practices will be required to meet new circumstances. The greatest degree of uncertainty, however, revolves around the question: whose interests will they serve?"

p34 Toothpicks And Logos: John Heskett

After attending 'The End Of Design', a lecture held on thursday night at uni, by Tom Inns and Mike Press, I felt that this quote sums up what some of the lecture was about.

We are not coming to the end of design, we are coming to the end of a design era and a new one is about to begin. From the book by Heskett, he refers to the history of design ass being layers and when we come to a new age of design it is just added to the previous layers of design. (for a better understanding you might be better reading the book.)

And the last question in this quote emphasises what Mike Press said about how the new design direction is 'social design,' which is where the major priority will be designing for the publics needs and not for company profits.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorials: Best Of

click on the following link for a selection of photoshop tutorials.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/10/adobe-photoshop-tutorials-best-of/

Ronan And Erwan Bouroullec

http://www.bouroullec.com/