Advertising

1. 2500 anodized aluminum bars of 1/2” thickness are used in a pixelated interpretation of the new Lexus by NonDesigns. http://bit.ly/dBTXY3
2. Dangers of driving aggressively around commercial motor vehicles is best explained in this billboard ad. http://bit.ly/90gDVl By Amélie Co.
3. ‘Flying’ billboard for Mercedes-Benz SLS designed by BBDO. http://bit.ly/bxyFhp
4. An advertising for the famous family game Pictionary made by O&M. Original, funny, creative and graphically impressive. http://bit.ly/bRhtbX
5. Lobo created Panasonic Viera 3D Ads – Dino and Robot. Great idea! http://www.advertolog.com/panasonic/print-outdoor/dino-13783105/

Logo/Identity Design

1. Barcamp Bangalore 9 logo competition: My entry is here — http://antzfxway.com/2010/08/24/design_bcb9/

Photography

1. Take stunning wide angle photos using your camera phone. What you need is this: http://bit.ly/bK6igQ
2. Photography rules are not laws. Here are some examples on how some of the rules are meant to be broken. http://bit.ly/c9KYkQ

Print Design

1. Time to start designing! Here’s a ’round’ 2011 Calendar from Russia. http://bit.ly/bj8zVF

Product Design

1. “The lack of personality of the iPad has enabled people to create their own enclosures.” says Jonas Damon. His iPad TV: http://bit.ly/9b8ICh
2. “Does a water sink need the ugly drainage hole?” A brilliant answer from Dallas Winspear. http://bit.ly/ccXaDw
3. Google ‘Cooler Thinking’ cooler. This is for promotional purpose. http://bit.ly/cQtfRp
4. A stylish water bottle made from Bamboo. It has a glass container for liquids. Designed by @BambooBottleCO. http://www.bamboobottleco.com/
5. ‘The Gear Ring’ by @kinektdesign has a cool design and the gears actually turn! http://design-milk.com/gear-ring-by-kinekt-design
6. A water bottle that splits in the middle for easy cleaning. Great idea by @ALEX_bottle. http://www.alexbottle.com/
7. Luminous mushrooms whose only magic lies in their ability to charm. Created by ‘Great Mushrooming.’ http://bit.ly/cpbzZo
8. Cardboard Mechanics mady by 4 students of the Utrecht School of Art and Technology. http://www.vimeo.com/12480554

Resources

1. The Best Must-have Plugins for Google Chrome : http://bit.ly/d5L0SO

Typography

1. Anamorphic typographic installation by two graphic design graduates. http://bit.ly/cx8OBn Nice idea.

Barcamp Bangalore 9 (‘BCB9’) is happening on 18-Sep-2010. They are conducting a logo competition. I was brainstorming for a logo idea.

‘Talk of the town’
Much later, from the phrase ‘talk of the town,’ I came up with the above logo. Base of the design is a ‘9’ in Century Gothic font. The appearance of ’9′ is changed so that it looks like a single quotation mark that represents ‘communication.’

A speech bubble is incorporated into the design that contains the BarCamp logo. The placement of the elements is manipulated in such a way that ‘Bangalore’ on the logo is speaking about BarCamp. Clearly ‘the talk of the town!’

Following is an attempt on the branding of BCB9. Click on the images for a larger view.

An earlier version

This option with a green tint and a different placement, size of elements is later replaced with the current version.

Photographs Credits

1. ‘Billboard’ by Asif Akbar
2. ‘Auto rickshaws on the way to Mysore’ by Matthew Logelin
3. ‘Hand tag’ by Marcelo Silva

Softwares: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator
Design date:
Ver.0.9 — 12-Aug-2010
Ver.1.0 — 20-Aug-2010

But sometimes the crowd is so huge that we need someone else to point them out. This post tries to accomplish just that. With tons of Google Chrome plugins available for our use, choosing the “few” useful ones could be time-consuming. Presented below are a dozen plugins that I found useful (with a little help from some of my friends).

1. Google Mail Checker Plus

The number of unread messages in your Gmail and Google Apps inbox are shown by this plugin. Options for Preview mail, read, delete, archive and mark as spam are available. Plus the really useful Desktop Notifications.

2. Google Reader Notifier (by Google)

This plugin displays the number of unread items in your Google Reader account. Clicking can show a preview popup or open your Reader account.

3. AdBlock

AdBlock for Chrome! blocks all advertisements on web pages.  Your browser is automatically updated with additions to the filter: just click Install, then visit your favorite website and see the ads disappear! I found this plugin performing better that AdSweep

3.1 Browser Button for AdBlock

If you have already installed AdBlock and want a browser action button, install this plugin. Browser Button for AdBlock adds a button next to your Wrench menu which lets AdBlock users block ads and whitelist domains without using keyboard shortcuts.

4. Chromed Bird

Chromed Bird is a Twitter extension that allows you to follow your timelines and interact with your Twitter account.

5. Pharaohs Time Tracker

Ever wanted to track your daily tasks and errands? This extension is for you. Pharaohs Time Tracker helps track your simple tasks and compile a list of activities that you could use for billing purposes, for instance.

6. Google Dictionary

With this extension, you can double-click any word to view its definition in a small pop-up bubble and view the complete definition of any word or phrase using the address bar dictionary.

7. Google Quick Scroll

Google Quick Scroll is a browser extension that helps you find what you are searching for faster. It lets you jump directly to the relevant bits of a Google search result. After you click on a Google search result, Quick Scroll may appear on the bottom-right corner of the page, showing one or more bits of text from the page that are relevant to your query. Clicking on the text will take you to that part of the page.

8. RemindMe

RemindMe allows you to setup reminders while browsing and sync them between computers.

9. Things To Do

This extension has a few subtle features, which can help you manage your to do list very efficiently.

10. Secure Sites

Offer to automatically redirect to the secure version of the websites you visit if it exists

11. Rapportive

Rapportive shows you everything about your contacts right inside your inbox.You can immediately see what people look like, where they’re based, and what they do. You can establish rapport by mentioning shared interests. You can grow your network by connecting on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and more. And you can record thoughts for later by leaving notes.Imagine relationship management built into your email.

Highly experimental. It didn’t work that great for me when I tried it for this article. But I am mentioning it here since it is something I want to use when it works the way it is supposed to.

12. Shareaholic

Share any web page with your friends right from the page you are on!  Post to your Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Evernote, and more from one extension.

13. Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on

To provide website visitors with more choice about how their data is collected by Google Analytics, Google have developed the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. The add-on communicates with the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js) to indicate that information about the website visit should not be sent to Google Analytics. When you can opt-out, why let Google to collect the data?

Advertising

Logo/Identity Design

Photography

Product Design

Resources

More often than I remember, I have spent hours googling for nice, good looking gallery plugins for a variety of reasons. To save you time and frustration, I have put together a collection of posts that detail the various gallery plugins available.

1. jQuery Image Galleries & Sliders – Best Of
   HONKIAT.COM lists 22 gallery plugins in this post.
2. Top 10 Content Slider Plugins for WordPress
   Speckyboy Design Magazine short lists 11 plugins to be used along with worpdress.
3. 10 Pure CSS3 Image Galleries and Sliders
   Speckyboy Design Magazine also features 10 CSS3 based plugins
4. 30 Free Resources for Photoblogging and Image Galleries (WordPress)
   A long exhaustive listing of photoblogging galleries for wordpress blog platform from Speckyboy Design Magazine.
5. Top 14 JQuery Photo Slideshow / Gallery Plugins
   BLUE PRINT DESIGN STUDIO has their 14 top jQuery gallery plugin collection.
6. 11 Photoblogging Plugins for WordPress
   (Anti) Social Development has 11 more wordpress plugins for photoblogging.
7. WordPress Plugins for Photo Galleries
   All Web Design BlOg has well over 50 wordpress plugins for setting up photo galleries! Amazing feat!

Two twelve-year-old basketball fans. A basketball star. An out-of-form New York based NBA team. The boys started an extra-ordinary campaign to convince the star to play for the team. They got the help of two family friends who are into marketing. The result: ‘LeBron Buttons.’

Read such interesting stories in my tweets of June…

Advertising

Freelancing

Logo/Identity Design

Print Design

Product Design

Resources

1. Search Everything

The biggest flip side of wordpress, according to me, is its search or rather its lack. I can’t understand why they have made it absolutely difficult to locate stuff inside a blog! Search Everything plugin extends searching to inside of tags, categories and even comments should you opt so.

Home Page | Download

2. TinyMCE Advanced

I know I have already discussed this plugin in this blog, but still TinyMCE Advanced needs to be retold simply because of its usefulness. WordPress’ default editor’s lack of features is the life of this plugin. This plugin set can add over 40 new buttons to the toolbar making blogging a pleasure.

Home Page | Download

3. WordPress Database Backup

It’s always good to be prepared. WordPress database backup creates backups of your core WordPress tables as well as other tables of your choice in the same database and mails it to you periodically – once in a day, week or month.

Home Page | Download

4. Twitter Publisher

With the Twitter Publisher plugin you can send automated tweets out when you publish a new post. As simple as that – but very useful.

Home Page | Download

5. Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.

Home Page | Download

6. All in One SEO Pack

All in One SEO Pack is a vital tool in managing the search engine optimization strategy for websites, utilizing the automated tools in it which will save us countless hours and headaches in performing the necessary SEO functions of our sites.

Home Page | Download | User Guide

7. WordPress Related Posts

WordPress Related Posts Plugin generates related posts via the WordPress tags. It then adds the related posts to a feed which can, among things, be displayed at the bottom of all your posts. It will help keep people on your site for longer, and get more of your content viewed.

Home Page | Download

8. Hyper Cache

According to the site, “Hyper Cache is a new cache system for WordPress, specifically written for people who have their blogs on low resources hosting provider (cpu and mysql). It has three invalidation methods: all the cache, single post based and nothing but with control on home and archive pages invalidation.” Whatever that means, you will notice improved page response time.

Home Page | Download

9. Remove Title Attributes

Another WordPress goof up. WordPress puts title tags to anything and everything that it can put its hands on. This annoys you most when themes make use of menus. A handy plugin to have under such circumstances.

Home Page | Download

10. AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget

To “Make sharing easy” and they deliver.

Home Page | Download

11. Contact Form 7

A simple plugin to easily setup contact form in a wordpress blog. You can find a demo here.

Home Page | Download

12. ?

Did I miss anything? Let me know.

How hard can it be to make a car advertisement of 30 seconds?

James May and Jeremy Clarkson are presenters of the popular BBC show ‘Top Gear.’ In season 13, episode 7, they try to make a TV Commercial (TVC) for the new car VW Scirocco TDi. They go through everything: understanding the brief, brainstorming, initial attempts, review of the films, rejection, another brainstorming, review of films, again rejection… It is fun to watch the creative process behind a TVC. Hilarious!

Advertising

• How hard can it be to make a car advertisement of 30 seconds? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpXE-l8wjug
• Online Piracy is killing your favourite artist. http://bit.ly/aR4xlm Advertising Agency: Publicis India

Art

• ‘Character design workflow and technique’ written by @PankajDesign for the 2nd Anniversary of antzFxWay.com. http://bit.ly/9dlTpH
• Meaning of colors in different cultures across the world: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/colours-in-cultures/

Interview

• Design-Milk.com is an online magazine dedicated to modern design. Want to know how Design Milk got its name? http://bit.ly/9Ba9e4

Logo/Identity Design

• How would you rebrand BP? A logo competition by GREENPEACE. http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/files/tarsands/logo-competition.html via @aneesKa
• RT @vimalc: violet: i Protest! http://bit.ly/bW7yzZ
• I am the CyberPark Kozhikode logo designer! http://antzfxway.com/2010/05/19/cyberpark-logo-designer/
• Creating a Logotype Depends More on the Means Than the End. http://bit.ly/9OVM0i
• Some interesting logo designs: http://www.logodesignlove.com/unsung-heroes
• How can the initials TA also say TV? A typical problem, in that it involves two unrelated subjects. http://bit.ly/cb1Pec via @aneeska

News

• Today, our design blog antzFxWay is celebrating two years of its online presence. http://antzfxway.com/2010/05/20/we-are-turning-two/

Photography

• ‘Some pointers for better photography’ written by @ashmec for the 2nd Anniversary of antzFxWay.com. http://bit.ly/dwZsXL
• ‘Don’t Just Take Pictures, but Make Pictures’ written by @UrveshDesigns for the 2nd Anniversary of antzFxWay.com. http://bit.ly/bYuzrt

Print Design

• ‘Stay Green, go red’ by @MikeCampau. Excellent artwork! http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Stay-Green_-Go-Red_-posterwallpaper/54199

Product Design

• People have a 6th sense for knowing when someone’s taking their photo. For unposed shots, use this Super-Secret Spy Lens! http://bit.ly/zrus
• “A simple and little idea of packing for honey. We tried to treat jar as a playground for a character design.” http://bit.ly/aG1qGe
• Cafe table design inspired by the beautiful fireflies in the garden on summer nights by @VukDragovic. http://bit.ly/bMlSCU
• Interesting trophies for the Better Housing Coalition’s Groundbreaker Awards event created by Noah Scalin (@alrdesign) http://bit.ly/bGiBOY

Resources

• ‘Here is the secret to creativity… Reloaded’ written by @aneesKa for the 2nd Anniversary of antzFxWay.com. http://bit.ly/b5hIPN
• RT @gosquared: Liked our VI Editor Help Sheet? Get it as a wallpaper thanks to @aneeska: http://bit.ly/cw9aYH
• 7 Essential Tips to keep in mind while writing a post in wordpress : http://bit.ly/bEJ6us

Web Design

• Creative & cool! Enter a Twitter username to watch an animated “parade” of their followers marching, dancing & tweeting. http://isparade.jp

Guest Author

Ashveen Maheshwari is a Product Designer from IISc Bangalore. He is a great photography enthusiast. Thanks to Ashveen for contributing this article. He is available in Twitter as @ashmec

Many people I know are worried that they don’t have a good camera. To be precise, any camera is not a limitation. Photographers such as Terry Richardson (a well known fashion photographer) have made their career starting with cameras no better than a Kodak KB10. Great photography is not limited by the instruments at your disposal. Instruments do give you more options, but that is no limit for an artist’s imagination.

Photography: An art or craft?

When photography was started in late 1800s, it was not considered as an art form. By and large it was thought as a craft. Photographs were not even considered to get a place in art museums. Eventually, after a long series of efforts by artists, it got its place and was regarded as an art form.

Some pointers for better photography

Errors are of two kinds- either deliberate action or careless mistake. Calling a careless mistake an art is what I don’t find very convincing. Even that can become an artistic expression. On the other hand, deliberate actions are the ones that add value to the overall picture and its emotion. Many photographers and artists use them extensively throughout their work so much so that the work is identified by the kind of error it has in it.

Here are some pointers that I observed over time doing photography and watching others do it. I hope these will help.

Unwanted objects

While we shoot in real life, there are always unwanted objects in a frame that can spoil the picture. Here is my tip: Either take the picture in a way that all the clutter becomes a part of the scene or you reconfigure the angle to avoid them.  Yes, Photoshop is always there.

There are many objects that do not directly relate to the subjects.

This looks better and has more impact.

Improper perspectives

When we take pictures at an angle, the perspective gets affected. Try to avoid perspective distortion using tilt shift lens. If the subject is small and you want them to look as they are (no cartooning), then taking pictures at right angles is a good idea.

Here, as the perspective is wrong, the figure looks clearly distorted while it was not intended to be.

Unwanted Shadows

To avoid shadows like this, you can also use flash.

Subject not emphasized properly

Care should be taken so that the original subject gets enough attention.

Here, the person goes to the background and the big projection screen becomes the subject.

Lighting

• Natural lighting will give you great pictures if the light source remains on your back. You may do exactly reverse of this to get silhouette effect which is equally cool. Sometimes, angular lighting may also add value.
• While shooting with flash and studio light, it’s all in your control and you can get whatever effect you want.
• Best time for taking pictures in natural light is between sunrise and 10.00 AM or between 5.00PM and sunset. Weather is also to be taken into account.

Abstract

• True abstract pictures are pictures that can’t be directly related to any worldly object. They usually convey a mood or an overall meaning. This meaning may differ from person to person.
• Just look around you and you will be amazed to see how much possibilities are there for abstracts. You may introduce deliberate errors for getting some abstract pictures.
  
  This image was taken with a long exposure. The three colors from three t-shirts that I was waving along with my camera. The image conveys ‘American Dream.’

Other Points

• All simple principles that are related to graphic design like Gestault theories are relevant to photography as well. You can make use of them while taking pictures.
• Your work may have an objective.  So you may give it a little thought, sometimes this happens during the shooting process itself. The idea keeps evolving as you move forward with the photo shoot.
• Don’t be shy as you take pictures. You may need to touch your models and ask them to do crazy things, you yourself might need to be in odd positions while you take pictures. Just do it.
  
  This model’s hair is pinned on to the notice board and he is made to do all sorts of crazy poses. Model: Urvesh
• Photographers pursue beauty. Beauty is not Angelina Jolie; it is in everyone and everything you see. You just need to have the right eye for it. None of your models or objects can be ugly or filthy, at least they should not look like that to you while you stay behind the camera.I found this doll in the junk yard.
  
  To me the picture says “Recycle before They Haunt You.”
• It’s a good idea to make the models feel at ease. Start a conversation, crack jokes and refrain from criticizing them if something goes wrong.
• The number of best pictures in any shoot will be usually low. You will take lots of pictures and very few from them will satisfy you. So don’t worry, just shoot. Digital memory is very cheap compared with raw film rolls.
• Shoot everything that is around you. You can get amazing pictures from objects that look just ordinary. Ordinary objects may produce extraordinary impact.
  
  This is a mineral water bottle filled with water. There is a yellow Gold Flake cigarette pack behind it. The camera flash made an effect of fire in the bottle.
• Yes, your cameras are costly equipments. But if you are too cautious about the camera’s safety, you may miss a lot of great pictures.
• Experiment, experiment, experiment… You will get nice pictures.

Here are some of my favorite photographers.

• Steven Meisel
• Philippe Halsman
• Lee Miller
• Nobuyoshi ARAKI
• Terry Richardson
• Margaret Bourke White
• Spencer Tunick
• Ellen Von Unwerth
• Man Ray
• And of course, National Geographic guys — so many amazing and amazing pictures.

Hope you liked this blog post. And, congrats to AnasKA | antzFx for his long lasting blog.

Guest Author

Urvesh Avinash Bharambe is a Product Designer from IISc Bangalore. He is a great photography enthusiast. Thanks to Urvesh for contributing this article. Urvesh is available in Twitter as @UrveshDesigns

Everyone loves to have control over the situation in which they are present. People like dictating their own terms. Same applies to the field of photography too. You wait for the perfect sunlight to come up, so that you can take beautiful portraits of your model, or you can have the soft diffused uniform light on the flowers and get the beautiful saturated colours out of them. People wait for that few minutes at the dusk or the dawn to get the flattering light that make the picturesque landscapes.

Most of the time, light may not in your control; it’s in the hands of Mother Nature, unless you own a dozen of SB-900s that can turn the day-shot into a night-shot and vice versa. There is one realm of photography where it is not only important to have control over the light, but you have to depend on artificial source of light to have a creative control over what pops up on your LCD when you press the shutter of your camera.

Here I come up with one of my first encounters in this realm of photography called as Product Photography.

The Product

After the successful prototyping of the Centenary Pro Guitar by Arunkumar Francis, it was the time to put it into presentable form to give due justification to the efforts that went in coming up with this guitar. A product is said to be incomplete unless it is presented well. To put it in different words, the design is incomplete if it is not conveyed properly to its users. A proper presentation here meant, getting exactly similar photographs of the product as per the initial renderings made.

Initial Renderings in 3D Software

The important point that one should keep in mind while photographing products is to take full shots which will show the overall product and in addition to this, to highlight the special features, one should take shots that concentrates on these peculiar parts. Here the first two shots are the ones, which highlight the key features of the product, while the third shot is to give the complete view of the product.

The Challenge

This was important so as to justify that the final outcome is similar to what you had conceived initially. Imagining things and coming up with new ideas is not that difficult compared to bringing it into realization and to be able to convey it to the audience effectively. It is said that “A picture is worth a thousand words”. So now it was the time to prove this quote to be true. No words, only a picture and that should be able to present as many details of the product as possible.

The brief for this photo-shoot was slightly different, as here apart from getting the maximum details out of the product in a single photograph, it was important to get the exact views as that of the initial renderings of the product. Seeing my enthusiasm and interest in experimenting with different photographic techniques, Arunkumar Francis asked me if I would be able to do this. I was confident but at the same time was nervous too as there were some expectations involved, unlike my experiments where I get delighted at unexpected outcomes also!

The Setup

It was decided to carry out the shoot during the night time, after dinner so that we can have complete control over the lighting. I promised to bring all my equipment along with tripod. The setup was cleaned of dust and the roll of seamless paper was spread over the table. We had two Prolinchrom 23 studio lights with soft-boxes with us to do the photo-shoot. Then the Centenary Pro Guitar was cleaned so as to leave no fingerprints or daubs on the shiny surfaces of the guitar. And then with utter care, this guitar was placed on the setup table. Arunkumar Francis had the required photos of the rendering in his mobile, which we were using as a portable digital frame to have an idea of the lighting and the required perspective of the product. This proved to be better than using a laptop, as it was handy and did not give bright light, which on the other hand would have demanded more time from our eyes to accommodate to the darkness.

Just one month back before this photoshoot, I had bought an AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 D lens, which gives the perspective of the human eye (on full-format sensors of course), which may prove to be good for product photography (You would not want your beautiful guitar to be distorted, right?) and being a fast lens, it was good for night photography and blurring out the background for portraits too. So in all, I felt that this was a good investment for me as a beginner in photography, apart from this being few of the lenses that I could afford buying from the saving that I make from my scholarship. Now I was eager to try out some “real” product photography and so put on this lens on my camera body and setup the lamps arbitrarily on the two sides of the tables. But later on the position of the light strobes was changed, so as to get minimum amount of shadows of the product on the table base as possible. (Similar to the floating objects on black background or on seamless white backgrounds seen in the hoardings and similar displays).

Capturing the first view

When the exact perspective and the view of the guitar was achieved, the lights were moved to do some fine adjustment, so as to get all the details on the guitar, which included, the body, the fret, the pickups, the bridge, all the knobs, and the main feature being the newly designed aluminum turning pegs for tuning and last but never the least were “curves on the body”.

On to the second view

So at this point, the first photograph out of the three required views was achieved and was left for later processing in the digital darkroom (read Photoshop editing). Now the second view from the front of the side of the headstock was to be taken.

For the second shot, we tried lot of iterations, like bringing camera near the headstock, to give the exaggerated view of the headstock and comparatively smaller body, but all was in vain.

The view as seen in our digital photo-frame (read mobile) was not achieved. Then I realized that we can get this kind of distortion using a wider focal length. The peculiarity of this normal prime lens was to not to give any kind of distortion, and this is what was stopping us from getting the required view. So now I put on my AF-S DX Nikkor 18-55mm f /3.5-5.6G ED II, which is a kit lens that used to come with the entry level Nikon DSLRs. Nowadays they supply a VR version of this lens, but the one without ED (extra-low dispersion) elements, which in a way is a good strategy for Nikon to gain more money for a not-so-better lens.

Now after putting this lens, I could get the required perspective view of the guitar and then achieving the required lighting was an easy task.

One point that should be taken into consideration for this kind of product photography is to keep the aperture at its minimum, i.e. at maximum f number, so as to have the complete product into focus. Also when you focus, you should choose the focus point (out of 3, 9, 11, 51 or whatever number of focus points you have), that falls at around 1/3rd of the length of your product or try to focus at 1/3rd the length of the scene. This will help you get optimum depth of field for the aperture that you have chosen. One more point to be taken into consideration is that the shadows don’t show up around the product, you can either arrange the lights in a manner that will help fill all the shadows or else try elevating the product from the surface of the table; this will throw the shadow below the product. Here in this setup we had used the lens cap (shown in the picture below) to lift the Guitar’s fret so that no hard shadows are formed around that.

The Last Shot Standing

Finally the last shot was left in which we had to show the complete view of the guitar. For this we wanted a view from an elevated place, so as to maintain the normal perspective of the guitar, or in other words to get a bird’s eye view unlike the distorted perspective view. We did not have any camera boom stand or crane, so the easiest way was to climb a chair and take the photograph.

First shot was taken, the perspective and view was the one that was desired, but the image looked flat. All the details were not clearly visible. The details like fret, pickups, bridge, volume and tone controls were all visible, but the shape of the guitar or the curves cut on the guitar that are the characteristic features of the product were not visible.

Now there were two options with us, either to arrange the lights in such a way that you get the required reflections from these surfaces, but then there are chances that the other arrangements or the fine adjustments, that you had done to throw the shadows away, are disturbed. The other option is to use the reflective cards or white boards, which can be a thermocol sheet, a flute board, a white sheet of paper, which will give different kind of reflections based on their surface properties. For e.g., a thermocol sheet will give a diffused light and a smooth reflection, while a flute board, having a shiny surface will give hard reflections on the surface. Now by holding the white sheet in different orientations the required details are ‘carved out’ on the body of the product.

As shown below, you can see the step by step improvement in the details that are seen on the surface contours.

All the ones till here are having a slight warmer tone, while the one in the reference image was having a cooler tone, this was achievable by two ways, changing the white balance in the camera or else editing it later in the digital darkroom. The last image above shows the perfect details of the guitar giving details of the complete curves on the body, but the one shown below was to be achieved as it resembled the reference rendering. The difference between two is shown in the picture below.

Well done, boy …

The final shot chosen by the client is the one shown below.

One thing I felt during the whole shoot is that it would have been better if we had a wider paper roll, so that we could have avoided using the clone-stamp tool to extend the white surface.

Now the Urvesh Touch : Light Painting

Finally we got the shot which was similar to the rendering in our digital frame and my client was happy with the results. We could get the 3 images which were exactly similar to the initial renderings of the product. Now it was time for some fun shooting and before I could request Francis to keep the guitar there for some more time for me to try out some more shots, he himself told me to try anything crazy that I would like to try. I usually carry a torch with me in my camera bag, so I thought of trying light-painting the guitar. Here are the results of the light-painting the guitar in the complete darkness.

The recipe for this kind of shot is as follows:

1. Lock the focus on the Guitar when the room is lit, or you can use the auto-focus assist lamp to help focusing.
2. Switch off the lights, so that no unwanted light is there in the scene.
3. Go for bulb exposure in your camera, or if the bulb mode if not there go for a exposure of 10 sec or similar (based on trial and error) that may be sufficient for you to paint the guitar with light.
4. Release the shutter and start painting the guitar with the torch light. Make sure to conceal the light source, otherwise you will end up with the intermittent streaks of lights in the scene (which obviously looks bad, unless you want them intentionally).
5. Don’t forget to end the exposure (if in bulb mode) or wait till the shutter is closed, before you switch on the lights.

Last, but not the least

In the end, my deepest gratitude to AnasKA (antzFx), (my friend, my classmate, my project partner, my mentor and my critic for all my works) who has been after me since last 1.5 year, advising me to start a blog, and now for giving me a head-start by providing an opportunity to write in his blog. Thanks to Arunkumar Francis (my senior at CPDM, IISc, an ideal Product Designer and my daily dose of inspiration), for entrusting the photography of his wonderful work – Guitar on me and thanks to Amardeep Singh, (my friend, my room-mate and my companion in all my photo-shoots), without whom I would not have been able to write this blog entry, if he would not have covered the entire event. Thanks to my department, Centre for Product Design & Manufacturing (CPDM), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (for purchasing Prolinchrom 23 studio lights; this is one of the good things that they did in past), for letting me use the studio lights and the seamless paper roll. Thanks to my Mom and my family for buying me a Nikon D40 DSLR, which proved to be my stepping stone into exploring the beautiful realm of photography. Some people like to have a step by step kind of tutorial, but this being my first blog, I wanted to keep it in the narrative form and take readers through this encounter of making pictures, rather than just taking pictures.

My ultimate homage to my Guruani, Dr. Natasha Mhatre, whom I have considered as my Guru (though she doesn’t know this till now; I tried to be Eklavya ) and try to replicate her style and derive inspiration from her.