After taking a photo every day for a year, I thought it would be worth a few extra hours putting it all together in to a nice looking mosaic.

I think the easiest way to do this is using Google’s Picasa program.

The problem with this is that you need to have all your photos in on folder, which I didn’t have. Rather than spend ages going through each folder and finding the photo I had chosen for that day, I just downloaded mine from Flickr. Since I had them all uploaded in one set and all named with their correct numbers, this seemed like it would be the easiest method.

I downloaded the Saleen Flickr Downloader (which didnt seem the most elegant solution, but worked well enough) and told it to download my Project 365 set. I set it to download just the Large size, rather than Original, which would take hours. It still took quite a while and one photo didn’t download properly (lucky I noticed that!) but after that I had the folder of every image.

The next problem was that the downloaded images had the Flickr ID in the file names, so they weren’t being sorted properly. They also had no EXIF data, so I couldnt arrange by date taken. To fix this, I used the trusty old Bulk Rename Utility.

The files were named like this:

5794243281_ee16c5544c 121_365_L.jpg

So I just told Bulk Rename Utility to remove the first 22 characters from all the file names. And just to neaten them up, remove the last 2 characters too.

Which left much nicer looking file names which also could be sorted by name:

121_365.jpg

Note: This is only useful for the Picasa mosaic which is in chronological order. For the final mosaic, I didn’t need to do all this as the photos are arranged by colour.

Now the photos are in a folder and sorted by date, we can find the folder in Picasa and click on “Create Photo Collage” (make sure you only have the folder selected, rather than any of the individual photos within the folder, or it will just make a collage with the selected photo).

There are a lot of options here, so play around and see what you like. Since all my photos are square and I wanted an orderly, linear mosaic, I chose “Grid”

This was my result (after adding some space around the edges and text in Photoshop):

This was good, but it looked a bit messy. I wanted to see if I could arrange the photos by colour.

The closest thing I could think of was using a Photomosaic program. AndreaMosaic seems to be one of the best and is also free.

So after installing that, I found the image I wanted the images arranged on – I went for a rainbow type image. Basically a colour picker box.

Note the settings in the above image: “no duplicates”, no colour change, only use the original tiles. This ensures that only the 365 photos we have will be used, won’t be used multiple times and the colours won’t be modified to match the rainbow image.

Another thing to watch out for is having half-images on the edges of the frame. The first mosaic I made, 5 photos were right on the border and only showing about 5 pixels of the photos, so I almost missed them. I just needed to change the mosaic size so they weren’t being cut off.

Now we need to tell the program to use the images in the 365 folder. Click on the number 2 (at the top right, the dolphin photo)

Click on “Add Folder” and select the 365 folder. Then at the top click “Save List”. AndreaMosaic will go through and analyse the photos, ready to put it all together. Once that is done, click OK.

Finally, click number 3 (the Van Gogh) and see how it turns out.

There will be a warning saying there will be gaps (because we turned off duplicates and colour changing).

Mine had quite a few gaps, but I realised the photos would all fit.

After some cutting, pasting and rearranging in Photoshop, the mosaic was done!

A lot of the pictures are family photos or travel shots, but this was just an ordinary street. A candid snap-shot of a different era. I always like this kind of historical photo.

The photos on the DVD weren’t in any particular order, so I had no idea where this place was. I knew my great-grandfather had taken a lot of the photos while travelling from England to Australia by ship and had stopped off in Europe, Africa and India along the way. I had a feeling the photo was taken in South Africa but I wasn’t positive.

Zooming in and reading the signs revealed some clues to the location. The mixture of English and Dutch-looking text confirmed that it was South Africa.

One of the clearest signs says “Waldorf Cafe”, so I tried searching for a Waldorf Cafe in South Africa. There were a few hits, but looking at Street View, they didn’t match. This did lead me to discover that Street View was actually available to a lot of South Africa, which boosted my hope of finding this location, based on a single 50 year old photo.

Next I tried searching other words that I could see, thinking they might be the town name. “Gebou” was next, but that turned out to just be the Afrikaans word for “Building” (thanks Google Translate).

Finally, there was the small, blurry sign for the hotel. I thought it said “Barys Hotel” so I searched for that in South Africa with no luck. Then I noticed the word “Pary” half cut off on the right side of the frame and realised that is probably what the sign said.

This was a big help. Parys turned out to be a city in South Africa. I started searching for hotels in Parys, which returned 3 results – all of them tiny buildings and in fairly remote looking places. Parys isn’t large, but looking through Street View one street at a time wasn’t practical. I needed to find a main street.

Looking at the layout, I noticed a small section of fairly dense streets (in the centre of the image above), and decided to go in for a look. Immediately this looked familiar and after looking through a couple of intersections, I had found something that looked very close.

Zooming in and studying the details confirmed that this was it! While the buildings on the street seem to have been remodeled significantly, the hotel in the background is largely unchanged. Comparing the distinctive roof shape is what clinched it for me.

Parys Hotel mouse-over

Mouse-over to compare the original to the street view image.

My great-grandfather, Percy Evans.

I’m surprised partly by the fact that I was able to find this location, based on a single photo and minimal clues. But mostly I am impressed with the technology freely available to us, that allows me – on a whim – to research a photo, find its location, then lets me look through current photos of an entire city to pin-point the exact location. That is amazing.

Being able to look through my great-grandfather’s photos, tracing the route he took, seeing the places he stayed, being able to virtually walk down the same streets, really brings the history alive.

Messing around with triangular pixel effects and came up with this wallpaper. Thought I would share. Has a nice mix of detail and simplicity. 1920x1080px.

Tutorial coming soon. Let me know if you want it at any other sizes.

Download the ZIP file with the AI and SVG artwork

Canon 40D vector clip art by Luke Roberts is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at lukeroberts.us.

After saving the hard drive from my laptop which died a few weeks ago, I’ve finally been able to recover the 2011 calendar I had made!

If you’ve decided to participate in Project 365 this year, you might start to find it difficult to keep track of which number day it is in the year once you get out of January – I know I did when I did my Project 365 in 2009.

That year I made a special Project 365 Calendar with all the days of the year on it and now I’ve updated it for 2011.

Details

After some feedback on the previous year’s calendars, I’ve adjusted the layout to 4×3 columns and moved the notes section to be under each month.

The PDF contains two A4 pages (all vector graphics, so it’s no problem to print at different sizes).

Page one is the full colour calendar (I actually wanted to change the colours, but don’t have access to InDesign or Illustrator for now, so feel free to edit it if you can).

Page two is a simplified version – just black text on a white background.

Download

Project 365 Calendar 2011

Flange focal distance

Or: why you should try a Nikon lens on a Canon body

Coffeeground and simon.hucko made an interesting discovery here about the focal distance of the different camera manufacturers lenses and bodies. You can get a more technical explanation here on Wikipedia (as well as a list of all the other manufacturers and their focal distances), but basically Canon lenses are designed to focus on the Canon sensors which are 44 mm from the mounting flange (the metal ring on the camera and the rear of the lens). Nikon lenses are made to focus on Nikon sensors, which are 46.5 mm from the back of the lens.

This is interesting to freelensers because it means if you use a Nikon lens on a Canon body, you will be able to focus on things that are much further away, while still getting the beautiful bokeh and other freelensing effects. You don’t even need an adapter, since you’re just holding the lens in place.

Help – nothing is in focus!

Freelensing works best with prime lenses (50 mm is a favourite). Telephoto and zoom lenses can be used, but they will have more vignetting and seem to be harder to focus. Also, because most zoom lenses only start at f/4 or f/5, they can’t let as much light in (compared to an f/1.8 50 mm, for example), which may result in darker photos.

Before removing the lens it is best to set the focus on “infinity” – for two reasons. Firstly, you are more likely to drop the lens if you’re fiddling around trying to change the focus while holding the camera and lens separately. Secondly, setting the focus on infinity will let you control the focus more finely by using the tilt of the lens and will let you actually be able to focus on things more than a few feet away.

Freelensing doesn’t work with my Nikon!

If you use a Nikon camera for freelensing, you may need to set the camera to Manual or Aperture Priority mode. (Thanks to Eddie Barksdale for discovering this)

Nikon G lenses also close down the aperture blades when disconnected from the camera (the D lenses don’t do this – thanks kristopherlundborg), so if your photos are coming out very dark, this might be the reason. You will need to make something that will hold the aperture lever on the back of the lens in the open position. A small piece of blu-tack or cardboard seems to do the trick. (Thanks to ted @ndes and Joseph Yarrow for discovering this)

Narflet also reports that freelensing can make the metering on her Nikon a bit unreliable: “I often have to boost +1-2EV”. If your photos are still coming out dark after fixing the aperture level problem, this might be the next step to take.

Will freelensing work with my Sony?

In your camera’s menus, look for the “Release w/o Lens” option, and make sure it is enabled. If you can’t find that option in any menus, try setting the camera to Manual mode (M on dial) and also set the camera to manual focus (thanks ted @ndes).

Similar to the Nikon lenses, you may also need to make something that will hold the aperture lever on the back of the lens in the open position. If your photos are very dark while freelensing, this is likely the reason. A small piece of blu-tack or cardboard should be able to hold the lever and keep the aperture blades open.

Olympus, Pentax and others

I haven’t heard any problems from those using Olympus or Pentax cameras. It seems the Olympus and Pentax lenses, like the Canon ones, don’t auto-close the aperture blades when disconnected.

Anyone using a Panasonic or other camera for freelensing? Did it work? Any problems? I’d particularly like to know if anyone has tried it on any of the Micro Four Thirds system cameras. Let me know in the comments here or on the Flickr group discussions page.

“file.jpg” has failed to upload due to an error
Missing a temporary folder.

After some searching and a lot of reading, the only solution seemed to be that it related to the php.ini file which I didn’t have access to. All the folders had the correct permissions, so I was sure it was related to the php configuration and that I wouldn’t be able to help.

Just out of curiosity, I did the equivalent of “turning it off and on again” – I reloaded WordPress. It was already the latest version, so I just copied over all the WordPress files (except the wp-content folder and the wp-config.php file, as you would do if you were updating WordPress).

Somehow, this actually worked. The error was gone and files uploaded with no problems. I haven’t seen this posted as a solution anywhere, so I thought I’d just put this out there as an option.

Inspired by “Catch the Beat” by Staredown Studios and this MSNBC Style Effect tutorial, I decided to have a go at making my own.

Digital Aurora

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1024×768

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Digital Aurora flipped

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Digital Aurora dual-screen

2560×1024

And I thought this one turned out kind of interestingly – applied the Polar Coordinates filter.

2560×1024

.

Method

I used a slightly different method to the tutorial linked to above. I’ll go through the steps roughly here – if there’s any interest, I could make a video tutorial if this isn’t clear enough. Just let me know.

Basically, start off with a noise gradient (go in to the Gradient Editor and change Gradient Type to “Noise”). The colours don’t matter at this point, because you’ll make it grayscale in a moment.

Once you get a nice noise gradient (keep pressing Randomize until you get a good one), draw it on the canvas, then CTRL+SHIFT+U to take all the colour out of it.

Next, add a layer mask to the gradient layer, and draw in the basic shape you want. I went with a kind of semi-circle shape.

Apply the layer mask (right click on the layer and click “apply layer mask”), then put some motion blur on there to stretch the lines up.

After that, duplicate the layer and apply Filter > Pixelate > Mosaic to get some thicker lines, then run the Motion blur filter a couple of times to get rid of the squares. I wanted these to be more subtle so I turned the layer opacity down.

To get some colour in to the lines, I used a couple of Gradient Fill layers, set to Soft Light blend mode.

By now, it should be roughtly similar to what I was able to get. You might need to play around with the contrast/levels of the original layers to bring out the colours properly. If the colours look rought, flatten everything and then apply Motion Blur a couple of times to smooth things out.

Like classic motorcycles? I’ve started a tumblr blog over at KickStart.tumblr.com with vintage, classic, worn-out and generally interesting motorcycle photos that I find.

I thought it would be interesting to see how hard it would be to achieve in Illustrator. With one small, free Illustrator script, it turns out it is quite easy.

The script we’ll need is “vary_hues” from wundes.com. Save the .js file on to your computer somewhere. It’s well worth checking out the other scripts too.

Step 1

Create a new document, choose the Rectangular Grid Tool and click on your canvas to open the options for the Grid Tool.

I chose the same width and height to keep the grid as a bunch of squares and have set the rows and columns to 10×10. Unless you’re going for a Mondrian style effect, leave the skew at 0% on each.

Step 2

You may notice at this point that the grid is just a rectangle with lines through it, rather than a bunch of individual squares.

To fix this, select the grid and open the Pathfinder palette. All you need to do now is click “Divide” and this will cut the grid up in to a bunch of squares for you.

To make it easier to see, fill the squares with a colour.

Step 3

Now we have a grid of squares, but it’s still all in a block. Ungroup the grid so you can select individual blocks – right click > ungroup or CTRL + SHIFT + G.

Now we can get some colour in to them.

Step 4

This is where the vary_hues script comes in to its own. Select all the squares and go to File > Scripts > Other Script, then browse to where ever you saved the vary_hues script.

When the dialog box comes up, enter 100 and click OK. 100 will ensure that there’s a wide variety of colours.

Step 5

The random colours will, most likely, look fairly ugly at the moment. The secret to the Gerhard Richter and “Yes” examples is that the colours aren’t completely random. So to get some order and harmony to the colours we’ll use the Live Color tool.

With the squares still selected, choose the Recolor Artwork button to open Live Color.

Step 6

This is where you can have some fun choosing colours. Click on the little grid button to open the swatches menu. This will give you a large selection of colour swatches to choose from. Art History > Pop Art works well, but experiment with others to see how it works.

The Pop Art colours will be applied to the squares, replacing the random colours with more harmonious and hopefully attractive colours.

The default Pop Art colours are a little dull, so let’s jump over to the Edit panel.

This will give you more control over the individual colours. The slider at the bottom (under the little sun icon) adjusts the brightness of the colour, so we’ll turn that up to make it a bit more vibrant. You can also grab and adjust individual colours on the palette to adjust them.

Click OK and you’re done!

That’s the basic idea covered, so hopefully it’s a useful starting point for some interesting designs. If you use it, I’d love to see what you come up with.