AKELIAN PRODUCTIONS

Disappointed to hear that Brandeis University in Waltham MA is closing the Rose Art Museum. (via nytimes.com and Boston.com)

Some images from the 2008 holiday window displays for Hermes that I worked on:

Client: Sightgeist Design Inc / Hermes of Paris / hermes.com
Concept/Design: © 2008: Lucy-Ann Bouwman / Sightgeist Design Inc
Creative Director: Lucy-Ann Bouwman / sightgeist.com
Photography: © 2009 Chris Akelian / akelian.com
Digital Animation: “Metamorphosis” © 2008: Glenn Marshall / butterfly.ie
Digital Animation: “Travel the World with HERMES” © 2008: Sarah L Lee / Sarah L Lee

June 8th, 2008 - Flickr and Getty Images announce a partnership wherby photographers of selected public images on Flickr, identified by the photo editors at Getty Images, will be invited to become part of the Flickr collection on Getty Images.

You can read the full announcements on their respective websites: Getty Images, Flickr.

So what is this going to mean for the stock photography market? More importantly, what consequences is this going to have for the assignment photography market? Read more…

I didn’t think I needed this until I read it, especially since I saw an immediate performance boost after Adjusting the Cache Levels. At the very least it’ll give you a better understanding of some of the inner workings of Photoshop CS3.

Source: Adobe Support TechNote 401089

I guess I’m not surprised that someone thought of this [Image Fulgurator], just that no one thought of it sooner. (Semi-technical photo description warning) It’s basically a camera converted into a projector that’s attached to an optical slave that triggers the projection with a flash at the exact time that someone else is snapping a photo, and projects a chosen image into that photo. I haven’t been able to get Julius von Bismarck’s website to load since the Wired.com article about it came out so you can read more about it here.
Read more…

I came across a cool little application recently called Filechute which allows you to easily upload and send a file to anyone with an email address (i.e. just about most people).

You just select your file(s) or folder full of files, drag it over to the window in Filechute, decide whether you want it to zip the file(s) or upload as is and it will upload the file(s) according to the storage settings you have entered in the preferences.  Your options for storage can be your iDisk on a .mac account, a WebDAV share (if your so inclined), or even a good old FTP account on your own web server.

The best part is that after uploading the file, Filechute displays the direct link to it (which you then email) so that the recipient can retrieve the file at their convenience and not have to worry about email attachments and quotas. As an added option Filechute can spit out a short URL through SNIPR (pronounced like snipper) with the click of a checkbox.

It’s a great way to send clients (or family and friends) files without the hassle of setting up FTP accounts with logins and passwords that can easily be forgotten.

Having spent a week on a film set I can only describe the experience as similar to being on a roller-coaster: somebody else is in charge of the ride and you just do your best to hold on.

It was several days of long hours, sometimes busy, sometimes not. A couple of technical challenges and solutions were thrown in to keep things that much more interesting.  I got to meet a lot of talented people and the teamwork and dedication to the project of everyone involved was inspirational.

My favorite part was being asked to be in a scene. Here’s hoping it doesn’t end up on the editing room floor.

I’d venture to say that I do technical consulting on a regular basis for a number of clients as part of my services but now it’s official. I got hired today as a consultant on Ghosts of Girlfriends Past starring Matthew Mcconaughey and directed by Mark Waters. I can’t give too much away but I’ll be part of a two man team making sure the photography aspect of the film (equipment, technology, authenticity, etc…) runs smoothly during filming.

This will be my first film experience. It’ll be interesting to see how a big production like this is put on and runs.

I recently got hired to work on a video project for a couple of tradeshow displays. This required me to extract some scenes from a DVD and then edit them into a montage for display on a loop.

Extracting the video from the DVD:

For this step you can use any number of available applications such as MactheRipper or DVDBackup which will give you all of the files from the disc in a VIDEO_TS folder.
Read more…