Digital Art and Space Blog
Reflections on Art, Computer Graphics, Photography, Space and Astronomy

Did you ever start out doing one thing and get distracted by something else? I was asked by the Adler Planetarium to teach a class about NASA’s Project Gemini - the frequently overlooked program wedged in between the Mercury and Apollo programs. I happily agreed. For more info about the class, see Gemini: Stepping Stone to the Moon (ST1).

As a part of preparing for the class, I went to the Adler armed with my Nikon D50 to take photographs of their “Return to the Moon” exhibit. The centerpiece of this exhibit is the Gemini 12 space capsule. This was the final mission of the Gemini program and carried James Lovell and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin into space for a mission that lasted just shy of four days.

The lighting in the exhibit area was low, especially in the room housing the Gemini 12 capsule and flash photography was discouraged. Fortunately I had the foresight to bring my tripod with me so steadiness for long exposures wasn’t a problem. However lighting did present another challenge in that the spacecraft was housed within a large glass exhibit case. On the wall opposite the case were some brightly lit quotes. Unfortunately I did not notice the reflection that these quotations created on the glass case at the time. Last weekend upon a closer review of the photographs I took of the capsule’s interior, I was dismayed to discover the presence of these “backwards” quotes in a number of my shots. Fortunately I had taken photographs from a number of different angles and a few managed to come out clean. But I digress.

The real purpose of this story is to highlight the synergy of the camera and the computer. Synergy is the combination of two or more elements in which the net effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects, or the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The marriage of the camera with digital image processing is one of the best examples of synergy that I can think of. I had always been interested in photography at an amateur level and I have worked with computer graphics off and on going back more than 20 years. It was my move from film to digital that renewed my interest in photography. Combining my love of computer graphics with the image capturing ability of the digital camera has led me in a new direction graphically speaking.

An example of this synergy is seen in the image used to illustrate this story. Titled “Spaceship Under Glass” I took the photo only to serve as a reference image of the Gemini capsule. Following my initial visual examination of the photo in Photoshop, my first thought was to just adjust the image to lighten the underside of the spacecraft. One thing led to another and before I knew it I had multiple adjustment layers and an image that was looking increasingly psychedelic. The true power of digital image processing is that it encourages experimentation.

One thing that I found very annoying in the original photograph was that the upper right quadrant of the glass case was obscured by a movie projection screen which was showing a movie about the Gemini mission. I could have cropped out the top of the image to get rid of it but that would have entailed cropping out all the lights as well and I was determined to keep them. Instead I resorted to a combination of the clone stamp tool, the healing brush tool, the eraser tool, and segments of the image copied to another layer and then blended in with the underlying layer to remove the intrusive movie screen. A companion screen was also present at the extreme left of the image. However, it only intruded over the background wall, rather than the glass case, and was easy to digitally “erase.” Note that the left portion of the photograph was cropped out of the version of the image shown here.

In summary, I began just wanting to use the photograph of the Gemini capsule as a simple illustration in the Open Office Impress presentation I was preparing. Instead of just making minor image corrections in Photoshop, I began a digital excursion that led me to an entirely unforeseen result. On the bright side, I suddenly found myself with the perfect title slide for my presentation along with some new image processing techniques under my belt.

Ad Astra, Jim

The current issue of Photolife magazine, November 2006, has an article by Freeman Patterson. Titled Thoughts on Photography, Freeman reflects on his career as a photographer while offering advice to those new to the field of photography. I was particularly struck by one quote:“If you have a boot fetish, photograph boots until you’re sick of them or until you become so good at it that footwear manufacturers and fashion houses come knocking on your door - be who you are!”

In essence Freeman is advising newbies to not only pursue their dream but to pursue their subject. Contrast this with a photographer who loves astronomy but instead photographs weddings because that is where the money is. Yes you have to make a living but love of what you’re doing can take you to a higher plane of understanding. If you love photographing boots, you will be more likely to explore all aspects of the subject and become quite familiar with the angles, lighting and texture and ultimately produce better photos of boots than someone with only a passing interest in the subject.

This same reasoning is true of me with respect to the Viking and Mars Global Surveyor missions to Mars. As a NASA JPL Solar System Ambassador, and prior to that as a speaker for the Chicago Society for Space Studies, I had created a number of presentations about Mars. But I chaffed at being limited to using the images that had been publicly released. To overcome this limitation I had to figure out how to process the raw image data myself. When I began processing the raw image data files, stored in the Planetary Data System or PDS format, from the Viking and Mars Global Surveyor missions several years ago it took me quite some time to come up with an efficient work flow and a methodology for processing the images. If my desire had been less I would have given up and resigned myself to using the MSSS and NASA publicly released pictures. My love of the subject and the desire to create my own renditions of Mars won out. You can see some of the pictures that I have created at my Mars Art Gallery web site.

To illustrate this story I decided to photograph one of my boots - a first. But rather than take just one photograph, I took two with slightly different focus and from slightly different angles. I then used Photoshop to merge the two pictures together. Layer blends, adjustment layers, selective blurring and sharpening were all used to create the final image (2200 x 1600 pixels).

For the digital photographer, photography should not be considered just mastery of the camera, but mastery of image processing software, like Photoshop, in order to create pictures impossible to obtain from the camera alone.

Ad Astra, Jim

Yes that is me in the picture. You can click it to see a larger version if you like. I needed a photograph of myself for inclusion in the 2006 International Space Development Conference Space Art Track Programming Guide. To get the picture, I set up my digital camera on a tripod and took a photo of myself sitting in my office chair. With the magic of Photoshop, I erased my office background from the picture. I then used Photoshop to create a separate picture of an astronomical scene to use as a background. I then merged the two pictures together and scaled them down to the required size. Creating my picture for the program guide in this manner served two purposes. First, it was the opportunity to create a distinctive portrait for the program guide and second it was to give me one more excuse to experiment in Photoshop, which is my preferred image editor.

Too bad my night sky doesn’t really look like what is shown in the picture but living in a Chicago suburb - our night sky consists of a bland orange background and a handful of stars. Well that’s not really true for the suburbs but take a trip to downtown Chicago and look up: you’ll see what I mean. Who knows, if all the world’s skies were as bad as Chicago’s, we’d probably still believe that ours was the only galaxy and the heliocentric model would be alive and well.

Ad Astra, Jim