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In addition to exploring astrophotography as a form of fine-art photography, I am also interested in experimenting with astrophotography-based videos. For me, astrophotography evokes feelings of wonder, mystery, and drama. When I blend astrophotography with music I find that I can intensify and heighten those feelings. Here is a link to a 2 ½ minute video that I recently produced. It combines my astrophotography, camera movement, and the music of Johann Johannsson. https://www.garylopezphotography.com/videos I know there are some musicians and film makers in the Fine-Art Astrophotography group. Let’s explore what we can produce. |
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| Absolutely superb! Definitely an area I am working toward. Keep up the great work! |
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| Super video, Gary, with some stunning content |
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| Mind blowing |
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Splendid Gary ! This way of presenting astrophotography can really generate a feeling of immersion into the scene (which is the Universe !). It reminds me of the cosmic scenes in Terrence Malick's film "The Tree of Life" (probably you have seen it?). Your opening up of the fine-art astrophotography topic has really been very intellectually stimulating for me and I thought a lot these days how can we integrate our passion into the art world. It helped me crystallise and clarify my ideas about what I try to do. So I hope I'll be able to make some progress with my next projects. Since you interacted with the fine-art community, I was wondering how do the 'classical photography' artists see astrophotography ? And the video presentation opens up really interesting possibilities and it can now interact with the film realm - the ramifications are indeed complex, but also fascinating. Best regards Bogdan |
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Jeff Ball: Thank you very much, Jeff. CS, Gary |
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DustSpeakers: Thank you, DustSpeakers. I wish you clear skies. Gary |
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Mind blowing Thank you, urmymuse. I figured that with your background in music, this use of astrophotography would be perfect for you. Yes? |
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Bogdan Borz: I have seen The Tree of Life, Bogdan. I found it a powerful, moving experience. The composer of the film score, Alexandre Desplat, is one of my favorites. He also wrote the music for The Shape of Water. I am delighted and excited to hear that viewing this video has crystallized your consideration of the direction of your astrophotography. Bogdan Borz: [quote="Bogdan Borz"] Much of my regular interaction with the photography community here in Monterey is with Image Makers, a group of photographers with deep roots in the work of Edward and Brett Weston. Second and Third generation Westons are active members. Needless to say, classic modern photography ("Straight Photography") is appreciated. That said, there are members that are pushing the edges of creative photographic expression. The membership has been very supportive of my astrophotography offerings and have helped guide my exploration. I am sensing that is a new generation, Millennials and more, that gravitate toward artistic astrophotography. I believe that the time is now for exploring astrophotography as a fine art form. |
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@Gary and all, Just wondering if you have seen the 3D "fly though" etc. work by J-P METSAVAINIO? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZz9Com0piE https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/amazing-astrophotography-lets-you-see-nebulae-in-3d-25351639/ https://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/ Beautiful and amazing stuff, but he has not shared the actual details of creation (only at a very high level, at least not enough for me to follow). There was a long video with music shown at the last AIC. |
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Glenn C Newell: Hi Glenn, Yes, I am familiar with J-P's work. He posted at Astrobin until about 2015. I stumbled across his imagery in 2017 when I joined Astrobin. His work is wonderful. Some of the processes that have become staples of amateur astrophotography, such as Tone Mapping, were invented by J-P. I was going to reach out to him and Sara Wager, two legendary astrophotographer with artistically beautiful work. I am hoping they can join and contribute to our exploration. |
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Glenn C Newell: Based on the ideas presented by JP and ideas presented in Chris Woodhouse's book "The Astrophotography Manual" (pp. 356-61), I was able to create this: https://astrob.in/340905/0/ It's not as good as JP's work because I didn't use a volumetric model for the nebula like he does. I just used over a hundred layers of 2d data. I have tried to get myself to create more, but the way I did it was so time-intensive that I haven't gotten around to it. Although I do have some data that I think would lend itself well to this treatment. Here was my workflow (this again may be too high level, but if you need any assistance, I would be happy to help): Prep In PixInsight: ImageSolver (under Scripts->Utilities)Solve the image in PixInsight. If you have trouble, make sure all the info like pixel scale, and focal length are correct. AnnotateImage (under Scripts->Render)Annotate the image with named stars, hipparcos, and tycho catalogsTurn on grid and tweak to taste. Create image and text file (“write objects to text” from this dialog) Data wrangling In Excel: Open the text file from PI in excel and use the import options to get everything into columns Visit VizieR and download the Tycho and Hipparcos star catalogs Make a formula to match the catalog numbers and grab the parallax data from the VizieR download. I also grabbed the stellar classification info which was good to double-check star color, etc. Alternatively, use Stellarium, Sky Safari or other full-featured planetarium to look up distance info for the stars. Manipulating the Photo to prep for 3D in Photoshop: Separate out and label the stars with stellar distances This step takes forever! Open the original image and the annotated image in layers. Start with the top left star. Separate it by cutting it out of the image, filling it in with fill->content-aware and then “paste in place” on a new layer, name that layer with the distance in light years from spreadsheet, and name of star.Repeat hundreds of times. (I did not do every star, but did do most of the bright ones, where I could make it out any color information, and I had parallax data for). Separate out bright and dim parts of the nebula and put those on their own layers as well. Make slightly fuzzy selections. Finish prepping photoshop file. There should be a sky background layer, nebula layers, and many star layers, any unnamed stars should go on their own layer with transparency too. Save as PSD. Animating the prepped PSD Open PSD in After Effects as “composition” and retain layer sizes. Select all PSD layers in After Effects, and click on the 3D column to make them 3D layers. On each layer, click “P” (for position) and add the distance (in layer name) to the Z-value (they will all start at 0). If anything in the nebula, looks weird, change the opacity (“T”) until it blends a bit better.Add a camera (Layer->New->Camera), and keyframe the “Z” position of the camera over a few seconds. I think I also changed some of the other camera properties like “zoom” until it looked right. For some reason, everything got flipped (L to R), so I also flipped it back to proper orientation at this point. Render a video, I was still working at high quality (4k) at this point. The nebula looks a bit weird since there is no volumetric data, but I knew I was going to downsample to make the gif. Open video in PhotoshopExport->Save for WebGif, loop forever, perceptual, 256 colors, dither at 85%, change size, everything else full quality Upload Gif to astrobin |
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Awesome. Thanks so much for the detailed explanation! Wish we could find an amateur astroimager who does animations with blender or similar as a day job! |
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| Yes, that would be great! I would love to really learn Blender. I've done the basics, but I really would like to be fluent in it like I am with Photoshop. |
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Maybe a little off topic, not fine art but astrophotography combined with some planetarium scripting for public outreach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4NC-cANE0E 16 minute demo with a verbal description at the end. |
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Nico Carver: That is so cool, Nico. I remember when you posted that fly through a couple of years ago. It was mind blowing then and still is. Thanks for posting your detailed work flow. Man, that is labor intensive, but it turned out great. CS, Gary |
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Check it out: https://salmonick-atelier.com/ Simulated Nebulae 3D animations. |
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| Holly wow!. That is incredibly cool looking. Any chance we can create a similar 3D fly-through with an real photo (or series of photos) of an nebula? |
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Glenn C Newell:Stunning! |
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Your initial video Gary is the kind of work I intend to do more of. Music and motion enhance great visuals so much, both for our own satisfaction and maybe even more to share with others. One question I would like to ask to all is « what kind of music / which composers / artists do you find are particularly fit to pair with astrophotography? Any idea about this @Steeve Body ? |
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Thank you for your kind words, Emmanuel. As I listen to music, I occasionally hear a composition that strikes me as a candidate for one of my videos. I keep a catalog of compositions and review them when I am producing a new video. There are many, many composers that are in my catalog, and I will also reach out to friends that write film scores for help. A composer who work I have recently used is Helen Jane Long. Her composition, Porcelain, was a perfect accompaniment for the pace and mood I was striving to create. Here is a link to that video, Tales Told By Ancient Light. https://www.garylopezphotography.com/copy-of-video-my-view-of-the-galaxy CS, Gary |
