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Produced by Billy Newman and Marina Hansen
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0:14
Hello, and thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast.
0:23
My name is Billy Newman. I’m a photographer based in Oregon, I do a lot of landscape work. And this image was taken in California on a trip that we did to Mount Shasta to the east side of Mount Shasta. It was just kind of a really cool spot. It’s kind of interesting near the town of Mount Shasta near the town of McLeod, if I remember right, there’s a lot of good stuff over there a lot of good camping too. There’s a lot of, I think it was the Shasta Trinity national forest that stretches out over there. So there’s a lot of public land that that’s developed enough and accessible for for a number of things you can do for summer recreation, it was pretty cool. I remember going up to a lookout tower up there, checking out some stuff, I think there’s a fire lookout tower, some old timer was up there too. But this image was taken on government camp road in the evening as the sun was setting and this is kind of looking up to the I guess it’s the East face of Mount Shasta on the east side. And it’s a really beautiful spot but I kind of love the angle of it there kind of the sweep that the mountain had. And I tried as hard as I could to sort of to sort of square that up the way I wanted and match that up with the trees and the grass and the shadows and get some of those towns but this was shot on that nav film camera, some of my best images from one of the cheapest, most just common cameras that are out there. Really cool stuff and I love that I got it. It was really fun. reminds me a lot of great stuff from that trip school.
1:54
You can see more of my work at Billy Newman photo comm you can check out some of my photo books on Amazon. And then you look at Billy Newman under the authors section there and see some of the photo books on film on the desert, on surrealism on camping and cool stuff over there. We did like a bunch of traveling and we recorded a bunch of stuff which was pretty cool it was kind of a special project so that’s what we’re gonna be talking about today. Brooke Marina what kind of special work were we doing? It was
2:27
super cool. We were doing some 360 video and photo recording
2:33
and it was really cool Yeah, it was really interesting doing that I did like a little bit of a podcast talking about the idea 360 video and some of the GoPro fusion stuff but yeah, it was really interesting having the GoPro fusion for for a week we rented it and we went around and we shot like a bunch of footage all over Oregon and a whole lot of different spots of similar like the natural areas that we’ve been where we’ve had like the the just it’s probably like the more high profile locations for landscapes and a lot of the areas in Oregon so it was really cool getting to run around and maybe be some of the first people to shoot some high end or higher quality 360 footage in those areas.
3:13
Yeah, I think so definitely. I think there’s some of the spots we got to the thing I really see many regular photos from
3:19
yeah not many people really go there in the first place. Yeah, and really some of those locations were incredibly beautiful like I was thinking about I think about like sisters rock that we did at the end that that evening was just so cool but just the the way that the 360 video virtualizes is really interesting to look at it it’s kind of a neat kind of optical effect when you know you get to look out and you get to kind of turn your head and see just sort of the the field of view that you would see if you were experiencing the place if you’re traveling there but it’s really fun to get to see especially in certain locations you know where you really get to turn your head and see different aspects to the environment that are going on. Yeah there’s something going on
3:58
yeah, it was it’s really cool what a great job we the GoPro camera does yeah just with the quality of it looks so real and so beautiful
4:09
yeah I was really interested in that and how it was going to do but but yeah the GoPro fusion is I think the the newest offering from the GoPro camera company and and you know they have they have the regular you know, two dimensional system still too but but the three 3d six system is really interesting. It’s not through sight. It’s not 3d, but it’s a 360 degree spherical image that’s what I was talking about an equo rectilinear image that stitch together from two cameras that record 180 degrees of your field of vision and then that’s brought into the computer and stitched with a special software the fusion Studio software and it’s really interesting how it works but I think all this is really pretty new if I understood right from from like the the invoice and what I understand about GoPros these cameras really have just come out I think it was it was more marked as the like the innovative product of the year at CES this year. So that back in January is kind of pre announced. And I went, you know, once some more now it’s interesting, but but I think is really just come out for release in April now. And then so we’re probably some of the first people to even rent it from this company that has it available. So it’s cool. Yeah, last couple weeks of May, and yeah, trying some of the new technology out, but the GoPro fusion is probably the most adapt 360 camera that’s available for consumer use right now. I think there was the other camera, the ryla, which is a 360 degree camera that also has some of the video gimbal stuff that the GoPro has. But really, I think the GoPro is higher end. And there’s, it seems like, every time I’ve not used the GoPro system, I’ve had a little bit more trouble, but I was really impressed with how it works, that’s really the only 360 system I’ve used. There’s also the theta camera built by Rico, that does 4k video. And that’s a little bit less expensive. I think that’s been out for a couple years. But um, but I don’t think that’s the gimbal system, you missed the stepping, kind of image stabilization. Man, that
6:08
made a huge difference for videos, we were able to watch them, I guess you can preview them on your phone with an app. Yeah, just from directly from the camera. And it looks awesome. But you can see the motion for the stepping and stuff a little bit. And it’s cool when you process it through computer and see the the effects of everything,
6:35
the full stabilization is really impressive. And it really makes it possible to have like a walking or moving video and 360. And I think I think otherwise given given like the change in access that would happen. You know, like as the camera moves through the 3d field and its Z axis changes are you kind of spin the camera a little bit, then it kind of throws the rest of the axis off is how it would be without stabilization. But with stabilization, you really virtualized in that location, and you kind of independent from the movement of the camera, which is what’s really amazing about the way that it’s able to do some of the recording, which really gives you a much more immersive feel when you’re watching the video because you can move the camera independent of any kind of jerky motion that the camera recording had in it, which really makes possible for for videos that are moving, I think otherwise, it would almost be nauseating to have video that was moving unless it was on some other kind of gimbal system. Yeah, that’s why probably you’ve really seen only only like kind of standstill videos up into this point that are related to 360 video. And what’s really cool about the GoPro 360 is that it really provides you so much opportunity to do moving videos that look really good in this 360 immersive environment in 5.2k. So like when we’re compressing down to 4k, it’s cool, but oh my goodness, does it take forever on this laptop?
7:58
Yeah, does rendering take so long?
8:00
Yeah, so we had to go in overnight. So it’s not a bad I have a MacBook Pro. It’s like a it’s a couple years old now. But there’s really not I mean, there’s a few improvements in the MacBook Pro line, but not that many in that would have had other problems if I had upgraded anyway, but this one isn’t like the top of the line, but it means it’s capable. But the graphics card I guess in a laptop really crushes through fine in HD video and anything else that I’ve thrown at it to do editing and Final Cut, it’s amazingly fast compared to the video editing system I would have had like in high school or college or something like that. So I’m impressed with what I can do. But I upgraded the final upgraded Final Cut 10.4 which is the version that can handle some of the 360 footage. I also installed the GoPro fusion studio app and really, it’s the process of stitching the video together that takes the longest time so they’re enormous files to start with. I think just over the weekend we recorded like 200 gigabytes of files that we put into the onto the drive. Yeah, was a huge amount. Yeah. And then so those have that’s just before anything’s done with it. So I guess it’s you know, it’s a higher quality video, but that then has to be stitched together into an even larger file. And then that has to be brought into your editor and then compressed or edited or rendered together. So all that takes a ton of time. So but rendering the stitching is what seems to take the longest amount of time. And I guess we had to go on all night. I think we got in minutes, let’s say maybe six minutes of video for about eight hours of rendering, something like that, but it’s a lot of rendering time just for this little computer and you can see it going I have this this program this like I stat monitor program that shows you like what some of your system components are running at but it’s just kind of paying my my graphics system on this laptop. And so I hear that you really have to have a ton of horse better power to get through a lot of the 360 video. Maybe that’s some of this stuff you would win here too but I have to. You have to really that’s really where having like a higher capable Computers is where you see an advantage of doing this level of rendering.
10:05
Yeah, my laptop can’t even handle what we’re trying to do, you need
10:09
minimum eight gigabytes of RAM. And then it helps to have an SSD so you can pull the video through faster, something like that. And then you have to have a dedicated graphics card. I believe in the system and it any gotcha even with a pretty modern system. It is extremely slow versus, you know, a lot of other kind of editing rendering system that exists right now. But I think it’s like, one frame a second. So if you think of like, videos, 30 frames a second, I think it’s rendering one frame out a second when I guess 360 degree spherical frame, or, you know, equo rectilinear that were that we were learning a little bit about. So after it stitches it together and makes that echo rectilinear image of the to 180s sort of mapped onto our rectangle. Really interesting as doing it. It’s fascinating to go through all this stuff. It’s really fun to working with the GoPro camera stuff. But so yeah, this weekend, we did like a bunch of travel stuff to try and produce some videos and photos and kind of make like a portfolio for some of our 360 stuff. So we traveled. Where was the first place we went, we went to like, say Hailey falls.
11:17
Yeah. It’s cool. It’s beautiful. It was our second time being there. But our first time was just a few days before that. So it was a nice spot to us, which is cool. Yeah. It’s long the Mackenzie River. And it’s a really beautiful place. It’s a waterfall just right off the trail. And it’s cool because you can climb down from the trail. There’s a kind of self made trail from I think people. Fourth down there. Yeah. But it’s really cool. Just the big waterfall and it kind of goes into a river that drops off and to another little tiny waterfall. I don’t know, if you count as waterfall. It’s a waterfall.
12:00
It’s, it’s really cool. I like I like the way that that looked. And it was interesting kind of learning from that it’s kind of a composition experience with 360 video, or for making a 360 images sort of being in the bowl of the action, right seems to be kind of an interesting way to produce it, where you have something to look at, let’s say if you’re mapping it onto the face of a clock, you have something to look at at your 12 o’clock, but also something to look at your six o’clock so that there’s a reason to sort of, sort of pan and move the camera in the frame of the field around.
12:31
Yeah, it’s a 360 photo or video. So the point is that you look in every direction. Yeah, you really have to produce it for that. Yeah, there has to be something interesting.
12:42
Yeah, that was interesting about looking at a lot of the, let’s say the viewpoints that I set up for, let’s say the, you know, the perspective that would be taken for a photograph, let’s say that, and those really don’t seem to work very well for composing these 360 images. So I guess that’s kind of the tip of the thing that I learned pretty quickly as we’re trying to put it together, like you can’t be back up against the trail or back up against the road or something like that, that kind of view out toward whatever the subject is, let’s say that waterfall in this case, because really what you experienced most of is 180 degrees of just to trail and dirt and trees, and things that aren’t really that that interesting visually to look at. So it’s interesting trying to try to mediate all of those different angles that you could look at in a 360 degree view, which is where you really have to think about the method in which you’re composing the image a lot to put yourself in a position where there’s something pretty at all angles of view that you have isn’t it difficult to think you know, like photography, you just have to try and worry about getting getting just that little bit to look good in composition but in 360 you have to think about every every field of every part of the field of view.
13:49
Yeah is a fun and interesting additional thing to think about was composing something that’s like visual media.
13:58
It is really fun, but it’s a challenge or it’s not as it’s just a different type of perspective of trying to think of something that looks good you know, something that while I was like looking at 360 video a lot of people don’t seem to notice that part of it yet.
14:12
Right below they’ll be like a background that’s just a driveway or parking lot.
14:17
Yeah, yeah, something like that where we’re so that’s what I’m seeing, like some of the successful the successful arms a 360 video are bringing you into an immersion of it. And of course, you know, of course, that’s what you do. But so it was interesting going through and trying to produce some of that in this way. But even with like some of the company videos that I did, like trying to walk through and do like a tour of a retail location. That was kind of interesting to do where you know, instead of maybe skirting the side of the building or something, but you just kind of walk right through. But it’s interesting where you can, you can have the view 360 degrees around you. So you’re really trying to like build an environment where you get to see the perspective is cool. So we went to say Haley falls, we walked the trail around there, which is a place also where I learned In the same lesson about composition, where the trail is beautiful, out toward the river, or out toward a lot of angles, but then the trail is also not that it’s also kind of just a lot of work, a lot of broken pieces, a lot of a lot of wood and branches and things that aren’t really the forest and its beauty. So it’s interesting to see that,
15:17
yeah, when you’re using it, you really do notice pretty quickly, what is not visually interesting or attractive, where you
15:25
just you see all the places around you, you would not take a picture of, yeah, well, I wouldn’t take a picture of that, or that or that or that. But that’s all in the picture now. So. So it’s interesting to kind of consider that sort of stuff. But that’s really the the challenge, I guess, in trying to do storytelling, or composition in photography for 360. But it’s but it’s also possible to like, right, like, what we were saying we found is getting to that center position, like an area with a creek and a waterfall, is really kind of naturally conducive to being compositionally interesting. For some type of 360 VR content, we have semi static but comprehensible landscape that you’re surrounded by. And then a waterfall, it’s sort of a natural position where you’re going to have a geographical bowl, where you’re sort of set in with it, it’s also going to be green around all of your angles, you know, it’s blowing water up, and it’s sort of making everything green. And then you have like the creek that flows out from that, that’s another piece of motion that you get to look at. So all of this kind of pieces sort of work together where you can look up and see like the forest and stuff around you. So that was a really pretty way to shoot that. And it’s a really interesting way to kind of look at and visualize what was there and it’s fun to see, you know, after we do like, well, this is like, this is like what it was when I was there. So it’s really fun. But yeah, I like doing the hike stuff along the river there too. I also like the photos that we got from it there. I was talking about that some of the images just still images that we took. Yeah, of course. Yeah, there’s beautiful area. So just you know, obviously like still liking to take pictures. It was really fun to take photos. Yeah. Well, you know, spring snow melt is so crystal clear right now that the water just looks blue. Light lumen aluminum blue to school.
17:09
Yeah, it was really beautiful. Water was really blue. And it was so clear. You could see all of the rocks. And a lot of the rocks had like moss on them. I guess it was green underneath the blue water. And it was really pretty.
17:23
Yeah. Yeah, that was a beautiful spot. So that kind of the Mackenzie’s always been really interesting. And I think they’re on the McKenzie on. And then I think it’s, well actually, what is it the maybe the calapooia the citm I don’t know the one that goes out from like, like Corvallis, Albany, that one’s really nice to err in, it’s like really mossy, and like, I just looks foresty that sort of thing looks kinda like a rain forest that most than some of the spots. But yeah, it’s beautiful about getting up there. So we traveled there, we went up, kind of in the cascade area, route to a bunch of spots.
18:04
You can check out more information at Billy Newman photo comm you can go to Billy Newman photo.com Ford slash support. If you want to help me out and participate in the value for value model that we’re running this podcast with. If you receive some value out of some of the stuff that I was talking about, you’re welcome to help me out and send some value my way through the portal at Billy Newman photo comm forward slash support, you can also find more information there about Patreon and the way that I use it if you’re interested. Or if you’re more comfortable using Patreon that’s patreon.com forward slash Billy Newman photo.
18:44
Data Management stuff that maybe we can talk about some other time. Like how to use hard drives, how many you need, how many backups you need, how to like re archive stuff, and probably just talk about like the Trump like because they’re not experts. But just the trouble that we have of trying to sort out the hard drives that we have. And like where the data is, do we have duplicates of it? Like I think you were talking about that today of the duplicates that you have in files in the archive?
19:09
Yeah, I’ve been putting together I’m also trying to get in shape for 2018 my photo work for that year. So I’ve been putting together an archive of all my stuff. And yeah, I’m at that point where I really just have to weed out all the duplicates. But I have so many things.
19:25
Yeah, yeah, I’m definitely there to where there’s so many different little parts of files that have been made from the original RAW file that was taken like the original photograph. There’s so many derivatives of that that have come out of it over over time, especially if it was a photo that I like that I ranked highly, you know, and then I’d already exported there’s already copies of that as a JPEG, or some other like smaller web sized die.
19:48
I have a lot of different sizes. Yeah,
19:50
and that’s the one that I’m trying to get through right now. I’m going to try and go through this catalog. And I’m going to try and sort it out so that I pull like the top few factors. And photos of the last decade, that are the raw files that I really want to be able to work on and get access to, or make new versions over prints over something, whatever that might be. But I just have access to kind of quickly or you know, like, Oh, yeah, these are all the memories that I’m really after. I want those best versions of the files available to me. But a lot of us are noticing that, like, it’s really difficult to get to that, given like the current archive structure that I have, where it’s just all 100,000 photos that I have, yeah, I can’t really get the stuff in the way that I need to. So I’m going to try and like figure that out where it’s all the best stuff that I want to have with me, right now everything gets archived to the cloud, or to some some cold storage thing, or, you know, to some old hard drive that gets shut off or something but some some place where we get like everything stored there. And then really just like the last like year, or 18 months or so, and like the next six months or so is what I want to be able to, like keep on the harddrive that I’m working on. But we should talk about more like hard drive data stuff. As the year comes in a little bit closer.
21:01
Yeah, I know we’re planning on, or we’re kind of in the process of changing around our hard drives are set up for stuff.
21:11
Yeah, we’re trying to get I think a little bit bigger stuff because like right now I have a four terabyte hard drive here. That’s the one that plugs in. And that one’s been great for, like doing some storage stuff. But now like, you know, like the data rates, they just the cost comes down so much that you’re able to get a really large size, large capacity, hard drive for not much money. And I think the like the the cost of that is a lot better than some of the cloud storage stuff. And just some of the efforts of trying to put something in the cloud, and then trying to pay to keep it there year after year after year. I’m really looking for a lot of these things that aren’t really super important or super high priority to be able to put in some kind of cold storage thing like this, like what we’re talking about, where we have a backup of it on a hard drive. That’s kind of put aside that we don’t have to worry about too much. But kind of like what we noticed. I think like what one of those burned out cables, it’s in the trash right now. Is a signal a signal of is that hard drives go bad sometimes like that hard drive, that we had that portable one where burned out at the USB port,
22:08
right? It’s terrible. Yeah, yeah. There’s nothing on it.
22:12
Yeah. So that Well, yeah. And yeah, there’s nothing not backed up. So yeah, that’s the thing is that there’s a back so it would be terrible if you know, one of these hard drives went where it was the like the soul, the soul House of all of the data that we have, especially like all like the decade of photographs that we made and stuff. So I’m really trying to be conscious of trying to keep those in multiple places at the same time. So we’ve done an effort to put those up on the on like a cloud storage service, which has been okay. But I think it’s like, oh, it’s not the best version of those files. I understand, right? It’s like a JPEG version. There’s a few limitations around it, if I understood, right, but it’s, it’s okay, then we’ll try and put a bunch of stuff up on the prime photos service like that. I was
22:57
gonna ask which, which services you’re using right now?
23:00
Yeah. But amazon prime cloud services is what I’m trying to use for the photo storage. And they have like unlimited photo photo uploads for a lot of stuff. And we put up a lot of stuff on that. But you kind of keep, you have to make it current. So there’s all the stuff from 2016 and 2017. That wasn’t really part of that. And so I need to upload all of that content. I’ve been in the cloud.
23:23
Sure, yeah, you just have to keep, keep adding to it. Yeah, I have to keep
23:27
that to keep some of the stuff synced. And I think he was still there’s there’s a lot of gaps within like 2015, and 14. And it’s all just stuff that we can file ourselves. But but so that didn’t make it up originally. And so now that I have like this, this like new catalog, like so what I would say before I get out of myself, what I did this weekend is that I took the hard drives had this one terabyte hard drive that I use is like my portable drive that’s like my storage and stuff like the tank that I have with my laptop when I’m in my bag out on the road. And then as all my photos on it, and it’s really just a copy of like the whole photo archive for a long time. But what I’ve been wanting to do is update that for 2017. And take every photograph, I have every JPEG DNG file and any RAW file or photo file that I have on my computer on any amount of drives, I want to try and condense that down into one set of files that are organized in some way. And so I wanted to use Lightroom to do that since Lightroom in its back and when it when it brings in files, it’ll bring in files from one hard drive and then write them into a new file architecture on another hard drive. And so I tried to take a try to take everything and I backed it up into the four terabyte hard drive. And then I brought everything back over and I filtered it through Lightroom so that I could get everything put into a new file architecture that matched by by like month and date and year of the file date and most most of the metadata is correct or like you know, Marina like a lot of the metadata for whatever weird camera whatever set of film that we had that was scanned by some computer Never had its clock set, and still says 2002. There’s all sorts of stuff that has the wrong metadata date, where it shows up like when my d3 is battery diamond and said it was 2007 in February again, because I was the first date that that computer knew in that camera. And it just reverted to that date again.
25:20
So first,
25:22
so it’s Miss it’s misstated, but it’s really fine for most cases. So I was able to bring all this photos back over, I put a new collection together, I was about 500 gigabytes or so. And then I was able to transfer that back over to the, to the larger drive. And then the plan is to wipe the go drive, the one that I have with me all the time. And and then bring back over like I was talking about at the beginning, like the top few 1000 photos, and then everything that I’m kind of currently working on for this year. And last year, so there goes a huge Bang, bang, bang, bang sounds like hammers on a pipe, it really does every time is exactly what it sounds I never used to like when it comes into in the fall, and they’ll start popping. It’s pretty funny all through the winter, all through spring. styling is like in the 70s. late May. But, but yeah, so we’re trying to do like this collection of archiving all these photos and trying to organize it together. And it’s been a fine process so far, but like trying to get your hard drive straightened out, especially when you’re a little short on space, because you sort of wait until you start to organize your harddrive until, until you’re running low on space and you’re like Oh man, I gotta do something, I gotta move these files around so I can kind of get by so and that’s what I was running into problems with to where like every hard drive was starting to get falling and go, Oh man, I gotta get like a new hard drive. And like we were just talking about hard drives go bad, especially portable ones, especially these spinning disk drives like the mac book I have now that’s an SSD, the solid state systems are going to last a lot longer than the spinning disk disk mechanisms because that magnetic spinning disk plate is going to mechanically fail after some number of miles of revolutions that it makes that the motor does that the solid state system has the advantage because there’s no moving parts, it’s just electricity. And so it’s really conceivable that there’s really no finite point that that drive will fail. Like most thumb drives or something optical media, it’s kind of like thought that that’s gonna burn out after 20 or 30 years, you’re not really even going to be able to use the disk as it’s stored unless it’s stored like a good condition. But thumb drives and other like solid state media. If if the ROM doesn’t lose whatever data was on it, it’s likely that you know it’s still be readable if it was damaged. So it’s kind of interesting, like how
27:43
different types of interesting and what’s not. Yeah, this guy.
27:51
Thanks a lot for checking out this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast. Hope you guys check out some stuff on Billy Newman photo.com few new things up there some stuff on the homepage and good links to other other outbound sources. some links to books and links to some podcasts like this a blog posts are pretty cool. Yeah, check it out at Billy new minnesota.com. Thanks a lot for listening to this episode and the back end