360 Video – Billy Newman Photo Podcast
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I am Billy Newman, a photographer and creative director that has served clients in the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii for 10 years. I am an author, digital publisher, and Oregon travel guide. I have worked with businesses and individuals to create a portfolio of commercial photography. The images have been placed within billboard, print, and digital campaigns including Travel Oregon, Airbnb, Chevrolet and Guaranty RV.
My photographs often incorporate outdoor landscape environments with strong elements of light, weather, and sky. Through my work, I have published several books of photographs that further explore my connection to natural places.
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This episode of the Billy Newman photo podcast for May 21, 2018. My name is Billy Newman, you can find more of my work at Billy Newman photo.com. You can also see some more at Billy Newman on Instagram, if you’d like to check that out, I’m trying to put up some more, some more content up on Facebook, I’m interested in trying to check out some more videos to I’m going to see if I can try and bolster up my YouTube page, try and put some new things up there for for 2018. But I thought I’d try and do a quick podcast today and try and put down some of my thoughts about some of the things that have been going on. Recently, you know, just this last week, I thought I’d give just a little update about it outside of photo news, but I just had the sixth anniversary of the Kelly Christianson Memorial Scholarship, which is a scholarship that that I worked on with a couple other people. I guess now six years ago back in what was it 2013, after, after an old high school teacher and my dad passed away. And so we put together a Memorial Scholarship to support students and staff at our old high school. And it was great. We just had our sixth scholarship evening where we gave out a little bit of money for a scholarship to somebody who’s going to university next year. So it was pretty exciting. But it’s kind of cool. And I’m really happy that we got to we got to kind of participate in that again this year. And yeah, it’s just another one of those, I guess kind of positive things that have sort of come to pass. So it was cool that some people that helped out trying to put that together and yeah, it’s pretty neat. It’s cool that I don’t know we’re giving a little bit back. I guess we’ve been doing it for six years now. We’re going on seven, which is which is quite a bit more than I was ever even at my high school. Um, so it’s a it’s kind of fun moving through. But But yeah, this weekend, I guess we would offer that. If you are interested in any of that, you can check out Christiansen scholarship.org. But moving on from some of that stuff. This weekend, I did a photo trip up. Well, I guess it was really just hiking and just kind of exploring, you know, but it’s really, I guess, well, the best part of it. You know, you’re in town and you want to get out on a Saturday drive or a Sunday drive or an evening drive now that the sunset,
or you know, the skies bright up until I don’t know, what is it like, nearly eight o’clock or
so now. So that’s pretty cool. I’m pretty happy about that part of it. But But yeah, so we went up to the Mackenzie River. So we went up highway 126 out of Eugene. And we passed Mackenzie bridge and took the corner went up a little way. So I think we stopped it like this A Haley falls area, which is really it’s nice, especially right now a lot of the snow is melted, you know, we’re kind of moving into late May and June. And so a lot of the snow up in the mountain range is definitely melted out by now. And there’s a lot of those trails that are opened up, especially along the Mackenzie River. But it’s a really beautiful, really lush, well forested area up there in the Cascade foothills. And so it was fun jumping up into the Mackenzie River area hiking on the trails for a while. And really man, it’s amazing to see just how blue and how crystal clear that the water is, especially this early section of the or the the early part of the season where there’s a lot of freshwater coming down out of the mountains, there’s just, there’s just so much the water, the rapids are just so crystal clear, with like a blue-green kind of hue to the water. So that was fine. It was it was nice getting up there and to try and take some pictures for a while, but we were up there. I think through a good part of the afternoon, it kind of sparked my interest that was sort of a nearby location that I should try and spend some more time, get up to the Mackenzie River, the upper Mackenzie River area, and see if there’s some interesting stuff I can explore up there. But a little additionally to that I was looking at some of the River Outfitters that are out there. And I was thinking, man, I know I should really take a chance and I should jump on one of these. These like river day trips that they have that go down the Mackenzie since it’s really a section of the river. I’ve never been on the Mackenzie River or the quad or the Clackamas, or really a lot of these other These are their bodies of water that are up here in Northern Oregon. And really as rafting goes, I’ve only done some stuff in Southern Oregon. So I was thinking about me I should really try and put in some time on the Mackenzie River just given how how interesting it is how I think really a lot of times it’s it’s kind of considered one of the world-class one of the world-class rivers to do a float on or to go hiking on so it’s really beautiful out there but it was fun jumping up to the Mackenzie River and checking some stuff out. I think this time of year in May, it’s really starting to come out it’s really starting to pop a bit more as we’re moving into spring and moving into summer on some of these nicer days. But But yeah, it’s really beautiful stuff up there. And and then putting up some more photos from like a commercial tulip shoot that I did a while back. And I’m really glad I got to work on that. I thought that was pretty fun. I did it for a job here at work where we had to get some marketing material for some motorhome so we got a really, really nice motor on we hadn’t driven up to the tulip farm, which is at the wooden shoe. What is the wooden shoe tulip farm the season’s over, and now I think it’s kind of moved on. But for a while yeah while there was the the tulips grow and this was what like late April or so we hit just a really beautiful nice day and got a motorhome and a truck and trailer up there and spent the evening photographing it as the light was changing we spent photographing against Mount Hood in the background which those photos turned out really cool I was really happy about that. And then also spend some time photographing the motorhome the this this new Marvin Tron it’s like a half-million dollars to get a motorhome like this, but it was cool putting it up in the field and kind of laying it out as a landscape, you know, against the, the bright, colorful, red tulips and you know, different colored roses and tulips. So it was fun working on something like that. There’s a lot of variables and shoots like that, but But yeah, that kind of commercial shoot stuff I really like I really like them, most probably are close to the mouse, I don’t know, I like I like kind of the simpler. Well, I do like having some kind of structured event to sort of put in front of the camera. You know, like there’s these landscapes which are great, where it’s just that kind of pristine wilderness that you take a photo of, and I really like trying to capture that but but more than that I really like kind of put some kind of object or some kind of subject in the photograph. So what I’m learning now a little bit so as rudimentary Is this something like like a cool motorhome and a picture, at least for a commercial picture where it’s trying to market motorhomes. That’s kind of the idea instead of just just the flat horizon line ahead of you. I like trying to learn more about how to put something interesting in there that sort of the the draw the attention, but it was cool working on that, that tool, that photoshoot. One thing that I learned on that tulip photoshoot, though, was that I spent a lot of the time working with the Sony a seminar and I talked about in this podcast maybe last summer, when I was getting the seminar that it was a really cool camera, it’s interesting, I like shooting with it. I like the high quality sensor that it has and the ability that it has to shoot low light, but there’s this there’s a select number of things that are really inadequate about the way that that camera performs technically, and, and just given that it’s a camera from what 2012 2013 it’s, it’s just technically not as proficient as maybe it would have been
at its time or run or something like that. But, but I think suffice it to say, I think I’m gonna sell that camera body, I’m gonna try and move on to something else. And it’s just sort of not for any personal or particular reason. Other than that, professionally, it isn’t working adequately as a tool right now for me. So that’s a big thought about what I need to work on. But, but I guess like a little more than that, or you know, a little wider thinking of it, it’s like, it’s a really good camera, but I have a huge amount of issues with the autofocus on the a seven-nine. And I also have a lot of issues with the way that the electronic viewfinder works on that a seminar well, or on on the early, a seven-line of mirrorless cameras that that Sony produced, there’s just too much of a gap too much of a blackout period, when you’re trying to take take a picture or you know, fire the shutter. And I don’t have problems like that with the 6000 I don’t have problems with that with the a seven two or a seminar two that i’ve i’ve rented and tried out a couple times for images. So So I think what I’m going to do and also Additionally, maybe the most important point is that the price of a seminar is depreciating rapidly. So I think what I’m going to consider is that I’m going to try and sell the seminar off before the value of it depreciates too much. And then I’m going to try and invest that money back into another camera body that that you know kind of hopscotch a little bit so two years ago, I had a Nikon well actually even just one year ago at this time I had a Nikon d3, then I got you know an a seven R and now I’m gonna try and kind of transition that money and maybe a little more into another kind of camera body. And I’m considering trying out night or excuse me, I’m considering trying out canon now I had started with Nikon, I tried Sony for a while and I’m I’m considering now I think trying to move over to canon to try and do some stuff for a while. So it’d be interesting I think, just to try it and maybe it’s just an idea of trying to be more versatile or, or just more professional, more able to operate a wire wider series of of equipment standards, I think is something that’s interesting to me. So I’ve worked with canon stuff professionally for years in the past, you know before but but I’m interested I guess in kind of pushing that a little further and using it as as sort of a professional tool that I really lean against to try and get the professional work that I’m interested in. So so that’s one of the ideas that I’m working on, but I’m trying to move some money around and sell some equipment, sell some cameras and stuff so I can try and put together a little, I don’t know, or pile of cash, put it on the piggy bank at one time and then move in on on some nicer probably used canon body and hope canon, you know a nicer Canon lens that I can get started. And that would really be a big start to do. Probably a lot of wedding work or you know, it’s a pretty functional commercial camera. And I guess what I what I meant to say when I was talking about that tulip shoe and why it brought me into this point of maybe salad mix equipment is, I love the Sony equipment for the low light like I was talking about. And for some of them, the the real specific use cases and landscape photography, but really, as an all-around camera, there’s a lot of a lot of things that that that it lacks. And I’m sure maybe a lot of that’s answered in this in a Sony A seven or is part of Sony, a nine or a Sony A seven r three one of those newer cameras that has some of these issues specifically addressed because I think, I think a lot of photographers talked about how this was a complication and in the way that they would shoot. But what I noticed, though, is I had it I had a Canon camera with me or really just I guess for purposes of conversation, a standard DSLR where it was, you know, a mirrored camera with the prism system. So I could see the subject the whole time, and then fire the shutter when I wanted to capture that that moment. And I just had a much harder time getting the the autofocus system to work functionally. And in simple situations, it wasn’t really dynamic focus that I had to chase, it was just a landscape, just focus wideout, just focus, do anything, just focus and then it couldn’t do it, I missed the shot, or I get an autofocus shot. And I’ve just seen that happen dozens of times with photographs I’ve tried to get with the Sony camera. And really, that’s just sort of like, Okay, this isn’t working, I need to sell this, it’s a cool camera, if I had to use it, I could get a lot of things out of it over the last year I did use it and got a lot of things out of it. But But I think now specifically, I’d really need to push on maybe buying or investing in higher end glass lenses and higher end canon body. So I don’t know, hopefully to do some of that stuff. But we’ll see how it goes over the next month or so as I try and try and do a little equipment swap, it’s a nice goal to have that kind of keeps me focused on on something at least. But the other one I’m trying to I’m trying to figure out, and so this is the camera thing. Obviously, photography is what I’m I’m trained in and sort of the discipline that I’ve tried to seek out as, as what I want to do the most.
And new media is really a big interest of mine too. And what I’ve been looking into is some of the some of the changing media opportunities that we’re going to have in this next decade. And you know, one of the things that we’ve not really been able to produce before just one of the media types we’ve not been able to produce even though I messed around with it in sort of an amateur way, you know, given a lot of the computer or computational photography that exists, but I’m really looking at 360 video, I’ve been kind of interested in that this for about two years or so. But I haven’t really thought that the equipment, or just the camera gear was really there yet, but I’m really interested in not necessarily 360 photographs as much, though that can be really interesting too, especially with a lot of the ones that HDR well, HDR images, but also HDR screens that are starting to come out where you’re able to display an image in a format with a wider variants of color gamut. It’s really interesting how, you know, it just got a wider amount of black to white that it can show. And apparently that, you know, that can make a big difference to make things look look a little bit more representative of things that we see. And so I think I think when we’re working with cameras like we do right now, the the dynamic range is just so much less than our eyes that that’s why we see. That’s why it looks poor, you know, when you look at something that was maybe shot in a bright midday light that just doesn’t able to pick up the shadows and the brights as well. So it’s kind of interesting new formats and new sensor technologies that we’re able to get into that make things just more expansive and more capable. But as we move into 360 video is just real, a whole new threshold or 4k 360 video. It’s this whole threshold of stuff that I’ve not really worked on in media before. And I’ve not really, I guess what would it be? I haven’t rendered it. I haven’t; I haven’t brought a 360 video file. I haven’t ever brought a 360 video file into like Final Cut Pro before. So I was trying that out this weekend. And I had to upgrade a lot of stuff to upgrade my Mac to Mac OS High Sierra, which has been out for a long time. But I’ve been kind of delaying on that because I wanted to Well, I just had a stable system. And I tried to use my computer for work last time. So I really don’t try and do updates that I don’t have to do with some stuff. And I don’t know, it’s good that I waited six months to put ICR on it, but it runs fine and run stable. And really I was most interested in trying to work on this 360 video project which takes Final Cut 10.4, which is where they bring in some of those features for 360 video, and VR editing and production. So it was kind of cool trying to checkout, but oh my goodness is that 13 inch MacBook mine really struggling when it tries to render out even just one minute of footage or when it tries to render in a 360 graphic element is supposed to exist. You know it like on a dimensional plane. It’s interesting. You can put you can like put text out into space in the 3d or in the three dimensional well not three dimensional but in the 360 space. You can look to the north, let’s say and see words that are printed there. To some kind of graphic that’s laid out there and rendered into the frame, I guess is what you would call it or into the, into the virtual environment. It’s just sort of stuck there. And so as you look around as the video elapses, you’ll see you’ll see this graphic object layered into the frame. And I can only imagine what kind of what kind of processing it takes to really produce some of those effects in the backend. It’s amazing that we’re able to make what is it at queer rectilinear images? At akwil rectilinear, I think is a format. I don’t know. It’s one of the format’s that, you see, that’s where you see like the stitching of the two 180 degree images sort of melded together. And it’s really interesting looking at that footage, and I think it’s a phone is a pretty effective viewer for it. And in the moment, but I’m looking at other stuff like the, I think it’s the gear, not the Gear VR, well, there’s the Gear VR, the HTC Vive, there’s, like the Oculus, I think it’s Oculus, right? The Oculus VR, there’s like a cheap one. Now, I was really impressed. Or, like, it was like, $200, it was like 199 to get to get a screen and goggles, to do some of this 360 video experience. And I’m trying to think about like this business ventures that are sort of attached to this with a, with a new medium that’s sort of approaching like I think a couple of years ago was the advent of, of aerial drone footage, you know, before then you had to get a helicopter and a gimbal. And that’s $100,000 shot, to get to get aerial footage over your property or, you know, whatever it is. And so now it’s it’s just so much more possible than it used to be.
I remember watching, I don’t know, I think there was like a movie that had this gimbal shot and they, they talked about in the you know, the behind the scenes stuff, where they had this cable camera that ran for like 200 yards is it sort of swept in and, and sort of did this one shot through this long, sweeping intro into like this, you know, this big opening scene, they had this big cable camera ran across a football field basic, you know, you know, whole action field. And, and they pulled this camera across, so it’d be this smooth kind of gliding shot that was just a little bit 2030 feet above everyone, and they couldn’t really pan it with just a crane. So they’re talking about technically how they engineer this shot, and this is back in I don’t know 1999 2000. And now it’s just, that’s an amateur ability where you can get a drone with a gimbal and put it 20 feet in the air and have it follow in for 200 300 feet and have a perfectly still 4k image that that tracks in on a party or you know, looks really cinematic or you know, any anything like that. It’s just amazing what kind of options that are now with with the way you’re able to develop media. So it’s cool thinking about just the level or the simplicity that we’ll be able to work in rendering or work in producing 360 VR virtual reality footage, or drone footage 10 years on from now, like, if you think about it for a moment, like 10 years ago, it was pretty hard to drop in, like high definition footage onto your laptop or computer to like render out about 2008 April 2008 May 2008 that was still like a pretty common there was that it was starting to happen HD or you know amateur Lee recorded HD footage was starting to happen. But really it was it was pretty rare to get HD cameras on the market for inexpensive prices. in that era, it was still all standard definition stuff. I mean, while I was in college, do a new media stuff all the camera project or you know all the video projects that we worked on were all in standard def It was really an interesting invention that we switched over to 16 by nine for a lot of the you know, the the standard output of a lot of the files that we’d render when I started. The first camera like the first camcorder I was really working with was it was a Canon XL one. And like the 2002 2006 seven era, and man and fantastic camera, I think there was like a lot of documentaries that were put together that you know, is a real workhorse kind of professional camera. And I was really fortunate to be a person in Southern Oregon getting to work with that level of video technology back in the early 2000s. It was it was really a cool opportunity that and then kind of thinking about that now just the level of like, wow, okay, so we moved on from standard definition, we moved on from the four by three aspect ratio, we moved on from tape media or from AV capture files, and you know, capture card systems, and so on. That’s kind of transitioned into much simpler h 264. Prores file systems, these digital file systems that are easy to upload easier to write to a computer. And amazing what processors can do now to just in the the level of work that they’re able to output. And what’s interesting is like this, so 10 years ago, the difficulty of rendering HD footage that we had, that’s similar to now 10 years later in 2018. The difficulty I’m having trying to render out this 360 degree footage that’s, that’s been recorded, and it’s just so much you know, you’d imagine it’s like an HD video in front of you now this is a 4k video. That’s all around you. And then it’s just seems like, you know, just seems like dozens more. I don’t know, it just seems like a way bigger file to render, I guess that’s really what it is 4k files are real big. And for this virtual reality 360 thing, it really seems like you need that level of resolution so that when you look in any particular spot, you know, through like a VR headset, you get a full resolution image from that, that single vantage point that you’re looking at. And when I was talking earlier about ventures or, you know, business ventures that I’d like to incorporate into the 360 video idea, I was really thinking a lot about like, like wedding photography events. So you know, there’s, there’s wedding videographers. But I think now with, with like the release of the, just this season, the release of the GoPro 360 fusion, which has, I think it’s like integrated digital gimbal support. So as you as you move the camera around through three dimensional space, the camera kind of digitally reacts to the motion that you’ve created. And so it sort of stabilizes that. So I guess considered you’re you’re walking, and you’re taking steps and so you kind of have a trot to the the motion of the camera. Well, I guess Apparently, this gimbal is supposed to this digital gimbal doesn’t Macan or it doesn’t, you know, work in the real world, but it just, it takes the video file and I guess it’s able to gimbal it, whatever that means, but it’s able to smooth that out, and stitch it together. So that, you know, you kind of lose a lot of that shakiness to the video,
I guess they’ve had stabilization for years. But apparently, they’re, they’re explaining at least that it might be a different level of it. So it might be an interesting thing to check out. But what I was hopeful to do was, you know, try and do something where you you record, like, a 360 video of let’s say, like a wedding ceremony. And then as a as an offer to a bride and groom, you give them a headset, and you give them the 360 experience so that they can either I guess give that to family that wasn’t there, perhaps really, that’s just like a Facebook opportunity in a big way. Like, because you can just share those videos. You know, share those videos online and kind of see them digitally through the browser, which is a really exciting thing about social media sharing, YouTube 360, Facebook 360. And I think Vimeo, 360 are all video sharing platforms where you can you can view that content in a browser. I think chrome works the best for right now. I had a lot of trouble in Safari viewing 360 browser stuff but but really interesting stuff. And it’s been kind of cool. I was trying to think through Yeah, like, be cool. Yeah, set up for the you know, set up a 360 video. And then years from now, you can come back because a big track, but years from now you can come back and like put on goggles or view just everything that was happening at a wedding, but it’s a really immersive experience. I thought it’d be kind of cool. So I guess all that’s to say I rented a GoPro 360 fusion, I think it should be here this week. So I’m gonna try and run through and put together like a portfolio of 360 images, and in 360 videos from a lot of the locations. You know, a lot of the natural outdoor landscape locations that I’ve sort of come to learn about over the last 10 years of doing landscape photography across Oregon in the Northwest. So I’m hopeful to try and do that over like the Memorial Day weekend. I think it’s going to be kind of fun. Trying to hit it hard.