Show notes for the Billy Newman Photo Podcast.
Communicate directly with Billy Newman at the link below.
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If you’re looking to discuss photography assignment work or a podcast interview, please drop me an email.
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my current photo portfolio is here.
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Visit the Support Page here.
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Twitter https://twitter.com/billynewman
Communicate directly with Billy Newman at the link below.
Make a sustaining financial donation, Visit the Support Page here.
If you’re looking to discuss photography assignment work or a podcast interview, please drop me an email.
Send Billy Newman an email here.
If you want to see my photography,
my current photo portfolio is here.
If you want to read a free PDF eBook written by Billy Newman about film photography:
you can download Working With Film here.
If you get value out of the content I produce, consider making a sustainable value-for-value financial contribution,
Visit the Support Page here.
You can find my latest photo books on Amazon here.
View links at wnp.app
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/billynewman/
Website Billy Newman Photo https://billynewmanphoto.com/
About https://billynewmanphoto.com/about/
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/billynewmanphoto
Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/billynewmanphotos/
Twitter https://twitter.com/billynewman
0:14
Hello, and thank you very much for listening to this episode of The Billy Newman photo podcast.
0:23
I’m showing another photograph of mine today, this one from Mount Washington up in the Cascades. It’s a really beautiful spot. And I appreciated this, this day to photograph it because of those high altitude clouds that you see in the photograph with a lot of that dark rich color, and it seems like a lot of I don’t know if it’s moisture thickness, or density, or just the parts of it were thinner, and there’s passing cloud or something like that. But I loved the light that day, it was sort of a vanilla color. At least in the higher part. You see those dark blues down toward the horizon where it seemed like there was a lot more of a heavy storm that was moving in. But it’s a cool spot up. I think it’s on-off highway 126. You take that to the end and then you come into that road that’s going to take you down into sisters right before the hoodoo snowpark but you can go up there and there’s a number of spots you can get a good view of Mount Washington really beautiful kind of picturesque peak and especially when it’s covered in snow like this, it looks almost like the like mount Paramount, you know the one in the movie, the movie and trail. But it was a really cool spot. It’s an interesting mountain and it’s a cool spot up there there’s really happy to have this photograph and a few of the others in the sequence come out the way that they did that it’s cool, I appreciate the kind of tonal color of it and just the sharpness the way that that mountain really kind of has a presence in the frame you really get that with that compression of the big lens
1:47
you can see more of my work at Billy Newman photo comm you can check out some of my photo books on Amazon. I think if you look at that Bitly Newman under the author’s 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. But Marina what kind of special work were we doing?
2:20
It was super cool we were doing some 360 video and photo recording
2:27
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 have a 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.
3:07
Yeah, I think so definitely. I think there’s some of the spots we got to the I don’t think I really see many regular photos from
3:13
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 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 get to look out and you get to kind of turn your head and see just sort of this 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
3:52
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
4:02
yeah I was really interested in that and how it was gonna 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 it’s well I was talking about an actual 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 the special software, the fusion Studio software, and it’s really interesting how it works but I think 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 marked as the the like the innovative product of the year at CES this year. So that back in January Pre announced. And I want you know when some some more now it’s interesting, but but I think it has 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 was cool. Yeah, last couple of weeks of May. And yeah, trying some of the new technology out. But the GoPro fusion is probably the most adept 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 that works, that’s really the only 360 system I’ve used. There’s also the theta camera built by Rico, that is 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.
6:01
Man, that 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 your computer. And and see the the effects of everything,
6:28
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 Z axis changes, or 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?
7:51
Yeah, does rendering take so long?
7:54
Yeah, so we had to go in overnight. So it’s not a bad I have a MacBook Pro it’s like 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 by any 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 your 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, it was a huge amount of matter. 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 and so but rendering the stitching is what seems to take the longest amount of time and if 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 out 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 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 capability computers is where you see an advantage of doing this level of rendering.
9:59
Yeah, my laptop can’t even handle what we’re trying to do you need
10:03
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 the 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 one, I guess 360 degree spherical frame, or, you know, Echo 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 Haley falls.
11:10
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. test, which is cool. Yeah. It’s long, the Mackenzie River. And it’s a really beautiful place. It’s 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. Yeah, fourth down there. Yeah. But it’s really cool, just a 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.
11:54
It’s, it was really cool. I like I like the way that that looked. And it was interesting kind of learning from that, that’s kind of a composition experience for 360 video, or for making a 360 image is 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, to sort of pan and move the camera in the frame of the field around.
12:25
Yeah, it’s a 360 photo or video. So the point is that you look in every direction. Yeah, and you really want to use it for that. Yeah, there has to be something interesting.
12:36
Yeah, that was interesting about looking at a lot of the let’s say the viewpoints that I set up for, let’s say that 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 is when 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 to 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 in 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.
13:43
Yeah is a fun and interesting additional thing to think about with composing something that’s like visual media
13:51
It is really fun but it’s a challenge or it’s not as interesting a different type of perspective of trying to think of something that looks good it was something that while I was like looking at 360 video a lot of people don’t seem to notice that part of it yet.
14:06
Right they’ll they’ll be like a background that’s just a driveway or parking lot.
14:11
Yeah, yeah something like that where we’re so that’s what I’m seeing like some of the successful the successful arms of 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 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 like 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 really trying to like build an environment where you get to see the perspective is cool. So we went to the Hayley files, we walked the trail around there, which is a place also where I learned the same lesson about composition where the trail is beautiful, out toward the river or out toward a lot bangles. But then the trail is also not that is 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,
15:11
yeah, when you’re using it, you really do notice pretty quickly, what is not visually interesting or attractive,
15:18
when you just you see all the places around you, you would not take a picture of, yeah, well, it wouldn’t take a picture of that, or that or that or that. 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, 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 gonna have a geographical bowl, where you’re sort of set in with it and 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 say 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 areas so just you know, obviously like still liking to take pictures. It was really fun to take photos. Yeah, well you know, the spring snow melt is so crystal clear right now that the water just looks blue. Light luminous blue too. It’s cool.
17:03
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 It was really pretty
17:16
Yeah. Yeah, that was a beautiful spot. So that part of the McKenzie has always been really interesting. And I think they’re on the McKenzie on and then I think it’s What is it? 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 too. Or you know, it’s like really mossy and like it just looks foresty that sort of thing looks kinda like a rain forest that most than some of the spots that but yeah, it’s beautiful about getting up there. So we traveled the day we went up kind of in the cascade area, route to a bunch of spots. You can check out more information that 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 feel more comfortable using Patreon that’s patreon.com forward slash Billy Newman photo. For the longest time I was shooting with Nikon cameras, and I’d always really liked doing that but most of that was always kind of maybe constrained by budget for I think I started with a Nikon D 40 back in 2007 is when I bought it the camera probably came out earlier than that I really enjoyed kind of picking up and that was like an entry level DSLR at the time, and now it’s like really antiquated I sold that off now years ago and kind of moved it over into other other camera equipment over time. But that’s what I got while I was in college is a really good camera for me to learn on and kind of learn some of the fundamentals of working with a digital camera and I had a lot of fun working with that made it like a ton of photographs with it then pretty soon after that. I tried to switch over to something that was more of a professional body when I was trying to take some of the work that I was doing a little more seriously and when I was trying to get hired as a photographer to do really even just student projects at the time I was trying to get a couple extra lenses and I was trying to get a couple stronger features in the in the camera body that I was using. So at the time I think it was in like 2008 2009 actually I think it was in 2009 I bought my first like professional body that Nikon D two H and at that time, that was already a pretty antiquated camera. I think in 2009 it probably came out in 2003 I think is what it was. So it’s already like a pretty big gap in time. There. There’s been at that time especially in that decade there’s just so much advancement in the way that sensors worked in the way that the scene I wasn’t even a CMOS there was like an elb caste is like an lb ca St. Named sensor I don’t even know what that is but it was different than the CMR system that would be in a lot of cameras I think that maybe we probably find now or you know like the sensor piece in the back and it wasn’t full frame either it was in even the professional and it wasn’t full frame it was still like that crop sensor that Nikon had. So it was good for for a long time and I was really happy to use it and happy to kind of learn on that camera they had a ton of features and really I probably go back to that that full professional body of Nikon if if I was just a big any camera that I wanted to use I think like a Nikon D five would be an amazing camera to work with. But at the time what I was trying to do was get a job at a newspaper like the student newspaper when I was going to college and to try and get some jobs or you know trying to get get some activity to try and go and take different photographs in different locations. And that job was great it was cool working for the student newspaper because you get to go to different locations and try and make some interesting photo out of something that’s probably not very interesting. It’s normally like a person talking to a to a classroom with beige walls and low level ceiling light or something like that every once in a while you get to go to a football game or something like that so that you don’t really have the opportunity to go to normally that was really fun that was interesting and it provided me a lot of opportunities to do some some different you know work with different lenses work with different lighting and some sort of you know interesting and dynamic subject matter but a lot of the time like I mentioned it was like I think I had to go photograph that they were removing pipes from a student building on some side of campus I hadn’t been to before so it was it was the I was supposed to take a photograph of the absence of pipes didn’t really
21:54
make a lot of sense it wasn’t really a very interesting photo and there was no people or story around it so it’s you know it’s always something like that or it seemed to be often something like that. That was just like had almost no subject to take a photograph so it was a challenge in that way. But it was really fun when you got to do something cool so that’s that’s why I bought that Nikon D two H and then to a company that I think I tried to save up some money in college that was hard for me to do I tried to save up I think like $150 or something like that to buy the 50 millimeter one eight lens that was like the version of nifty 50 that they have over on the Nikon side It was great to use and and that that kit there that the D to H and the the 50 millimeter was what I use to take a bunch of photographs for the next many years is a great kit of a camera to have it worked really well to take I think like a bunch of the cool landscape stuff that he did on the first couple trips they did were just both with that setup. So I bought that I bought that Nikon D to h USD on eBay when I made that purchase of it. And I use that camera probably for the longest amount of time. Like I think I used that up until like around 2013 or so when I was kind of trying to shift away from it. And that’s when I was getting into more film photography stuff at that time I actually switched over to a an even or just a different camera a Nikon n 80 film camera because I was I was doing a ton of stuff with with film and film roles at the time. And then I bought a Nikon f4 s another film body camera that was from like the 90s I think is when that one was manufactured. I think it first came out in like 1988 that I’ve probably mentioned a couple times. 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, some good links to other other outbound sources, some links to books and links to some podcasts. Like this. blog posts are pretty cool. Yeah, check it out at Billy new minnesota.com. Thanks a lot for listening to this episode and the backend.