By Ian Hollidae, 2025/03/01

I was on my way to a local rose garden to take pictures and I needed to stop at the store for something. This was spotted in the parking lot. While not a candidate for classic minimalism, a small box on a large open wall seemed like a photographic opportunity.

I took several shots from different angles trying to frame the box (whatever it is) in the best composition. It wasn't until I tilted the camera did things get interesting.

The irony of this shot is that I planned to visit the gardens a week in advance and this was really the only photo that came out of all my effort.

Photo Only

This post is a continuation of the Beginners Photography Project.

Tags: Feature Photos

By Ian Hollidae, 2025/02/18

Throughout my texturing project, I've been able to capture a decent number of textures. Most have come from places I expected such as floor and wall tiles, facades and natural settings. In this case, I found a texture in an unlikely spot: a vending machine. It wasn't something that stood out or overwhelmed your senses. It was the subtleness that drew me to it.

The upper left thumbnail is the original photo. Select a thumbnail to see a preview.

I was somewhat surprised to capture anything in this particular case. The machine was outside during the day and sitting on a white concrete sidewalk. Fortunately, it was located under a large canopy but it was still quite bright. I was able to find a small area that was workable (low reflective light, no highlights). However, I couldn't quite tell if there was a backlight turned on inside the machine. During editing, it appears there was one but it made little difference. It may have even added something to the overall capture.

Download the Plastic Shock texture set under Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0).

Tags: Textures

By Ian Hollidae, 2025/02/05

I've been looking to get more into advanced shapes and controlled navigation in X3D. It's clear that basic shapes will only take you so far and certainly not as far as I'd imagine. Meshes are clearly what's coming in the near future. As for controlled navigation, the free-style form of “City Stroll” didn't exactly provide the best UX. I do think it can work for other scenes.

For this project, since I had a number of shapes already made, I decided to create a gallery. The big question was how to create a navigation system. I decided to provide preset positions, letting the user pick what they wanted to view, and guided the avatar/camera to the spot. It seems to work well.

In the future, I'd like to expand this presentation with more shapes. Maybe add some interactiviity to each of the features as well. Just have to find the time.

The "Tour Of Shapes presentation.

Tags: Web 3D

By Ian Hollidae, 2025/01/27

This is a wall facade taken at an office building lobby. The tiles had a marble-like pattern that didn't have a reflection so I decided this might make a pretty good texture.

Since photo textures rarely get used without some post-processing, simple coloring seemed like a good idea for this particular image. It also adds to the reusability of the image.

The upper left thumbnail is the original photo. Select a thumbnail to see a preview.

So far this texture has only been used in the Tour Of Shapes project but I can see several other uses for the original photo in the future. Whether I stick with coloring or try something new remains to be seen.

Download the Marble-ish texture set under Creative Commons (CC BY 4.0).

Tags: Textures

By Ian Hollidae, 2025/01/27

A while back I wrote a post, Shooting for Textures, in which I offered some thoughts about the process of using a camera, as opposed to a generator, to create X3D textures. At the time, I decided not to include examples of what I was doing mainly because it wasn't a tutorial. I've come to believe that was a mistake. So instead of making a large revision of the original post, I'll just make a short post about upcoming texturing examples I intend to share.

The fact of the matter is, texturing is a sub-project of the larger X3D project I'm doing. Texturing clearly has its own set of creative processes to go through in order to even be usable in the larger project. I'll even include a downloadable zip file for anyone who wants to try the textures out.

In the future, maybe I'll post other types of textures such as SVG Path generated patterns, especially if X3D adopts SVG as an image format. For now, we'll see how photos work out.

Tags: Textures

By Ian Hollidae, 2025/01/09

I've found a lot of value in re-evaluating old photos. Some of the benefits are obvious such as finding your mistakes, seeing alternative compositions and realizing you could have used better camera settings. Another benefit I've found is the opportunity to try out editing features you don't often use. That's how I got this photo.

This was taken at a local park in my spare time. It's a concrete structure that's been mostly torn down except for a wall that has an iron gate entrance. For whatever reason, the gate has been chain locked. The shot was simply a one-off practice snap that I didn't give a second look for months. What brought me back to this photo was an editing exercise I was going through. Specifically, the use of lighting presets for Portrait mode in Apple Photos. I never saw much use for them before but this picture made such a leap so I decided to post it.

So I guess there are some uses for lighting presets after all.

Photo Only

This post is a continuation of the Beginners Photography Project.

Tags: Feature Photos

By Ian Hollidae, 2024/12/03

This was a photo opportunity that arrived fast and left even faster. It's the front edge of a late afternoon storm. At first, all I could think about was getting home before it hit. But as I was measuring how to beat the storm, this shot appeared directly overhead and thought it was too good to pass up.

In order to capture the shot, I knew I didn't have time to line things up perfectly. So I decided to try and frame the shot with as wide a framing as needed. I would simply crop what I wanted in editing.

On an iPhone, zooming is digital. If you're a (relative) beginner like me, you'll come to realize that it's useless. But one thing I've learned is if you enlarge the ratio setting, you can get a little more coverage of the shot you're trying to take. In this case, I took shots in a ratio setting of 4:3 (default on my iPhone) and 16:9. Both ratios gave me the shot I wanted.

Fortunately, I was able to get off a number of shots because two minutes later the entire sky was covered.

Photo Only

This post is a continuation of the Beginners Photography Project.

Tags: Feature Photos

By Ian Hollidae, 2024/11/20

My first 3D outing is a photo gallery with “free style” user navigation. I decided to go with X3D (X3DOM library) because it's a little bit easier to learn than three.js as a 3D beginner. It also appears to be the better option to get up and running quickly.

The biggest thing I've learned from this project is that X3D, and 3D in general, has unlimited structure. What I mean by that is I could make any sort of UX to showcase this photo gallery. So there's plenty of room to reach new heights. There's also plenty of room to bury yourself. Planning and design are hugely important.

As for the thumbnails, I wound up being satisfied with the rendering quality. What viewers can't see is there are lights positioned within the world that can affect how the image is displayed. Positional lights are just above the canopy. The viewer avatar has a headlight that can be turned on or off. For this project, it's off. There's also a global light source and direction.

Obviously, in the future, I'll have to experiment with all the moving parts. But as a first effort, I think it worked out well.

The "City Stroll" Presentation

Tags: Web 3D

By Ian Hollidae, 2024/11/08

I'm finally getting a chance to try out a few of the 3D technologies I've long been wanting to experiment with. My primary interest is X3D/VRML which is something I remember from the early aughts that held a lot of promise but didn't have much support. The applications were poor, browser support (plug-ins) was almost non-existent, and the overall web landscape just wasn't ready for it. Eventually, it seemed to fade away.

Then there's Three.js which came out after I left the tech industry so I don't know much about its early history. When I made a partial return to tech, and came across it, I added it to my todo list.

The third item is Blender, but to be honest, I never really had much interest in it. I always viewed it as a "professionals" tool for movie-level graphics and animation. Then I found out it supports the X3D file format so I've decided it was worth looking into despite its steep learning curve.

The only question now is how to maximize my efforts.

For now, it appears that X3D/VRML, since it's a markup language, is more suited for web structures such as photo galleries and interactive presentations. Three.js looks far more suited for more realistic 3D worlds. Blender? Still working that part out I guess. While finished projects will posted over on VRIGNETTE, all the notes about the project will be posted here.

Hopefully, I can create some neat stuff because I think the effort is about to get really interesting.

Tags: Web 3D

By Ian Hollidae, 2024/11/01

This was one of those photos that made me think about how to push the limits of an iPhone and how I would translate what I've learned when I eventually switch to a "real" camera.

Originally, I wanted a picture of just the building with clear sky in the background. But positioning and repositioning didn't provide anything of interest so I decided to experiment with compositional balance. At first, I included the moon but eventually I added the contrail as well. The photo stopped being about the building and became more about what we can see over our heads.

In the end, I decided I liked the shot. Sometimes setting aside standard/rigid photographic rules can produce something you're happy with.

Photo Only

This post is a continuation of the Beginners Photography Project.

Tags: Feature Photos