Well, I am enjoying a very interesting weekend. I'm currently at PIA/GATF's Color Management conference, which has been very enjoyable, and has enabled me to confirm much of my own research and hypotheses around best practices and color theory.

The entire experience has been very enjoyable thus far. Being here amongst color folks has been interesting. I'm a little bit out of place, as this group is highly focused on the intersection of additive editing and subtractive printing, and moving towards purely additive processes.

Again, the focus is on printing. This has been informative for me as a printer (personally) but my actual pursuits are more general regarding management, and hopefully we'll get into that over the next several days. The electronic distribution industry has not suffered the same complaints as the print industry because the end client is not a content creator but rather a general consumer. If something is "too red" the consumer blames this on the creative at the far back end, generally because the color process is opaque to them and they do not understand it (at all).

Here on deviantArt, there is very little focus on accurate presentation, partially because of the difficulty (or impossibility) of standardization and verification, but also (interestingly) because the users do not care so much about their own decisions but more about consensus regarding the value of a given piece of creative.

It will be interesting to see if this sort of mob-rule continues to drive creative decisions or if creatives will simply create content that is so extreme in spatial (cielab) relationships, that as long as the relationships are relatively preserved, the genuine intent is irrelevant (to the artist).

I'm beginning to wonder if this phenomenon can explain the emergence of wide gamut content like HDR as popular, because regardless of distribution type, the relationships are at some extreme edges of the display's gamut that the accurate rendering attributes of the hardware are made irrelevant.

Interesting stuff!

It's lovely here in New England, and the first fall in a while that I've had the chance to truly enjoy. I'm going to try to upload another lighting tutorial, this time on metals rather than glass. Metal is easy to make "shiny" but difficult to make "beautiful."

I hope you're all doing well. I loaded a little something of the region in this late season for you.

Well, it's been nearly a year since my last update. Doesn't appear that deviantArt has changed too much. I don't suppose I have either.

I don't know if anyone out there knows who he is, but Utah Phillips died this month. I feel his absence in the world. If you're not familiar with him, look his stories up on iMeem.com or iTunes. He had a podcast as well, and Ani DiFranco published a few albums accompanying him.

Well, I'd like to know what you're doing, out there in the wide wide world. So please be sure to tell me.

Myself, running my studio. Got an H3Dii to work with and a pile of other gear. Shooting pretty ridiculous volumes of product. It's very strange to have a regular paycheck, rather than doing the "waiting for work" thing. I've been researching color almost constantly, and feel that I am beginning to get a base level of expertise in the subject. The physics of light has been a study of mine for years, so combining that with the mechanics of color transformations and colorimetry is pretty exciting. I'm hoping to publish at least a white paper on the subject.

Shooting a lot of film now, again. Built a wetlab to work out of, rather than renting a space or beg-borrowing from a university. I had forgotten how wonderful the film process is; it is so organic and tactile, a great contrast to the antiseptic quality of digital processing.

I have become more aware, as my world begins to age, that the universe is beautiful.

Do stop by and say hello.

~adoniram

In case you weren't aware, as I certainly was not, today marks the beginning of the 30th annual Badwater Race.

What makes this race special, you might be wondering. Well, competitors race across the stark, barren landscape of the hottest place on earth: Death Valley. They race non-stop over 135 miles, from Badwater to the Mount Whitney Portals.

Oh, and one more thing...

They do it on foot.

That's right. This is a 135 mile marathon in 120ºF / 48ºF degree heat. This year, it is predicted that someone will finish the race in only 24 hours.

I don't know about you, but I couldn't run five miles in that kind of heat. To undertake 135 miles in such conditions is to undertake the very fabric of existence. The founder, who first cross Death Valley on foot, said that upon completion, he felt "immortal."

I'd believe it.

If you'd like to learn or read more, or follow the race results live, head on over to BADWATER.COM

I can't recall the exact number, but supposedly due to neglect over the past seven years (hmm, what happened seven years ago?), our national and urban infrastructure has been greatly weakened, and would cost trillions to bring back up to code.

Yesterday I was outside Grand Central at about 540, and five minutes later the intersection I was standing at literally blew up (due to infrastructure failure: [link]).

Makes you really appreciate serendipity.

I hope you are all well!

Cheers.

~adoniram