It should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with my art that I like record albums. I’ve been collecting records since my earliest days of college and they became a natural fit when I began taking photographs of cool things like records, books and toys. I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that one of my many “someday” projects would be a set of limited edition prints packaged in a real album cover. How cool would that be?!?!
(No, sorry, no such print set is being announced in this post. But… someday!)
Future plans aside, I recently did have the opportunity to create my own record album cover, and it came out great! So today I’m sharing my experience in a “how to” tutorial for others who may be so inspired to create their own record album packaging.
The Background
Years ago, I sent out an elaborate Christmas card package, which I dubbed, “It’s a Copyright Infringement Christmas!” The package included an 8 1/2 x 11″ card and a 110 minute cassette mix tape of the coolest Christmas music imaginable — Detroit Junior, James Brown, various Motown greats, etc. I printed all the cassette labels and inserts on a (rare, for the time) color printer, and filled the envelopes with glitter, broken cassette shells, and tangles of audio tape pulled from the destroyed cassettes. The star, though, was the music, as everyone loved the selections I made (said the former college disc jockey with much modesty).
As the years have passed, with cassette players giving way to CD players and iTunes, fewer and fewer people have been able to listen to their hand-picked Christmas collection, but EVERY year since I’ve been encouraged by family and friends to make a new version. “If you ever copy Copyright Infringement Christmas to CD,” they would hopefully plead, “you’ll never have to give me another thing!”
Promising rewards aside, dubbing the collection to CD has always been something I’ve wanted to do, but year after year the project has been pushed way, way off onto a back burner without the time to do the project right — whatever that meant, as I had no idea how I could better the original package by just dumping the music onto CD.
I then realized that I’d made the original tape in 1992, and 2012 would be the 20th anniversary, so…
I did it!
Where the original had filled both sides of a 110 minute cassette — 55 minutes per side — in the CD era I’d be able to fit 80 minutes of music per disc. Bonus tracks could be at play!
CDs? Dude. No one uses CDs. It’s all about streaming and downloads.
Well, yes, I thought about producing the 2012 version of my illegal Christmas compilation on a USB flash drive, but:
A couple of the recipients (most notably, my parents) don’t use iTunes, iPhones or iPods, and would not know an MP3 from a hole in the ground.
Handing someone a flash drive and saying “Merry Christmas” seemed like a hollow offering.
My plan, then, was to produce a set of 4 CDs. The first two would reproduce the 55 minute A and B sides of the original cassette, while the last two would be loaded to the digital gills with newly discovered (and equally cool) bonus tracks. The discs would be packaged inside an LP-size album jacket, with the CDs mounted on a full color cardboard insert. Rounding out the package would be a limited edition Christmas-themed print suited to the copyright infringing nature of the music.
Got it? Good! Let’s go to work!
Geography of an album cover
In order to design my album cover I first had to figure out how an album cover is constructed. Those of us who grew up around records have the basics: an LP is about 12″ in diameter and fits into a square cardboard sleeve that’s a little bit large. Easy! Take two pictures, glue ‘em together, and — voila! — album cover!
Not so fast!
Careful attention to how an album cover is actually laid out and constructed will provide a guideline for generating a design template that can be used for applying art to the front and back covers, as well as the spine you’ll see on the edge when the album is stored on a shelf. Using this template, the cover can be printed on a single sheet of paper, then cut, folded and glued to produce the final sleeve.
Template of an album cover
The template for designing an album cover is shown above. Note that the image to appear on the front of the cover is on the right, while the back cover image is on the left. Designed in this manner, if you were facing the album in a sales bin, the spine would be on the left and the record (or in my case, CD tray) would slide out from the right. Virtually all album covers are designed in this way to be consistent and prevent dust from sifting down into the record jacket.
Note
On occasion you’ll see variations on this design, with the jacket opening on the top, or the position of the front and back covers swapped. Usually, these are design mistakes that are sometimes corrected in later pressings of an LP.
The dimensions you see above are as follows:
The front and back covers are typically 12 ¾” tall and wide.
The top and bottom tabs you see on the back cover are folded over and affixed to the reverse side of the front cover. I chose to use 1″ high tabs, which seemed like a good size to get a good firm seal between the two covers.
Plus… the spine. Read on!
Does a record album have to have a spine? Well, no, not really. Vinyl records aren’t very thick and a 12″ LP will usually fit fairly easily into a simple spine-less (ha, ha ha) 12 ¾” sleeve. But that would be boring! After all, don’t we want to see the sideways title of our album when it sits on a shelf squeezed between other records? Sure we do!
Spine detail
So, between the front and back covers we also need to provide a bit of space for the spine, and the spine needs to be wide enough to accommodate whatever we plan to put inside the jacket. For an album that holds a single vinyl LP, the spine is usually 1/8″, varying slightly higher when the packaging also includes a booklet or other inserts. For my project the album needed to hold a CD tray, a limited edition print, and a very thin sheet of protective bubble wrap. I estimated that a spine of 3/16″ would be sufficient.
The image above and to the right is a detail of the spine measurements for my album cover. It is important to understand that an album cover is actually a box construction. So, if we provide a 3/16″ spine running up and down between the front and back covers, we must also provide a 3/16″ margin between the cover and the tabs, effectively forming the “sides” of the box we’re going to construct. The spine and the top margin are illustrated in the diagram.
Color note!
It’s worth noting that I chose to color the tabs dark gray, even though they were to be glued to the reverse side of the front cover. I used the color change as a visual clue when folding the tabs, and the dark gray color was close enough to the margin color (which in turn matched the front color) so as not to be visually distracting if the construction of the “box” was not precise.
Software note!
I used iDraw on my iMac to layout and design the cover you see above. Nice piece of software!
Printing the cover
Once the cover art had been designed it was time to print. Recall that we’re going to be printing everything — front, back, spine, margins and tabs — on a single sheet of paper. How big does that paper need to be? Adding up all the dimensions…
20 x 30″ prints on Kodak Endura photographic paper
Okay, the total dimensions of a flattened album cover are roughly 15 x 26″, and that means we need to print on a big 20 x 30″ sheet of paper — 16 x 30″ if that odd size is offered by your favorite lab. While I suppose it would have been most preferable to print on lightweight cardboard to mimic the stiffness of commercial record jackets, I didn’t have that option, so instead decided to print my covers as 20 x 30″ glossy enlargements through my regular lab, myphotopipe.com on professional grade Kodak Endura paper.
Whoa! 20 x 30″ photo prints? Isn’t that, uh, kind of expensive?
Yes, it is. Making your own album covers is fun and amazing, but definitely not cheap!
Constructing the record album
Once the prints arrived (and after a few days of allowing them to lay flat), I used an X-acto knife and metal L-square to trim away the excess paper, as illustrated in the photo below.
Trimmed cover ready to be folded
On the right is the spine and the front cover, while the back cover, tabs, and top/bottom margins are on the left. Constructing the record album was then simply a matter of making the proper folds and gluing the tabs in place. I found it helpful to make my folds in a set order, with the printed side of the paper face down, and using the edge of the L-square as a sturdy guide to insure that the creases would be straight and square. In all, you’ll need to make 6 sharp, square folds:
Left edge of the front cover where it meets the right side of the spine.
Left edge of the spine where it meets the right edge of the back cover.
Bottom edge of the top tab where it meets the top edge of the top margin.
Bottom edge of the top margin where it meets the top of the back cover.
Top edge of the bottom tab where it meets the bottom edge of the bottom margin.
Top edge of the bottom margin where it meets the bottom of the back cover.
Photo paper is not generally meant to be folded, so — with a ruler or square edge in place along the crease line — go slow, and gently ease the paper up against the edge of your ruler or square edge, using pressure where you want the crease to form. Once a crease is in place along the entire width of where you want to make the fold, remove the straight edge, fold along the crease, and gradually apply pressure until you have a firm, sharp fold that is able to stand up on its own. Remember — photo paper will fight back!
After folds have been made
Belated trimming tip!
Note in the photo above that the tabs, which were originally designed to be square, have been tapered slightly. This extra bit of trimming is done to allow greater flexibility while gluing, and will prevent any excess paper from from sticking out beyond the edge of the cover.
Ready to be glued!
All that remains is to glue the front cover onto the folded tabs. I used rubber cement for this job, as it doesn’t bubble, provides a good solid bond, and is very forgiving and easily removed should you “over glue.” The tricky part of gluing the tabs is that the tabs are actually inside the cover and sit suspended in air at a height equal to the width of the spine. Yes, this is only an eighth of an inch (or, three 16ths, in my case), but still enough space to prevent a solid seal — especially at the edges — between the tabs and the cover. To workaround this problem I found magazines of the appropriate thickness that could be placed inside the cover and beneath the folded tabs to provide a solid surface upon which the cover and tabs could be glued with sufficient pressure. The magazines also made it easier to “square up” the corners where the cover, spine and top/bottom margins all meet. Once the glue had been applied, and leaving the magazines in place, books were used to weigh down the construction until the rubber cement had completely set.
Hot off the digital camera presses, I have a brand new photo and accompanying video to share! And since this piece has been in development for longer than I care to mention (though I will in a moment) I won’t waste any more time with a lot of buildup and hyperbole. So, here it is!
Sensible family planning is dreamt away to the 1950s by Esmeralda — Femme Fatale of Conservative Values
So, yes, I began this piece way back in late July (yes, July), and finally wrapped up work on the photo and video in early November. That’s over three months for those of you keeping score at home. The initial work of setting up the pieces and iterating over the composition took about a month, interrupted here and there by other ongoing projects and setting up my new shop on Zazzle. I shot the final set of photos and a couple of hundred frames of animation over Labor Day weekend. Then… my dad broke his hip, I ran into censorship problems on Zazzle, opened my Fair Use store, and finallygot back to the photo in mid October.
Early concept shot in July
To the right is an early concept shot built around a vintage record player, as if the woman in the background was placing records onto the turntable. This version also filled the space to the left and right of the album cover with pulp paperbacks. As you can see looking back at the final image, both concepts were abandoned as I moved towards the finished composition (but I’m sure the pulps will show up in future photos).
The record player proved too bulky and limiting for the composition I had in mind, so it was quickly replaced by stacks of vinyl records and alphabet blocks to form the basic stage. With the records in place I had room to build five connected scenes: one in the center, and two each to the left and right atop the surface of stacks of 45s. It then became a matter of establishing the action for each scene through the placement of various characters — a process that took a couple of weeks as I wandered my way through lots of combinations of characters and story concepts. Though, to be honest, I never truly understood what the photo was about until after it was actually complete! That’s how things sometimes work in my weirdly, disconnected, make-believe world.
Fresh out of the camera — unadjusted!
To the left is the final composition as it emerged from my camera, warts and all, prior to all the post-production image adjustments you see in the final image at the top of this post. As previously mentioned, I’d decided to eliminate the paperbacks, and instead wanted the entire background to have the same mauve-ishly textured background found on the album cover. Of course, I didn’t actually have any kind of mauve-ishly textured background material handy, so I hoped, uh, planned on cloning pieces of the album’s background behind all the other figures you see on the left and right. To make this task a little easier, I placed a couple of additional albums and sheets of pink poster board inside the light tent behind the stage construction. This actually proved to be a mistake for reasons I won’t get into, but art is forever a learning experience, and I was able to work around my blunder.
The final image was actually constructed from 6 separately shot photographs using the “focus stacking” technique I wrote about in a previous post. This time around each photo was shot at a different aperture setting so that the depth of field would vary from shot to shot. I then assembled the final image by masking the in-focus portions of each photo, and layering them all together in a big digital sandwich to create one image with everything in reasonably sharp focus.
The video is another of my simple pan’n'scan slideshow with the camera seeming to zoom around the staging as figures magically materialize into view. Oooooo! It’s a fun and simple technique that’s not nearly as tedious as true stop-motion animation. This time around I chose an instrumental piece of music from Tuatara that nicely captured the drama and tension I wished to convey in the photograph.
Have I settled my ongoing dispute with Zazzle, Elvis, The Beatles and kewpie dolls over alleged copyright infringements? Nope, and those issues currently remain with Zazzle apparently ignoring lawful requests to reinstate the materials they had so unceremoniously removed from their site. That disagreement aside…
I’m very pleased to announce the Wind-up Dreams & Vinyl Nightmares Shop! Yes, our creative little elves have been hard at work cobbling together a candy-colored smorgasbord of amazingly cool products to make your life pretty damn FANTASTIC! (No one has ever accused me of understated hyperbole.)
The new shop is live on Zazzle—
What??! Huh?!?!? I thought they were evil and took down your products?
Yes, they did take down a total of 20 products, which I previously detailed in a couple of prior posts, and those products remain in Merchandising Limbo. But that has not deterred our team of marketing masters from stocking the store with dozens of super cool Wind-up Dreams products! You’ll find everything from mouse pads to laptop sleeves, coffee mugs to messenger bags. Each piece lovingly crafted with your favorite images. So what are you waiting for?!?!?! Check it out!!
Mugs! Mouse pads! Cases for iPhone and sleeves for iPads! We have bags and notepads, clocks and coasters, and even a couple sets of playing cards and desktop speakers.
New products will be coming regularly, and I’m more than open for suggestions if you don’t find exactly what you’re looking for.
Remember — the holidays are upon us! And don’t your favorite people deserve a little bit of Wind-up Dreams & Vinyl Nightmares in their lives?
And, don’t forget, the I Support FAIR USE store is still going strong, selling t-shirts, mugs and bags to call attention to censorship in the arts!
I hope you enjoyed my first installment on Copyright Confusion and Fair Use, and the saga that has been unfolding as I attempt to make my artwork available on custom bags, mouse pads and other fun print-on-demand products sold by Zazzle.com. Thanks for coming back!
Today I’ll be continuing the story with lots of information about your rights as an artist. We’ll also talk about copyright and discuss what websites such as Zazzle can and can’t do with regard to your content. Yes, we’re going to toss around some legal stuff, but legal stuff is oh-so-much-more-fun when it revolves around pro golfers, prima donna rock stars, and raunch novelty rap acts, wouldn’t you agree?
So read on, and at the end of this article I’ll have pointers for how you can join in my crusade to support FAIR USE through a new blog, a Facebook page, and — yes! — through self-censored, “copyright friendly” versions of my Wind-up Dreams & Vinyl Nightmares photos on everything from t-shirts to tote bags.
Oh yeah, disclaimer! I’m not a lawyer, neither professionally or in any amateur capacity. Still, I hope you find the information informative, enlightening, and entertaining.
Fair Use — when copyrights are not exclusive
What bothered me about Zazzle’s claim is that the appearance of an Elvis matchbook in my photo is protected by Fair Use, defined in the Copyright Act of 1976 as an exception to copyright law allowing the use of copyrighted material in transformative ways. It’s what allowed Duchamp to put a mustache on the Mona Lisa and Warhol to silk screen photographs of celebrities. Fair use has many tentacles in the art world, some valid (Barbie in a blender!), others not no much (the US Postal Service taking a photo of a sculpture and placing it on a stamp).
Oster Dive — Tom Forsythe, 1997
The Fair Use exception amounts to only 175 words in the law, but—oh!—how those words have been tested and applied to a wide variety of copyright disputes! I don’t mean for this post to be an in-depth debate on what constitutes fair use, so I’ll just focus on a few noted decisions from the courts to illustrate why my photos (and countless other works of art) satisfy the most prevalent arguments for Fair Use.
Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.
Ugh! Legal stuff. ::: yawn ::: Boring!
No, wait, this is cool! In this landmark case the rap group 2 Live Crew was sued by the estate of Roy Orbison over a raunchy parody of Orbison’s song, “Oh, Pretty Woman.” The case went all the way to the Supreme Court with 2 Live Crew insisting that their version of the song was protected by Fair Use. The Court ruled in favor of the band and, in their summary judgement, had much to say about the transformative nature of Fair Use beyond the 175 words that define the law.
The issue, in the opinion of the Supreme Court, was whether the infringing work “merely supersedes” the original or, instead, “adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first with new expression, meaning or message.”
Getting back to the Elvis matchbooks…
Given the Supreme Court’s opinion, had my art focused on only the matchbook, uploading to Zazzle the face of Elvis to be placed on my own set of commemorative plates, my use would clearly not be protected by Fair Use. I’d just be copying (i.e. “merely superseding”) the original, and I’d be in violation of the copyright held by Elvis Presley Enterprises. But that’s not what I did in my photo.
In Backstage Pass, the image of Elvis is merely one element within a complex conceptual narrative. In other words, quoting from the Stanford University Copyright and Fair Use Website in offering their interpretation of the Supreme Court’s ruling, ”…the material has been used to help create something new.” There. Fair use.
Back to Zazzle
In the days following the rejection of products designed using Backstage Pass, I received dozens of additional rejection emails covering a total of 10 of my original photos—all judged by Zazzle’s content review team as having violated the copyrights of others.
The characters found to be in violation?
Elvis
The Beatles
Kewpies (yes, kewpies!)
I defy any website, court, law student, or scholar to determine that the placement of a pink kewpie head on the body of a plastic bride, with Leonardo Da Vinci and Grover Cleveland looking on, is not a valid example of fair use.
Kewpies play a particular and recurring role in my work, to the extent that individual kewpies (red, green, pink or yellow) add very specific symbolism and character to a given photograph. Likewise, the “Beatle” figures I use in many photos (actually, manufactured in Asia during the mid 1960′s and sold as “The Swingers Music Set”) are not intended to be a literal recasting of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Like the kewpies, the presence of these blue-suited figures is symbolic, contributing to the conceptual arc of a given photo through their facial expressions and placement within a given composition.
As before, the product designs I’d submitted were completely removed from my Zazzle account and I was left with no discourse but to write to Zazzle’s content review team for clarification. Over the course of several emails I presented a case for the consideration of Fair Use, citing copyright legislation, cornerstone papers on the transformative aspect of determining fair use, and pointing to case law that supports the rights of artists to use copyrighted material in the creation of new work. Unfortunately, in their brief replies, Zazzle ignored the legal arguments, falling back on their “acceptable content guides” and making statements such as:
Unfortunately, celebrity names and/or likeness (sic) may not be used for commercial resale on Zazzle.com without permission from the celebrity, their legal representative or their estate.
And:
The issue is not with you creating the art of Elvis, the issue is Zazzle selling the artwork images. Zazzle has been contacted by Elvis Presley Enterprises and they have submitted a DMCA notice. In accordance to following the notice, Zazzle cannot carry any images of Elvis Presley.
Oh really? Unfortunately, that’s not what the law says, and Zazzle may, in fact, be suppressing the rights of artists who wish to post and sell products created under the protection of Fair Use. Or, perhaps, they’re simply making a business decision to err on the side of caution and choose to ignore Fair Use as a valid form of artistic expression (note how the issue is deflected in the second response above). I can’t say, as recent emails asking such questions have gone unanswered; as have requests for a copy of the takedown notice Zazzle claims to have received from Elvis Presley Enterprises in reaction to the posting of products containing my Backstage Pass photo.
In any case, let’s take a look at their claim that “celebrity names and/or likeness may not be used for commercial resale on Zazzle.com without permission….”
Hey! What about Elvis’ right to his own face!
It makes sense that a celebrity or public figure would have the right to control how their image is used and marketed. In fact, they do! Under the Lanham Act; a broad piece of legislation that protects trademarks and establishes the “right of publicity,” the use of an individual’s name or likeness is protected from being used in a manner that would imply some unwanted affiliation. In other words, in a world without the Lanham act businesses would be free to Photoshop anyone they liked— Lady Gaga! Peyton Manning! Oprah! —into their advertisements without consequence.
Taken alone, the Lanham Act would seem to support Zazzle’s claim that images of celebrities can’t be used without permission. Ah, but the law is complicated, and the “right of publicity” is not incontrovertible. In fact, it is superseded by… you guessed it, Fair Use!
Let’s take another look at some case law (and I promise it won’t be dry, boring, or filled with Latin terms).
ETW Corporation v. Jireh Publishing, Inc.
Sounds like two big businesses butting heads, doesn’t it? Well, in this case ETW Corporation is the exclusive licensing agent for golfing great Tiger Woods, who sued artist Rick Rush over a painting Rush had created following Woods’ victory in the 1997 Masters tournament.
Attorneys for Tiger Woods argued that Rush did not have the right to use the image of their client in his 1998 painting, The Masters of Augusta (left), claiming Woods’ “right of publicity” under the Lanham Act.
Bzzzzt! Wrong answer.
The judges in the case ruled that the right of publicity is limited by the principles of Fair Use, and—where Rush may have lost the case if his painting was a straightforward portrait of Tiger Woods—the work was transformative in the sense that the image of Woods had been incorporated into a much more complex composition that included other Masters victors and elements of design that put Woods likeness in historical context.
Victory, Fair Use!
So, given the precedence of the decision above, to what degree can Zazzle claim that designs incorporating a celebrity likeness (like Elvis on a matchbook cover) are unacceptable, without also considering the protections offered by Fair Use?
Is Elvis just a bully?
To read Zazzle’s response to my email inquiries, one might assume that their corporate hands were tied, locked in a legal full nelson by the ghost of Elvis Presley, and bound by the stone tablet orders of the DMCA to “not carry any images of Elvis!” Convenient though that belief may be, the law around Fair Use and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) counters such absolute restrictions. In fact, copyright holders must consider Fair Use before instructing a website to remove material from their site; there’s really no such thing as a blanket “take down all things Elvis” order.
I’m going to sneak in one last legal case, because it reinforces my argument and—yet again—is mildly entertaining. This one comes from YouTube and it’s known officially as Lenz v. Universal Music, a case where the plaintiff saw a 29 second video of her toddler jumping around to “Let’s Go Crazy” by Prince removed from the video website. Lenz countered that the use of the song (distorted and in the background) was Fair Use. Though YouTube eventually reinstated the video, Lenz took Universal to court on the basis that they had incorrectly interpreted the DMCA by not considering Fair Use in issuing their takedown notice. Universal countered the counter by releasing a statement that their intent was to rid the internet of all user generated Prince-related content, simply as a matter of moral principle. This was a particularly bad idea and became an issue in the suit, as Lenz argued that Universal was abusing the DMCA by issuing blanket takedown notices rather than considering alleged infringements on a case-by-case basis. Lenz won her case, and the court ruled that copyright holders must consider Fair Use before requesting that a website remove material uploaded by their users.
The DMCA actually protects websites such as Zazzle from liability when files posted to their servers are found to infringe on copyrighted material. True! It’s “safe harbor” legislation that takes legal responsibility off the shoulders of the middle man (in this case, Zazzle) and moves most of the liability and burden of enforcement to the uploader and copyright holder—provided that the middle man follow a few very simple procedures:
Notify users when their material has been down.
We took down your file because
we’ve been told it infringes on someone else’s copyright.
Provide users with an opportunity to challenge the removal of materials.
If you think we made a mistake, here’s how to contact us with your side of the story
The user can then send in a counter-notice stating why they believe their material does not infringe on another copyright.
My image is protected by Fair Use under the Copyright Act of 1976.
At this point, the website must promptly notify the copyright holder that their copyright is being challenged.
Hey Elvis! One of our users is challenging your claim
that his image violates your copyright.
Here’s what he has to say.
The copyright holder then has 14 days to file suit against the user who posted the disputed material.
Sue! Sue! Sue! Or…
If the copyright holder chooses not to file suit (perhaps agreeing that the use is fair, or simply not wanting to take the matter to court), the website is required to restore the materials that had been removed from their site.
That doesn’t seem so hard, does it? In fact, it’s exactly what other sites do (YouTube, for example, which provides a convenient online dispute form) to fairly manage disagreements between copyright claimants and the users who upload files.
So, no, Elvis is not a bully. I simply question whether he (or The Beatles, or all those adorable kewpies) is being included in the conversion.
Tap, tap, tap… Hello? Is this thing on?
Let’s take a look at how—when it came to Elvis, kewpies, and The Beatles—Zazzle implemented the copyright conflict process outlined by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act:
Notification Check!
Challenge Check!
Counter Check!
Promptly… notify… the copyright… Oh, never mind.
Who knows? At step three I made my claim for Fair Use, and rather than see the process continue to some conclusion that would involve my dispute being provided to Elvis Presley Enterprises, I was told by a representative of Zazzle that there was nothing that they could do; hiding, effectively, behind a very limited interpretation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This is not the way the DMCA is supposed to work and it is certainly not fair to artists and designers who have legitimate claims to publish and profit from the art they have created.
Furthermore, for the two dozen or so product designs that were taken down, Zazzle has followed the first three steps of the dispute process in only one case. Though I have responded to every notification with an email requesting additional information, Zazzle has failed to respond, except (on three occasions) where they simply passed the buck and identified the copyright holders making claims against the art I had uploaded. I’d like to assert my claim of Fair Use for each of the deleted product designs, but this is difficult to do when emails go unanswered.
What now?
As things stand today, a couple of weeks following the initial flurry of product rejections, none of my disputed content has been restored and Zazzle’s content review team has been mum on prior claims of Fair Use. The good news, though, is that no additional products have been rejected, which is a bit maddening, as many of these designs are based on the same images, uploaded the same day, but applied to a different class of product. So, where one image was rejected as a mousepad, it has yet to be flagged for copyright infringement as an iPhone case or a tote bag. Baffling.
Though Zazzle has stonewalled in replying to my requests for more information, my resolve will not be hampered. I plan on issuing formal counter-notices on the grounds of Fair Use for each prior rejection. Tedious, yes, as often the same image was rejected in the design of multiple products. Hopefully, with Fair Use on my side and by working through the process defined by the DMCA, I’ll convince Zazzle’s content management team to follow through (as they are legally required) and notify the copyright holders of the challenges I am within my rights to raise.
In the meantime…
As stated near the beginning of this article, I like Zazzle. I think they make good products and I’d like to see my art featured on a wide range of their products. I yearn for a big, chubby-cheeked kewpie surrounded by buddhas and bathing beauties, cheerfully gazing from the back of my iPhone, but Zazzle tells me that my art infringes on the intellectual property that lives, apparently, in the DNA of a kewpie. And the Beatles. And Elvis. Until otherwise resolved, those figures as persona non grata on a Zazzle product.
And so, with the store I want to open currently in copyright limbo, I’ve decided to open an alternate store filled with “copyright friendly products” meant to bring attention to the case for Fair Use in fine art.
The Beatles? Banished!
Elvis? Erased!
Kewpies? Vaporized pixel by pixel in the merciless purgatory of a JPEG’s alpha channel.
To that end I sharpened my digital editing tools and created censored versions of each of the 10 photos Zazzle had flagged as unacceptable for product designs. Below is the censored version of Backstage pass in the ninth circle of Hell.
Backstage pass in the ninth circle of Hell — censored version
As the Clash once sang in the song 1977:
No Elvis, Beatles, or the Rolling Stones!
The Elvis matchbooks have been whited away; the Beatle bobble heads, removed. (No Rolling Stones in the photo, but you will note a ticket stub from the Clash concert on the right side). In their place, the symbol for copyright, which as far as I know is fair… to use.
The new shop—I Support Fair Use—is now open! Come on by to see the censored versions of my art and maybe buy a mug so you too can support Fair Use while you sip your morning coffee.
And while you’re sipping that copyright friendly cup of morning joe, please visit my new Tumblr blog where I’ll be posting all kinds of example of art that benefits from the protection of Fair Use.
I’d love to hear from other artists to learn how you might have faced and (hopefully) overcome issues related Fair Use. I’ve created a page on Facebook for this very purpose:
Drop by the page, give it a like, share it with all your creative artist friends (and their friends, and their friends’ friends)! Fair use and the creative freedom it affords artists in the expression of their artistic vision is IMPORTANT. Fair Use exists for a reason. It protects the work of countless excellent artists from Ron English to Isabel Samaras, Todd Schorr and Alex Gross, to Jason Freeny and Shepard Fairey. It will continue to protect the work of artists in generations to come, especially as technology and the ability to share and distribute content evolves—but only if we stand firm and defend the rights we as artists are clearly entitled to exercise, as there are no bounds to the imagination, and unjust restrictions to our creativity should not be tolerated.
Envy springs forth from the pious song of man — censored version
Take a look at the photo above. Notice anything unusual? Ha! Rhetorical question! It would appear that this version of my original photo, Envy springs forth from the pious song of man, has undergone the careful hand of a surgeon’s scalpel, carving out objects and replacing them with big fat copyright signs. And that’s pretty much exactly what I’ve done, though using photo editing software to perform this digital photoectomy, as opposed to the gleaming blade of a surgical tool.
Envy springs forth from the pious song of man
So why, exactly, would I decide to censor my own work? Well, in the opinion of the print-on-demand service Zazzle, I don’t have the right to sell products containing my original copyrighted photo (seen to the right) on their website. This photo, along with nine other images, was rejected by Zazzle’s content review team as being “in conflict with one or more of our acceptable content guidelines.”
Each of the past couple of years I’ve released new products around the holidays: a set of collector postcards in 2010, and a deluxe box set of my iPad book in 2011. For 2012 my product plans were far more ambitious, envisioning a veritable gift shop full of Wind-up Dreams & Vinyl Nightmares merchandise. After researching a variety of print-on-demand services, I selected Zazzle, impressed with their wide range of products, their reputation for high quality printing, and the ease with which artists like myself are able to setup storefronts and sell custom products to the 25 million or so people who visit the site each month. Moreover, I was extremely impressed with their hand-sewn laptop bags and sleeves manufactured by Rickshaw Bagworks in San Francisco. These bags are COOL, providing artists the opportunity to use their creativity to layout seam-to-seam, all-over designs, and make these product available for sale on the Zazzle website. Awesome!!
Setting up the Wind-up Dreams & Vinyl Nightmares store
With dozens of my photos to choose from, I began to design products, carefully scaling and laying out images using Zazzle’s helpful templates and online design tools. I made mugs, mouse pads, iPhone cases, laptop sleeves, notebooks, day planners, coin purses, cosmetic bags… even cool little desktop speakers manufactured by OrigAudio. After three or four weeks I had 80 or 90 products waiting in my “virtual stockroom” while I setup my store and made plans to go live with a launch of exclusive merchandise just in time for the online holiday shopping season.
Stocking shelves and getting ready for the Grand Opening!
As you work on the design of a new Zazzle product—say, a mug—it resides in a queue of In-Progress Designs, which is kind of like a little workshop where you can tweak and modify the images and text you want printed until it’s ready for prime time. Once you’re done, you can add it to your shopping cart, submit payment, and your custom printed mug will be shipped directly to you—personalized service with the click of a button.
Custom printing is one way of using Zazzle. Another is setting up a shop and offering your custom designs for sale in Zazzle’s online marketplace. Zazzle does the printing and the shipping, and you as the artist get a royalty (which you set) on each sale. With several dozen product designs now complete, I was ready to begin moving my work from In-Progress to my online Zazzle store (which had been created as “private” until I was ready for launch). The Zazzle mechanism for moving a product into a shop is to click “Post for sale.” There, you give your product a title, write up a description, specify a variety of options, establish your royalty, and add all-important search tags to catch the electronic eye of search engines. All very easy! At the bottom of the page is the following checkbox:
Yes, indeed, I indicated that I do have the right to publish and sell products designed using my photographs, and I didn’t see any reason why I would not agree with Zazzle’s user agreement.
Once posted it may take up to 24 hours for an item to appear in your shop, but the process actually runs much more quickly than that (maybe an hour or two) and Zazzle sends a nice email notifying when the process has completed. Though the “doors” were still closed, I was very excited to begin seeing all of my designs popping up in my little Wind-up Dreams shop!
Then… trouble began.
Sorry, you did not build that!
I posted my initial batch of products for sale on Tuesday and Wednesday, September 25th and 26th. The first sign of trouble began that Friday, September 28, with an email from Zazzle’s Content Review Team that read, in part:
Unfortunately, it appears that your product, Backstage Pass Mug, contains content that is in conflict with one or more of our acceptable content guidelines.
We will be removing this product from the Zazzle Marketplace shortly.
Policy Notes: Your design contains and (sic) image or text that may be in violation of an individual’s rights of celebrity/publicity. This may be due to the actual design of the product, description or search tags that are associated to your product. Please feel free to submit a new design to our Marketplace from original elements.
Backstage pass in the ninth circle of Hell
I was a bit puzzled. The mug I had designed featured the photo to the right, Backstage pass in the ninth circle of Hell, which I staged and photographed in my studio in the fall of 2008. The photo is a commentary on fame, selling out, and the potential consequences of getting what one seeks (e.g. money, fame, access). The piece has appeared in gallery shows, is sold online as a limited edition print, and is included in my book and postcard set.
No sooner had I read this first email that two more arrived—one denying my attempt to place Backstage Pass on a MacBook sleeve, the other restricting the same image on the face of a desktop speaker. Sure enough, upon clicking over to my as-of-yet-unopened Zazzle shop, all three products had been deleted. They hadn’t been moved, as I would have expected, to the In-Progress area of my account where I might be able to figure out what had happened. They were just gone. Poof.
Confused, I wrote to Zazzle requesting more specific information about why my photo had been rejected, and later in the day received a canned, condescendingly apologetic explanation that read in part :
We would love to offer every design that our users submit, however we must abide by all applicable laws and standards as well as our own content guidelines and copyright policies.
Unfortunately, it appears that your products did not meet Zazzle’s Acceptable Content Guidelines. Specifically, your products contained content which infringed upon the intellectual property rights of Elvis Presley Enterprises.
We have been contacted by Elvis Presley Enterprises, and at their request, have removed the product from the Zazzle Marketplace.
Elvis matchbooks in the staging of my photo
I certainly could not deny that the image of Elvis is, in fact, included in my photograph. There he is on three matchbook covers observing the scene backstage with detached reserve and dissatisfaction (essential to the social commentary intended by the piece).
Putting aside, for a moment, Zazzle’s claim that they had been “…contacted by Elvis Presley Enterprises” requesting that my mug design be removed, my concern was with this statement:
…we must abide by all applicable laws and standards
as well as our own content guidelines and copyright policies
Well, in accordance to “all applicable laws and standards,” my photo is completely legal!
How can I be sure of this and what does it mean when it comes to posting images on the web? Tune in tomorrow to read the rest of the story. If you are an artist, a supporter of the arts, or just someone who likes reading unsual legal cases about celebrities (I know you’re out there!), I promise you will not be disappointed.
We’re going to take a short break from my Comic-Con wrap-up for a quick little instructional post on how to make your own alphabet blocks. They’re just like regular alphabet blocks except they don’t necessarily have the alphabet on the face—but we’re still going to call them ”alphabet blocks.” Basically, we’re going to be creating photo alphabet blocks, placing alphabet block-sized images on the face of each small wooden cube. Like a lot of my how-to posts I’m going to ramble for a bit about the motivation for creating custom alphabet blocks, so if you’re in a hurry, scroll down to the section titled “New and improved Mexican Loteria blocks.” Otherwise, read on and enjoy!
A little background
Arlene measures the value of her soul while listening to the insidious sounds of Musica de los Muertos — 2007
I’ve been using traditional children’s alphabet blocks in my photography for several years, dating back to around 2007, when I discovered that blocks would allow me to build more elaborate stages for my photos. Until that time, most of my work lived on a single horizontal plane atop the stacks of records that formed the physical base of each scene. Using blocks I could create tiers and steps, and better integrate the objects in the foreground with the vintage album covers in the back.
The blocks also allowed me to interject words and numbers into my compositions in a manner that stayed true to my vintage sensibilities. Like many of the toy figures that roam about my surreal constructions, alphabet blocks are objects that connect to past memories, and set the narrative in a familiar—yet unsettled—time period.
Money blocks!
The drawback of traditional alphabet blocks is that each set contains only 38 different characters (A-Z, 1-9, +, -, =). Sure, that’s plenty for creating words, numbers and equations, but I soon found the blocks somewhat limiting. My work relies quite heavily on symbolism and iconography to represent ideas in a much more interpretive way than the literal communication of letters and words. While working on my 2009 solo show Plastic Prophets of Vinyl RedemptionI “invented” money blocks, which are nothing more than regular alphabet blocks wrapped with a piece of old-style U.S. currency like a little birthday present. A good example of money block use is seen below, with the blocks adding both compositional structure and narrative symbolism.
Mindy dreams of pearls and the envy of all the girls at Kappa Nu — 2008
My next foray into alphabet block customization came in 2010 as I was preparing new work for Seven Signs of the Kewpie Apocalypse. For this show I had it in my head that several pieces would benefit from alphabet blocks that looked like Mexican Loteria cards. Surely, such blocks must exist, or so I thought, for several reasons:
Loteria images are everywhere! You can find them on greeting cards, matchbooks, cigarette cases, shopping bags, wallets, pendants, mouse pads, and beaded curtains.
There’s no possible way that I’m the first person in all the world to have thought that Loteria images should be on alphabet blocks.
They simply should exist because the idea of stackable Loteria blocks is just too cool!
Nope. I searched and searched, along the way finding alphabet blocks for languages across the globe from China to Egypt, but nothing that even remotely resembled what I was envisioning for my new photos. So I made my own.
A little history for those unfamiliar with Loteria cards Loteria is a bingo-like game played by matching colorful images selected from a deck of cards with identical images on a player’s game board. It’s a simple but entertaining game, largely because of the wonderful pictures of people and things such as the sun, the moon, the devil, and the human heart. The images that most people associate with Loteria were created by Don Clemente Jacques in 1887, which continue to be produced to this day.
Mexican Loteria blocks — the early years
My first attempt at creating Loteria blocks was mildly successful, but not particularly satisfying. Having a nice deck of Loteria cards I simply scanned the card faces as high quality TIFF files, arranged the images into a document as one might envision the faces of a cube unfolded to lay flat, printed, then wrapped the paper around a normal alphabet block as I’d done previously to create money blocks.
Yeah, I guess they look okay, but the images are only so sharp, the colors are rather dull, and the folded end flaps were too thick and bulky, so you couldn’t really stack the blocks without first setting them beneath heavy books for a few hours to coax the paper flaps to lay flat. You also see only one image on each block, as I never could quite get the dimensions right to center images on every side of the block (and forget about the top or bottom flaps). Still, I used them for the photos in the exhibit with reasonable success.
Seven Signs of the Kewpie Apocalypse — 2010
Which brings us to the present day.
New and improved Mexican Loteria blocks!
Always looking to improve the look of my photos, I recently set out to create my own custom Loteria blocks that would improve upon the quick’n'dirty paper-fold blocks I’d previously produced. To this end, the blocks needed to be:
Colorful!
Sharp!
Printed on all 6 sides!
Easily stackable!
Rather than wrap traditional blocks with paper, I decided that a better solution would be to either apply or transfer existing Loteria images directly onto blank wooden blocks. I’d attempted photo transfers onto wood in the past, but had been less than happy with the results. DIY photo transfers are great if you’re willing to sacrifice a little bit of clarity and accept some distress to the image as you peel away layers of the transfer material. I’m not one to generally sacrifice or accept quality—unless that’s exactly what I want, and in this case, it was not. So, for this project, I’d be applying existing Loteria images directly onto the face of blank wooden blocks using decoupage.
Step one — Preparing the images
Finding Loteria images that would fit onto the face of an alphabet-size block was not as difficult as I’d imagined. Pasatiempos Gallo makes a set of mini Loteria games that are intended to be tucked as prizes inside a piñata. The whole game—cards and boards—is printed on a single sheet of perforated light cardboard that is folded up to fit inside a playing card-size plastic wrap. Perfect! Though the cards were too large to fit on the side of an alphabet block, the images on the game boards were juuuuust right! Using a pair of scissors, I cut out each image, trimming to just outside the black line that borders each colorful illustration, effectively creating a deck of super mini Loteria cards
Trimming images from the mini Loteria game boards
Note on the printing process!
The Loteria images used for this project were professionally printed, likely using an offset printing process. If you consider using this same process for your own photos or images you will want to make sure that the images are similarly printed using either a laser printer or professional printing equipment other than ink jet. The process of applying the image to another surface involves the use of goopy liquids that may cause standard inks (even when dry) to blur or smear. Be forewarned!
Traditional Loteria sets include 54 different images. Unfortunately, the mini game includes only 36, choosing to leave out 18 “less essential” images such as La Botella, El Arpa, and La Maceta (the bottle, harp, and pot, respectively). At first, this caused me no special grief… until I realized that La Calavera (The Skull) and El Musico (The Musician) were not included in the set. Oh, sadness.
Step two — Preparing the blocks
Alphabet blocks come in all sizes, depending on the manufacturer. The alphabet blocks you see in my photos are produced by Melissa & Doug. They are really great blocks measuring 1 and 3/16ths of an inch on each side. There are a number of manufacturers of plain, unpainted blocks around the country, but the precise dimensions used by Melissa & Doug eluded me. For this project I chose 1 and 1/4 inch blocks from Barclay Wood Toys and Blocks located in Hebron, Indiana. Their blocks are made of kiln dried hardwoods (maple, birch, ash, etc) and at a cost of 16 cents per block I bought 16 for about $12 (including postage). Since there were 36 different Loteria images and I wanted to place a different illustration on each side of my blocks, I’d need to make six blocks (leaving ten for mistakes, er, future custom blocks.
I wanted my new and improved blocks to somewhat resemble the blocks I’d made using the paper wrapping method, so I made the decision to place the Loteria images on clean, white backgrounds—kind of replicating the white backgrounds of traditional alphabet blocks (though without the colored edge borders). A different approach would have been to stain the blocks to give them an old world feel, and while I think that would have looked spectacular, the white backgrounds would provide greater image contrast when incorporated into my work.
First coat applied to the unfinished wooden blocks
I applied two coats of white enamel spray paint to the blocks, placing each atop a quarter to prevent the painted blocks from sticking to the newspaper drop cloths.
Step three — Organizing the images
Didn’t we already prepare the images? Yes! But now we are organizing the images. Remember, my intention was to use these custom blocks in my photos, and how calamitous would it be to be in the midst of composing a scene and discover that El Diablito (The Devil) was on the same block as El Alacran (The Scorpion)? Horrors!
I divided my mini images into six groups—one per block—making sure that there would be a good distribution of illustration themes and colors from one block to the next. So, for example, a single block might have one side depicting a person, another with a celestial body, another with something that grows, etc. I also used this time to plan the orientation of each image on each block. There really aren’t any hard and fast rules here, but have you ever looked at a drawing or painting of a pair of dice and had the feeling that something is wrong? That usually happens when the artist mixes up the number of dots that should appear on each face—i.e. one is next to six, three is next to four, two is next to five—combinations that won’t be found on a real die.
‘A’ is for apple…
The same holds true with alphabet blocks where, generally, the painted letter on the front of a block will be right-side up, with the letter on the opposite face will be upside down. Likewise, the outlined letters, numbers and illustrations on the unpainted sides (those that wrap all the way around the block between the painted sides) are flipped 90° from the main letters on the painted faces. (Go ahead, if you have some blocks handy, check it out.)
In any case, decide on a strategy for how your images will be oriented on the faces of your blocks. In my case, I decided that images on opposite sides of a block would be vertically flipped (like on traditional alphabet blocks). Images on adjacent blocks would be flipped 90°, so no two touching faces would ever have the images oriented in the same direction. I did this, again, to provide greater contrast for the image that would be facing the camera.
Organizing the images might not sound important, but will save steps later on when you discover that an image 30 seconds from drying solid has been affixed to the block upside down.
Step four — Attaching images to the blocks
With the paint dry we’re finally ready to attach images to the sides of our custom alphabet blocks! If you’ve ever decoupaged, this part is super easy. Of course, prior to this project, I had never decoupaged… and it was still easy!
I used Mod Podge to affix the mini Loteria images to the sides of my painted blocks. Mod Podge is, basically, a bunch of goo that acts as a glue, finish and sealer, that comes in all kinds of “flavors” such as matte, gloss, and sparkle (and probably a lot more based on the dizzying array of bottles I found at my local craft store). I chose Gloss Lustre. I also chose a container with a flip-top drip applicator, as I didn’t anticipate the need for a whole lot of Mod Podge. For larger projects you may want to get a big ol’ vat of Mod Podge and a paint brush to slop on your glue and sealant.
Attaching an image to a wood surface is a two step process:
The Glue Step
Place a few drops of Mod Podge on the surface of a block.
Spread the goo over the surface using a foam brush (or a paintbrush), thoroughly covering any area where you plan on attaching the image.
Place the image face down on your workspace, and place a couple of drops of Mod Podge on the back of the image.
Once again, spread that goo around, making sure that you brush the goo up to and over the edge of the image.
Take the now gooey image and place it—face up, of course—on the equally gooey surface of the block. The image is going to slip and slide a bit, which is actually to your advantage as you can slip and slide it right into place at the very center of the alphabet block. I actually used the backside of a fork for this task, as the width of the fork was a little narrower than the height of the mini Loteria images, so I could easily eyeball the horizontal and vertical center points of my blocks.
You want to make sure that every little piece of the image is well attached to the underlying block, and that evil air bubbles get squeezed out from beneath the commingling layers of goo. How? Oh, I suppose you could use a fancy rubber roller for this kind of job. I used the fork from step 5, rocking it back and forth to firmly seat the center of the image and squeeze out bubbles. I then ran the rounded edge of the tines along the perimeter of the image to squeeze out excess goo and make sure every edge and corner was firmly affixed to the block.
Wait 15 or 20 minutes for the Mod Podge to dry. You can pass the time by reading my blog or by cleaning your brush using ordinary tap water.
Note!
Remember that Mod Podge is a glue, and though it is water soluble (to a point), your brushes will be very unhappy if they are allowed to dry solid in a coat of Mod Podge goo!
The Sealing Step Once the first application of Mod Podge has dried, you seal and finish the now glued-on image with a second application of Mod Podge. Yes, the same Mod Podge. Remember, it’s a glue and sealer all in one!
Place a few drops of Mod Podge on the surface of your image.
Spread the goo over the image surface, making sure of three very important things:
Cover the entire surface, spreading beyond the edges and corners.
Brush as smoothly as possible (which is why a foam brush is recommended).
Brush in one direction.
That’s it!
Allow 15 to 20 minutes for the sealant coat to dry—perfectly clear!—and one face of the alphabet block is finished.
For the Loteria blocks I worked on all six at the same time, basically doing the primary (i.e. the coolest) image for each block first, then rotating to an adjacent side to affix that image, and so forth until all six sides were complete.
The results?
My set of six finished Loteria blocks!
I’m incredibly happy with the way my blocks came out and I can’t wait to begin using them in upcoming photos! Next—and since I still have 10 unused blank blocks—I think I’ll begin brainstorming future custom alphabet blocks. Famous authors? Notable scientists? Tarot cards? What do you think, Patient Reader; any suggestions?
People, have been after me for ages to post a few photos of my studio, and it seems as though it’s always that “next thing” on my long list of tasks. Well, guess what? Today, finally, is “next thing” day!
Behold! We step behind the Lego gates that border the grounds at Wind-up Dreams Studios!
Okay, so I don’t really have a gate made of multicolored Lego bricks, but the studio is tucked away behind a stucco and red-roofed wall in the converted guest house in my back yard. Here’s a nice view from the back courtyard.
Wind-up Dreams Studio — exterior view
The studio holds all my vintage vinyl LPs, along with a stockpile of essential equipment for creating my art: toy figures, alphabet blocks, old books, and kewpie dolls. Oh yeah, I also have a bunch of photography equipment such as tripods, flood lights, and a light tent where all of my creations are constructed, staged, and shot. The studio is the place for shooting my photos, with all post production work taking place on an iMac inside my office in the main house.
Entrance to the studio. No, really, I’m quite friendly.
Let’s go inside!
View from just inside the door. Messy!
And there you go. Nothing too fancy. Just a single small desk, a chair, and a whole lotta “stuff.” My main work area is inside the light tent you see on the right. That’s where I build the three dimensional scenes that are the basis for my photographs and videos. Beyond the light tent is “toy land” where my crazy array of toys and trinkets are stored. Actually, that’s not completely true… Many of my extra special figures are on permanent display inside the main house, with small collections of interesting figures occupying almost ever room. When called upon, those figures magically come to life and wander out to the studio while I am a sleep. One day, I’ll be stuck on a particular composition, and the next morning I’ll awake to find that a clay devil pounding on a drum has somehow made his way from the main house out to the studio to stand in exactly the perfect place to complete the photo. Amazing!!
Note!
Please shield your vision away from the lacy white curtains and the horrid floral print on the window valances. Those are left over from the previous owners who had papered the entire room in a similar pattern. And covered the bed with the same floral print. And shaded the lamp with, yes, flowers. And upholstered the white wicker furniture in the same wicked print. And laid white carpet. It was a 1970′s Holly Hobbie nightmare. I’ll change out the window treatments, I swear.
The back corner of the room is for lighting and tripods, records are on the left, and alphabet blocks are just inside the door and out of sight.
A, B, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K…
The storage for my alphabet blocks doubles as a TV stand, which actually doesn’t do me a whole lot of good since cable doesn’t run out to the studio, and I’m only able to pickup a handful of digital broadcasts using rabbit ears—which is just as well, as I’d MUCH rather listen to music as I work. The little bookshelf speakers on top of the cabinet are hooked up to a wireless receiver so I can stream music from iTunes inside the main house out to the studio. Random shuffle is my best friend!
Interesting coincidence
The purple cabinet was originally brown, and it was a fixture behind the counter at my parents’ drug store. There, the cabinet was used to display rolls of 35mm film.
Here’s a better look at the vinyl records I frequently use as background source material for my photos.
Stacks of vintage vinyl. Probably 500 LPs to choose from.
Record storage was becoming a huge problem in the main house until I discovered these LP-size milk crates at The Container Store. Each crate holds 50 or 60 record albums. They’re easy to move and flipping through the crates is a breeze while looking for a background to catch my eye. To the right are stacks of 45 RPM singles. Being an engineering bordering on OCD, I recently organized all of my 45′s by label color so I don’t have to go searching for a particular color to top a stack of records in a given composition. I’d formerly find myself taking apart whole constructions looking for a 45 of a particular color because I’d buried my one 7″ single on Sun Records somewhere deep within an elaborate stage set.
45 RMP singles. Yes, organized by label color.
The box beneath the 45′s contains a veritable army of kewpie dolls, all acquired for the installation I had on display during my Seven Signs of the Kewpie Apocalypse show in 2010. I don’t let them out much. I’m afraid of what they may do.
View from the toy cabinet looking back towards the entrance
Super cool art hanging in the studio!
You won’t find a lot of art on the walls of my studio. Not because I don’t want art on the walls; I do. Unfortunately, the walls are not particularly conducive to driving nails. While the main house is generous in its use of the finest construction methods of the day (remember, this is 1927), the studio—nay, guest house—nay, “servants quarters” (which was, in fact, the original function of the room)—the walls of the studio seem to be constructed of concrete blocks covered with plaster, which makes hanging art an exercise in frustration. To the right is one of my favorite pieces—an enlarged page from the Space Happy coloring book that’s been decoupaged on the surface of a kitchen cabinet and embellished with glitter.
Dinos! Cowboys! Battleships!
Hanging opposite Space Happy is the awesome mixed media piece you see to the left. It’s a mosaic on a big ceramic tile created by one of the developmentally disabled adults at St. Madeleine Sophie’s Center in El Cajon, California. St. Madeleine’s is a wonderful organization that has done immeasurable good tapping into the creative talents of students throughout San Diego County. My sister gave me this piece for Christmas several years ago and thought it was a perfect addition to my fun filled studio!
Elsewhere in the studio I have posters of work by Keith Haring and Jackson Pollock, as well as an instructional cool poster outlining bad behavior in India. In a couple of the photos above you’ve probably noticed a large lobby poster from Forbidden Planet that had been on the wall in the big empty space above the record crates. Curse you, concrete walls, curse you!
Way over on the other side of the studio is where you’ll find most of the objects I cram into my photos. At the center is the Cabinet of Pop Culture Curiosities, which we’ll explore in all its candy-colored glory in a few moments. Above the cabinet is an assembly of shells, stones, and other interesting things first created by my artist friend, Anthia Linou. Over time the installation has changed a little, with new pieces added and older pieces moved or removed as occasions have arisen to use elements of the installation in my photos.
Far wall. Toys! Books! Stuff in boxes!
To the left and in front you see a jigsaw of boxes and containers, each containing a wide array of recently acquired figures or toys that overflow beyond the red wooden walls of the cabinet. I have a general idea of what is hidden where, but I’m frequently surprised by what I find as I open boxes and hunt through bags searching for a specific object to to be positioned within my latest three dimensional diorama.
Vintage books used to construct my scenes
Right of the cabinet is a bookshelf of oddly collected books, many of which have made appearances in past work, and almost all of which at one time or another has been used out of sight as supporting structure for my gravity defying stage constructions. Beyond what you see in my finished photos is a calamitous construction of records, blocks, Legos, and books, as I often need to build platforms and scaffolds as a base for objects and figures to be “level” with my chosen background imagery.
As we teased earlier, the real stars of my photos are the vintage toys and figures that perform as “actors” in the scenes I create. I’ve been collecting toy figures for years and years, and before committing my work to a studio these figures once-upon-a-time occupied playful space in my office from my days as a software engineer. There, they were scattered all across my desk, danced precariously atop my computer monitor, and mingled with manuals on the bookshelves. It was a fast paced, high tech life to be sure, but my toys are much happier living life together in my studio!
The Cabinet of Pop Culture Curiosities
With a little close inspection you’ll notice that the shelves are more or less organized into zones of common purpose—sort of like the sections in an encyclopedia. There’s the presidential section, the cowboys & Indians section. The kewpies all stand together, rubbing their cute little pink, green and yellow shoulders with Buddahs and nuns. There’s a musician section. An animal section. An army section and a skeleton section. Then, we have the geography section, the bumper car section, the rubber food section and the Egyptian section. Outer space is on the top shelf, and the realm of Monster Women is down below. It all sort of makes sense and provides me with the palette from which I add character to my images.
Want a closer look? Let’s go!! (Click on any image to get a nice close-up view!)
Beatles!
Kewpies, and Buddhas, and Hulas — oh my!
Toys waiting to be plucked for use in a new photo
A portion of the animal shelf
The presidential suite
Telephone Teens and Astronauts sitting atop my little Tivoli radio
The presidents stand next to the brain section. Clever, no?
A portion of the religious section
Little girls and pirates
Doesn’t that make you want to run off to a toy store and buy a bunch of toys? I do feel bad, though, that accommodations are so crowded, and—worse!—so many great figures and toys are still locked away in the darkness of their shipping containers. One day I hope to devise a better way to store and display my cast of willing characters so all will have equal chance to catch my eye and find a spot in upcoming photographs.
We’ll wrap up this studio tour with a quick look at some of the equipment I use when capturing my photos.
The light tent where I construct all my photos
Above you see the setup for a typical photo session, with a 30″ EZCube light tent sitting on a table top, and floodlights surrounding the cube. The gauzy fabric allows light to bounce throughout the inside of the tent which cuts down on harsh shadows and other lighting troubles. The lights in the back are simple low wattage desktop lamps that are used to illuminate the inside of the tent while I’m working without sucking up huge amounts of electricity and otherwise acting like a personal tanning salon. The floodlights in the front are each 500 watts, which blaze with heat and illumination to pretty much simulate the sun inside the tent. In front of the tent and hidden just inside the fabric flap is my camera—a Canon XTi with a really nice L-series lens that allows me choose from a variety of apertures and zoom as necessary for a given stage construction.
The light tent with three floods. Get ready to sweat!
About a year ago I decided that simulating the light of the sun was not good enough—I wanted to simulate the light of many suns! So a third floodlight was added that could be positioned above the tent for even more control over light sources. The current setup is shown at the right with the staging for Despite her parents’ righteous determination, Baby Haley dreamed to follow her own path contained within.
And there you have it!
We hope you’ve enjoyed this short trip into Wind-up Dreams Studios, and if you come across any interesting and unusual figures that would like a home amongst the devils, nuns, kewpies, and presidents… Please! By all means send your recommendations my way!
Time moves quickly in the world of Wind-up Dreams, and where I’ve had a host of posts planned around my springtime trip to Los Angeles, it’s suddenly summer and almost July, and does it really make sense to write up a review for a couple of concerts I attended back in April? No, of course not!
Ah! But that now long ago trip north did yield a pair of fairly amazing vintage finds that have found a life together and forever in a brand new photo and video animation. Where some may direct their travels to resorts, tourist destinations, and upscale shopping districts, I’m a bit more adventurous, wandering into odd little shops, swap meets, or tiny indy record stores where (my kind of) treasure surely awaits. One such store is Permanent Records, a fantastic little record store on the main drag in Eagle Rock with an incredibly diverse selection of new and used vinyl, plus a very knowledgeable staff with great taste in all kinds of music.
“Lazy Rhapsody” Lou Busch and his Piano Orchestra, 1957
In the stacks at Permanent Records I found Lazy Rhapsody, an album released by Lou Busch and his Piano Orchestra (imagine the stage required for that!) in the late 1950s. The record had loooooong been included on my Records Want List, a comprehensive spreadsheet I’ve maintained for many years to track the album covers I see on various vintage vinyl websites that have good potential as background subject matter for my photos. The best are those covers with a glamorous gal of the 50′s gazing off into negative space where my devious mind can construct an alternate universe for her to contemplate, and—for obvious reasons (I mean, just look at it!)—Lazy Rhapsody was VERY high on my want list!
Vintage books have made several memorable appearance in my photos, and I’m always on the lookout for old texts with unusual titles or fancy gold lettering on the spine. The day before my trip to Permanent Records I discovered the Cosmopolitan Book Shop, a jam packed used bookstore on Melrose Avenue, east of La Brea. Wow! Inventory, inventory, inventory… Floor to ceiling and wall to wall. It would take days to fully appreciate their stock, and I basically found the store while filling 10 minutes before heading off to other locales. Luckily, it took only 9 minutes to spot an absolutely incredible vintage book! Crazy title—gold on the spine. Yay!
“The Influence of Women… and its cure” John Erskine, 1936
To the left is The Influence of Women… and its cure by John Erskine, a non-fiction book published in 1936 as a call to attention to men across the land that, basically, this whole business of (gasp!) gender equality could screw up the good deal that men had enjoyed since the beginning of recorded time. Oh, the horror! Inside is a stern text bemoaning the perils of women’s rights, the outlandish notion that women could be teachers, and that men have sadly allowed their wives to control the purse strings of family wealth. I’m convinced that I could leverage the book into a career as a standup comic by merely taking to the stage and, in a serious and knowing tone, recite passages to my delighted and far more liberated audience.
Best, though, is the inscription inside the front cover:
To Roy,
with best wishes,
from Lea — 1936
What a lovely gift! Doesn’t it make you wonder about Roy and Lea? Was Lea a strong independent woman sending Roy a message? Or was she subserviently giving Roy a gift that in present day would have been on his Amazon wish list? In any case, The Influence of Women seemed like it would be perfect as a treatment in one of my photos.
I ended up combining both of these LA finds in a new photo and video. Behold!
Malcolm was never a popular boy, until he won The Irish Sweepstakes
This was actually a very simple photo, as it involved only a single background image and very few foreground elements, whereas most of my recent work has involved much more elaborate staging. Still, building the narrative and getting the overall composition right took a fair amount of time.
Added bonus… As I’ve done with many of my recent photos, I created a video animation of the photo during deconstruction of the set! For the video I tried to imaging why Tuxedo Guy might be surrounded by all those women, and tried to find music that would sort of carry the story—though from the perspective of the women, rather than the perspective of Tuxedo Guy. Many songs were auditioned; none of them worked. And then I recalled a number one hit from 1970 that ruled the airwaves to such a heavy-rotation extent that, now, decades later, there remain people suffering from the annoying effects of an “earworm” as this invasive slice of bubbly pop drivel continually spins inside their heads. Not daring to use the original and perhaps risk the peril of worldwide audio infection, I chose a harder edge 1991 cover version from Voice Of The Beehive.
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t post new blog entries anywhere near as frequently as I would like. Ideally, I’d be blogging on a daily basis, sharing news about new photos and videos, art exhibits, great books, cool records, and posting articles that dive deep into my creative process. Trouble is… I have a difficult time churning out prose without laboring over every word, sentence and paragraph. Plus, just to make matters a little worse, I can’t… stop… writing. Simple topics—hey! I like this record!—turn into exhaustive (but still, of course, interesting) accounts worthy of a short chapter in a book.
Yes, it’s a problem, but now… a solution!
RIP Jonathan Frid—the “real” Barnabas Collins!
I now have a super cool Tumblr account where, throughout the day, you can find quick and interesting posts from me and the merry minions at Wind-up Dreams Central. Everything we post is, of course, Super Cool. Take, for instance this scary photo of the recently departed Jonathan Frid. Oh, sure… I could have dedicated a 4,000 or 5,000 word blog post on Dark Shadows (and, come to think of it, I may do that), but I could spend a week or more in Creative Writing Hell in an effort to produce a Pulitzer caliber post on campy daytime horror. Instead, as quickly as a vampire could sink his teeth into an alabaster neck… there it is on:
I hope you enjoy this foray into more frequent sharing of interesting things, and if YOU have a Tumblr, don’t be shy… feel free to reblog any of the images you find on Vintage Vinyl. We’re scouring the universe for cool finds to share with our followers, so let us know about your interesting finds!
Welcome to my third installment in this short series on how to create deep focus images using Aperture. Today we will finally get to all the gory details of dissecting differently focused photos to create a single image where every object in the frame is sharp as a proverbial tack.
Recall from Part 2 that this experiment resulted in 9 photos, each focused on a different part of the scene. From one photo to the next, at least some area of the image is perfectly sharp, while the rest of the photo may be terribly out of focus. Doesn’t it make sense that we could take just the in-focus parts, leaving out the out of focus parts, and construct a single image where everything is sharp and clear?
That’s just what we are going to do.
The Big Picture
Before we get started it’s a good idea to look at the Big Picture before diving into the details. We are basically going to constrct a jigsaw puzzle, where the “pieces” are oddly shaped portions of the nine photos we have shot. Our pieces won’t necessarily have the precision of a jigsaw, where edges align at tight, exacting borders, but they will cover every inch of the canvas and seamlessly fit together to “paint” the entire scene. Our eventual goal will be to create puzzle pieces like the one you see on the right, as transparent TIFF files that can be composited together using a third party application.
Analyzing the image and getting organized
Nine photos means nine copies of every object in the scene. For the photo we’ve been working on, Engine 316 takes a detour on the glorious path to the Hereafter, that means we have nine versions of each and every object in the scene—nine giant devil heads, nine bikini girls emerging from the earth, nine skulls atop the log cabin—but we really need only one. The sharpest one.
Every object appears in every photo — we have nine to choose from!
In preparing to slice and dice this photo into various puzzle pieces I first took a good hard look at the objects surrounding a given point of focus to determine which areas were in focus for that photo, and whether or not that object/area was in the sharpest focus across all nine images. For example, in the “puzzle piece” we examined previously, the AF point had been on the dress of the dancing girl. In examining this particular photograph, the dancing girl (of course) was in very sharp focus. And, as expected, many of the surrounding objects—those within the calculated range of acceptable focus (an inch or so)—were also at their sharpest.
A second very important consideration into building a focus stack is to understand how the objects in your scene stand in “z-order (oooo! ahhh!) relationship” to one another. That’s basically a fancy way of saying that some objects stand in front of others (e.g. the dancing girl on the right stands in front of the menacing devil). Understanding the three dimensional relationship between objects will help you plan how all these puzzle pieces will eventually be layered together.
Think of the objects in your scene as laying on a series of vertical planes or “focus layers.” The background is the farthest layer and stands farthest from your vantage point. In our example, the record album cover (Movin’ On To Victory by Tammy Faye Bakker) is farthest from the camera and—since album covers are nicely flat—is a layer all by itself. The log cabin is slightly closer to the camera, so it (and the figures atop and within) can be thought of as comprising the next closest layer. So too the large devil head which is affixed to the album cover using mounting putty. It’s a tiny bit closer to the viewer than the log cabin, and stands alongside a band of three merry devils, each roughly the same distance from the camera. So the devil head and the three musical devils make up the next closest layer. And so it goes as we inch closer and closer to our vantage point, identifying objects and areas of similar distance from where we stand as the viewer.
Why it is important to maintain background-to-foreground consistency will become more clear in a bit when it comes time to reassemble the image from all our puzzle pieces. For now, just plant the concept in your mind and hang tight!
In any case, after careful analysis of the scene and the photographs I had shot, I broke down the image into the areas you see circled below, as a means of organizing the work to come.
Breakdown of the image into similarly focused regions
I then created a folder for each area to be used as a workspace for generating the photo puzzle pieces, giving each a name like “Log Cabin” or “Devil Head” to help in identifying which objects I wanted that focus layer to include. The numbers that precede each folder name came later, after I had determined the back-to-front order of each layer. In any case, I now had a place to get to work!
Workspace folders for each differently focused area of the photo
Creating transparent focus layers using Aperture
As we saw earlier, our goal is to create transparent puzzle pieces. Strike that. We don’t actually want traditional puzzle pieces with hard edges that fit together like… well, a puzzle. What we want are pieces with soft, feathered, semi-transparent edges, so that the joining of two edges forms a nice, seamless, undetectable blend from one piece to the next. Seems like a job for Aperture’s adjustment brushes, which do an exceptionally nice job of creating soft, feathered edges.
Trouble is… Aperture lacks an “erase with transparency” brush, or any capability for exporting (or importing) images with transparency. That’s okay. With a little help, Aperture brushes can produce exactly what what we are after. The key will be to produce a mask that isolates only the in-focus portions of an image, then introduce that mask as the alpha channel of a TIFF or PNG file.
The steps for creating transparent layers using Aperture actually involve three different applications: Aperture, the Finder, and a third party graphics application that supports the creation of images with alpha channels. We’ll be going into each step in much greater depth than you see here, but a quick summary of process will help you see where we are headed:
In Aperture
Select the photo you wish to use as the source for your transparent image.
Export this image as an 8 bit TIFF to a folder on your Mac. We’ll call this your workspace.
Open an adjustment brick that you do not intend on enabling in adjustments made to this image. I use Black & White for this purpose.
Brush away the adjustment from the portions of the photo that are NOT to be included in your layer (i.e. brush away the transparent parts of the image).
Copy the mask file to the workspace folder where you’d previously exported the unaltered image.
In a third party graphics application
Details will vary from application to application, but the basic strategy looks like this:
Open the TIFF image exported from Aperture.
Add an alpha channel to this image.
Open the mask file we’d copied into our workspace folder.
Copy the mask image.
Paste the mask into the alpha channel of the TIFF image.
Save the TIFF image.
Voila! We have a transparent TIFF that shows only the portions of the photo we wish to include in our focus layer.
That’s pretty much all there is to creating a single focus layer. Later, we’ll combine all of our layers to create a single composite image with everything in focus, but first we’ll walk through the steps above to create a “focus mask,” finding the mask we’ve just created, and using that mask along with the original photo to create a transparent layer.
Creating a focus mask in Aperture
We’ll use Aperture to create the alpha channel mask for the transparency layers that will be applied to each of the photos in our focus stack. Generating a mask is really easy, as Aperture creates masks when adjustments are brushed into or away from an image. Which adjustment doesn’t really matter, as we only care about the mask Aperture generates, and we will not be enabling the adjustment after our brushing is complete.
I chose to use the Black & White adjustment brush to define my focus masks, as I don’t generally apply this adjustment to any of my photos, and the effect of the Black & White adjustment contrasts nicely with the areas you wish to mask.
Let’s go to work!
We’re going to create masked layers from each of our separately focused photographs. The first one is easy—the background layer, which doesn’t actually require a mask since it will lay behind all of the other layers, and—except for the image of the album cover—will be overlaid by all our other layers. All we have to do is:
Select the photo shot with the focus on the album cover and export it as an 8-bit TIFF image. Easy!
Let’s move on to something a little more interesting: the photo taken with the focus on the devil playing the yellow wind instrument. This mask will be used to create our “Devil Head” layer, and—as we determined earlier—will include the three musicians and the large devil head on the front of the locomotive. The mask will not include any of the imagery behind the devils, as that part of the composition will be in better focus in the previously saved background layer.
We’ll edit the devil-focus photo by adding a Black & White adjustment.
Enable the Black & White adjustment brick
Select Brush Black & White Away and use the eraser to brush over the areas of this photo you want to be shown in the final image. In other words, you are brushing black and white out of the in-focus areas of the photo. This may be counter to what you would have expected, so a picture will surely help.
Color areas in focus; black and white out of focus
The image above was exported after brushing out the areas of the photo we don’t want to include in our focus mask. The in-focus area that will form the mask is shown in color, while the portions that remain in black and white are masked out.
Wow!! That was easy! How cool!
Don’t get too excited…. This is not your garden variety brushing.
Brushing to create focus masks
The strategy for using Aperture brushes to create a focus mask is not quite the same as what you would follow to brush in an image adjustment. Typically, when applying a brushed adjustment to an object, I meticulously fill the object right up to its edge, then feather the adjustment just inside the borders. But, remember, we’re not brushing in an adjustment. We’re defining an area of the photo that contains sharp focus, and—the way the eye perceives sharpness—the region we define must include the edges of objects contained within, plus a little bit of over-brushing that will be helpful in blending this layer with those that will lie below. So…
Note!! When erasing areas for your mask, brush beyond the edges of the objects you wish to include in the focus mask!
Zooming the above image to 100% illustrates how each of the four figures has been brushed to just beyond the edges (click to view at full size). Pay special attention to the area around the devil head, where you can see soft glimpses of color beyond the edges of the object.
Zoom at 100% revealing brushing beyond edges of focused objects
Brushing beyond the edges of the target objects is further illustrated by turning on Color Overlay. Here, it is very easy to see where the black and white adjustment has been brushed away, leaving the primary objects contained inside our focus mask, plus juuuuust a little of the background.
Color Overlay view revealing over-brush regions around focused objects
Zooming even closer to 200% (the magnification level I usually choose for fine brushing) reveals the feathering that has been applied to the edges of the Black & White adjustment.
Feathering zoomed to 200%
Feathering is greatest around the large devil head, and less pronounced around the smaller, more intricately shaped objects. The more gradual the feathering, the more gradual the transparency will be for this layer when we eventually blend the masked image with the imagery that rests below.
One last view at how our devil brush has been applied; this time taking a peek at the image with Brush Strokes enabled.
Brush Strokes view
Ah ha! Looks like a mask, doesn’t it? In fact, that’s exactly what it is, and by examining the brush strokes we’re able to determine whether or not brushing is complete. Remember, we’re intending this mask to be the alpha channel that defines the transparent regions of an image layer. White regions translate to areas of transparency (i.e. out of focus areas we don’t want to see), black regions will be opaque (and in focus!), fuzzy areas will be a little of both and will blend with the layer below. Close examination of the brush strokes will quickly identify any areas that are not fully opaque or fully transparent.
Quick note about how Aperture really works!
Aperture treats the white parts of a brush mask as the area over which an adjustment will be applied, so the black portions indicate areas where an image adjustment has been erased. This is exactly opposite of what you find when looking at the alpha channel of a TIFF or PNG file that contains transparency.
Once brushing is complete, we can dig into Aperture, retrieve the mask file, and use this mask as the alpha channel for a layer that has only the in-focus parts of the photo in view.
Retrieving the mask file
Several months back I wrote an article on how to find and copy Aperture adjustment brush masks, and we’ll be relying on that article quite heavily to generate the masks we’ll need to create our focus stackable puzzle pieces. Where that post dealt with copying brushes from one adjustment to another within Aperture, here we merely want to find the brush mask file and copy that file so it can be used as the alpha channel for a transparent image file. You can read all the details here: Aperture brushes unmasked! Since writing that previous post I’ve since committed the task of locating mask files inside the Aperture Library to a Saved Search, which finds any modifications I’ve made today and sorts them by modification date. The most recent brush adjustment will always be at the top.
Saved Search for brush masks generated in the Aperture Library
There it is!
Even though this mask was created with the Black & White adjustment tool, it’s really our focus mask. And once the mask has been located we can copy the file to the workspace we’re using to build this layer of our focus stack. The Finder window below shows the contents of this folder after the mask has been moved and renamed, alongside the full color 8-bit TIFF version of the photo exported from Aperture.
Devil Head workspace folder
With both the photo and the focus mask safe and secure in our workspace folder we can combine these two files to create a single file transparent layer.
Creating the layer using GraphicConverter
I’m going to use GraphicConverter to set the focus mask as the alpha channel for our focus layer. I image other graphics packages such as Gimp, or Photoshop, could serve this purpose equally well. We just require an application that allows for the editing of image alpha channels.
The steps to add, modify, and save an alpha channel in Graphic Converter are not immediately obvious, but once you’ve gone through the process a few times it (like anything that requires computational learning) becomes second nature. We’ll go through each of the steps and illustrate the process.
Open the TIFF file (Devil Head – Full Color.tiff) exported from Aperture.
8-bit TIFF of original photo opened in GraphicConverter
With this exported copy of the original photo open, an alpha can be added.
Choose Add Alpha/Mask Chanel from the Picture → Alpha Channel menu
Here’s where things get a little tricky, as by all outward appearances there’s no change to the image you see in the window. Trust me, though, an alpha channel has been added, but we’ll need to ask GraphicConverter to show it to us.
Choose Show Alpha Channel in new Window from the Picture → Alpha Channel menu
The default alpha channel... boring!
Well now, that wasn’t very interesting, was it? Black regions indicate areas of full opacity, and in this case—immediately after adding an alpha channel to an image—the entire image is opaque. We want to change the alpha channel to reflect the focus mask we created using Aperture.
Open the focus mask (Devil Head Mask.tiff) previously created by Aperture and copied to our workspace folder.
Devil Head Mask.tiff opened in GraphicConverter
This looks much more promising! We’ll copy this image and paste it into the alpha channel of the photo we exported from Aperture.
Choose Select All from the Edit menu.
Choose Copy from the Edit menu.
Select the window that contains Devil Head – Full Color.tiff alpha channel.
Choose Paste from the Edit menu.
You would think that with the black mask now replaced, we’d be done. Not so! As things stand, GraphicConverter treats the image we’ve pasted as an opaque black and white image that sits in the alpha channel. Black is black and white is white, and there is no transparency to be had! We need to turn the opaque black and white mask into an alpha mask with transparency.
With the content of the window still fully selected (choose Select All from the Edit menu if that is not the case), choose Create Alpha/Mask Channel from Selection from the Picture → Alpha Channel menu.
Alpha channel converted to provide transparency
Now, if you switch back to the window containing the original photo exported from Aperture, you’ll see our focus layer in all its transparent glory!
Original image now transformed into a focus layer with transparency
We can now Save As this image back to our workspace folder as an 8-bit TIFF file with transparency. We’ll call it Devil Head Layer.tiff to identify it as the layer of our focus stack that has only the four figures you see above in focus. If we open this file in Preview…
Demonic puzzle pieces!!
We’ll go through the process of creating transparent focus layers for each area of focus in the original photo, generating images like the one above for each. Once all our pieces are ready, we can start assembling the composite image.
Constructing a single in-focus image
We’ll use a third party application to combine all of our focus layers into a single image that has every object in sharp focus. Lots of graphic applications are capable of this task (GraphicConverter, Photoshop, Gimp, etc), so choose the application with which you are most comfortable. Just make sure it is capable of managing several layers of VERY LARGE images. In the case of the image we’ve been working with, I ended up with 10 layers, each of which was in excess of 34 to 40MB, so the final image weighed in at close to 400MB before it was flattened into a single layer.
If you’ve ever observed the way an artist constructs an oil painting, you’ll typically see him or her first painting in the background, then layering in foreground objects from back to front as the objects move closer and closer to the vantage point of the viewer. We’re going to do the exact same thing in building a single image from all of our layered puzzle pieces. Remember, as we were brushing the original images we made sure to include detail just beyond the edges of each object. By layering from back to front we insure that the sharply focused objects of a newly applied layer will always lie in front of objects that fall behind. We’ll illustrate these benefits in a moment.
The process for combining all the layers in a third party application are fairly straightforward:
Create a new document window.
Set the canvas size to match the dimensions of the photos exported from Aperture. In our case, we’ve been working with 3888 x 2592 pixel images.
Drag a focus layer from the workspace folder and drop it onto the canvas.
Set the position of the just dropped image to the origin, (0, 0).
Do the above for each of the focus layers.
Finally, export the combined image as a single 8-bit TIFF.
Normally, we’d lay down our background layer first, then apply all other layers atop this background. It’s good practice, however, to first skip the background layer and lay down all subsequent layers, one at a time against a white background to make sure that all the oddly shaped “puzzle pieces” fit together without gaps in between. Let’s take a closer look at this process by watching a quick animation of how the layers of our sample photo fit together.
Now, a stationary look at all the layers except the background.
Overlay of all layers but the background. Any unexpected white space?
Where you see white space the background layer will show through when we assemble the entire composite image from back to front. If white space is showing where you hadn’t planned on seeing the background, it’s time to go back to the brushing drawing board and adjust your focus masks. In preparing the layers for this photo, the initial composite construction revealed slight white gaps between many of the layers; primarily along the surface and faces of the record stacks. To correct those problems I went back into Aperture to alter the Black & White adjustment brushes so that my virtual puzzle pieces would overlap and blend correctly.
In the overlaid image above, the only white spaces we see are intended to peek through to either the background album cover, or the light tent (which will be cropped out of the final composite image).
Strange but true phenomenon!
Recall a statement I wrote much earlier in this series:
…and because the objects inside the light tent don’t move (ha! we’ll see about that…) capturing the images would be simple.
Well, in assembling this photo I discovered that the objects inside the light tent did move! In particular, the little tiny Dia De Los Muertos devil on the left had moved slightly. So too had the large devil head on the left. When overlaying their layers atop the background I discovered that the edges of those figures in the background where “bleeding through” the feathered edges of the foreground layer. Why? Because I light my photos with 1,500 watts flood lights, and—even though the complete photo session lasted no more than a minute—the heat generated by that much light does not agree particularly well with vinyl records and mounting putty!
To correct these very slight problems I offset the devil head layer by one pixel to perfectly align it with the background, and I extended the focus mask around the Dia De Los Muertos figure by just a bit to obscure the offset image that had been bleeding through from the background.
As you create your own deep focus images you’ll want to similarly examine the joining points of your layers and make slight adjustments to your focus masks to achieve a seamless blend between layers.
So… how does it look?
Actually… great!! Yes, it’s a lot of work, but the results are excellent. Remember the complex puzzle piece we saw at the beginning of this post? The one with all the fine brushing around the dancing girl? Here’s a detailed look at how that layer joins to the log cabin layer that lies beneath.
Detail of the joining point between two layers at 100%
The layer blend around the dancing girl and the referee’s flag are perfect. Even at 200% magnification it’s very difficult to see where one layer ends and the next begins. Here’s a 200% zoom of the Dancing Girl layer, focusing only on the area around her outstretched left arm.
200% magnification of the Dancing Girl layer
Now, the same area of the photo after it has been layered on top of the Log Cabin layer.
Detail of the joining point between two layers at 200%
Even at 200% zoom it is very difficult to see, exactly, where one layer ends and the next begins, but objects in both layers are in sharp focus—which is exactly what we want!
Making image adjustments to focus stack images
There are (at least) two strategies that can be used in making adjustments to images created using my focus stack technique.
Individual photos can be transformed into layers (i.e. our puzzle pieces) without any adjustments, combined, then imported back into Aperture as a single TIFF image. The TIFF image can then be adjusted to create the final image.
Each photo can be separately adjusted, then transformed into a layer, with the final image composed outside Aperture.
I actually used a combination of these strategies in creating Engine 316 takes a detour on the glorious path to the Hereafter. Each of the nine original photos were given the same adjustments for Exposure, Levels, and a few other things that I knew would apply to the whole photo, independent of any single object or area. Photos were then individually adjusted where objects within that photo could benefit from specific brushed improvements (Noise Reduction, Colors, Vibrancy, Definition, Retouching, etc…). After the layers were combined, I imported the resulting TIFF file back into Aperture where the final image was cropped and a vignette was added.
The final result with everything in focus.
Engine 316 takes a detour on the glorious path to the Hereafter
I hope you’ve enjoyed this short series on how to use Aperture brushes to create deep focused images, and I hope you’re inspired to see what you can do to extend the capabilities of the tools we’ve been given to improve our photos.
Please let me know if you have questions. I’ll do my best to clarify things were I can!
All but one title complete & this last one is KILLING me! I'm beginning to question whether or not I actually know what this photo is about. 5 hours ago
