Arace Photographic – Chris Arace – The Reason »

GMC Vehicle 360′s

Thursday, February 14, 2013 Posted in Advertising, Travel

This past July I had the opportunity to create the background images for GMC Vehicle exterior 360′s on GMC.com. The process upon which a photographer collaborates with a production house, the agency and his team of scouts and location managers on the ground is paramount to the success of such a large project. We had 4 days to shoot and secure assets for 13 different GMC Vehicles, so it was off to Los Angeles and locations ranging from The Disney Center for the Performing Arts, to Lower Grand St, to Private Residences with luscious Lemon Orchards and Horse Stables all to achieve zero sleep and creative bliss.

The assets needed to create the background for the CG vehicle to live in read like a science project rather than a shot list. (See the Lincoln MKZ shoot I captured this time last year) We had to secure the closure of multiple locations in the Los Angeles area for random hours throughout a 4 day stretch, and literally document every square foot of the assigned area. With the team from the agency and CG production house, we measured distances from camera, lens tilt, shift, height, and all corresponding keyframes of the 360 degree animation seen on the site. We based all of the photography off of a bed frame in compositions center. This acted as the area where the vehicle would live. We captured 36 separate frames encompassing the 360 degree spin around the vehicle. using a Canon 5D MK3 on a tripod. Each frame was marked, measured and exposed at 3 bracket captures. These 36 frames are called a flight path around the vehicle, which in the case of all GMC vehicles on the site were measured and predetermined heights and distances. This allowed our team to choose the right space on our location for each vehicle to live, drop the bedframe and reflective garden globes into place and then create a chalk line circle with our 36 keyframes as reference points for the tripod placement. (See image below of my assistant Jesse’s gaffe taped pants) A second MK3 was housed in a Seitz Roundshot Robot which captured complete 360 degree Domes of our various locations in order to provide the production studio with the adequate assets for the reflections in the vehicles sheet metal and lighting direction. Upon completion of each locations shots (which after great practice we were able to accomplish a complete 36 frame 360 in under 15 minutes) The team at Mackevision stitched together the retouched frames into complete spins that the user can navigate on the site.

It was a great experience, and the vehicle 360′s site incredible! shout outs to Mackevision USA and the many friends I have there, I could’nt have pulled it off without you, team!

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Posted in Advertising, Travel

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おはよう日本 (Ohayo gozaimasu.) Good Morning, Japan.

Sunday, August 19, 2012 Posted in Photojournalism, Travel

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Japan. hop on a Jet and travel 13 hours halfway across the planet from Detroit. Japan. An Island nation, Efficient, Calm, Patient, Reserved and Peaceful. Cameras packed, @LanceStein awaiting my arrival at Tokyo Narita. The 10 plus day adventure that not only opened up my cultural horizons, but many times left me in awe of the social potentials yet unrealized by us here in the USA. Boarding the Shinkansen and speeding across the Japanese countryside at speeds of 185+ MPH I would experience more imagery and excitement than my lens (and eyes could handle) The Megaopolis that is Tokyo. 30 Million strong and efficiently prepared for your enjoyment. Where even the youngest of Japanese citizens treat you and your property with respect. Where trains are never late, and never unsafe. To the Peace Memorial Park of Hiroshima. Where a humbled culture was destroyed and rebuilt again. Stronger and Laser Focused. To Kyoto, the gorgeous historic and cultural capital of Japan. Old world charm meets Chicago-esque neighborhood comfort. To Kesennuma, a fishing town in the North country, where tradition and family are strong and people like Baba Kuniaki opened there homes to us… Sharing the stories and reality of life resuming prosperously after the March 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami destroyed so very much. Where friends like @Jaykun organize student volunteers from all over the country, comforting and involving themselves within the community in Kesennuma. Sacrificing much of their own personal time to help others.

Never in my life have I felt so welcomed and respected. Inspiration surrounds. A very humble Arigatou gozaimasu (Thank You) to @LanceStein without your passion for language, social change and Japan, I would have been lost to so many wonderful experiences. Great to see you my friend! Now, Enjoy the imagery. Afterall, I documented it for you all.

Posted in Photojournalism, Travel

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TheReason.us Redesign

Sunday, May 20, 2012 Posted in Uncategorized

Awesome Post by David Brooks about how he implemented my websites new design this past week.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on a really cool redesign of Chris Arace’s website, thereason.us, and I’m thrilled to announce that the site is officially live.

When I first spoke to Chris, he told me that Flickr is his CMS, it’s how he manages his photography. So I built the underlying structure of the new site like that of a robot that goes out and collects the latest updates from Flickr and then reinterprets them for his personal site. This way, when he updates Flickr, things stay synchronized with his site automatically.

Having a design background, Chris designed the site in a few days and sent me the comps. I think visually it sets a new bar for photography sites. It’s current, and has some really great details that make it uniquely his.

On the front page, he wanted to show his latest work in almost a mashup of Pinterest and 500px. There’s a bit of jQuery Masonry in place to allow images to flow around as you resize your browser, or as you scroll down. That’s especially interesting when you scroll to the bottom and hit the next loading point of the infinite refresh. A quick word about that… typically I despise infinite refreshes, but in this case it actually makes sense. You don’t want to initially load 450 photos into the view, and since we’re using the jQuery colorbox to show his work, you don’t have to worry about losing your place on the page.

The site also plays nicely with an iPhone and other mobile devices, thanks to CSS Media Queries. But, for the desktop view I opted to use some JavaScript to detect the browser width and adjust the main column width accordingly. By doing that, I saved myself from writing extra content into Media Queries, dodged older browsers not being able to interpret those minor changes due to lack of media queries support, and was able to still make the design snap to both a 1300 and 1600 pixel version. When that happens, because I’m using JavaScript and not CSS Media Queries, I was also able to call the jQuery Masonry and have it re-flow the images.

One of the star pieces of the site is the lightbox view, which is built by adapting the jQuery Colorbox to match the way Chris wanted it to look and function. The shell is the same as any other implementation of Colorbox, but the center of it is built around a custom request to the server that brings back the image and details about it, populates the colorbox and then builds the arrow key functionality.

And last but certainly not least is the map feature which places all, or some of his photos onto a custom-styled Google Map. You can interact with the map, or the slider to jump around and see where each photo in his portfolio was taken.

Working with Chris was a great experience. From the start, he knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish and had a great eye for how he wanted it to look while still letting me have fun writing the HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP to make it function. There were a ton of challenges to overcome, but that’s half the fun. So, be sure to go check out his site and work, you won’t regret it.

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