From The Roof

As a follow-up to my Day with the Mayor, last week I was invited back to shoot for a couple hours on the roof of the Government building in downtown Indianapolis. My main task was to shoot some time-lapse footage of the city to be possibly used in the documentary.

Here is a single frame from the main time-lapse setup I shot.

Alan Berry, the man behind the creation of the documentary, asked me about possibly doing a tilt-shift miniaturization type shot. Unfortunately I don't have a tilt-shift lens and there was no budget to rent one for this, so I decided to try out CrumplePop's ShrinkRay X plugin for Final Cut Pro X. Below is a before & after video of the filter and it's effect on two of the other setups I shot.

I'd love to hear what you think of the look with and without the plugin. Have a strong preference of one over the other? Let me know by leaving a comment either here on the blog or on my Vimeo page.

I could have easily spent a lot more time up there. We were there during the middle of the day so the light wasn't the prettiest, but we got lucky with the weather as it was an absolutely gorgeous day. We also had limited time, but I made the most of what we had. Hopefully I can get back up there some day or night.

It's been awhile since I've created any desktop/wallpaper images, so I decided to make a 2560 x 1600 image available free to download to use as a desktop image. And a first for me, I also created a version specifically for the new iPad with Retina display, although it will work just fine on older iPads. You can get those over on my Downloads page. Just look for the Downtown Indy file (they're in alphabetical order).

More photos coming soon!

PippaPaper

My iPhone and iPad wallpapers were so popular with Pippa Mann fans (it didn't hurt that she tweeted it and mentioned it on her Facebook page) that I decided to create another set of just Pippa for her fans. Since my task at the race was to photograph the rookie drivers for the American Dairy Association's Fastest Rookie program, I have a pretty good selection to choose from.

The iPhone collection has 9 photos (each with matching blurred version for using behind your icon-filled homepages) and the iPad collection has 10 (again with matching blurred version). You can download a zip file containing all of the images for a given device from my Downloads page (they are about half way down - list is alphabetical) or grab individual wallpapers from this gallery. When you click to see an image full size, you can just drag it to your desktop, or if you're using the iPad or iPhone, tap and hold until the Save Image popup is visible.

If you have any problems or questions, just let me know. Hope you enjoy the wallpaper.. er, excuse me, the PippaPaper!

p.s. Shout out to Paul Braun on Facebook who coined the term "PippaPaper".

Indy 500 iPad Wallpapers

Are you an Indycar or Indianapolis 500 fan who also happens to own an iPad? You're in luck! I've made several of my images - 14 to be exact - available exclusively here as iPad wallpapers. You get a nice sharp photo for your lock screen, but also a blurred version for behind your icons on the home screen. You can download all of them from the Downloads page in a single zip file, or you can download individual images. Your choice. Here's a preview of the iPad wallpapers:

Once you've downloaded them, add them to iPhoto (Mac) or your Pictures folder (Windows) and sync them with your iPad. Then just find them in the Photos app, select the action button and select Set as Wallpaper.

ENJOY!