Photograph of Mitchel Wu taken for Mojo NationFlintstones – Toy Photograph by Mitchel Wu
Based in Los Angeles, Mitchel Wu creates and crafts stories through toy photography – capturing the illusion of motion and emotion where none exists.
After moving away from his career as a wedding photograph, Mitchel envisioned a new path for himself – one that would combine memories of both his and his daughter’s favorite movies, stories and toys.
Woody and Bullseye – toy photography by Mitchel Wu
Behind the scenes video of Mitchel Wu setting up his equipment for a photo shoot of Sponge Bob:
Final still with Sponge Bob and Squidward – Toy Photography by Mitchel Wu
Although toy photography is admittedly an extremely niche avenue of photography, it is unique and in Mitchel’s case an impactful piece of the creative world.
Mitchel has worked with Mattel, Disney and Warner Brothers.
Still from video called Adventure Kermit made by toy photographer Mitchel WuDuke and Forky Toy photography by Mitchel Wu Wally-E and Eve – toy photography by Mitchel Wu
Mitchel Wu’s underlying message is that “age shouldn’t stop you from playing or having fun,” and that imagination and storytelling shouldn’t diminish as we grow older.
Kurt Wenner attended Rhode Island School of Design and Art Center College before working for NASA as an advanced scientific space illustrator. In 1982 he left the NASA to pursue his passion for classical art and moved to Rome where he learned and experienced from the masterpieces first hand.
While in Itlay, Wenner saw an artist who explained the tradition of street painting in Europe. Working with chalks came natural to Wenner and so began his new career creating a unique form of pavement art.
Wenner’s compositions appear to rise from, or fall into the ground. Onlookers are encouraged to “walk” into the design.
In addition to teaching, Wenner has lectured at corporate events and conducted seminars and workshops for organizations ranging from the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian Institution to Disney Studios, Warner Bros. Studios, Toyota, and General Motors.
Being a firm believer in arts education, Wenner has taught more than a hundred thousand students over a 10-year period for which he received the Kennedy Center Medallion in recognition of his outstanding contribution to arts educations.
Wenner teaching 3D chalk art at Science Festival in Leominster Massachusetts Credit: Facebook Photo Courtesy Denise Kowal
Wenner is now working on several new projects, which will have unusual geometry. He enjoys using multiple surfaces to create single illusions and is currently moving in the direction of creating illusions as permanent installations for interior spaces.
Best known as a scientific photographer, Martin Oeggerli takes close-up images of microscopic creatures and structures that have been featured in scientific publications and art galleries worldwide.
Most of Oeggerli’s best images are taken with a scanning electron microscope (SEM). SEM is always black and white because it uses electrons instead of photons to view the specimen, and only light carries color information. As an artist, Oeggeril wants the images to be attractive. He tries to highlight morphologically different structures to make them more visible so that the viewer can recognize complexity. And he goes to great lengths to reproduce the original color.
Oeggerli, otherwise known as Micronaut, has collected and explored pollen grains. Here are a few examples from his gallery:
Water cabbage (Pistia sp.) is an invasive plant. Despite a tiny flower, the pollen is a medium sized elliptic monad covered with equatorial crests, which are rarely found features in the pollen universe. (c) Micronaut
Forget Me Not pollen (c) Micronaut
Pollinium of an orchid, consting of many hundred single pollen grains Credit: (c) Micronaut
Purple willow pollen (c) Micronaut
Pink thrift pollen (c) Micronaut
Pollen on pistil of a geranium (c) Micronaut
One image might take 20-60 hours to create depending on how much detail and how many structures are in the picture. Because Micronaut goes to great lengths to reproduce the original color each one is a work of art.
Fog Sculpture rendering in Olmsted Park over an island on Leverett Pond, Brookline, Massachusetts
To celebrate the 20thanniversary of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya will exhibit five fog works along the historic urban parks that link more than a dozen Boston neighborhoods.
Fujiko Nakaya. Photo courtesy of the Emerald Necklace Conservancy
Nakaya is the daughter of the physicist and science essayist Ukichiro Nakaya, renowned for his work in glaciology and snow crystal photography. Like her father, Ms. Nakaya’s lifelong artistic investigation engages the element of water and instills a sense of wonder in everyday weather phenomena.
Working as part of the legendary group Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), she first enshrouded the Pepsi Pavilion at the 1970 World Exposition in Osaka in vaporous fog, becoming the first artist to create a sculptural fog environment.
Pepsi Pavilion Osada Japan Photo by Fujiko Nakaya
For the last forty years Nakaya has been partnering with Thomas Mee, a Los Angeles-based engineer. Mee figured out a system for generating water-based artificial fog. To make it work the installation uses a special fog system that included high-pressure pumps and specifically designed fog nozzles. Several outside factors, like wind conditions, temperature and relative humidity in the environment, determined how intense or thick the fog would be at any given time.
Nakaya has established many other fog installations at galleries worldwide, including the Australian National Gallery, Canberra and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain.
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Photo by Phillip Maiwald
Here are two views of the Cloud Parking by Nakaya located in Linz, Australia – by day and at night:
Daytime photo of Cloud Parking by Fujiko Nakaya
Night View of Cloud Parking
Veil: The Glass House fog installation by Fujiko Nakaya in New Canaan, Connecticut Photo: theglasshouse.org
In Veil – shown above, Nakaya has wrapped the Glass House or Johnson House in a veil of dense mist that comes and goes. For approximately 10 to 15 minutes each hour, the Glass House will appear to vanish, only to return as the fog dissipates. Inside the structure, the sense of being outdoors will be temporarily suspended during the misty spells.
The 85-year-old artist describes her work as a “conversation with nature,” creating shape-shifting, cloud-like, pure water forms that rhythmically appear and dissipate, inviting visitors to immerse themselves in the art while experiencing the landscape anew.
Husni Che Ngah photographed newly hatched stink bug nymphs around their empty egg shells. (Credit: Husni Che Ngah/Biosphoto)
They’re creepy when they buzz loudly past you towards light sources and produce an extremely pungent odor when disturbed, but stink bugs live their lives content to feed on plants and would rather not encounter you.
There are more than 200 species of stink bugs in North America. Adults are usually some shade of green, tan, or gray-brown.
After mating, the female lays batches of 20 to 30 eggs, depositing them on the underside of plant leaves. Her eggs look like tiny barrels and are light green in color to blend in with their surroundings and avoid predators. Sometimes the eggs are pearly white at first, turning pink later. On top of each egg is a circle of white projections.
A single female can lay up to 300 eggs in a single season.
Stink bug nymphs and their eggs on underside of citrus leaf Photo credit: Project
Stink bug nymphs and their eggs Credit: pinimg.com
Macrophoto of hatching stink bug by Adolf Abi-Aad/Flickr.com
The eggs hatch in four to five days, marking the beginning of the nymph stage. A small triangle on each egg shell is used by the nymph as a knife to cut the shell open. Stink bug nymphs usually remain gregarious for a short period of time after hatching, as they begin to feed and molt.
Photographer and artist Stephen Wilkes’ latest project, “Day to Night,” takes on the idea of showcasing, in one composite still image, the transformation of a place over the course of a day.
Pont del a Tournelle, Paris Photo by Stephen Wilkes
As Wilkes explains, “When you can capture an image on a silicon chip versus a piece of film you can see it instantly, that’s the first thing.” So Wilkes can take more than 2,000 photographs without moving his cameras over a 12 to 15 hour period. (He has one camera recording daylight; the other night.) Once he has all of the images, he picks the best moments of the day and the night to create what he calls a master plate.
This is not time lapse photography. The work is done using layers and Photomerge in Photoshop seamlessly blending them into one single photograph, where time is on a diagonal vector, with sunrise beginning in the bottom right-hand corner. That process of editing to create a single image can take about four months — though it’s photographed in a single day.
London Photo by Stephen Wilkes
Wilkes works with a master printer in New York and actually prints on conventional photographic paper because of the depth perception.
Day to Night Coney Island Photo by Stephen Wilkes
National Geographic Society has hired Wilkes to photograph the national parks. Here is one of his latest:
Tunnel View, Yosemite National Park. Photo by Stephen Wilkes
The power of digital photography is its ability to share emotion through an image. Wilkes’s goal is to show the face of time, which is an amazing emotional thing for people to experience.
Fluid Mechanics Credit: Stuart Hirth/New Scientist Eureka Prize for Science Photography
The amazing photograph above shows splashes formed from single drops landing in puddles. Captured over several months, they were photographed in darkness using a high-speed flash to preserve their colors and shapes and then brought together in one image.
This winning photograph shows drops of glycerin and water impacting a thin film of ethanol. The difference in surface tension creates holes in the drop’s surface making it look like lace.
Growth of agaric toadstool mushroom Credit: Phred Petersen/ Royal Photographic Society.
Another image created by Phred Petersen. This is a time lapse image showing the progress of an agaric toadstool mushroom as it grows.
Phred Petersen is a Senior Lecturer and Coordinator Scientific Photography, School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, a global university of technology and design.
Obelia hydroid Credit: Teresa A. Zgoda
This last photo is a confocal image of a marine organism (obelia hydroid) taken with the 10x objective. It was a winner from the 2016 International Images for Science competition.
Confocal cross section view of a dandelion showing curved stigma with pollen. Credit: Dr. Robert Markus
Just one more – an honorable mention from 2017 Nikon Small World Competition.
BB-8 has already become one of Star Wars most popular characters. He’s quite possibly the Star Wars character with the broadest appeal across generations, a mix of humorous personality and key narrative function. This adorable and inventive droid has stolen the hearts and minds of fans everywhere.
C-3PO and R2-D2 meet BB-8
The first concept for BB-8 was a sketch on a napkin that was scanned and emailed to Josh Lee, Senior Animatronics Designer. It caused Josh a lot of head-scratching about how to achieve it on set. The first thing he did was build a model out of polystyrene. He just wanted to get the movements down—the ball rolling, the head pitching. Instantly it was full of character. All you have is a head—there are no eyes—but you can do a lot with that. For example, to make BB-8 look sad, you can just drop the head.
BB-8 netted by Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Concept Designer Jake Lunt Davies of the creature shop developed BB-8 working through many variations of the head and body, with very subtle placement of features to really show a personality. The final design was a rotating spherical body with a half-dome head almost hovering above.
Enter Dave Chapman and Brian Herring, the puppeteers literally behind BB-8 who had to figure out how to manipulate BB-8 the puppet to convey joy, sadness, curiosity, and fear, but defining how BB-8 the character would convey those emotions consistently. “BB-8 can cock his head over and look away, he can double take, he can look scared, he can look angry,” says Herring. “We managed to find a whole vocabulary of movement for him, if you will.”
This model would then serve as a springboard for a small army of BB-8s, all with their own specialty, designed by Lee and Matthew Denton, the Electronic Design and Development Supervisor. There was the “wiggler,” which was static, but could twist and turn on the spot and was used for close-ups. There were two trike versions, which had stabilizer wheels, allowing them to be driven by remote control without a puppeteer in the shot. A puppeteer in a blue or green suit would hold the rods, and have very fine control over the head and ball. That’s how we achieved some of the more-subtle acting shots. There was a version that could be picked up by actors and controlled via remote for specific reactions and movements. There was the “bowling ball” version, which could literally be thrown into a shot and never fall down (like a Weeble toy). Finally, there was the rod-puppet version, which was operated by Chapman and Herring — one controlling the head, adding nuance and attitude, and the other the body — who would then be digitally erased. It was this version that would be key and able to act on set. Lee and Denton did all their engineering without seeing the script, though they were told of certain BB-8-has-to-do-this benchmarks they needed to hit. It all worked out in the end.
“Matt made the brain, Josh built the body,” says Herring, “and, hopefully, Dave and I gave it heart and soul.”
Rey with BB-8 still from Lucas Films
And finally Pinewood Studios built the fully functional, remote-controlled drone specifically for the red carpet.
BB-8-posing on the Red Carpet Photo Credit: Michael Buckner Variety Rex Shutterstock
Many of today’s most original and bizarre visions of alternative worlds and landscapes come from the workshops of Hollywood effects studios. Behind the scenes of nondescript San Fernando Valley offices and warehouse spaces lurk the multidisciplinary teams whose job it is to create tomorrow’s monsters. Spectral Motion (http://www.spectralmotion.com), the effects house responsible for some of the most technically intricate and physically stunning animatronic creatures seen in feature film today, is no exception. They have developed monsters and other grotesque creatures that have since become household nightmares.
Founded in 1994 by Mike and Mary Elizalde, the firm has worked on such films as Hellboy & Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Looper, Blade:Trinity, X-men: First Class, The Watch and Pacific Rim.
Spectral Motion staff pose with Sammael from Hellboy film
Wink from Hellboy II created by Spectral Motion
Wink’s hand – animated by Spectral Motion
Actor Ron Perlman getting his make-up as Hellboy at Spectral Motion studio
Applying make-up to actor Ron Perlman as Hellboy
Animatronic head for Edward the Troll from Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters film
Ivan the Corpse from Hellboy created by Spectral Motion
Mechanical skull under Ivan the Corpse
Scrunt from Lady in the Lake Credit: Spectral Motion
Mechanical skull of the scrunt from Lake in the Water
Technician at Spectral Motion stretching yak hair over mold to create monster fur.
What kinds of backgrounds do the people who work at Spectral Motion tend to have? There’s really no limit to the fields that bring people to this industry—they come from everywhere. The common thread is that they all love movies and creatures. So if you have a technical background in electronics and love making rubber monsters for a living head to Hollywood.
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