makebright | making stuff in waterloo

Topography photography

Posted on April 1, 2015 by dw

My buddy John “Storz” Storozuk gave me a Kinect-like distance-sensing camera a few weeks back. In his extensive travels of the tech world, many bits of gear get caught in Storz’s net and happily, knowing my interests in photography+making, he passed this Intel RealSense camera on to me.

Calder and I had been wrestling with the developer examples and that was proving challenging on Windows 8.1, possibly due to permissions or code signing issues. Messing around with just accessing the “regular” visible light camera on this rig, I serendipitously discovered this mode that gives me topographic JPEGs. Wicked! Like a topographical map based on… an IR laser projector-receiver pair mashed up with a colour camera.

Now the maker and photographer inside me must fight it out to determine what happens first: explore the photographic potential or the 3D user interface possibilities? Click through for a few more pics…

Continue reading →

Posted in photography | Tagged camera | 1 Comment

1shot #223-photography as a gateway to adventure

Posted on March 31, 2015 by dw

Photo: Marc Dease – used with permission, scanned from print

I always tell my kids that photography is really just an excuse to meet people. I didn’t invent that: I grew up observing it in action. My Pop started photographing Great Lakes freighters in the 70’s as they passed near our house, travelling up and down the St. Clair River where it meets Lake Huron. Through some combination of sharing photos and his chatty good nature, he was invited to ride along on 21 trips aboard these quiet giants in his lifetime.

He loved all the boats, but I think there was a special place in his heart for the MV Richard Reiss. The photo above by Marc Dease shows Duncan posing at the wheel of the Reiss in May 1987.

Photo: Marc Dease – used with permission, scanned from print

Pop became good friends with Captain Arne Kristenson (right) and was rarely seen without his camera in hand. I know that look in his eyes in this photo. It’s the look of an adventure that started with a photograph.

So much for a 1shot. Today, you get two, Pop.

Thanks to excellent photographer and friend Marc Dease of Point Edward for permission to share these photos online. Check out Marc’s work on rail, boats, and planes.

Posted in personal | Tagged life-lessons | 1 Comment

Lightroom workshop worked at kwartzlab

Posted on March 30, 2015 by dw

Why is this man smiling? This is my old friend Barry Reville. He was one of 14 peeps who came out to kwartzlab last night for my Guerrilla Lightroom Workflow workshop. Some people learned some stuff, so that’s always a win. And the workshop brought out a few new visitors to the lab, which doubles the win. I’ve linked my slides here and that deck will make a lot more sense if Matt Bells shares the video he shot of the workshop.

This wraps up my 3-month artist-in-residence gig at kwartzlab. Big shout out to the maker members who support the program. I’ll still be dropping by on Tuesday Open Nights to tweak and update the photobooth I built. You will be delighted to learn that the next artist-in-residence is the ever-lovin’ Mr. Jon Johnson. You can learn more about this cool dude in the profile I wrote on him last year.

Happy makin’,
DW

Posted in workshop | Tagged Kitchener, kwartzlab, photography | 4 Comments

UW School of Architecture… Wow.

Posted on March 19, 2015 by dw

Last Saturday morning, my daughter Arden and I trucked on down to Galt to check out the open house at UW’s School of Architecture. For those of you who don’t have kids in high school and/or aren’t exploring what comes after high school and what comes after that, March Break is post-secondary open house time.

Life is funny: I totally missed the turn on to Roseville Rd off Trussler and by the time I got turned around at Paris we landed 20 minutes late for the 10am orientation session. Serendipity, being as awesome as it can be, opened an opportunity for us to tour the undergrad studio with two first year students. Giulia and Caitlin, both about six months into the program and outstanding representatives for their school, answered a million questions (from me) and also took us through the library and the most amazing first-floor fabrication shop. Maker paradise.

We got back to the auditorium just in time for the next session with Ila Berman, O’Donovan Director of the University of Waterloo School of Architecture. Dr. Berman walked us through the most compelling slide deck I’ve ever seen, highlighting the hands-on course of study, international opportunities for co-op work, top notch faculty, famous alumni, and the kick-ass facility on the banks of the Grand River. A few weeks ago, I was chatting with my friend (and architect) Roger Farwell and mentioned that Arden was considering architecture. I asked if UW had a good school and he replied “They have an excellent school.” Everything I saw on Saturday confirmed that as an understatement.

Beyond my parental guidance role, I have to note this school as yet another gem of Waterloo Region. It’s a world-class school right in our back yard. And it’s been there for 11 years. Hopefully my newfound appreciation is old hat for you, dear reader. The community integration is evident in the student-run storefront space The Bridge just across the river. The school’s Expanded Practice lecture series is open to all. And I’m told the mayor hosts a barbeque for new students each fall.

This post wouldn’t be complete without thanks to Donna Woolcott, Undergraduate Student Services Coordinator, who organized this event and made us feel very welcome. What a great way to start a Saturday.

On Melville Street South, this is Galt.

Posted in fieldtrip | Tagged Cambridge, UW | 2 Comments

Giving a lite Lightroom workshop at the lab

Posted on March 19, 2015 by dw

Hey friends, I’m giving an intro workshop on Lightroom as part of my artist-in-residence gig at kwartzlab. Sunday March 29 7pm-9pm. There are seven spots left. It’s free-no-pay and if you sign up, you gotta show up. Hit the doodle if you want to join in. We’re capping the class at 15 people. Click through for deets.

Continue reading →

Posted in workshop | Tagged Kitchener, kwartzlab, photography | 1 Comment

kwartzlab is people

Posted on March 18, 2015 by dw

This week at kwartzlab’s regular Tuesday Open Night, I gave a talk about my photobooth project for the artist-in-residence gig that I’ve been cranking away on since the beginning of the year. The TL;DR is that kwartzlab is people. It’s not the building, nor the tools, nor even the projects. It’s the people.

Back in 2009 when we were creating kwartzlab, I thought it would be a good idea to have a set of reasonably consistent portraits of all the members up on the wall. Every single thing that happens at the lab happens because somebody put the work in. The *volunteer* work. I wanted to reflect back to the group the delightful collective capacity of which they were each a part. I wanted to amplify the pride in what we had built and evenly distribute the sense of belonging within the group. I wanted to help answer those universal questions: What are we all about? What are we doing here?

Like lots of makerly projects, my 2009 effort kicked off with a fast and cheap proof of concept and then languished on the bench as I pushed other meta-maker work on my stack. Fast-forward to 2015 and the storytelling that was once my necessary past-time is now my business and passion. Happily, through the lab’s most excellent artist-in-residence program, I was able to re-animate that project. And instead of just shooting portraits of members, I decided to build a rig so members could ultimately shoot their own portraits. A photobooth of sorts. This let me get my maker-freak on, provided another tool for the lab, and will allow the group to update/add their own portraits and equip them to experiment. It also satisfies my penchant for meta-photography. What’s the old saying? Teach a maker to fish…

Above is a collection of portraits of makers, mostly from Tuesday night. Some are members and some are visitors. What they have in common: they showed up.

Click through for a few more build pics…

Continue reading →

Posted in kwartzlab | Tagged Kitchener, makeosphere, makerspace | Comments Off

Structur3D Printing in new digs

Posted on March 5, 2015 by dw

It was almost a year ago that I met Charles Mire and Andrew Finkle of Structur3D Printing. I had heard they were by kwartzlab and chatting about their paste extruder attachment for 3D printers, but I only met them in person when they joined the Communitech HYPERDRIVE accelerator program. Communitech’s Director of Editorial Strategy, Tony Reinhart, asked me to do a story on Structur3D. One story turned into two as we discovered that both Structur3D and I were on our way to San Mateo, California in May for Maker Faire. More recently, upon graduation from HYPERDRIVE, Structur3D moved into their new home over on St. Leger Street just a few blocks from the Hub.

I bumped into Charles last week and he said to come by on Friday afternoon for a beer. So I did. Above, I had Andrew model the holy trinity of local startups: company t-shirt, the requisite tech-uniform hoodie, and the engineer’s iron ring from UW.

Continue reading →

Posted in fieldtrip | Tagged Kitchener | Comments Off

Hub Haps #017-our destination

Posted on March 4, 2015 by dw

Headphones on, medium volume. Puttin’ some familiar flavour in yer ear.

Me being a photographer, you might reasonably assume that I’m visually driven. True, but I’m also a keen consumer of ambient sound. I think of places I frequent as having a palette of sounds. A sound signature of sorts. Work places in particular have very distinctive sounds: the click of the door strike, the bleep when someone joins your conference call, the hiss of the coffee machine, the whirr of the paper towel dispenser, the elevator bing. The example above is particularly delightful because of the long rumbling decay that rattles on long after you think it’s done.

Alright, Hubsters, where is this? And what other sounds define the Hub?

A friend of mine, David Jensenius, explores sound in his art and in fact we talked about ambient sound palettes right here at the Hub during the Fluxible conference last year. David created an iPhone app called FoundSounds that allows you to capture, geotag, and share environmental sounds. It also allows people to take a “sound walk” and experience previously shared sound based on location. iPhone-deficients like me will have to continue to share sounds the hard way.

Like all of my best gigs, I learned a few things trying to capture the clip above. I shot this on my BlackBerry Z30 mounted to a tripod and it can be pretty painstaking to square up the shot. Also learned that –32C windchill makes even 5-minute shoots painful. Speaking of wind, it can totally overwhelm the microphones and obliterate the audio you’re actually trying to capture (click through for my no-cost fix for that issue). Over the course of three separate shoots on this, I discovered that my coat makes a *crink* sound every time I turn my head to see if traffic is passing by. I also have an intermittent habit of talking to my gear, which undesirably shows up in the audio track. I learned Adobe Premiere Pro has an occasional fit and becomes convinced your media is offline. And finally, I learned (again) the necessity of recording a chunk of ambient location sound without the specific “action” that you’re going for. If we’re learning, we’re winning.

Click through for the reveal and a makerly tip on recording audio outdoors with your phone.

Continue reading →

Posted in community | Tagged Communitech, HubHaps, sign, soundscape | 1 Comment

Hub Haps #016-Thalmic test-driving a variety of arms

Posted on February 25, 2015 by dw

I caught Victor Janzen helping out brand ambassador Deviya from Thalmic today at the Hub. Thalmic had multiple teams on site and no shortage of willing participants. The goal was to collect sample data from a variety of users wearing the Myo.

Click through for a few more pics…

Continue reading →

Posted in community | Tagged Communitech, HubHaps, Thalmic | Comments Off

1shot #219-FOUND

Posted on February 25, 2015 by dw

The absurd work requires an artist conscious of these limitations and an art in which the concrete signifies nothing more than itself. It cannot be the end, the meaning, and the consolation of a life.

Camus, Albert, The Myth of Sisyphus, 1955

Driving across Victoria to the Hub, I saw this sign on a post at Lawrence Ave last week. Didn’t have time to shoot it then, but today I stopped, and climbed into a snow drift so I could capture this thing that had me thinking since I saw it. The “FOUND” is so bold and the picture or description of the found thing is almost completely obliterated. It seemed like an Existentialist’s poster. Man, I could riff philosophically all day, but I’ll have to settle for this post.

I see art everywhere.

Posted in photography | Tagged Kitchener, street | 1 Comment