Sunday, March 14, 2010

Scanography

First, from the 'whatever catches my eye' file, is this news story.
I definitely feel sorry for this guy, but I can't help but laugh about the means of his demise.
If I were an editor, I would have titled this story "Be careful where you point that thing!"

Wash. man electrocuted by urinating on power line
Monday, March 1, 2010
(03-01) 12:53 PST Montesano, Wash. (AP) --
Authorities believe a Washington man was killed by accidentally urinating on a downed power line after a car crash.
Grays Harbor County sheriff's Deputy Dave Pimentel said Monday 50-year-old Roy Messenger was not seriously hurt after he collided with a power pole Friday and called a relative to pull his car from a ditch.
However, family members found Messenger electrocuted when they arrived.
Pimentel says Messenger apparently urinated into a roadside ditch but didn't see the live wire. The urine stream likely served as a conductor, allowing the electricity to reach his body.
Pimentel says there will be an autopsy but *burn marks indicated the way the electricity traveled through Messenger's body*.

Yeeeow!! what an ugly way to go!

"Be careful where you point that thing!"

Now to the real topic, scanography.

You don't need to be a Rhodes Scholar to figure out what scanography is, even if you haven't heard the term -
it's simply using the scanner as a camera, of sorts.
Remember when copy machines became ubiquitous, and it was a hoot to drop your pants (or hike up your skirt, as the case may be), sit on the 'copy' area, and maybe send it anonymously to your boss, after writing 'Kiss my...!!' on the copy??
Well... times have changed, sort of.
(I must remind you - 'the more things change? the more they stay the same'.
Mark Twain wrote: "history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.")

Now we have flatbed scanners, and you can put anything you damn well please on the glass, and make a 'scanograph'.
The depth of field is very short, everything goes pretty soft after an inch or so above the glass.
Of course thanks to photoshop, you can do most anything you want with that image.

For more on scanography:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanography

Some people have made some great creative leaps with this:

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/03/disposable-film-fest/
Short Shot on Flatbed Scanner Screens at Disposable Film Fest -
Devoted to the art of making movies without using movie cameras, the Disposable Film Festival found the perfect poster child in Memoirs of a Scanner. The short film came about when three University of Southern California-groomed filmmakers used an HP photo scanner to shoot 300 live-action scans that were then strung together with an audio track to tell a tale packed with alienation, sex and violence.

Me?... I'm not as creative in that way... but I have had some really good fun with a few scanographs of 'stuff' I've collected over the years, beach debris/detritus/etc. ... and then adding more to it.
That's what this image is about. I scanned 'a bunch of stuff', and then added some other digital photos, montage style.


For more, go to:
http://www.bobbennettphoto.net/BeachBlog_2010/Scanographs/index.html

And if you'd like to see more images done w/ "beach debris/detritus/etc.", bones, shells, etc...?
http://www.californiabeachtrip.com/
None of it is done w/ scanographs, but all of it deals w/ bones. shells, stuff found at the beach, all prints are 'darkroom', no digital here. I still have many of the items in storage boxes in my closet... but until I win the lottery, or someone gives me some hefty amount of cash to work with, which I highly doubt will happen, it's one of those projects that just won't get redone/updated with scanographs.