Friday, December 7, 2007

And the ripper's site is down

Following up my previous post, I've managed to bring down the website of the ripper I was talking about yesterday :)

By the way, since it's December, I've got an ongoing Advent Calendar project, together with 23 artists. You can view it on my DeviantArt account.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

This photographer artisticvisionphotography.com is stealing my work

Just a quick note Let me introduce you to M.Raul Sebazco / 321 West 24th St / New York / New York 10011 who is bravely stealing and ripping my work on his website called artisticvisionphotography.com
Now you know why I need to watermark my work :(

Thursday, November 22, 2007

No photo book on Blurb.com and here is why

Hello

Some of you had noticed that I was planning to create a 160 pages photo book at blurb.com. I was quite excited about it.

The first time I made a book with another company resulted in a complete disaster: I had carefully scaled down all of my image to the proper pixel dimensions for the page, saving them with the highest JPEG quality. Guess what? Their software recompressed my images before sending them, with a crappy JPEG quality resulting in ugly JPEG artefacts (see wikipedia if you don't know what it is).

So, of course, I had checked on Blurb website and forums - everything seemed fine, no recompression should be done.

Well, I'm afraid, there IS some recompression even if you create a correct file. Fortunately, I've noticed it while sending 4 times less data that I had expected. Hm. This shouldn't be good.

I've ran some extra tests and spent some more time on it, and here is the result:

  • any file beyond 2 Mb will be recompressed by the application
  • one can assume that JPEG quality 9 – 10 will give a filesize below 2Mb (max quality is JPEG 12)
  • Artifacts quite show up at JPEG quality 9 – they are less noticeable at 10, but 9 is really the moment when you can see them. Especially on detailed red tones and edges of objects.

While probably a lot of images will print more or less correctly, I know that the most detailed ones won't (think of these pics with red umbrellas, red fishes, etc)

Therefore, I don't want you (and me) to pay $40-50 for a book that won't meet my quality standards.

Sure, it's the price of 10 photos for me and I would had got 160 of them (not on photo paper, though). But simply due to tentatives on limiting bandwidth and disk storage, these companies fail on providing a good service.

That is, to say the least, quite stupid.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Traditional art and trend in graphic design

Hello my friends,

We have been celebrating yesterday Traditional Art on DeviantArt which was, I think, a good thing as many pieces there are more digital and traditional ones deserve recognition too. Changing our medium offers new ideas, challenges and possibilities - all for good.

I have been noticing for many months how traditional and hand-made/drawn/painted pieces are coming back into graphic design (in a general sense). If we step back, say, 7 years ago in the early 2000, most commercial trendy and cool designs were pure computer-generated stuff. Now, people tend to think that using the computer is too easy and if I consider some of those previously successful designs which were mainly Photoshop filters and various blending modes, I can't say this isn't completely false.

So, where are we now? I think, in the most exciting time: mediums are just mediums: paper, scanner, photoshop, ink... we can print an image and paint on it, scan a drawing and digitally paint on it... that's the time for mix-media. I personally don't care about how many processes are involved, what's important is how the final image will look. I mainly work digitally but this doesn't mean that my images should look digital (think of my paintings for instance).

Now I see on artists blogs, statement such as "[...] when creative design was a more hands-on affair, pens, pencils, [...] allowed designers to express a real individuality in their craft that is not possible with a keyboard and mouse." (this ones come from the cool blog www.cpluv.com ). Well, really, I can't agree. It just seems to me that digital artists are just re-discovering traditional media and feeling excited about it - but this is just a tool!

I've always disagreed with people who think that they know and do "real" art because of the medium they've elected. Like "I shoot film, I'm a real photographer". "I'm using a Leica because all famous photographers had one".

Everything is just a medium. These are just a tools.

It is important to play with them all. Experiment. Gain experience, get ideas, but don't disrespect others' work because they don't use your technique.

You'll get respect by showing some innovative ideas or touching images. But not because you're using a specific medium.

Enjoy and have fun mixing things altogether until you end up with something great and personal.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Pandora

Pandora is the latest photostory that I've uploaded on my website. I hope that you will enjoy it. Another series will be posted soon.

New Canon cameras

You know I'm a fan of Canon - well, not to say that other brands aren't good, it's just that I find all I need in Canon's cameras.

Anyway, even if there's no replacement for my great EOS 5D, Canon has now announced, among other things, a Powershot G9 compact camera. It's one of the few ones to have full manual control and RAW image setting. It'll probably be more expensive than the A710 IS (about to be replaced by a similar A720 IS) but both are really the best tool that you can get for the moment IF you need full manual control (which is, to my mind, mandatory).

Furthermore, the middle-range EOS 40D (replacing the 30D) has a lots a small features that are very well thought of: lens-cleaning system, live view, 3" screen and new buttons and settings. It'll be a great tool for the price. The next update within 12 months will probably be to put the same settings on a new 5D model (I'm not sure that I'll upgrade, though)

Saturday, August 11, 2007

web look update



I've updated the look of my jsmonzani.com website

Saturday, August 4, 2007

the Shades of Serendipity

The Shades of Serendipity, my latest photoseries, is now on my website.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Orphea: new photo story

Hello my friends!

Orphea, my latest photstory, is now on my website. I hope that you will like it!

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

retrofiction

Two new photos on my website. I hope that you will like them... I love the pattern :)

Thursday, June 21, 2007

muse

There's a new photo-series on my website, it's called muse.

Enjoy!



Friday, June 15, 2007

GREAT live help for Illustrator CS3 is already integrated into the application!


I've just discovered a GREAT feature in Illustrator CS3. It's called Knowhow and can be found in Window->Adobe Labs (together with Kuler, Adobe's great color palettes sharing tool by the way)

Knowhow detects the current tool and shows all available options. It's a GREAT way to learn about shortcuts, since Illustrator has loads of them. Look at the screenshot below to get it.




Furthermore, and thanks to del.icio.us, you can also automatically search the web for tips on the current tool! Head to NDesign's website for more info.

That's a great idea and step forward for a software! I really hope more companies will go into this direction.

James Jean: a great illustrator



I just wanted to feature the work of James Jean. He is an incredible illustrator! You can find his works on his website, he also has a blog and shares also his image on this website. Enjoy! If you have suggestions of other illustrators, don't hesitate to share them :)

Besides that, I'm going to shoot new photos on Sunday :)


Monday, June 11, 2007

Finally

So, I've received my new PC today... everything works, I'm quite happy!

Cheers

JS

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Quiet

Hm, I'm still waiting for my new PC :-]
Besides that, I'm quite good. I haven't planned new photo series for the moment, although I'll probably shoot one within the next weeks. Most of my models are busy for the moment - and so am I too.

In the meantime, I like to paint... I need to practice more thought!




Thursday, May 31, 2007

Darkskies (new photostory)

Hello my friends !

Here is a new photostory, I hope that you will enjoy it. You can view Darkskies on my website.



I will also receive my new PC soon ;)
Cheers!

JS

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Soooo. I've just ordered my new PC, should get it next week.

I was expecting to pick up something regular, but, realizing my needs, I ended up with something more "special".

Hope it'll work great :)

The new photos are on their way, and I'll maybe do a new series this week-end...

Cheers!

* * *

Just for those interested, it's a E6600 processor, 2Gb of Ram, 2 x 500Gb HD + I'm gonna add my two other 350+500Gb disks. There's room for 6 HD on the motherboard anyway, this should be OK. And took everything to make it as quite as possible. I'm sure I'll enjoy it ;) Enough for tech talk, you know it's not something I much enjoy.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Big crash

Hi,

Just had a big computer crash yesterday evening while working on my latest photos. While logging today, my profile (on XP) was buggy :-( It took me some time to fix it.

Plus, I had a Trojan alert with Avast but, as far as I can see, this might be just a false positive from the latest database, since it's only on one program (Fast Stone image viewer). I'm going to update it, it should fix it.

*sigh*

I hate when I loose time like that. But I've got to face it too: most of my four hard disks are now almost full, and I really need to buy a new computer with loads of new disks inside :-/

My main concern is: was this crash due to the new Photoshop CS3? ... since I was editing pics and this happened while closing an image. I'll keep you informed.

Cheers

Saturday, May 12, 2007

CS 3 + New photos soon

Hello,

Good news, my friends: I'm gonna make a new photo series tomorrow.
It will be the time to test the latest Photoshop CS 3, as I've just received the suite today. Expensive but cool ;)

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Bucharest: 115 exhibition

Hello!


I just wanted to remind my Romanian visitors that there's currently a large exhibition in Bucharest of digital paintings... Art:PartTwo website. You can also view images of the gallery
And there's a piece of mine (the third ;) !)



Sunday, May 6, 2007

Welcome to my world. I am a Swiss / French graphic designer and photographer. I live in Lausanne, Switzerland. My works are often constructed as photo-series - something between fashion photography and movie storyboards, with a strong eye for color and composition. For more information, visit my websites: jsmonzani.com and simplemoment.com