the scannography blog

Taking pictures of the outside world with a simple scanner can seem to be a strange idea. Thomas W McDonnell got from the idea to its realisation. With incredible results

So here we are in face of the first landscapes taken directly with a scanner. I except here Jeff Mihalyo's work, who has been the only one, on our site, realizing pictures with a real depth of field.
Thomas has taken out his scanner to capture real life, moving it around while it processes, putting it on his car while driving, scanning conversations with people. The result is really amazing, opening once more new fields for scannography.

Once again I hope you will all see his page. His work is really impressive. There is not much more to add, the pictures speak for themselves. From a personal point of view, I just want to say that I find lot of feelings in these images, a kind of sense of story-telling, a humanity that is often missing in scannographers works.
His large images have obliged me to create a special second page for him. A feature we can, maybe replace in the future. The images on the blog are less impressive so please click to see his larger works and you can also visit his Flick'r gallery.



And leave comments please (it takes a few seconds to write down just a few words : do it !!! It's a pleasure for me and for the artists concerned…)

The community continues to grow after a calm summer where I didn't do anything on the site !!

Stephanie Sierou-Aarten is a student in Art from Holland. She discovered the magic of scannography seven years ago, and this technic became a passion for her. This discovering reminds something to me, as it must for a lot amongst us.

Take a look at her beautiful creations. She seems fascinated by colors, lights and movements. Her works are close to Jens Standke's images. She plays with glass objects that she moves on the scanner while scanning. The result is amazing as it seems to represent some outerspace creatures or images from another dimansion. Which is, in a certain way, the case, as she distorts time and space with her method !

Mac McArthur has collected sculptures from his numerous travels around the world. They are from all kind and all origins. But they all become part of his intimate creative world. He makes them his own by playing with their forms and colors on his scanner.

Poetic, futuristic and full of emotions, his images have a kind of melancholy inside them which gives them a profound sense of humanity aside a cold feel due to the stony matter.

Mac has done scannography for a few years now and you can discover more of his images on his gallery.
I hope you'll all appreciate this original artist…

J. Seeley's work has been added on our site.
These are incredible images, with perfect harmonies of colors, compositions and forms… I advice everyone to take a look at them, this is technically perfect and has a very special and very own mood in it. A whole complete and personal universe…

Sergey Sorokin is a diverse artist touching all kind of medias.

His scannographys are abstract and geometrical. Far from the standards we slowly create by being a community of artists. But that's also what makes him interesting. He uses the scanner in a non-conventional way. Colorfull, presenting very repetitive motives, using often printed papers as ground material for his images, he doesn't fit completely in what we now call scannography.
Sergey takes the scanner lens out of the scanner and rambles it on the objects or things he want to interpretate. This approach is very new, I think, and certainly allows a lot of new images to appear. My regret is he stayed a bit too classic in what he showed. I suppose he will try out lots of things in the next future (why not body parts, screens, animals…). For those who are ready to try this technic I'm sure this will open new areas of creation. So, thank you Sergey, for presenting us these images and a good continuation to you.

Jaime Ruas is a spanish graphic designer and painter.
His use of the scanner is very special as he paints directly on it. He scans his painting after he has create them on the scanner glass. I don't know if this can still be called "scannography" but I find this approach really interesting. You can discover them on our main site
I'm sure the purists (yes, we have already purists amongst us in this new medium) will say that's not scannography because it's not a capture of objects, but maybe the approach can give us all ideas (in fact Liz Atkin already used paintings in her portraits). But sometimes he seems to introduce elements like tissus (see the second example hereunder), so… I hope jaime will write us a step-by-step of his method. That would be helpful for us all to discover new ways…

!!!!The choice of black and white scanns is rather rare amongst scannographers.

Joanne Urban is the first on our site working on black and white images. The result is fascinating and explains the success she encountered with the image below which won first place at the PBCC National Photography/Digital Imagery Competition


Discarded tulips


Gerber daisy,
I'm glad to give a place to this great artist on scannography.org, so the range of artists gets wider and wider. I now hope she will give some details on how she proceeds, so we all can learn a bit from her.

The new artist on our site, John Greschak, has a very particular approach to scannography.
For him this is a technique to approach the invisible. Here is a part of his explanation from his own site :
When I look at close-up scans that I have taken of glass marbles, I see beings. Some are human-like; others are not. Sometimes they are alone. In other cases, they are in groups within a scene like one would see in a photograph. Occasionally, I see isolated inanimate objects as well (e.g. a bottle or an automobile). Some beings and scenes appear to be from the past; others are futuristic. These beings and objects are of various sizes. Usually, they are overlapping and transparent. Images that I have cropped from these scans admit different interpretations, like an optical illusion. They can be extremely complex. I enjoy looking at these images. I find them to be very interesting; fascinating.

These things that I see within images of glass marbles are inconspicuous, especially under normal viewing conditions. In order to see them more clearly, I use special techniques. My primary objective in writing this article is to describe my methods so you might derive as much pleasure from these images as I do. At the same time, I would like to provide detailed information for investigators who seek to explain the nature of the phenomenon considered here.

I let everyone judge his visions and Art. For my part I just see here a complete and coherent universe. It's not each image alone that is interesting, it's the whole concept that has to be taken in consideration. Nothing to do with what John sees (or thinks he sees) in his glass marble, you believe it or not (I don't, this is, for me, like the Rorschach's tests : everyone sees in them what he needs or wants to see), but you can't stay untouched by the coherence and strange strength that comes out of the whole.

I hope this very special artist will make you react and leave some comments here…

Janet Dwyer has won some important prices (In 2007 the world’s most prestigious photography competition, the Pilsner Urquell International Photography Awards). Her attention to details and moods gives strenght to her images as well as a kind of poetry not missing some humor ! She doesnt hesitate to add other elements to the flowers and compose them so our imagination can play and see much more then the flowers she has scanned…
Take a look at the main site as well as on her own site.


flying dream


tango

Is floral the main theme amongst scannographers ?

It won't be Tim Fleming who would say the opposite. Tim's beautiful arrangements can now be seen on the scannography main site.


April in Paris


Fading Rose

Tim is an artist, teacher, web designer and photographer specializing in images of the American West, as well as a scannographer. His work is well known in and around the Northern California area, and he has exhibited his artwork both nationally and internationally. You can see his work on his personal website.