the scannography blog

This month I had to illustrate some packagings for organic food.

As I wanted something realastic and simple, as I had just seeds to put on the label, I thought "let's do a scannography". Here under the result for two of them:

I asked around if some other people used scannography to illustrate commercial works. Ellen Hoverkamp sent me two images and the cover of the book where they were used :

Here are Ellen's explanations about that work :
"Mohegan Sun Casino is one of the largest casinos in America.  It is located on Native American land, owned by the Mohegan Indian Tribe, in Uncasville, CT.   The cookbook was a project that brought harmony and pride to both the Casino corporation and the Mohegan Tribe. Here are the endsheet design, planned to fold in the center of the double page spread. The first endsheets, is meant to fold on the fern. The composition is a tribute to the tribe, which is related to the Woodland Indians. The crabs and clams are included to relate to aquaculture, which has always been important since the tribe is also located near the shore on the CT, Rhode Island border. The last end sheet (file name cornlecto) was mostly a tribute to a traditional mainstay of the Mohegan diet, Succotash, which is made from squash, beans and corn, mostly. These three foods were also planted together as a traditional sustainable farming technique. I worked on this project July of 2004. The cookbook was published in 2005.''
The book can be found on storesonline.

Pierre Jarlan, one of our artists on scannography.org proposes a very nice idea for all of us…
We could find a place where we could do a common exhibition of scannography. Pierre thinks of Paris, but if someone knows a better place or has already contacts somewhere, or knows a gallery… it's a new idea we could all think of because we could all gain of it.

Pierre also thought about having a common theme for this exhibition, like "everyone empties his pockets and scanns what he (or she) founds in them".
I like this idea a lot because as we are from everywhere on the planet, this coud reveal very interesting differences !!

I hope this idea will make you react and I hope to read some comments and messages. Let me know if you are interested. So we could start an working on such a project.

!!!!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.

Sharon has started recently to create images with her scanner. But she already has her very own style. Superb color harmonies in automnal colors reflect the mood of what she expresses in her works. Paper, nails, rusted metal are some of the elements she uses to create this work. Discover her work on our main site.
"Initially, I thought it would be an interesting means of presenting my 3-d paper art; subsequently, it proved to be even better than I had expected" she says.

skeleton keys

fruitfull

Do I need to present Jeff Mihalyo ?

He is already the writer of an excellent technical page on the main site. And I have presented his work here on the blog.


One of Jeff's scann
Incredible technician, but also wonderful artist, Jeff isn't only a great and original scannographer, he is also a painter and illustrator carrying a magic and poetic world in his perfect images. Go and see his personal website, it really deserves a few minutes to dive in a complete new universe.

Here are two examples of his Art:

Eiffels holiday

Earthman

What is this ?
Is it still scannography ? Is it again photography ?


Patri Feher just pointed Mike out to me.

Very interesting results Mike obtains with his customiezd scanner ; another vision of the world around us.
We should all like this as we like the results of our own scanner machines.
Mike Golembewski is pushing the limit of our favorite medium ! He is rebuilding scanners to be able to take them outside and scan outside views or portraits… Take a look at his site. He explains everything there (how his scanner-camera is built, how motion is taken by his machine…) and shows a lot of incredible pictures…

Mike is giving a conference and is opening discussions about his Art, but also the new technologies in general in the Massaschusetts College of Art & Design. If you're not too far away, this a place to be on the 24th of September.

The french "Blog Photo Scope" presents the "scannography.org" site


The superb french site has given us the opportunity to give information about scannography. This site talks about any interesting domain of photography and presents artists and galleries… The main site has a lot of entries getting in the photographic domains through different aspects. Even if you don't read french there are some superb galleries to visit and discover french artists… Vincent is working hard on this site and it deserves success.

A young talented artist from Mississipi joined us : Rosalynn Stovall.

You can discover her on her own blog and see that she is already an accomplished and versatile artist touching collage, drawing, scannography and writing.
A wonderfull eye, superb and nervous pencil touch, great imagination, she is touching every possible fields and seems to have no limits to express herself. I wish her a lot of success.


Organic-Shadow-Play


Pills

I wanted to start this from the beginning. It is now time !! I wish to compare what kind of scanner we use to do our scanns. Here under you will find a list of questions I would like you to answer.

An example of the differences between scanners. I scanned this insect (lucanus cervus) with 2 different scanners and you can see the result is very different :

This one is with the Quato X-finity and covered with white paper. Not much depth of field but a good color depth.


This one is with the Epson 1670. Greater depth of field ! But I reworked the colors and contrast on that one…

Here is the questionnary in 16 points :

Please copy the questions and answer them on a mail to me

1. How many scanners do you own ?

2, What trademark and what model is it ?

3. What is the maximum resolution of it per inch (dpi) without interpolation ?

4. Is it enough for your scannography works ?

5. Do you know how much depth of field it has ?

6. Do you know what color depth it has ?

7. Is it a 3-pass or 1-pass scanner ?

8. Is it CCD or CIS ?

9. Do you use it unconventially (like not letting it on a flat surface, taking it outdoor…) ?

10. Do you use external light to enhance your scanning ?

11. Are you protecting the glass when scanning objects ?

12. How do you clean the glass ?

13. Do you rework your scanns or do you use the image as it comes out once scanned ?

14. What software do you use to rework your images ?

15. What kind of computer to do you use ?

16. Is there anything specific you want to add about your material ?

Jeff is the artist of the week on scannography.org. He presents also his method of creating his unconventional images. As you can see these are very special moods and constructions for scannographies…

Here is Jeff's installation :

Here is the result with the installation above

You can see his whole explanations here.

Jeff is a professional artist and software interface designer. After studying fine art at Otis/Parsons in Los Angeles he returned to his native Seattle to work in Microsoft‘s multimedia division. While working with the MSN interface team, he developed a variety flatbed scanning techniques that broke with conventional methods. Go and see his creations on the main site but don't forget there, to jump to his own site…