the scannography blog

It's a superb object with a perfect layout and wonderful images.

Finally the book has passed frontiers. And it's worth having it in hand. Werner did a great job trying to explain what scannography is and how to practice it. Well the book is in german but it's worth having it in hand because it shows on paper what we all knew: the quality of the images.



The publisher added a few artists (jeff Mihalyo, Patri Feher, Jaime Ruas, Hercilia Lopes and more) at the end of the book to give a larger view and opening to the world of Scan-Art. For those interested you can order the book here. It's really worth the price. And it needs support.

After a chat with Patri, I was just wondering if publishers, somewhere in this amazing world have had the courage to publish a book about scannography. I see that sometimes books use scannography for their image content (more and more when flowers or plants are concerned). I also see that sometimes books about new technics of capturing images or processing images, have a chapter that gives a place to our technic. But how many books are now devoted to scannography.
Being in France, I may miss lots of things that happen in the rest of the world, so if you can share your knowledge.
By the way, we have a page called "bibliography" on the site and it may need an update.

So please send me whatever book you know that is a real scannography book…

The artist for this month is finally on the site.

His name : Stewart Nelson. His work is mainly based on leaves and fronds and bright colors. Stewart doesn't hesitate to alter the natural colors to arrive at the result he wants. His images are strong, simple and appealing. Hs compositions focus mostly on one main element and that gives strength to the whole picture.

Stewart is a professional photographer living in Florida. And you can also take a look at his very graphic and interesting photographic works here.

I wish a merry Christmas to all scannographers throughout the world and to everyone else also, by the way !!! I would like that this community develops and that we, all together, because union makes force, reach some of our goals this year.

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 ?

A new artist is welcomed amongst our little community. Here is an extract from her presentation.
"Liz Atkin is a visual artist based in London. She completed a Masters with Distinction from Laban, Europe's largest Conservatoire for Contemporary Dance, London in 2007. Liz is interested in skin as a constantly transforming surface, ripe with memory, a flesh canvas. Skin is her primary source for corporeal art. In her portraits, Liz works with her face and the surface of her skin, exploring texture and transformation through body focussed repetitive behaviour. Drawing with light, current pieces are produced through domestic flatbed scanners."

Her images are strong, deranging, sometimes violent but always with great artistic content, sense of composition and harmony.

Take a look at her other creations on the main site or also on her own site

I received these images recently from the Philippines. With just these lines :
Hello! I am Angely Chi from the Philippines and these are my first experiments on the office scanner. (I did it when I was alone.)

I liked these images I find them a good attempt for a first try. Original composition, strong feeling, and good color harmonies. I hope some of you will let Angely know what they feel about these scanns.




Here are some explanation the author gave me later to her creations :
I'm still very new this art but i find it a lot of fun because i could play with setting up images especially when I include myself as part of the scanned image. That's the best part despite its awkwardness. because I found it tiring to steadily put my face on the scanner and wait for a minute to have it scanned (a minute seems forever) i decided to play around and move my face while the scanner works up, chasing the light, alternating my face with other objects within reach-books, a calculator, magazines, etc. So the end products are fragmented images or fragmented portraits.
I had a bugging thought in my head that perhaps what I was doing was not really new and there were other people in the world scanning their faces and making art out of it. So I searched the web the next day with the keyword "scanner art" and found your site. I also found this website with a fun scannography project called "Face your Pockets
The image is a cover of "The Believer" magazine i've been reading. The cartoon character in the cover is Fantomah, the first ever female superhero created by Hanks Fletcher during the Golden Age of Comics. (Fantomah is a superhero who's beautiful when everything is fine in the jungle she protects. But her face transforms into a blue skull whenever her jungle is threatened and she is angered.) I thought it was an interesting juxtaposition with another cover of the book "Filipiniana" which features a Filipina meztiza during the Spanish era in the Philippines, and fragmented images of myself in the background. But my juxtaposition of the three occurred purely on impulse. I didn't plan to put one with the other. it just occurred to me to grab my magazine and the book, put them side by side, and work my face behind them

If you want to discover more about Angely : http://delirium1986.multiply.com