Posts Tagged guide

Perspective Basics

Posted by admin in Perspective, Tutorials on Haziran 30th, 2009

Learning perspective is generally taken as a big deal. Here we are going to change that prejudice. How? First you have to get the basics, and fully understand how perspective works geometrically.

To be comfortable with perspective drawing you always have to keep in mind that there is a person watching a scene which consists of geometrical, or near to geometrical objects, with a specific angle. Now to get familiar with the language of perspective, let’s put it in a more technical way. Suppose you are taking a snapshot of a scene. What do we need? A camera (the eye – point of view), the object(s) (scene), and light (guide lines). And as a result we get a photograph (picture plane) in the end.

Perspective Basics

The most important parts in understanding perspective are the “point of view” (POV), rays of light that carry the vision to our eyes (guide lines), vanishing points, the ground level together with the axis of origin, and the picture plane.

Point of View: This is where we stand and look at the scene. This point is also where all the light rays gather, since these rays are received by the observer’s eye.

Axis of Origin: Remember maths class when we drew x,y graphs. We had an axis of origin, where x and y both had values of zero. It’s primarily the same thing. We construct our perspective on these axi just like the graphics in math. Actually it’s 3 dimensional and we place the center on the picture plane, so that the picture plane and ground are sliced in two. A third axis can be imagined parallel to the bottom line of the picture plane.

Perspective view

Picture Plane: This is a totally imaginary plane representing our drawing canvas. We use it to project our guide lines that come from the scene, as if we are taking a photograph. The picture plane actually catches a vision of the scene

Guide Lines: These lines represent light rays carrying information of colour and geometry to our eyes. We use these lines by intersecting with the picture plane. This way we get the projection of objects from the scene onto our canvas. They are also called ghost lines. We don’t see these lines in the final picture.

Eye Level: Imagine you’re xray man. Rays come out of your eyes, focused on your scene. The level of the rays would give you your eye level. If you look up or down, the rays coming out of your eyes would have an angle. In 1 and 2 point perspective the vanishing points are on this line.

Perspective from top view

Horizon Line: It’s the contour of the landscape at the depth of your scene. Although it is different than eye level it can be taken the same if we are looking straight ahead, parallel to the ground level. The horizon line is generally a little below the eye level.

Ground Level: This is the level our picture plane touches the ground. For this we have to assume the ground is horizontal, and even. If we have uneven ground, we either imagine a straight level, lets say that intersects the corner of an object on the picture plane, or, if there are steps we accept one of these levels as ground level.

Scene: The composition of objects that we intend to represent in our perspective drawing, which could be of organic or man made objects, it doesn’t matter. Keep in mind that we are going to abstractify the scene into geometrical shapes in order to easily depict on our canvas.

Perspective from side view

Vanishing Points: I was just about to forget these. Oops! Shame on me! These are the points that our geometry in the scene tend to be drawn towards. The truth is every set of parallel lines vanish towards a differnt vanising point. Because we generally have orthographic (box shaped geometry) scenes we get up to 2 vanishing points horizontally. If we had a geometry of well, let’s say a more complex scene of 4 sets of parallel lines, we would have had 4 vanishing points. Generally we abstractify the lines that don’t fit in our normal orthographic set of lines to our existing vanishing points, instead of complicating the scene with more vanishing points.

Now we know the main terms, before we start, a thing to always remember when dealing with perspective is to visualize the scene before depicting on paper.
Imagine in your mind’s eye what the scene would look like before you pick up your pencil. It will make things a lot easier. When imagining, don’t forget to think as if you were taking a snapshop of the scene, as I mentioned before.
When imagining the scene we have to visualize it from more than one viewpoint to be more accurate. I mentioned before that we project guidelines onto the picture plane.
We can see our scene from top and side views to visualize the projection of the guideline coming from each object. I will not go into detail here. What I have already explained is enough for this post. For now I can say that the point where the guideline intersects the picture plane gives us the location on our canvas, of the specific corner the guideline comes from.

We need to visualize the scene, I repeat, to make the scene conceivable. This is why we abstract what we see into geometrical objects, points and lines. Don’t forget that all these lines and points are imaginary, we do not really see the guide lines, horizon line, ground line, etc… . We need them to construct the perspective. These lines and points help us imagine and convey onto paper. If you are successful in visualising and drawing what you see, you might not even need to use these points and lines when depicting your scene on paper. However, it is always beneficial to know the basics of perspective, if you intend to draw.

On my next post on perspective I will be explaining “1 point perspective technique“. We will get more familiar with how to use the basics I have explained in this post.

Methods of Making Money for Freelancers 3

Posted by admin in Freelancing, Tutorials on Mart 25th, 2009

In sections 1 and 2 of Methods of Making Money for Freelancers I mentioned about the problems of income flow for freelancers and of methods to ease the problem. In section 1 I wrote about promoting your public profile. And in section 2 I wrote about getting new income sources and of microstock firms. Now I would like to give some detail about these firms based on my personal experience.

The first site I applied to as a producer was Istockphoto. I had heard of this site from a friend, and in a period when I had nothing to do (there were no new jobs to be seen to in the near future) I decided to give it a go. I had some 3d works which wouldn’t create any copyright issues when published. I had stored away these files somewhere on my computer. So I opened those files and produced some animations, rendered 20 second clips from these animations and I was ready to begin.

A Review of Microstock sites

As I said I first applied to Istockphoto. Here you have to be accepted first as a producer to be able to upload any files for sale. The application is a wee bit difficult than most sites, since you primarily need to pass the initial application. In my case it took more than a month for my application as a photographer to be reviewed. Then you you have to get every file uploaded accepted. And this takes time, generally 1-2 weeks. This is because there are so many files in queue. So you can guess that this site is a popular one. Yes, that is true, and it is a growing community. However, the rates paid to the producers are low on this site, but you can compensate the difference with other sites because the sales are rather high comparatively. Another thing about Istockphoto is that it is very eager to make its members exclusive. It pays much more if you agree to the exclusivity terms (not to sell anywhere but on this site). Other sites also want exclusive members but this one puts more emphasis on exclusivity. Another thing to mention is the user interface; it is very simple and user friendly. The difficulty I experience with most sites is the uploading process for videos. Here you only have to upload the main version of your clip and the interface will do the rest. I’m talking about conversion of the video file to to other formats. I mainly upload a HD1080 video and it automatically converts it to HD720, PAL, NTSC and web formats. However, because I’m not an exclusive member I don’t have permission to use the ftp for uploads. Uploading 150MB files through html interface can be a drag. See what I mean about the emphasis on exclusivity?

Revostock is is the second site I uploaded my video clips. Its was a new site when I first started uploading and the community is growing very fast. This site pays higher rates per purchase than Istockphoto and the sales are not so bad. However the thing about this site that it isn’t for photographers. You can sell your video clips, After Effects projects and audio files here. The application process is similar to Istockphoto, but it doesn’t take so long. Revostock is a good fit for videographers, but, yes there is a but, the upload process is a bit slow. Although you have access to ftp, you firstly upload the main file, once it is accepted (in a few days) you upload the other formats which you convert yourself. If your internet connection is slow this process can stress you out. Still it’s a rewarding place to sell your stuff.

Another site focused on footage is Pond5. For now you can only upload footage files to this site. I don’t know if we will be able to sell other media on this site, we will have to wait and see. The interface is fairly simple and the rates per sale for producers are rather high compared to other sites. A nice thing about this site is the widget you can download from Pond5. With this widget, you can display the files that you have uploaded to Pond5, on your own site . The approval of uploaded media is quite fast (1-2 days), however there is again the problem of uploading all formats of your video clips yourself. You get them approved separately and they are also displayed as separate files.

Shutterstock, is another popular site for selling your image and footage files. The community is large and this firm is one of the biggest in this industry. The sales are good, however I must say I’m not very fond of this site. The web interface is terrible, I always get lost whenever I visit this site, and I never seem to get what I’m looking for. Initial application to be a photographer for this site is a bit tough also. The approval process of files is also a bit difficult. Their perfection level is a bit high. If you don’t believe your file is perfect do not upload to this site, it will be rejected, even if you think it has sales potential and is on sale on other sites. It is still rewarding so you should give it a try.

When I first joined I could only upload images at Fotolia, newly they have added footage. I’ve experienced no problems with selling my images here, and I’m new to selling footage on this site. So we will have to wait and see how it goes on.

At Dreamstime prices are low for Royalty-Free stock photography, so you can see that the sales are high. Therefore it is a good site for getting good results for image purchases.

123rf, Bigstockphoto, Canstockphoto, and Cutcaster are also good sites worth trying, if you want to expand your audience.

All in all you should try each site individually even if you don’t go exclusive to a specific site, and then you can see which files have a better audience at each site, and then you can decide to sell a particular exclusively to that site. It can take your time but if you are up to this job as a good means of income you should try.

I have one note to add: if you want to upload your files to more than one site (if you don’t want to go exclusive to a specific microstock firm) you should keep a table of your file descriptions and keywords. Everytime you upload a file filling out the keywords and file description can be very boring believe me. Copying from the table will shorten the process and you can keep your files consistent on different sites. If you have a load of files keeping track of them can also be a big problem. You can hold track of your files acceptance and popularity at different sites by creating a database for your media files.

I hope you have a good time selling microstock.

Read my other articles about Methods of Making Money for Freelancers:

Methods of Making Money for Freelancers 1 About promoting your public profile.

Methods of Making Money for Freelancers 2 About selling microstock.

Hi Everyone !

Posted by admin in Welcome on Şubat 20th, 2009

Welcome to the personal blog of Serda Yılmaz. On this website you will find my personal works and my writings on various topics from freelancing to the question of what is design. This site is taking things at baby steps for now since it is very new, but I can tell there will be some very practical stuff all written out of my very own experience in getting around as a freelancer and as an architect interested in photography and videography. I hope you find the stuff here useful in your practice. If you have any suggestions please leave a comment.

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