Saturday, April 7, 2012

Sight Adjustments

by Drew Martin
Visual art is the manifestation of how artists see the world. An artist's imagination, insight and conceptualization combined with a material technique yield paintings, drawings, sculptures, movies and performances. It is remarkable that we have the ability to share a unique perspective with everyone on
Earth. Most art is media because it is a mediated form of communication, and artists often use methods and devices to supplement their own sight to attain their product. The most commonly used apparatus by artists is the camera, which allows anyone to freeze a frame in a point in time. As photography slips into the world of digitization, I am always excited when I see the creative hand at work. Last week I bumped into Shawn Lux, an illustrator from California. We were waiting in a long, slow-moving line at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. Lux was holding (pictured here) a digital Nikon camera mounted to a device he made from wood and mirrors in order to create three dimensional images. The trick of three-dimensional photography is to simulate our natural binocular vision. Lux's setup captures almost identical images, at slightly different angles. Most three dimensional cameras use two lenses, set apart or manipulate one image digitally in-camera or in post-production with software but Lux captures the illusion with one frame. Lux uses a Loreo Lite cardboard 3D stereo viewer to look at his diptychs. Click here to see Lux's photos from this trip on Flickr.