First Flight Artworks book published

 

 

 

Flight Artworks Volume 1 by Gary Eason
High Wycombe, 12 May 2015

I am delighted to present my first book drawn from my growing collection of Flight Artworks​: 32 pages, available now in printed and e-book versions.

It contains captions, commentary and points of note – but the focus is on the images and they occupy most of the space. You can see some sample pages above and below. 

To preview or purchase the books please visit the Blurb bookshop.

I built it using their self-publishing software BookWright in 'standard landscape' size (25x20cm / 10x8in), in three formats from £19.99.

The production was straightforward if time-consuming. I lost count of how many times I thought it was done, then spotted something that was not quite right – which I suspect could become an endless process if you are not careful.

In fact it turned out that their existing software cannot properly reproduce it as an ebook without divine intervention by the Blurb support staff, so that is an ongoing project. 

Screen Shot 2015-05-12 at 00.27.55Am I pleased with the book though? Yes very. It was launched this morning, and when I went to look in my account for something a few hours later, I had already sold two. 

I'm afraid I can't do anything about the price: the fixed costs imposed by Blurb, including shipping, mean I barely get the price of a pint from each copy and I would have to sell a very large number indeed to cover the time invested in its creation. 

My son works in the book selling business and he will tell you (if only when he sees his pay slip) that for the vast majority of us, publishing and selling books is rarely ever going to be a get rich quick scheme.

The pictures I have used are not new, apart from a few I have adapted to fit the book design. In fact many people have prints of them hanging on their walls. And as regular followers of this blog will know, a number of others have appeared in print already in magazines and elsewhere. 

Also, as an aside, I am increasingly licensing them through my Alamy account – although I do not usually know where they will end up, because sales are reported to us contributors simply in terms of "Editorial magazine" or the like, and maybe not in a country or language I am likely to see. 

So what's the point of producing the book? Is it all vanity? 

Oh, come on – can anything beat sitting down with a cup of coffee on your most comfortable sofa, savouring turning the pages in a book of your favourite things? 

So when I say "first" Flight Artworks book published, will there be more? Oh yes.  

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 TO BUY PRINTS  of any of my works please visit www.flightartworks.com.

I do private commissions, for individual aircraft or bigger scenes. Publishers' enquiries are also welcome: many images are available already to license through the Alamy agency.

To get in touch visit the Contact page on my website. Find Flight Artworks on Facebook, and on Twitter @flightartworks.

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Aerial views

Action on 31 August 1940 flat4_pr_blog

Battle of Britain dogfight, featuring F/O Harold Bird-Wilson in his Mk 1 Hurricane

High Wycombe, 27 Sep 2012

Alongside my regular photography, taking in trips to the North East, the sailing Olympics in Weymouth and the Edinburgh Fringe, I've recently been putting a lot of effort into my new aviation project, Flight Artworks.

It is currently hosted on my main photography website but my intention is to spin it out into a separate venture with its own clear identity.

One of the responses to the pictures on my Facebook page asked,"Is this a Photograph or computer art?"  Well, given that I shoot and process digitally, you could say everything I make is "computer art".

But I know what he meant. In that sense – no, it isn't. All the elements of the pictures are photographic. They are then combined on a computer, and adapted to a greater or lesser extent as the scenario demands. So in that sense – yes, I suppose so. However I still need the photographs to work from.That picture of the Kent landscape? I took it from an aeroplane over Kent!

Hats off to those clever people who understand 3D software and can carve aircraft out of a block of digits entirely on the computer. But there's more to it than that. Almost all the purely digital creations that I've seen look like what they are. You can just tell. So it does please me when people look at mine and ask, "How has he done that?"

Spitfire Vb in progress_blog

Spitfire Vb in progress

I think a crucial aspect of this is my photographic background. Any photographer is a student of light. Light, not the camera, is the primary tool. What makes a thing look real is the play of light on its surfaces. The corollary being that an unrealistic play of light will make the whole look unreal.

When I think of a scenario I immediately think about how I can find and combine the elements that would be needed to real-ise it. In fact it can work the other way round: having the elements to hand suggests a scene that I might portray.

Half the fun is then in the research. As an aside, although I'm modelling virtually it turns out I have a lot in common with those who work in plastic to recreate past events – who do seem to exhibit a  passion for getting the minutiae correct.

I have also learnt just how easy it is to get it wrong. Spitfire wings? Don't get me started.  Ironically, often the wonderful old aircraft that are still flying around today, thanks to the tireless efforts of those who restore and preserve them, are not at all what they appear to be. 

But that's where the computer art takes over – and makes it possible to recreate them as they were in their heydays.

Everything from changing code letters and registration numbers, to bigger elements such as the cannon and wheel blisters on the wings, armament, props and exhausts – even the shape and size of the nose and cowling.  And in the case of a Type 464 Lancaster (for the Dambusters series), the bomb bay and mid-upper gun turret as well as numerous details such as fuselage windows, exhaust shrouds, aerials and pitot tubes.

I use primarily Photoshop. So, for those familiar with how it works, I typically would have dozens of separate layers going on which makes it easy to tweak various aspects or indeed re-use parts and change the coding or the extent of weathering or whether the guns have been fired and so on. 

 

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What do spinning props look like?

Hurricane_scramble_panorama_flat_blog

'Another day': Hurricanes from 17 Squadron RAF in northern France, June 1940

What does a spinning aircraft propeller look like?

You’re thinking I’m daft. Anyone who’s ever seen even an office fan knows what a spinning prop looks like.

Right. It’s just a blurred disk.

So why is it that in almost every photograph you’ve ever seen of a prop aircraft you can not only see but in effect count the propeller blades?

The answer is obvious of course: photographs are a sliver in time and if you are going to catch a moving aircraft without showing it as a blur, you need to have a fast enough shutter speed that it will also ‘stop’ the propeller.

The effect of this will vary with the speed of the prop’s rotation – which in part depends on the different phases of flight – and of course the shutter speed.

So the question that I have been grappling with is: what looks ‘right’?  

Dead engine

I want to know because, in a new departure, I am developing a range of aviation-related digital pictures under the Flight Artworks brand. 

These are photographically based, but the source material features a motley variety of prop rotations – from the total blur (rare) to the stationary (which looks just silly in my opinion – as if the engine has seized in flight).

I found that, to render them into photographic (or photorealistic) backgrounds it was easier, usually, to recreate the spinning prop from scratch. So I could make it look like almost anything I wanted.

I debated with myself whether to mimic the effect of an artfully chosen shutter speed – good blur but with discrete blades visible – which a crack aviation photographer will usually strive for. Think Paul Bowen, for example: http://www.airtoair.net/gallery/gallery-bombers.htm.

Or whether to recreate what you actually would see if you were right there. After all, in a typical air-to-air scenario, where is the viewer? Hanging somehow in space?

After a faltering start I’ve plumped for the latter. In the Hurricanes image above - with the viewer standing on the ground, I suppose – I started with a single prop blade, painted the tip yellow, and spun it into a circle (this worked better than spinning three blades). Then once it was pasted onto an aircraft I resized it and altered the perspective to fit – and adjusted opacity right down. 

[UPDATE: 19 Feb 12]  In response to online discussion of this approach and a review of more photos, I then also added some reflected sunlight 'shimmer'. This needs to be related to the surrounding light but i think it adds a good sense of depth and movement to the props. 

But I’m far from being sure about all this. So comments welcome please. 

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