Image Processing Reference
In-Depth Information
Exercise 2
Rotating Human
Subjects
This exercise is best when you have the availability of many people, and it
can be used as a workshop or class event. You need a single-frame camera, like
a digital video camera or a dslr still camera with a 35 mm lens. A tripod is
absolutely essential to mount your camera on. It is also important to tape
down and bag your camera and tripod, because your human subjects may get
close to the camera and bump the tripod, ruining your shoot. There are all
sorts of variations on this concept, but I run through one approach and you
can take the idea and expand on it. Once again, having a computer near and
connected to your camera that is equipped with a capture software program
like Dragon makes a huge difference in the success of this exercise. You will
frame reference the position of one human subject to the next, so having the
onionskin capability allows you to be fairly close in your registration from one
person to the next. When I practice this exercise, I also use a projector that is
connected to my computer, so that the image and frame I am working on can
be viewed by all the other participants in the exercise. This basically means that
this exercise should be shot in an interior space protected from the elements
and with a steady light source. As I mentioned earlier, you may expand on this
idea and take a variation of this exercise outside to see what results you get there.
Here is the setup. Put a chair in the middle of an open interior space and tape
down the chair to the hard floor so it is stable. Do not shoot on a soft surface
like a carpet. Put your tripod directly in front of the chair with the camera
facing the chair. Set the height of the camera at the eye level of someone who
might be average height sitting in the chair. Frame it up so that the person
in the chair can be seen as only a “head and shoulders” shot. It is helpful
to have a table behind the camera, so you can place and operate the computer;
the table might also serve as a platform for your projector (if you have one).
Your projector projects on the wall behind the camera so the person in the
chair sees what is being filmed while looking straight ahead. This is important,
so the person in the chair can see where he or she lines up in the frame in
relation to the person who was sitting in the chair the frame before.
The number of people involved can be anywhere from 2 to 12. The larger the
number, the more interesting the result can be. Let us say you have 12 people.
Line up five standing people starting on the right and left sides of the chair.
They should start just behind the chair with the rest of the people lined up in a
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