Radim's laser painting

I got it ! You thought the EOS 004 great beast eh?

Radim said:

Yes, it really is. I love forests since being child. It is my temple, where I can meditate, solve difficult tasks, keep my mind open and enjoy the peace. There you are not disturbed by anything. Just sitting there, listening sounds of it, seeing it and sensing in general opens the door. With lasers it is surreal, really - but it might be extremely dangerous. I noticed there is enormous number of insect flying now. Once they cross the beam, it is a very bright flash - not very convenient to see. Often the moths even burn their wings when hitting collimated beam of high power - I've seen it many times - moths on ground below the beam path trying to fly without success.

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I'm sorry, I was traveling for work this past week and didn't get much time idle. I definitely know what you mean about the forest!! I take it you grew up in/close to the mountains? I grew up in Colorado and agree, there's something unspeakably magical and serene about being in completely present and immersed in nature! I can't imagine seeing in person how lasers bring it alive and from your artwork, it brings hidden details and captivating shadows the lasers reveal. Oh no, that would be startling! I didn't think about that, but it now that I do, I'll bet that happens a lot with their glutenous love for lights lol.

Radim said:

For most people the philosophical questions are not really important, they focus on common questions. Still, I do not believe they asked some questions themselves. To these questions I'm trying to give answers, still these are hard to get if you focussed only on common things you have experience with (size and weight scales, space, time...) - I call it common experience. Quantum mechanics and general relativity are good examples of stuff people just cannot get. I'm member of Cosmology facebook group and the questions and answers I read there are often not only completely wrong, but often even do not make sense at all. That happens, when you are not able to think out of the box, refuse your common experience as dogma and step by step adopt what QM and GR really says. As they are talking about stuff out of our common experience (for common experience Newton is just good enough approximation), they cannot be understood by concepts coming out from common experience - might seem as paradox as here common sense is used.

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I think you raise a great point and one not often contemplated! I couldn't agree more that the right questions are common not asked and the general population is confined to thinking in limited terms and boundaries set forth by restricted or black/white beliefs. By defining our world by exact 'standards', I feel like it's a sort of programming, if you will, to establish very finite measurements of what's possible/probable and impossible/improbable and consequently impairing our ability to challenge our existence as we understand it. I know for myself, learning to think outside of the box and expand why imagination of what's possible has required a conscious effort and practice to come to. Lol, it is very paradoxical!:crackup: What amazes me is some so-called 'fundamental' principles and theories in physics that have been accepted for decades even centuries have been challenged and few even proven to be flawed and there is an ethereal component we're missing, yet our understanding of our universe and what is taught remain incorrect and unaltered.

Sorry, I got a bit enveloped in your perspective Radim and briefly took a trip down a rabbit hole.


You were talking about learning of new techniques you learn and things not to do in every piece you create... I am curious if you've been able to experiment much with using atmospheric conditions (i.e. temperature inversions, rain, etc.) and any possible effects they have on the lasers to change the exposures you're after for your artwork?

Av8tor said:

I'm sorry, I was traveling for work this past week and didn't get much time idle. I definitely know what you mean about the forest!! I take it you grew up in/close to the mountains? I grew up in Colorado and agree, there's something unspeakably magical and serene about being in completely present and immersed in nature! I can't imagine seeing in person how lasers bring it alive and from your artwork, it brings hidden details and captivating shadows the lasers reveal. Oh no, that would be startling! I didn't think about that, but it now that I do, I'll bet that happens a lot with their glutenous love for lights lol.

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Oh, thanks Av8tor. That is a really great comment you wrote.

There is nothing to be sorry about, noone here is obliged to spend 24 hours a day here.

You are right. I can see mountains (Beskids) from my home. However these are not really high. Still I grew up close to them, but in non mountain landscape. Likely there were influences of my grandfather taking me to the forests with his dog(s). He was "hunter" (but at these times not using firearm and more taking care about wildlife and forest itself). Another were me going to summer camps and being scout. I learned a lot about nature and love for it remained till nowadays, even none of these influences are present anymore. However almost entire my girlfriend's family are "hunters" as well. But more than shooting taking care about forest and wildlife and observing it. Hopefully you have had something similar like me.

Doing laserpaintings is not only beautiful experience, but also a lot of work and responsibility for safety. Still I only see the idea in my mind untill it is done and processed by camera, than I can check the result. As it is imposible to do it in one moment, they are painted per partes and many tricks are used (but no computer of course, all of them are single photo shots). You would be surprised how the scene composition setups look in reality as playing with perspective is very important here. And as lasers are very bright, directed and intense light sources, they create amazing shadows from little details. It is the same effect as you can see on the Moon close to terminator (day-night border on the Moon), the right angle of bright light makes the mountains and craters to get long shadows easily visible from Earth with some (even cheap) binocular or telescope. I really love to play with illuminating various surfaces and objects, there are incredible patterns created by light and shadow game.

Av8tor said:

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I think you raise a great point and one not often contemplated! I couldn't agree more that the right questions are common not asked and the general population is confined to thinking in limited terms and boundaries set forth by restricted or black/white beliefs. By defining our world by exact 'standards', I feel like it's a sort of programming, if you will, to establish very finite measurements of what's possible/probable and impossible/improbable and consequently impairing our ability to challenge our existence as we understand it. I know for myself, learning to think outside of the box and expand why imagination of what's possible has required a conscious effort and practice to come to. Lol, it is very paradoxical!:crackup: What amazes me is some so-called 'fundamental' principles and theories in physics that have been accepted for decades even centuries have been challenged and few even proven to be flawed and there is an ethereal component we're missing, yet our understanding of our universe and what is taught remain incorrect and unaltered.

Sorry, I got a bit enveloped in your perspective Radim and briefly took a trip down a rabbit hole.


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"Black/white beliefs" - really great description of kind of bipolar thinking - I like to say there are even wide scale of grey between and more - there are other colors and some are even invisible to us. With thinking inside box people are just taking themselves away from great ideas and beauties of this world. They just miss major part of it in deed.

Luckily nowadays (and even in science history) there are (were) people capable to get out of the box and search and discover new views of our world. Still it is being forgotten to be more philosophical sometimes and the philosophy is the mother of science, therefore science has her genes. I do not like "buts", but there is some - there exist a lot of conspiracy theories and kind of these things. This IMO keeps people sometimes blind to out of box explanations and often too sceptic to new ideas. Scepticism is a very good thing, but is needed to use it wisely.

And be welcomed in rabbit hole(s). If you are not in risk of cutting yourself out from reality, there is nothing wrong with it.

Av8tor said:

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You were talking about learning of new techniques you learn and things not to do in every piece you create... I am curious if you've been able to experiment much with using atmospheric conditions (i.e. temperature inversions, rain, etc.) and any possible effects they have on the lasers to change the exposures you're after for your artwork?

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Regarding various techiques - yes, I tried rain, snow, fog and various atmospheric conditions. Since I started to do laserpainting more in artistic way. Unfortunately rain and snow are proven to be very unfriendly to lasers and optics especially during windy weather, so it is difficult. Still I got these artworks during inversions and high light pollution therefore (city and vilages are not far). However I meaned it more like new ways how to use laser light in laserpainting, new patterns, objects, optics setups, compositions etc.


I posted below my earlier experiments/works. Yes, there are so many errors, but you can at least compare it with those recent artworks.

Radim said:

If you have asked me why I love 589 nm laser, I would have answered because it's DPSS, because it's unique pure golden light, because...





The Laser Sun

It's a day at night in the forest. The sun is shining on the sky – is it real or is it not? What is real? What is dream? The souls of the trees, the souls of the light? The esence of reality is surreal… Many words all spoken by single picture…

(for higher resolution click on the photo)



About

Yes, it‘s a real photo, no computer graphics, just pure laser painting of my style.

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Radim said:

I really love this thread a lot of beautiful pictures! Aardvark777, will manners, ArcticDude and others...

Thanks to all keeping it alive.

To contribute more - here is what I shot yesterday in the night after work. It was heavy snowing (roads being closed), I used my mountain bike to get to the forest to my favourite place, but I should have used skis instead - big mistake. BTW: However it was fun in 30 - 40 cm of fresh snow, but downhill, uphill I had almost no traction.

I was doing also some other study pictures for my next project - new laserpainting method. I need to improve it to publish some pictures - but I got valuable experience. Anyway this picture is my "usual" style and was worth all the dificulties with weather and keeping lasers and camera dry.

______________________________________

In deep black forest, when not observed, the Tree performs a vortex of concentrated magic

High resolution​

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Radim said:

Just a few pictures. More at my instagram (see my signature).

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All these quoted pictures I posted in ArcticDude's Enchanted Beams Thread, before I started this one. The Laser Sun is however quoted even at opening post of this thread, as that one was the first artwork I was honestly proud of. I highly recommend Arctic's thread, he does really great beamshots.

And if you wish to see some awesome indoor artistry search for Brucemir he has a lot of threads with his awesome works here for example.

A W E N S O M E :drool:

Then I send you the bill of the typography man :beer:

Thanks, 3D.

I just like to write stuff, what I've realized...

Bravo my little artist!

ZzzzZzzz... Wazup?

Working on an artwork - on spot composition design, meaning expression... Today lasers rest home (except Evo) and I enjoy creation of art in the forest.

Very nice! It's always a pleasure to check out your art work. :drool:. Makes you just stare at them.

Glad you didn't lose any of your pictures, that would have been a crime! :tsk:

Oh, thanks Bob. I have them stored on my HDD, here I use Imgur or FB and Insta, but these are lower resolution.

Wazup - Update: My girlfriend is awesome, we were planning doing laserpainting together in the forest tonight. Out of plan, but I had some earlier easier ideas to perform now. Unfortunately big storm just came and will likely last whole night. So we are sitting in garden house and having beer observing lightning. Hard laserpainter's life...

Wazup?

Dear friends,

I'm sorry for keeping you waiting here as well as with outdoor beam shots of The Beautiful Green Monster. Too much sad things happened in my personal life as well as hard work under stress did not allow me to do some of my personal projects on the list and even simple thing as to post here, react and so...

But at least I take notes when relaxing by biking in the forest. I have just got an idea for third laserpainting planned to do as soon as I've time and mood for that. New technique and quite easy. So, I guess two of them might be good to show for review of my new baby and express some further parts of the soul of my favourite tree.

I even started to study recent trends in web developing to... Just a bit training with some simple purposeful app before I get... but maybe by Christmass...

So, just to let you know, I'm alive, just needing rest to get back here soon.

Therefore no way me leaving LPF, just being absent for a 'while'.

Life comes first, rest up and come back and impress us with your "green monster" when you're ready! :yh:
We'll be here waiting for you, so just pop back in and wow us with some of those fantastic "Monster" green beams!

I second BowtieGuy!
I'm glad to see you on and that you won't leave us.
Anyway, you couldn't leave now even if you wanted to. You've teased us too much with your green monster. We'd hunt you down for the pics!
Congratulations on a year here as well. Make sure you find time to message C0ldshadow so you can come back a vet.

Take care, Radim. I hope things improve for you soon.

Rest, be well and balanced then come back at us with some more of your beautiful laser art --first things first.

Looking forward to an update on the RPL 1400 too.

WORTH the wait for such awesome work..TY--and be well..

Hi my friends,

Finally, last week on Thursday I got to my job project the „GREEN LIGHT“ and after over six months of total, three months of preparation with last two weeks finialization and last two days no sleep. Finally it is over… And I should receive just confirmations. (Well, not really, 2nd stage of stabilization will follow.)


And here I’m…
I apologize for not responding even to messages. I was not lagging, just busy too much (and we all know how much time LPF consumes, when you are here). Eyes tired from all day long staring into computer and mobile screens needed to rest. In my free time I was working on my artistic project and after successfully proceeding to laserpainting on 21.10.2017, I planned to finish the artwork during weekend and come to you with it. Just to bring something on the table to share…
Unfortunatelly, new problems in my job’s project occured about which I was informed just on Friday (as coincidence it was my B-day). That was a serious issue and I was working on alternative solutions to be discussed and examined. And once this trouble was solved, another occured…

Long story short...
In the weekend I was seeing my friends... (So, obviously I needed to reset my LPF password after this long time.) And as it is usual in my friend circle, everyone brings something he/she likes and we all share that together. So, here are my favourite…


INSTANT LASERPAINTING
Concept:
It has to be easy to setup, safe, quick exposure of a few pics and choose those which match criteria for being used and from them the best one. I did this with two of my friends Friday (Mira) and Saturday night (Zuzka). The key was not to take it too long for the object to get tired or bored.

In addition to inclusion of the eyed object between lasers, there are many potential dangers. I used my protocol I’m continiously developong and improving.

SAFETY NOTE:
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES TRY TO DO LASERPAINTING OF EYED OBJECTS,
if you do not know what you are doing and

HAVE EXPERIENCE WITH LASERS BEFORE

I tested this laserpainting concept with care on my friends - after brief laser safety instructions and rules how to move on scene and after I set the safe zones and their barriers.

Laserpainting with some eyed organisms as objects was something I was not allowing myself to even think about very long time. And after weekend I got finally first artistic experience to work with people as objects. What kind of ways it can go?

It does not mean I won‘t capture detailed souls of the trees and other natural objects. It is just different approach and esentially what I have to do like million times to get one artwork like previous Soul in the Surreal world. Therefore I can train anywhere, have stuff to post and work on long term artworks…


Ok, enough, let’s see it...

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Story behind:
We were just chilling at his place after seening other friends in a pub and having liquid sky above our heads… We talked and he started complaining about his poor phone’s camera, so I took the action and composed in my head momentary some pic to make with it. I just edited brightness and contrast in app a bit. It was just about him to stand in right position for a while and be safe. The exposure was quite fast (but took longer than the pic below). First piece a person on my laserpaintings appears.

Further…
Saturday was the day I had planned to see some art galleries in Prague and as my second sister expressed her wish to join me on Friday, we agreed to do so. I was just waiting for my sis to arrive in the afternoon and playing with my laser at home a bit, when I got an idea (obvious one), to an interesting composition. Then we visited my favourite gallery, where there is a labyrinth of dungeons and where I plan to have my first exhibition once. I also desired to see again the interesting exhibition, I visited a few weeks ago. I took my new camera just to do some test shots and see how to use it. After our artistic souls were about to be satisfied, we went to my place nearby to plan some further gallery trips. However it was cold and it started to rain, so we were just chilling and I switched the laser on. Safe zones and barriers with safety info were compulsory. Zuzka was a bit worried, but I told her it is safe if she do not do something against the rules.

We discussed art, laser light and various other stuff. When the topic went back to the lasers (sorry for my long speech) I told her about the holography, how it works, etc. Maybe this was the final point before it happened…

Since we feeled inspired and full of art I decided to do the instant laserpainting of both of us. I‘m always trying something new, as you know, some new effect, new trick, playing with perspectives and viewer’s mind and of course I love to explore the laser light (more accurately – complex electromagnetic field). So, I prepared the composition of scene how I planned to capture us. Before we started I told her, it won’t be perfect, since I did not want to get her bored standing long minutes before I get everything ready and that I do not have experience with this camera yet. For this reason, I even held the camera in my hand to adjust the composition align fast for the best result under given circumstances.

It was very fast. I spent with this laserpainting just a few minutes with entire composition preparation, exposure and adjusting it a bit (contrast, brightness and bit of colour balance) to send it to Zuzka instantly.

On first look it was a bit tricky, since it played a lot with viewers mind, but still it was just a pic (mostly). I fell in love with this artwork as it was quite momentary idea to capture it like this.

This laserpainting however I can not show you yet. Instead I’ll show you what I’ve found when I explored various interference patterns in the laser grain of the laserpainting and what is one of the most awesome things I’ve ever seen…


Just check it out yourself.


It is easier if you are in the dark or shade without direct light hitting the screen. Look at this picture from the distance and if you do not see it try it from the side a bit, try to focus a bit beyond your screen. If still nothing look somewhere else than your computer, focus and look back on the pic. Once you get in, you will see something strange there. There should appear hole in your flat screen with noisy 3D surface just beyond.

I thought it is just some kind of funny effect/trick what I was studying in the begining and I sceptically refused what it appeared it was. All Sunday I spent studying this artwork with fascination. And once I made this deep zoom of the laser grain far beyond the resolution of the picture (esentially there is JPEG compression very visible here) and I saw there is a hole in my screen!

Further I spent a while reconstructing the composition on paper, doing some basic calculations and everything was making sense. My hypothesis needs to be confirmed! I sent the pic you see to one of my close friends and he saw that too. In addition his little son found that yesterday evening as he saw it. There are two persons there! I looked at it as soon as I read his message. On first glance it was not evident (since the depth of field is very low), but then. Oh, my god! I see myself and Zuzka, but from the side, which should not even somehow appear on the original laserpainting! Completely new perspective! In adition the angle do not even optically corresponded to the camera position! I examined the scene, where should I stand to took this pic, what kind of perspective view it is in the reality and I cannot believe it…


My first hologram, or not?

Behind me (on the right - I'm there without head) you can locate Zuzka in the middle and you can see awesome details of her face in 3D. Further the scene continues beyond. Interesting is there is Zuzka's eye hidden beyond my bent hand holding the camera, but if you move your head you the eye will appear. Just like in the hologram I saw in the optics lab long time ago.

It is a bit harder to see due to very low depth of field, but it is there. If you have OLED it is much easier to see than LCD.

I’m sorry for the resolution. I was not able to open the RAW file with PS at the moment – some feature is needed to be installed, so I used JPEG file created by camera to have this laserpainting instant. Anyway it was just a test of the camera…

Overall I’m surprised how resistant it is to JPEG compression and various adjustments like resizing on screen etc. I’m also surprised I could recognize both of us with such a detail. And it behaves like normal hologram on glass plate or film (like those you can get a kit for hundred bucks and take holograms of coins etc.)

Laser used to get this was my favourite („buttsaver“),532 nm 100 mW WL EVO & my new camera (observer) being tested is Canon EOS M100.
Very light and versatile camera. I like it, however I’m getting just used to the touch screen to start with. This feature is ideal for instant use and therefore instant laserpainting. Fast, just simple composition and momentual capture (like selfie). Anyway since I was testing it, I used full auto setup, with focus selection on screen (like on mobile).

Of course both pics are real digital photographies (noise was left there intentionally - obviously), no computer graphics, I just moved sliders for contrast, brightness and color balance a bit.


Regarding the potential digital hologram (if my hypothesis is correct) I would like to know your opinions. After that, I've agreed with my friend, and we might go to see one of his friends – scientist focussed on optics and lasers, to show it to him and discuss this cool stuff. In addition I’ll explore the artwork more deeply to find out what is hidden there, I’ll try to open the RAW and get the highest resolution possible (this one was just for studying purposes) - but I’m starting to believe I’ve just discovered something revolutionary even the principle (according to my preliminary notes) makes sense and I’m surprised, I’ve not seen something like this yet (on normal screen – just these special 3D TVs).

So, guys, what do you see? What do you think? I’m hungry for your opinions. Why I do not see more stuff like this on web? No, I do not mean stereograms, they are something different. This is captured reality in 3D and much easier to focus on than stereograms (even the depth of field here is so low).

BTW this version is PNG taken as screenshot of screenshot of screenshot... when I explored the original artwork, no other computer edits. So far it worked on every device I tried it yet (OLED on phone - best results, LCD on my laptop and LCD TV).


Project A and others
Further I know, there is a lot of questions about the Beast, maybe about my secret artistic project and which is being rebulit to version 2.0 and regulary tested… After a few blind paths I got what I needed, but still a lot of soldering to do… Let’s call it „Project A“.
I even worked on further projects on the list, still, they are just being prepared as ideas and technical solutions.
To be honest I do not feel confident to write about the Beast yet. It has just one unpublished and unseen artwork in progress (v1.0 of Project A was sucessfully used). I need more experience to evaluate this awesome laser.
And so on…





:thanks: Thanks to all worrying about me, keeping my rep up was very nice to see (it is updated automatically in one of my excel sheets I use) – but you know I just had to resist and not come back till I finish that job stuff...

Overall I should find some time to be on LPF and posting here. I wished to return almost every day I was not here.

R.

P.S.: By the way. that Canon I won in the autumn last year in Canon Low Light photo contest (on FB). I just applied first time ever in some photo contest and won the best prize of the bank (2 pieces in total and one went to me). Yeah! But, I had no time due to my work to explore the options this black box (gray actually) can offer… You leave you to guess, which one of my artworks I submitted.