Spotlight: Hanlin Goh’s 365 Days of Living Pictures

One of our first Lytro camera owners, Hanlin Goh, caught our attention last March when he started sharing a new picture every day on his blog, My Living Picture Year, and Twitter. Today, as he shares his 365th living picture, we celebrate Hanlin as a true light field pioneer.

On March 19th, just over a week into his year-long project, Hanlin shared the picture below, “Small in size, tall in ambition,” with us on Facebook. We shared the picture as part of a Lytro Blog post about some of our new light field photographers.

A year later, his picture has over 100,000 views and the count continues to grow. We liked the whimsy of his picture, and asked him if we could use it on the Lytro website to Continue reading

Lytro @ Maker Faire

Lytro spent the weekend at Maker Faire Bay Area 2012, a fantastic festival of DIY enthusiasts in celebration of invention, creativity and resourcefulness. Our booth was completely mobbed for the 2-day event, giving everyone there a chance to play with a Lytro light field camera in person. We ran continuous photo walks, encouraging attendees to wander the fairgrounds in search of interesting light field compositions.

One of the great things about Maker Faire is that it fosters hands-on creativity in children. Many booths offered creative space for kids to experiment. We had a few kids using the Lytro camera during photo walks, which is always exciting for us. Some of the kids who came to the booth already knew everything about the camera, and could easily have led the photo walks for us!

We’d like to congratulate Jeremiah Cohick, Komei Harada, Ingo Richeter, and David Lytle for winning Lytro’s Maker Faire Picture Challenge. All of them posted living pictures to win free tickets in our Maker Faire Challenge

Also, special thanks to beta-tester extraordinaire Grant Hendrick, to the Lytro employees and others who volunteered at our booth, and to the Maker Faire staff who made the booth and photo walks possible last weekend. See you at the next Maker Faire!

More Lytro living pictures from Maker Faire are embedded below. Continue reading

Annular solar eclipse in light field

Did you see the “ring of fire” annular solar eclipse last Sunday? Lytro camera owners and employees have been sending in solar eclipse pictures taken with the Lytro light field camera. Living pictures of people enjoying the eclipse worked well, as did pictures of the various methods used to project the eclipse onto safe viewing surfaces. Continue reading

How Weird Street Faire in Living Pictures

San Francisco is a city that is well known for its street fairs, which draw eclectic crowds who are virtually begging to have their portraits taken. About a week ago, a few Lytro employees went to the 13th annual How Weird Street Faire, the longest-running electronic music street festival in North America. The faire is run as a fundraiser benefitting the World Peace through Technology Organization. Continue reading

April Photowalks in Monterey and Phoenix

During the recent EG Conference in Monterey, photographer Trey Radcliff, invited the Lytro Team, including director of photography Eric Cheng, to join his photowalk.

About 15 newbie light field photographers tried out a Lytro camera for the first time, including David Polzine, who captured this extreme macro shot using Creative Mode.

We’ve posted many of their pictures on our Camp Lytro account, where you can check out pictures from all of Lytro’s photowalk, events, and demos.
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Our First Photowalk with Lytro Camera Owners

Last week we shipped our first Lytro cameras, and this week we got to meet some of our first owners who brought their own cameras to San Francisco’s Ferry Plaza Building. “It was an arrival point to look out at all these people with a Lytro camera in their hands…complete with wrist staps,” said Eric Cheng, our director of photography.
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Lytro and Stephen Goldblatt, Cinematographer

One of the great things about being Director of Photography at Lytro is that is gives me the opportunity to discuss image making with a lot of interesting people.

Last week, I met with Stephen Goldblatt, A.S.C., who has been cinematographer / Director of Photography for over 30 movies, including The Help, Julie & Julia, Charlie Wilson’s War, Batman Forever, Lethal Weapon, and others.

We spent an hour chatting about the cameras and workflow used in Hollywood movies, and about how the potential of light field video might make its mark in movies in the long term. These are truly exciting times!

Living pictures of the last Space Shuttle mission ever

Shortly after midnight on the evening of July 20, 2011, my phone rang. On the other end of the line was Philip Scott Andrews, a photographer who currently works for the New York Times. Philip had received a Lytro prototype camera and was charging it up on his way to the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center to photograph the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis. Philip has been photographing NASA Space Shuttle missions for many years, and having a Lytro on the ground at the landing site for STS-135, the last Space Shuttle mission ever, was very special—the beginning of a new era in photography juxtaposed with the end of another era. We posted a few of Philip’s light field pictures this week and managed to catch up with him for a short interview. Continue reading

Spaceships, grumpy kids and gardens

Over the past few weeks, Lytro employees and select testers in the field have been using prototype Lytro light field cameras to document their lives outside of the office. We’ve updated our Living Pictures Gallery with 11 new light field pictures; the selection includes pictures taken by Kira Wampler (Lytro’s VP of Marketing), Heather Champ, and professional photographers Jason Bradley and Philip Andrews.

Especially exciting are some of the pictures that Philip took at the landing of Space Shuttle Atlantis after STS-135, the last shuttle mission ever. We’ve got an interview with Philip in the works, and will post more about the experience soon.