Did you know its 5560 miles from Brazil to England. That is how
far Clara Veiga travelled to appear on UK catwalk shows in the
early 2000s. Those that read my blogs know that I write the odd
book and celebrate Clara Veiga as the face of this site. You will
not spend much time looking at my computers before tripping across
a reference to Clara Veiga on your travels.
Anyhoo ... I recently completed yet another of my scribbled works
and decided to have a play with the cover of the book as viewed
as an internet document. Although I could have nabbed a few
images from the net to show off the work, I chose instead to take
one of Clara's shows and animate using the Amiga and then capture
a screen shot. In doing this I marvelled at the journey the image
took to get onto the page.
Reflect first on the 5560 miles that the very beautiful Clara Veiga
first travelled to make the image possible. Then consider the
transmission distance from France ( home of Fashion TV ) via
satellite orbiting the earth back here to my SONY VHS recorder.
The image then was copied to a DvD disc which travelled the short
distance to my player hooked up to a VidiAmiga interface plugged
into an Amiga 1200. From there it was captured and edited using
the very wonderful DPaint IV and saved as an Amiga IFF animation.
Once copied to ZIP it travelled to a PC in the Workshop and again
copied to USB. Back to the Win7 machine and burnt to CD. I then
set up the tripod in front of my Microvitec in the Workshop and
photographed the images freezing the DPaint animation at specific
points. The camera used was my Lumix. Pictures are not captures,
they are actual photographs taken of a monitor.
The images were then taken to the PC and edited using Photoshop
where I zoomed in on the specific images which remember have had
many years and many miles and many conversions and saving to
degrade. And yet after all that working of the image, and
remembering that these are 'stills' from an animation from a video
transmitted to my location, I am staggered at how smooth and
consistent the black and white images are. They may not be sharp
but then these are close-ups of a face that is just the top part
of the full image. I find them incredible. And to this day I
have never been able to capture images so easily as I do on the
humble Amiga.
A big thank you to Clara Veiga for basically being such a truly
magical subject for my creations. And a big thank you to the
Amiga for making the whole thing possible. I know I could have
produced quicker and more crisp and colourful images using
images from the internet, but then that wouldn't be retro.
I include also some images of my kit that I still use. My video
recorder and DVD plus the Hi-fi and record deck. I know I bang on
about this but if you look after your stuff and get it repaired
when it breaks it will last a life time. And one day you will be
so happy you didn't throw your old kit away. Cus they are loads
better than anything you can buy today. Seriously.
Book Cover - An amazing journey.
A selection of images from which I chose just one.
The face of Clara Veiga.
The face of Clara Veiga.
The face of Clara Veiga.
The face of Clara Veiga.
For me the pictures capture the very essence of Clara.
By the way... Clara is not the Demon in the book
and the stories are for my own private use only.
I have written many many books for my amusement.
VIDI AMIGA
MONITOR
CAMERA
My second camera I use
I use the Lumix for monitor shots and screens,
and the Canon for all pictures of subject matter.
CAPTURE
What you see without the grabber.
Choose the frames you want to use.
With the DPaint animation control panel
Clara Veiga
A D-Paint animbrush
My D-Paint avatar captured with Vidi-Amiga
of the very lovely Miss Clara Veiga
Image manipulation
Not sure who is manipulating who
This was the old book cover. This also is the link
to the latest page entry regarding the book.
T o r n E d g e s - S u b t e n d 3
Please note that the book is a rabbit hole ...
which means you will never find your way back
to any of the earlier pages by clicking the links.
It is designed that way. 'Curiouser and Curiouser.'
