There is not much to say, as a custom bamboo case for an iPhone pretty much tells its own story …
The case is made by a small and highly energized team at Grove in Oregon. They started from the intersection of Joe Mansfield (laser engraving) and Ken Tomita (contemporary Japanese furniture); then add in Chris Rizzo (CNC industrial design). Along the way they also managed to enlist nearly every member of their extended family and friends. The result are machined bamboo cases with a high degree of accuracy, fit, and finish … and customizable with laser engraved artwork.
The cases are very nice, very different from the mainstream, and are a bit more expensive than some injection molded polymer. All of that is just fine by me.
An interesting side note – even their packaging has their high level of attention to detail – part of the packaging used to ship the case is actually the cut-off waste from the CNC process; sanded and finished so it can be used as a small picture frame ! (AIGA presentation here)
Given the case is made from bamboo *and* I have done a lot of work in bamboo (dining table, kitchen, other, …) I ordered my case even before I ordered my phone. The question then became "plain", "artist", or "custom". I had always loved the stained glass artwork titled, "an Bradan Feasa" or "the Salmon of Knowledge" by Oisín Mac Suibhne.
I wanted to use Suibhne’s artwork or something similar but did not want to infringe on his intellectual and artistic property rights. I was able to contact him and he was very kind to allow me to work with his sketches to transition it into something that could make the transition to laser engraving.
It took some time and about four attempts. I used GIMP and my Toshiba M200 tablet for the graphics work. My reference layers were a combination of the original sketches and the stained glass photos. On my fourth attempt, I was able to reproduce the two key elements of the fish and the "eye" of the window. The "title" at the bottom is my own hand writing, using a pressure sensitive stylus and the tablet.
The result is unbelievably fine detain and wonderful to look at.
Many thanks to Oisín Mac Suibhne for allowing me to use his artwork and to the entire Grove team for creating such tangible art with their bamboo iPhone cases!
The title says it all. These are not at all related other than they are all images that caught my eye over the past year and I happen to have a camera with me.
For the curious, "Dark Sunrise", "Blue Sky", "Mocha Swirl" and "Holly" are cropped with little or no adjustment to color. "Wheat" received some warming. "Helicopter" was bland because it was an overcast day so I did a lot with levels and in the end opted for a B&W finish. "Deer" has the most work because I wanted to make the animal to be accentuated so I did a layer and dulled the surroundings.
click to get 640×960 (suitable for the iPhone 4 and will work nicely on the 3G and 3GS)
I’ve had the iPhone 4 for a couple weeks now. At some point I’ll do a a few posts about how I use it, what apps I’ve installed, what I miss about the Blackberry (yes, the iPhone is not perfect), and I’ll explain why I’ve already visited the JailbreakMe website. For now, I’m going to talk about the camera.
The iPhone is the point-n-shoot I knew I wanted. It’s not the best camera in that category. For my needs, that would be one of the diminutive Canon units. So why the iPhone? Because it’s the camera I’ll actually have with me most of the time and not feel it’s a “hangar on”.
Take this moon shot. I saw it. Thought it was nice enough to photograph. So I took a picture.
I wasn’t planning to take a picture. I didn’t even know the moon was up when zen and i went for a humid walk.
The image posted was taken with the Camera+ app partly because it has a trick of using the volume button as a shutter release in landscape mode. But more so, I use it because it has some good quality post production features which I use for most of my blog posts. I have other apps but if the photo is pretty good to start, then Camera+ has everything I need in z single workflow – take picture; color, vignette, blur focus, border, publish – all done but the blog text or Facebook title.
Case in point; I’m still outside looking at the moon as I finish and post this.
The iPhone is a powerful handheld computer. (Yes, it can also make a phone call but who does that anymore?) So the logical test for me was blogging with it. Here is my workflow …
My blog posts are nearly always accompanied by a photo, image, or graphic. The layout is mostly standard with the image on the right near the top and the text flowing around it.
My blog is running WordPress software. I’ve installed the Postie plugin which adds extensive “blog by email” support. I’ve configured WordPress’s “media” settings to create small, medium, and large thumbnails. I have configured Postie to use the medium sized thumbnail and to add the necessary markup to position the image and to link to the original.
What was left was to find a solution to “decorate” the images. On my desktop computer, I use Windows Live Writer. It has build-in features to add drop shadow, borders, etc. I also have GIMP for more extensive editing. On the iPhone I’ve installed a few different apps. The most technical of these is PerfectPhoto which gives me most of the color/light editing functions of GIMP. For taking pictures and handling some predefined edits, I like Camera+. (Before you ask, I did snag Camera+ before Apple pulled it from the app store – Google for the controversy.) The ColorSplash app is for that “colored b&w” effect and Photo Finish is for adding borders and edges (I don’t like the look of a plain photo for my blog). I wish Photo Finish supported native resolution but it always rescales to match its fixed frames. (It looks like a 1.0 release and the developer has moved on.) For blogging “on the go”, I can live with it.
To blog, I just compose an email. It’s a bit backwards actually. The iPhone does not let you add a photo to an email. Rather, you email a photo – from the camera roll – and add text to it.
This post is an example of the above process and tools. Oh. Before you send you email to get posted, make sure to delete your ‘sig’ at the bottom. There’s probably no need to post you contact info
Roy over at Return to the Center is an accomplished photographer with a eye for the unique perspective of things. I always look forward to the images he posts and the photographic excursions he documents.
Recently Roy attended “Skip’s Cruise Night“. The images speak for themselves. When I watched the slideshow, I immediately wanted them as wallpaper for my iPhone. Roy was great when I requested to post them here for others to enjoy !
click to get 640×960 (suitable for the iPhone 4 and will work nicely on the 3G and 3GS)
Given the case is made from bamboo *and* I have done a lot of work in bamboo (dining table, kitchen, other, …) I ordered my case even before I ordered my phone. The question then became "plain", "artist", or "custom". I had always loved the stained glass artwork titled, "an Bradan Feasa" or "the Salmon of Knowledge" by Oisín Mac Suibhne.
