kohiyama

----The digital reality-----
Kenji Kohiyama

Human eyes and brain does not understand the whole picture of an insect. Whether we feel it's beautiful or ugly, we only understand insects seen in norm as only a "small life".
Also, the multi-eye or the antennas that we see with a electron microscope is only an overly enlarged "part" of the insect. It is impossible to use a normal photographic technique and have the focus on the whole insect.

Therefore, I thought of an idea to get a precise enlarged picture of an insect using digital graphics. This is a technique where, by taking more than 20 cuts of positive film and by changing it to digital data, it would be possible to collage them on the computer.

The reason that we picked a beetle as the subject of photography is for it's variety. There are more then 60 thousand types of beetles, and there are some which shows very unique mimicking capabilities.

I find it very interesting that we humans gather those vast types of beetles as one group, as "beetle". I believe that the common parts and variety overlaps with that of the human language. There is the diagram of "the beetles making varaiety by hardware, and the humans making baraiety by software(the brain)".被写体としてゾウム

I'm not trying to show my work as art. All I'm trying to do, is to show the natural existance as "clearly" as possible. Because, looking at the beetle and feeling beauty in it means that you are understanding beauty towards the essence of nature.

Creation process of a multi-focus photograph

step-1

step-4

Take a photograph of a beetle using a stand of about 20cm with a strobe light.
Focus on any part of the insect, and make a few dosen cuts.
Take about 20 to 30 positive films from what you took, and convert it into digital data using a film scanner. Each of the photos will be transferred to the computer.

step-2

step-5

A beetle's length is from a few millimeters to about 30 millimeters. Due to the focus depth becoming thin, you will not be able to focous on the whole subject. The pin marks on the insect will be fixed at the collaging stage. Cut out the sections of each photograph where it is focused. After each of the picture are gathered into one, a little more fixing and adjustment is nessesary.

step-3

step-6

There is a case where you move the camera and fix the subject like a scanning camera, and there's another case where you move the subject and fix the camera instead. The former will produce a photograph with perth, and the latter will produce a photograph without a perth. When it's printed, the size of the work will be A4.

Creation process of a multi-focus photograph
step-1	step-4
	Take a photograph of a beetle using a stand of about 20cm with a strobe light. Focus on any part of the insect, and make a few dosen cuts.	Take about 20 to 30 positive films from what you took, and convert it into digital data using a film scanner. Each of the photos will be transferred to the computer.
step-2	step-5
	A beetle's length is from a few millimeters to about 30 millimeters. Due to the focus depth becoming thin, you will not be able to focous on the whole subject. The pin marks on the insect will be fixed at the collaging stage.	Cut out the sections of each photograph where it is focused. After each of the picture are gathered into one, a little more fixing and adjustment is nessesary.
step-3	step-6
	There is a case where you move the camera and fix the subject like a scanning camera, and there's another case where you move the subject and fix the camera instead. The former will produce a photograph with perth, and the latter will produce a photograph without a perth.	When it's printed, the size of the work will be A4.

The finished photograph

(Thanks to Mr. Kenji Kohiyama, this page was copied from his homepage.)

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