Body Painted Models - Biorhythm LA Event

Hi All,

On August 6 of this year, a few of us had the pleasure of attending and shooting at Biorhythm LA, an event showcasing the art of some local Los Angeles body painters. With me was Scott Ressler shooting traditional 3-D shots and helping me work out lighting, and Shyam Kannapurakkaran, who shot did some virtual reality shooting there.

To shoot these we taped out a 6' x 8' rectangle onto the ground, 3-point lighting, and an especially tall tripod. They were shot with a Fujifilm W3, from an approximate 30 degree angle.

The acrobatic pair are models Cody Shellenberger and Siobhan Shiva, and they were painted by the event's organizer, Nicolette Spear.

To process the images, first I reversed out the effects of perspective by cropping to the taped markings, and next re-sized the images to 6' x 8' proportions. The backdrop was a fairly wrinkled bedsheet, not much to look at, so the next step was to mask out the backdrop from the subjects, a fairly time consuming effort. I put the masked subjects onto the light grey backdrop you see here, which should help cut down on ghosting in 3-D.

The last step was to turn these into anaglyph images, viewable with red-cyan glasses. One of the problems with anaglyph is the "retinal rivalry" encountered in areas that employ much red, blue and green. Some options in anaglyph are commonly available in StereoPhoto Maker, and often I cycle through them for what looks best. I often use Dubois anaglyphs for flowers and plants, but that style doesn't look good with caucasian skin tones, too much of a pale green cast. For this image I used the Suto anaglyph technique, created by Masuji Suto, who also created StereoPhoto Maker.

I took around 160 shots at the event, and processed as phantograms 78 of them. Of those I've masked and finished 24 to date, likely a few more to come.

You can see all 78 phantogram processed images along with the 24 masked, completed images at http://3ddigitalphoto.com/specialevent.asp?show=biorhythmla2016. Click on the thumbnail size images to bring up larger ones.

You can see just 24 masked, completed images at http://3ddigitalphoto.com/specialevent.asp?show=biorhythmla2016completed. Likewise click on the thumbnail size images to bring up larger ones.

These images are best viewed on an iPad or tablet laid flay on a table and viewed from back at an angle.

Barry Rothstein

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