Happy Place: An Experimental Camera

Captures from the experimental camera.

Description

For my experimental camera, I wanted to focus on the joy of movement and the feelings of the user rather than traditional cameras that try to capture a nice still image. To capture the aspect of movement, I used a motion blur and an arrow will appear on screen in the direction the subject moved. To determine the subject’s “happy place”, I used clmtracker.js to track the position of the face and took the difference between the positions of the corners of the mouth to determine if the subject is smiling. Using my mouth, I approximated the difference between the corners of one’s mouth and set a smile to a difference of 62 or higher on the x-axis. If the subject is not smiling, the camera will become black and white. If they are smiling, the camera will be in color. Abstractly, this camera captures how the subject moves and how happy they are in their movement or position. Since I do truly believe that movement brings joy, if the subject is in motion the camera will automatically capture the image in color, symbolizing how movement can bring color to your world.

Click here for the link to the p5 editor and sketch.

Design Process

Corrective Depth Camera

The human eye has relatively poor depth perception, often causing people to underestimate distances or unconsciously flatten 3-dimensional objects in their heads. Conventional cameras exacerbate this effect by flattening 3D scenes into 2D images. My first idea for an experimental camera is one that focuses on illustrating the depth of a scene. This camera would measure the distance of an object from the camera, then copy the object a certain number of times proportional to the distance or ‘depth’ from the camera. Then, the camera would place increasingly smaller copies of the object in front of the original object to help illustrate the relative distance from the camera, helping the user see ‘depth’ in the captured scene.

Technicolor Camera

Modern design has become increasingly industrialized and utilitarian, often using minimalistic color schemes, namely grayscale. This cold, modern aesthetic seems to reject traditionally feminine colors and design concepts as well, such as intricate detailing or pastel colors. My second idea for an experimental camera would reject this aesthetic by coloring grayscale objects with randomized colors. The image above illustrates how the original, almost colorless living room scene (left) is converted by assigning colors to the grayscale objects (right). In this example, the white is tinted yellow, the dark grey is tinted blue, and the light grey is tinted pink.

Motion Camera

Images rarely capture the important aspect of movement. I believe motion is one of the most beautiful things and that it brings joy. For my third idea, I thought of creating a camera that emphasized motion. Using motion blur was an obvious choice in capturing motion in a still image, but it can then take away the structure in the image. To tackle this, I thought of perhaps framing people using simple stick figures at the beginning and end of a movement to really help capture motion without completely losing information about the structures in the photo.

Final Design

The final design of my experimental camera combines ideas from all three initial ideas, utilizing location of the subject, color, and motion to communicate the message of this experimental camera. The location of the subject as determined by clmtracker.js (source: www.auduno.com/clmtrackr). Using the clmtracker, I returned the positions on the canvas to create arrows that pointed in the direction that the subject had moved; up, down, left and right. I also used the clmtracker to determine whether the subject was smiling, and used color to communicate happiness while the lack of color indicates the subject is not happy either in their static position or the way/direction they moved. Lastly, I wanted to capture motion, which I found was best communicated using motion blur. I copied the pixels on screen and added a blur by setting a very low copy ratio for a higher blur value. I decided to set the blend mode to hard light because it best captured the motion blur. The arrows also help capture the movement by indicating directional movement, which can be confusing when looking at an image with motion blur alone.

Reflection

Although there is so much beauty in the world, I realized how plainly regular cameras capture images. It does it’s best to imitate the human eye, but this project made me realize how much we base our perception of the world on cameras. For example, even in animation they will often add lens flare when there is a sun or raindrops on the lens when there is rain. I learned more about how I saw the world when capturing this camera, and through code I realized I can emphasize what I valued. The best part about coding an experimental camera was that it became interactive, and it created a very different relationship between the subject and the camera. Although simple, one choice that really made the captured images take on a different view of the subject was adding a black and white filter to the camera when the subject wasn’t smiling. Suddenly, the subject appeared much more sullen, and the image seemed less exciting and interesting. This simple if statement made me see what the camera captured in such a different light. It also made me want to smile or move more when using the camera, which was a strange unintentional consequence. I didn’t think much about how capturing images could also manipulate its subjects, as we’re often invested in how the image turned out. What I found funny was a camera meant to capture the joy of movement actually could make the subject want to move! It could be interesting for more experimental cameras to be used day to day or for the sake of storytelling and see how the results differ from traditional cameras.