November, 2016 - PhotoTrice

Scripting a Calendar Generator

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about my Photoshop automation project for generating single page photo calendars. Phototrice includes a new calendar every week as part of our regular Friday Photo feature. Actually two calendars are produced every week with North America and international weekday formats. Creating two calendars a week is not all that labor intensive but creating two calendars fifty two times a year is something worth automating. The coding on the calendar generator was completed about a week ago. I used it to generate last week’s Friday Photo calendars without a hitch.

This project was put together using Visual Studio 2015 and VB.Net. As mentioned in the last post, external automation provides many more options for integrating functionality that cannot or should not be scripted to run directly in Photoshop. Of course this approach limits me to running under Windows but that is what I use anyway. Future projects will likely be coded in JavaScript or ExtendScript to make them platform independent.

The application GUI is quite simple. I can enter all necessary information and kick off the generator which is about all that is required. A SQLite database is used to store various kinds of information for the generator. Right now configuration and logging data are the primary items stored. Eventually it will contain all information and images required to create any previous calendar. This will be useful for my yearly compilation of calendar images in book form.

The application lends itself quite easily to other uses where templates and dynamic data are combined to produce finished documents. Right now I’m working on a series of custom postcard templates which will also use the generator. Table driven configuration allows for great flexibility in layout and template selection. Coding was done using normal object oriented techniques. This allows me to extend or repurpose functionality as necessary.

This is the first time I have created code to script or automate Photoshop. I have learned some very useful things about how Photoshop operates by analyzing the API model. That information gives me insight into how to accomplish various tasks with or without scripting. The experience of writing code for Photoshop has been good overall. The documentation is accurate and detailed which is not always the case many application API’s. I expect to build other useful scripts in the months ahead. Hopefully I can make scripts available on Phototrice at some point. Anyway that is my goal.

Texture

Mining Company Office - Study Butte, Texas — Mining Company Office – Study Butte, Texas

I spend as much time in the less civilized parts of Texas as I can. There is something in those places that makes me feel alive in ways that modern safe environments do not. I want to inhabit the West of my childhood imagination. That version of the West didn’t exist sixty five years ago and is even more unreal today. My imaginary world is not about cowboys but rugged individuals boldly making a stand. It is my American dream. To be clear it is a narrative of men, because it was always about men when I was a kid. Not inclusive and a little embarrassing given what I understand today. But there it is.

Of course a hundred years ago those so-called rugged individuals were dreaming of a better future for their families. They didn’t see themselves as living some ideal life of great moral courage. I don’t know whether they looked back to earlier times with nostalgia. Probably not, they had to work hard every day so no time for such nonsense.

There is risk in photographing ruins of the past. We see the remnants of former lives but not the context of those lives. Collected history can provide some of the missing pieces if it exists. The lives of common folks are small history, passed across generations by word of mouth until forgotten. A generation or two then gone forever.

Mostly we photograph the physical remains of the past in a friction free way devoid of social history . Ruins survive outside our modern context. We can imagine them in any way we wish while being mindful that our imaginings may exceed the realities of the past.

Photography and Commerce

The eye Photography has been an integral part of successful marketing for more than a hundred years. Images provide a direct route to our emotion driven selves. Our brains are wired to interpret images as triggers for responses such as fear, sex, aggression, flight and desire. Words are interpreted and filtered but images have instant impact on our mammalian brains. Marketers use this fact to great advantage. They are advocates and make no bones about that. Publishing subtly biased images is a basic technique of mass persuasion and propaganda.

Consider the following images.

These images all have an emotional impact of some kind on the viewer. Our brain determines at a glance whether to trigger survival mode or some emotional response without conscious thought. It is simple, image perceived and emotional response triggered. This is the basis for much of the mass marketing that we see every day. As our attention spans shrink, marketing via high impact imagery becomes ever more important.

With the exception of straight documentary vernacular work, photographers should always strive to create images that bring forth emotional responses. We craft images using content and arrangements of elements to make a visual statement. In effect we are marketing our work. In my mind much of the difference between a technically competent image and a great photograph is emotional content. An attractive image that does not make an emotional connection will be easily forgotten in a world saturated with images.