“Enter His gates with thanksgiving
And His courts with praise.
Give thanks to Him, bless His name.
For the LORD is good;
His lovingkindness is everlasting
And His faithfulness to all generations.”
Psalm 100: 4-5
Happy Thanksgiving!
Latest
“Flying Fortress”
“Flying Fortress” b/w photography by Dale Jackson/www.StratoArt.com
The B-17G Flying Fortress. The B-17 was primarily employed by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) in the daylight precision strategic bombing campaign of World War II against German industrial and military targets.
Print available at Fine Art America: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/flying-fortress-dale-jackson.html
(Click to enlarge)
"Flying Fortress"
Restoration of old photo and transformation to painting.
This is a polaroid restoration and then transformation to painting using Photoshop CS5.
Old polaroid snapshot transformed to painting
insert detail
StratoArt Portfolio
These are my finished pieces of art. Enjoy!www.StratoArt.com
StratoArt Portfolio, posted with vodpod
“AWACS Up for a Drink”
Here’s one I finished recently. Was glad to finally restore this old photo I had taken to something that could potentially sell.
I had taken this photo from the boom-pod of my KC-135 tanker I was flying on. I shot it with my old Pentax camera with a standard lens. This was not digital back then. Then back in 2009 I had scanned in the photo. Recently, I just came across it and decided to turn it into a painting. The E-3 itself was extracted and I just repainted the background from scratch using the original photo as a loose reference. The quality of the original photo was poor, so I had to essentially paint the entire jet using the original as reference as well.
Print Available at Fine Art America: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/2-awacs-up-for-a-drink-dale-jackson.html
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1:350 Polar Lights Enterprise Refit built
It’s time to build this. Been two years since I got it for my birthday, it’s going to be tough, it’s going to be tedious, but it needs to be built. 1:350 Scale Polar Lights Enterprise Refit.
To start off, here’s an animation someone made that is very close to the original movie.
Currently, I am working on the shuttle/cargo bay. I am modeling the Refit as shown in Star Trek: The Motion Picture – Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. ”No…A, B, C, or D”
Below is the live-action set for the inside of the Enterprise refit shuttlebay.
Here is some shots of the shuttlebay in progress. Adding photo-etch parts. Railings should be bent slightly as shown in the movie.
I merged my sci-fi modeling blog into this StratoArt blog and my posts of my progress on the Enterprise were deleted but I’ll be uploading them shortly as I’m starting on the kit afresh.
Yeah, I really need to redo the cargo train containers. I was being a bit hasty and didn’t double check against the production models seen in the film. You can see more photo-etch detail on the two travel pods and the windows, which will be punched out to show a room on either side of the shuttlebay.
(below) shows photo-etch detail of the interior of the shuttlebay as seen in STTMP. I think the turbolift tubes are upside down, but you know what? It doesn’t matter cause you can’t see the tops and bottoms of them when this is all buttoned up. I really am wanting to get my hands on the photoetch details from PNT, but they say they are out of stock. I wrote them an email to see when they can get a new batch in. It would be mighty nice to have that photo-etch detail too.
I’m transitioning from Facebook to Google +
I’m transitioning from Facebook to Google +
Look for me at: http://gplus.to/StratoArt
Understanding image compression artifacts
I created a little graphic showing the two types of jpeg artifacting (there are more, but this shows the two, major ones). I got the graphic of the flower from the DeNoise vs. DeJPEG webinar hosted by Topaz Labs. Wiki has a good article about artifacting found in low-resolution photos/video.
The flower image above is a good example to use Topaz DeJPEG on.
Here’s two examples of artifacting:
1. Mosquito Noise – “Video compression artifacts include cumulative results of compression of the comprising still images, for instance ringing or other edge busyness in successive still images appear in sequence as a shimmering blur of dots around edges, called mosquito noise, as they resemble mosquitoes swarming around the object.
2. Checkerboarding Noise – “Blockiness in ‘busy’ regions (sometimes called quilting or checkerboarding)”
Topaz DeJPEG is useful for eliminating these two common artifact problems found in compressed images (all JPEGs are compressed images and are called “lossy” – in that they lose color data). Formats such as .PSD and .TIFF are lossless formats (but also very large file size because of the larger color information stored).
Topaz DeNoise is useful for eliminating noise found in photos that were shot with high ISO (such as dark or night scenes).
The shot of the bridge below is a good example to use Topaz DeNoise on.
To see more videos about Topaz Labs excellent products go their Youtube Channel and subscribe.
“Sunrise on the Sea”
The early morning sunlight breaks through the clouds on a calm, blue sea.
Print available at: Fine Art America
"Sunrise on the Sea" by Dale Jackson
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