Photograph by Sajid Saiyed

Algorithmic Photography

Escher inspired

A couple of years back I purchased a Nikon 10.5mm F-2.8 fisheye lens from the second hand market in Singapore. The purchase was purely done for no reason (most of you will understand how that happens :) )

After a while I realised that I hardly use this lens. Most of the time I was shooting with my Tamron 17-50 F-2.8 (a superbly sharp lens btw.)

I was about to make a decision to sell the fisheye when I came across some cool panoramic photographs on Flickr. I thought, “thats not a bad idea, I could put this lens to some good use”.

Thats how my journey to learn more about panoramic and algorithmic photography started.

Being an Architect by qualification and later becoming a user experience designer by choice, I adore the works of M C Escher.

So here I would like to showcase some examples of my work which are inspired by Escher.

Inspirations:

Double Planetoid

Image reference: http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/m-c-escher/double-planetoid

I like the way Escher crafted the double planetoid. The image creates two worlds floating in space like a planet. I created the following Stereographic images to create such floating worlds from things I saw around me:

Picture Location: Ion Mall Singapore — By Sajid Saiyed

Picture Location: Ion Mall Singapore — By Sajid Saiyed

Picture Location: Flyer Singapore — By Sajid Saiyed

Path of Life III

Image Reference: http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/m-c-escher/path-of-life-iii

I really like the algorithmic spirals and projective geometry in this work. There is even a nice paper written on this subject by Heidi Burgiel and Mathew Solomone.

Here are two attempts at creating something similar using photography:

Picture Location: Inside Ion Mall Singapore — By Sajid Saiyed

Picture Location: Inside Ion Mall Singapore — By Sajid Saiyed

If time permits and there is enough demand, I will write more about tools and techniques used.