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Events

Creating Meaningful Discussions About Art – Opening Festivities of the Oakland Museum of California

By | creactive, Events | No Comments

This weekend’s festivities to celebrate the re-opening of the Oakland Museum of California was a testament to everything that is great about Oakland and also a welcome look into what the next generation of museums and art engagement will look like.

Oakland has accomplished what many other cities did not. It maintained and expanded its beautiful art museum without sacrificing exhibition space for architectural ego. The Oakland Museum of California was closed for 28 months for a $58 million renovation and reinstallation. The original building, groundbreaking with its naturalized planted terraces, built in 1969 by Kevin Roche, was a series of concrete structures that mirrored the nearby topography. The museum’s challenge was to expand the galleries within the overall footprint without compromising the intent and effect of the landscape architecture.

The new updates include; sculpture and roof gardens designed by Dan Kiley and a new top floor with an expansive California art collection. The spirit of the collection puts a Grace Hudson atmospheric depiction of a Pomo Indian in proximity to Mel Ramos’ larger than life centerfold fantasia as well as to Richard Diebenkorn’s abstracted landscapes and generations of assorted carvings and macrame.

Entrance to Art Galleries - Oakland Museum of California Art

The art collection is installed thematically and actively seeks to engage through the use of questions and interactive art projects. A particular fun example of this was the “Is It Art? Lounge,” where museum goers can grab pink and green tickets marked with either yes or no and vote on 3 pieces decide for themselves if what they are looking at is art or not.

Voting

For the celebration,  the museum opened its doors Saturday morning for 31 hours straight – in honor of California’s status as the 31st state.  An exhaustive list of multi-sensory around-the-clock activities were planned. Night owls were encouraged to stay and wear their pajamas. I found myself walking through crowded galleries with gutsy attendees wandering in their robes at 9 PM. This spirit of interactivity was clearly catching; everyone felt like neighbors and they eagerly discussed the art and got up close and personal.

While I was unable to catch the  8 AM Yoga class on Sunday, I did go to the Indian Bangara dancing where I was amazed to see hundreds of people in a multi-purpose room like setting swarm the area around the stage to learn some Bollywood moves. I finally left at 11pm when the incoming traffic seemed to outnumber the departing. The arriving grandmas just made me smile. How awesome to see a Museum as a true meeting place for all people to interact.

Highlights From Joby Lab Launch + Liquor and the Joby Inspired: Wall

By | creactive, Events, Joby Inspired, Office | One Comment

Joby Open House April 22nd 2010

Recently, we celebrated our new office space with a lively and fun filled party aka Joby Lab Launch + Liquor. Over 200 people joined us to eat, drink, mingle and even dance a little. The drinks flowed liberally as we feted our lovely new setup designed by Philip Wood & CITIZEN: Citizen along with Derek Chen the rest of the Council design team who crafted the amazing white tables that you see in the pictures below.

In addition, we inaugurated the Joby Inspired: Wall –  a curated space which showcases creative work whose goal is to inspire and foster new ways of viewing. Philip Wood blessed us by setting the bar high with the showcasing of his new work titled The Pattern of Security series of objects derived and inspired by data protection envelopes. In Philip’s words:

The Pattern of Security, a collection of products and a book, together form what we see as a first draft, a response and an observation on our concerns (both real and imagined) with security in the contemporary age.

Philip Wood - The Pattern of Security

Our space was further enhanced with a collection of found photographs (visible on most of the walls) by Rich Hansen from Indicate Design Group. Thank you Rich!

We even created some fun pictures ourselves  with the help of an instant back resulting in a cool vintage feeling photographs.

Noah strikes a pose in the photo booth

Photos from the Photo booth

Mingling

See more photos from the party in our  flickr pool.





Friday Find – Cool Products Expo, Miniature Video, Time-Lapse Photography & European Press

By | creactive, Events, Friday Find, Gorillapod, Photography, Press, time-lapse photography | 2 Comments

Hello Creactives,

Another busy week has flown by here at Joby!

Cool Products Expo

Wednesday we participated in the Cool Products Expo at Stanford University. Having originated in a classroom at Stanford, the Gorillapods felt right at home.  There were a bunch of innovative  products at the show including carbon fiber guitars by Blackbird Guitars, the action-sports inspired portable crib by Guava Family and the perfect product for those of us not gifted with a green thumb – Easy Bloom.

Cool Products Expo -Noah, Jenny, Michael

Gorillapod Focus with Huge Camera

A Day in the Life of New York by Sam O’Hare

The Sandpit from Sam O’Hare on Vimeo.

I came across this mesmerizing video on the Picture Perfect blog today and loved it.  I then read that some of video was shot using a Gorillapod and I had to share. Composed of 35,000 stills stitched together, the video shows a day in the Life of New York but with Lego sized proportions. Some details on how the film was achieved from the artist Sam O’Hare:

It is shot on a Nikon D3 (and one shot on a D80), as a series of stills. I used my Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 and Sigma 50-150mm f/2.8 lenses for all of these shots. Most were shot at 4fps in DX crop mode, which is the fastest the D3 could continuously write out to the memory card…

I did some initial tests a while back using a rented 24mm tilt-shift lens, which is the standard way to do this. However, after my tests, I found it made much more sense to do this effect in post, rather than in camera. Shooting tilt-shift requires a tripod, as it is very hard to stabilise afterwards, and gives less flexibility in the final look. I opted to shoot it on normal lenses, which allowed me options in the depth of field and shot movement in post. I used a tripod for the night shots, and my Gorillapod (which is much more portable) where possible, but many locations—like hanging over the edge of a roof or through a gap in fencing on a bridge– had to be shot hand held, and the inevitable wobble removed afterwards.

Love it!

Montreal City Time-Lapse by Martin Reisch

Awesome find on twitter this week by the Canadian Artist Martin Reisch aka @safesolvent. Joby fan that he is, he posted his spontaneous time-lapse photography of the Montreal Skyline that he captured using a Gorillapod Focus.

Montreal Skyline Timelapse Photography from *safe solvent™ on Vimeo.

He also was kind enough to post the the video of the Gorillapod Focus gripping the fence to catch the shots.

Here are the details of the shoot from Martin’s perspective:

so i went out with my 5D Mark II, 40D, MacbookPro, iPhone as usual (yes, i tend to travel light) and the sky looked fantastic so i found myself down by the waterfront near Montreal’s Peel Bassin (one of several classic skyline vantage points) looking for a perfect place to shoot from.

As always, the best place to view un-obstructed skyline is in the middle of the water, but with a Gorillapod i was able to hug the railing on the bridge and stick my lens through the frame giving me a centered and perfect FLOATING clear view of the city!

I shot a frame every 4 seconds for 4.5 hrs and It held for the entire time without even a slight shake or slide! I keep my Gorillapodmobile 3G for my iPhone in my bag too, so i managed to snap a shot of myself waiting beside my timelapse with my laptop.

Gorillapod Timelapse Photography - Safesolvent


Joby in the International Press

Joby was feeling quite continental this week with a feature of the Gorillamobile in the Italian Vanity Fair and a piece on the Gorillapod Magnetic in DSLRmagazine.com in Spain.

Gorilla Mobile in Italian Vanity Fair

DSLR Magazine -Gorillapod Magnetic

Friday Finds – Swagapalooza, Twestival, Press and More

By | Events, Gorillamobile, Gorillapod, Gorillatorch, Photography, Press, Uncategorized | No Comments

Hello Creactives!

It’s Friday and its time to share a little bit of the fun that has been happening around here.

Swagapalooza

Last week a few of us from Joby had the pleasure of attending Swagapalooza, an at times raucous event where companies showcase their products to a gathering of social media greats – and some others. Guy Kawasaki keynoted and a bevy of hard core twitterers joined  in the fun. The live twitter feed made for some “interesting” moments. Joby CEO Forrest presented some of the creative ways Joby products have been used for photography including an awesome shot by our Director of Industrial Designer inside Notre Dame in Paris. Despite rules against tripods, our wily Gorillapod was welcomed into the venerable cathedral, allowing for some great photos even with the low lighting.

Here is the image that was taken inside of Notre Dame and the set-up:

Here is a video of our CEO Forrest speaking:

Twestival

Joby was thrilled to be involved in the San Francisco Twestival event last week, which successfully raised over $10K for Concern Worldwide, an organization which seeks to bring education to the world’s poorest children.  Concern has been implementing innovative programs and solutions for over 40 years. The worthy caused brought together a number of people from the social media to tweet, drink, listen to music and drink some more.

Press

We love the press love…here are some recent hits which make us feel – oh so very happy.

Best title of the week goes to Graphic Design & Publishing Center who wrote an article entitled “You need a tripod…a Gorillapod.” While the title may not be subtle, they certainly get the message across.

Honorable mention from a few weeks goes to this ultra long but very funny title from Cult of Mac;  “iPhone apps weekly digest: The day Mr. Mediocre came to town and got smashed in the face by Gorillacam.”

Other great press clippings this week include a piece on the Gorillatorch for in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and  a piece on the Gorillamobile for Smart Computing. 

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