Returning to NVPS as our December Program speaker by popular demand, I’m happy to welcome back Max Lyons. Max is an outstanding photographer, as well as a software developer specializing in digital imaging software.
Max Lyons was born in Belgium and grew up in England and the United States. After completing graduate studies in Economics, Lyons worked briefly in Washington as a policy analyst before becoming interested in both photography and technology. Lyons’ interest in creating photographs started in the mid 1990s with the advent of consumer-level digital photography. He was inspired by the freedom to experiment that this new technology allowed, and developed interests in both architectural and landscape photography.
By 2000, Lyons was becoming intrigued by the visual impact provided by very large photographic prints. He was influenced by the large format works of film photographers such as Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth…two artists pushing the limits of large format photography. However, Lyons was also becoming frustrated with a serious limitation of digital photography — its relatively low resolution, and inability to capture sharp, detailed, large images.
In early 2001, Lyons stumbled upon an innovative solution to the limited resolution of digital cameras, in the form of “stitched” images — composite images created by joining together multiple images. Lyons realized that this technique could be used to create photographs with much greater clarity than any single digital or film image. Lyons embarked on a multi-year, and ongoing, effort to create a portfolio of incredibly detailed, high resolution images.
For our December 6 NVPS Program, Max will present on Night Photography (i.e., photography between sunset and sunrise), and he will plan on covering a number of topics including:
- Stars and star-trails
- Moonlight
- Alpenglow
- Twilight
- Software and night photography
- Hardware and night photography
A copy of his slide presentation can be found here: max_lyons_night_photography.pdf
Max will join us at Chili’s for dinner at 5:30 pm prior to the Program. If you’d like to attend dinner, please rsvp to Mary O’Neill by Sunday, December 4 at: Mary.m.o’neill@gsk.com (preferred) or mmoneillphotography@gmail.com
Max is also a software developer specializing in digital imaging software. He has created several software programs of interest to digital imaging enthusiasts, including:
PTAssembler (http://www.tawbaware.com/ptasmblr.htm) — One of the most advanced panoramic image creation programs currently available.
TuFuse/TuFuse Pro (http://www.tawbaware.com/tufusepro.htm) — Exposure and focus blending software.
Image Stacker (http://www.tawbaware.com/imgstack.htm) — Image stacking software.
Star Tracer (http://www.tawbaware.com/startracer.htm) — Star Trail photography software.
Max has many photographs (almost all of which were created utilizing his own
software) on this site, which is updated regularly with new images:
Gallery: http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/
Catalog: http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/cgi-bin/imgdb.pl
Lastly, in 2003 Max created what he believes was the first “gigapixel” (1000
megapixel) photographic image, using PTAssembler and some proprietary software that he had written earlier that year:
http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/gigapixel.htm
The image was quite a hit with photographers and became the motivation for the gallery of “gigapixel” sized images on display at www.maxlyons.net. The image was printed at 11×7 feet and displayed at the annual Photographic Marketing Association show in Las Vegas in 2004.