In September, I went to New York to give a talk at Luminance, a fantastic event organized by Photoshelter to celebrate and explore the intersection of business, technology, culture and photography. The talks were almost all really interesting, and the discussions that happened in the break area between the talks were equally as interesting. I hope Photoshelter puts on another event next year. If you’re interested, please let them know!

Also, Photoshelter is running a Lytro camera giveaway through the end of November. All you have to do is sign up for their newsletter to be in the running to receive an 8GB Graphite Lytro camera.

Hello, everyone. Lytro’s SXSW 2012 panel pages are online for public voting. Please help us get our panels selected for next year’s conference! To vote, login to (or create) your SXSW account (free—easy to register), and then click on the thumbs up button at each of the following panel pages:

• Building Active Photography Communities (Eric Cheng)
• Mapping Out the Future of Photography (Ren Ng)
• Beyond the Buzz: Maintaining Momentum Post-Launch (Kira Wampler)
• Turning PhD Concepts into Cocktail Conversations (Kira Wampler)
• The Creative Class in High Tech (Victoria Hoyle)
• The Customer Is (Mostly) Never Wrong (Chris Macomber)
• Legal Dos and Don’ts From a Startup Veteran (Mariana Antcheva)
• Giving Your Product a Passport (Kristen Berman)
• Form v. Function: Rethinking Conventional Product (Dave Evans)

Thank you!

I was in Monterey earlier this week and took a Lytro shot of Joe Platko with a tiny little lizard on his hand. Immediately after, Jason Bradley took a shot with his iPhone. Here are the two shots.

Joe Platko with lizard (photo: Jason Bradley)

Richard LeParmentier, the actor who played Admiral Motti in Star Wars (who was almost choked to death by Vader’s use of the force), posts with a toy bust of himself at Comic Con 2012.

I’ve got him now.

Internalizing Lytro light field photography techniques can take time and practice, but there’s an easy one that you can master in no time at all. Get a friend to hold an interesting object out in front of him and take a picture, holding your camera really close to the object. We call this picture “the present” (as in the verb, not the noun).

Here’s a living picture of Alex, one of Lytro’s handsome designers, presenting his friend’s band’s CD:

Here’s a picture of me taking that shot. I’m zoomed out all the way (full wide), and the front of my camera is about 4″ away from the CD. Note that 4″ means 4″—not 6″, 8″ or 12″. I’ve had Alex tilt the CD so it takes up less of the frame.

You can shoot from further away and still get great refocus by moving backward and zooming in. Here’s a shot taken at about 2x zoom (just over half zoomed in everyday mode).

Here’s a picture of me taking that picture. I’m zoomed in just over half way in everyday mode (about 2x).

Mastering “the present” gives you an easy way to take highly-refocusable living pictures of your friends. Give it a try!

Here’s my eye (self-portrait with a Lytro camera):

Here’s a lovely Italian woman’s eye, taken today at a Lytro press conference at the Trienalle in Milan.

Mine looks kinda dead in comparison!

Here’s a picture of me taking that picture:

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Source: @ocalao

Following in Nick Bilton’s footsteps, I took some close-up shots of the new iPad using a Lytro camera in creative mode. The Lytro camera can focus on its lens, so it’s really easy to get macro shots of detail. (read more »)

It is really exciting to be able to post pictures from the Lytro camera, now. :) I posted 50 pictures of Schrep and Erin’s cats…

… and an assorted gallery from the past 10 months, including pictures of Coco Rocha from our photo shoot back in July of 2011.

Lytro light field cameras have reached the real world. :)

Congratulations, Lytro team!

I went on a fun photowalk with Robert Scoble last Tuesday, where we gave him a chance to play with a pre-production Lytro Light Field Camera. Scoble posted a thoughtful summary of the photowalk and included a video interview of me, which you can see here in this post.

Coco and James have posted the behind-the-scenes video from the Lytro photo shoot last week. My face is in the video for approximately 4 frames. ;)

Ren, Baby Kai, and Koci are all in the CNN piece on Lytro!

Hello, friends. Lytro is proud to have launched out of stealth mode last night! We are a light field camera company who will change the nature of photography and imaging. Light field cameras capture the entire light field, and not just a single 2-dimensional projection (which is what traditional cameras capture).

Here’s a sample living picture taken by my friend, Jason Bradley:

I’m excited that I can finally talk about what I’ve been doing for the last 9 months!