Michael Verdi

  • Why Make Art?

    I’ve been wanting to create a series where I talk about art, design, life, whatever. I think this is my fifth attempt and the first one I liked. Let’s see if I can make more.

  • 3D People Looking at 2D Art

    I’m facinated by views of people looking at art. They’re even better in 3D. The hard part is always being rushed. One day I need to go to a museum by myself and spend time waiting for better shots. I’d love to make a whole zine (printed and for the Vision Pro) of these one day.

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    These images are all from the Amy Sherald show we saw at SF MOMA back in January.

  • Italy

    Last month we went to Rome and Florence. It was spectacular. I took so many photos—here are a handful.

  • Rosette Nebula Processing Examples

    The Rosette Nebula processed in PixInsight.
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  • Dwarf 3

    It took 5 months to get here but I finally got my Dwarf 3 telescope and had a chance to take some images. Now the images right from the telescope don’t look this good but you can download the .fits files and process them yourself. So I figured I try to learn how to do that. I used this tutorial as a starting point (I skipped re-stacking the images myself) and got some nice results. These are taken from my backyard in light-polluted Dallas, TX.

    M42 – The Orion Nebula
    The Horsehead Nebula
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  • Spatial Photos and Videos with Fullscreen controls

    I think this is the best solution at the moment. I’ve added a button (labeled “spatial”) over these that triggers fullscreen. If you’re using an Apple Vision Pro, putting these in fullscreen will allow you to see the 3D versions. Everyone else will get 2D versions.

    your alt text 
    <div class="media-container alignwide">
  <div class="video-container">
    <video controls playsinline="true" poster="https://exp.michaelverdi.com/styles/spatial-poster.jpg">
      <source src="https://exp.michaelverdi.com/styles/spatial.mov">
      <source src="https://exp.michaelverdi.com/styles/spatial.mp4" type="video/mp4">
    </video>
    <button class="fullscreen-button" onclick="goFullscreen(this)"><img src="https://blog.michaelverdi.com/media/apple-vision-pro-icon.svg"/></button>
  </div>
</div>

<div class="media-container alignwide">
  <picture>
    <source srcset="https://exp.michaelverdi.com/styles/spatial.heic" type="image/heic">
    <img class="photo" src="https://exp.michaelverdi.com/styles/spatial.jpg" alt="your alt text">
    <button class="fullscreen-button" onclick="goFullscreen(this)"><img src="https://blog.michaelverdi.com/media/apple-vision-pro-icon.svg"/></button>
  </picture>
</div>

<script>
  function goFullscreen(button) {
    const media=button.previousElementSibling;
    if (media.requestFullscreen) {
      media.requestFullscreen();
      }
    }
</script>

  • Ugh WordPress

    I love having (what I think is) a cool website. I also want a blog. You can do that with WordPress but it’s a lot of work. It also seems that problems are likely to crop up at some point. They certainly did for me. I am absolutely not interested in trying to fix that stuff. So now I’ve got this new installation of WordPress on it’s on domain. I’m using the default theme with a tiny bit of additional CSS. Hopefully this will be easier to maintain.

  • San Antonio

    We went back to San Antonio for Christmas. Here’s a selection of the photos I took.

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  • Virtual Set v1

    I spent a little time over the weekend trying to bring The Phantom Moon to life. I created this in Blender, rendered out a still image, and then made a video out of it. This was recorded in my Apple Vision Pro.

  • Testing Spatial photo and Video embeds

    In VisionOS 2.2 (I’m on the developer beta), you can now “tap to view spatial photos and videos embedded on web pages” in Safari.

    So if you’re viewing this in Safari in VisionOS 2.2 you can select and hold the image which brings up a menu where you can select “View Spatial Photo.” To view the spatial video, tap it to start it playing and then tap the fullscreen button in the upper-left corner.

    The image and video are from a trip to The Morton Arboretum outside of Chicago.