I built a depth of field (DOF) adapter. In most consumer digital cameras the sensor size is smaller than in film cameras. The light in film camera gets projected onto usually a 35mm film. Since the sensor in digital cameras is smaller it makes it harder to create depth of field.

Depth of field denotes the portion of the image that is in focus and appears sharp on the screen. Having a shallow depth of field refers to having only a small portion of the image being sharp (usually the subject of the photo) and everything else such as the background blurred out.

Inside this DOF adaptor is a focusing screen that is as big as 35mm film. This is where the magic happens. The light projects onto this screen and the screen is what the camera sees. But since the light now effectively falls onto a bigger area it is easier to create shallow depth of field.

I used Canon extension tubes so I can attach all my Canon lenses in front of any video camera.

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In January of 2008 I spent a week in Bali. After talking to some local artists, they agreed to give me some painting lessons. For a whole week straight all I did was paint. Get up at 9AM, spent half the day painting alongside Made Jelih, then spent the other half of the day painting with Budih Karyono till late in the night.

It was the best vacation ever. I learned so much about paint in such a short amount of time. I also learned how to squat really well since they didn’t have chairs.

As tourists came by I helped them sell their art work. I felt like I was part of the artist community. At the end of the week Made took me out to some local surf spots.

I was building all this stuff when I started Mechanical Engineering and always taking pictures for documentation. The photos were always disappointing considering how much time I spent on each project and that it was the only piece of documentation I would keep (some of the pieces I still keep around as junk).

I started reading up product photography and how to take good pictures of objects and since I become obsessive about anything art or tech related I decided to go ahead and build these giant soft boxes.

Soft boxes are meant to diffuse light and are used in product photography a lot to illuminate object evenly They smooth out surfaces and de-emphasize lines so they’re also good for shooting people with bad skin (eewwww!). By overexposing you can create that professional look of an all white background.

I think this project is what got me thinking seriously about photography.

When Ben and I first moved into Studio C3 on a cold December in 2005 we inherited these awful looking green wicker chairs from his mom. We also inherited an equally awful looking and equally green carpet to match.

We decided to give the chairs a redesign. We bought a lot of vintage retro ties with paisley and other funky patterns for $2 from Salvation Army. They looked pretty sweet so I even kept some for personal wear for when I want to look formal, yet retro stylish.

Each chair has 10 ties weaved in a cross pattern stapled to the chair. We definitely improved its looks and they ended up being strong enough to sit on, but they were still equally uncomfortable.

At the time of this writing my now ex-roommate Ben has moved to Portland, OR and is living on a farm, taking care of sheep, delivering birth to baby calves and making paintings.

This project was done in collaboration with Ben Kaplan, Holen Katz and Karen Yung.

This project was a class assignment to design a paper bike. We were asked to build a bike out of paper, where a bike is defined as anything on wheels able to transport a person. I admit our bike ended up looking more like a car and and the definition of paper was stretched to cardboard. Points were inversely proportional to the weight of the bike, and a big penalty was given proportional to the weight of non-paper materials used.

Some design highlights:
Entirely made out of cardboard, save for some glue and some sheets of aluminum foil to act as bearings for the wheels.
Wheels are made using Honeycomb principle to create lightweight but strong wheels.
Custom made encoder to measure distance traveled.
7 x 9 LED grid user interface.
Motorola mc9s12c32 was used as a microprocessor

Paper bike was done in collaboration with Melissa Clapper and Matt Kweder.

I made this self-portrait. I suppose I was really angry.

One light source from below.

Oil paint sticks on paper. Black and white. 30.5×44″.

At the age of fifteen, the media first took notice of my artistic talents. A modest article was written in my hometown’s local newspaper in the crime section titled ‘Graffiti Artist Arrested’. I was disappointed that the article was small and the review did not touch upon the meaning or subtle nuances of the art work in as much depth as I would have liked.

These pieces were done in collaboration with my still very good friend Martijn The. Thijs Hendrix and Bram Coolen joined the crew later on.