Jakob Montrasio’s Net.

The Big Apple.

// July 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // Technology

New York City, as seen from the Empire State Building. With HDR glasses. If there are any.

Order a print.

The Big Apple., originally uploaded by MK Media Productions.

Olympia: Opening Ceremony images faked?!

// August 11th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // China, Technology

Wow, this is pretty interesting.

That’s a quote from the magazine “Spiegel” in Germany.

Translation:

The chinese newspaper “Beijing Shibao” found out, that part of the TV images from the opening ceremony were fake: The part, where footsteps in form of fireworks walk towards the stadium have been animated at least a year in advance, the magazine was told by an employee named Gao Xiaolong from the video production company “Shui Jing Shi”. Only the last footsteps were real. As to why they did this, Gao stated, that it would have been too difficult to shoot this live. He said, if you look closely, you can see that the video beginning was brighter then the live ending.

Whatever. I liked the show, anyway.

The magazine also points out that Xinhua released an statement that 40 billion people watched the opening ceremony on TV, which is quite a number, given the fact that there are currently 6.7 billion people on earth totally.

And NBC has to deal with anger from the american citizens: They edited the entrance of the american sport stars towards the end so that the people would watch their station longer. Haha.

We got some tickets for a soccer game in Shanghai on Wednesday. That’ll be my little Olympia experience.

Grand Theft Auto IV sucks.

// July 15th, 2008 // 10 Comments » // Reviews, Technology

Yesterday night, I finally managed to finish the last mission. I’m now 70-something percent through the game, only having side missions and other stuff left. But I’m not gonna play that anymore. I am so damn bored from the game!

I’ve played GTA. GTA II. GTA III. Vice City. San Andreas. I enjoyed them all, except San Andreas, and after reading some reviews of GTA 4 it became clear that I would love it. And I did, for the first three days or so. I really enjoyed driving around Liberty City in 1080P Full HD listening to cool radio stations in Dolby Digital with awesome music and all.

Don’t get me wrong, visually the game is absolutely gorgeous, the best there is at the moment probably, the radio stations are great as always… There’s only one problem, and that’s a big one: The missions are so boring. So unbelievable boring.

They keep repeating themselves too much. GTA 3 and Vice City had missions that rocked so hard, they were always different and tough but yet manageable. GTA 4 has some cool missions, the bank robbery for example, or the last one. But 95% of the missions are in the end like this: You drive 5 minutes to the contact mission point. Then you drive 5 minutes to point A to pick something up. Then you drive 5 more minutes to bring it to point B. Then you drive 5 minutes back to the contact mission point for the next mission. And so on.

C’mon! One helicopter mission with shooting? And I don’t even shoot myself? Where are the tanks, the military? Why is there no mission to blow up a landing or starting airplane? Why do I only fly that idiot Brucie around all the time? Why are there 50 car pick-up missions that take hours to complete and that are not different at all?

Do young people nowadays enjoy simply driving through huge digital cities all the time?

And the police is a goddamn joke in this part. One star is like no star. Two stars are easy to get rid off, too. Three stars? Just drive fast on a long street. Four or five stars? Get to a paint shop. Boring! Too easy!

And then there’s some five missions that are so unbelievable difficult that you wonder who the hell made them and why he didn’t invent all of them. The best mission anyway, in any GTA game, was the golf club mission in GTA 3. That mission was difficult, funny, challenging, rememberable, it could be solved in different ways… Now that was a mission that you’ll never forget. I’ll remember GTA 4 as the game where I had to drive around 95% of the playing time. And that’s just sad, isn’t it?

You failed to impress me, Rockstar. Sorry. It’s great to see that you’re using all the technology to create these wonderful, colorful, vivd worlds for players - but next time, increase the budget for those who develop missions. Then it’ll be truly great.

Digg this review.

Cranes In The Sky.

// April 23rd, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Technology

Is this not the most insane building in the world?

You can buy a print of this image at imagekind.

digg this pic.

About the building:
The project was started in september 2004 following a review of the design by a panel of Chinese experts. The construction is scheduled to be completed in time to broadcast the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The development is being undertaken by the Chinese Government as part of a plan to redevelop central Beijing with innovative and functional architecture, while preserving historic buildings at the same time. The new building will involve two ‘L’ shaped high-rise towers linked at the top and the bottom at an angle to form a loop, which has been described as a ‘Z’ criss-cross. The total construction cost is estimated at €600 million ($750 million). The CCTV tower will employ 10,000 people following completion in 2008. But the construction was daleyted because of the opposition against this buildings cost, so the developers say the building will probably not be completed before 2009. (Source: SkyscraperCity)

About the image:
This high definition range image was created with three RAW files. I’ve created four different HDR versions and edited the best out of each version on top of the other. Took me over two hours to finish this beast in Photoshop.

Taken in Beijing, China.

- Jakob

Cranes In The Sky., originally uploaded by Montrasio International.

Jewelz - Mermaid (Original Mix)

// April 15th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Technology

3.318 pictures were used in this video. Shot entirely in Shanghai, China. Jewelz’ track was produced by Pete Tong’s Bedroom Bedlam and can be bought on beatport.com.

Watch or download the full length version here!

The images were taken with a Nikon D50 and batch processed with Photoshop later on.

iHnDustRy.

// April 10th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Technology

Taken while driving from Wuxi to Shanghai in January 2008. We were a lot on the road shooting John Rabe. I’m trying out various HDR things for a project at the moment. The HDR pictures I’ve been posting over the last couple of days on flickr are more or less the results of these experiments.

iHnDustRy., originally uploaded by Montrasio International.

Tianjin: Food Street.

// April 3rd, 2008 // No Comments » // Technology

This is a picture of the commercially… err culturally famous "Food Street" in Tianjin. The food is good, alright, but they sold me fake cigarettes there. And the restaurant owner was not able to offer us a fapiao. Watch out there. I had the feeling that it’s a bit of a tourist trap…

Tianjin: Food Street., originally uploaded by Montrasio International.

Tianjin Business Trip.

// March 28th, 2008 // No Comments » // Technology

Jiajia and I have been in Tianjin on a business trip. Tianjin is about one hour away from Beijing and has not that much too see. Well, it’s a business city like Shanghai.

When we drove back to Shanghai in a sleeping train, we met a foreigner from Canada in the cabinet next to us - I guess him and me were the only foreigners on that train. We talked a bit about god and then world. And then, today, we met him by coincidence in Shanghai! Crazy. I mean, Shanghai is quite big, but you still run into people. That’s funny.

I’m busy working on a new website for my media company, so I’ll leave you with these two Tianjin pictures for now. More next week. Have a nice weekend!

Tianjin Construction Site., originally uploaded by Montrasio International.

Come Back The Sun.

// March 20th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Technology

Song of the moment: Zucchero - Come Back The Sun.

‘Small town Romeo, kicking cans down the street
Coca Cola van broke down in the heat
The girls in colored dresses
They seem to laugh as they run - yeah
But they dream of only sweet caresses

Come Back The Sun
We will be like children
Come Back The Sun
Make us into children

The black and white of summer, and the golden light
The way we touched each other in the stolen night
The voices whisper in darkness
Dusty shoes on our feet, tender
And on my way to tomorrow, I remember

Come Back The Sun
We will be like children
Come Back The Sun
Make us into children

So you say that I’m dreaming
Beauty is mine
If I’m only dreaming, then its fine
Riede Paichi (Laugh you sad clown)

Bring back the sun in my life
I need your love to be there
Bring back the sun in my life

Bring back the sun in my life
I need your love to be there
Bring back the sun in my life
Well, you don’t care…

Come Back The Sun
We will be like children
Come Back The Sun
Make us into children

Come Back The Sun
We will be like children
When I was a kid
I could bring back the sun’

And that’s the image I created while listening repeatedly to Zucchero’s song:

Come Back The Sun., originally uploaded by Montrasio International.

Lights. Taken with my new Tamron lens.

// March 13th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Technology

So, a 300mm lens is finally mine. Actually, it’s a 70mm - 300mm lens from Tamron. Now my Nikon D50 can take pictures of things faaar away!

The lens was quite cheap, just a bit more than 1000 kuai is what I had to pay. I also bought an Kenko circular polar filter which gives me the ability to remove or enhance reflections and also influence the color of the sky. It’s awesome too and I can’t wait to try it out.

The weather in Shanghai is getting better, meaning warmer, but these days it’s too cloudy or smoggy for serious photography - got to wait for now.

More to come soon!

Lights., originally uploaded by Montrasio International.