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An important part of your image
making, mostly small devices,

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is what you use for backgrounds,
or how to view backgrounds.

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You know, you can make some very
interesting images even more

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interesting if you
subtlety suggest

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a certain kind of background
that works, that's relevant.

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Your selection can
really change your image.

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Sometimes you have
to be kind of careful

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'cause the background can
overtake what you want to say

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and we'll see that in a moment.

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So take for example
this image that I made

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of an assemblage of pieces.

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And I took it on a surface
against a white wall, which

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is what a lot of you do
and, the issue for me

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is that even though you don't
think that the view sees it,

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the viewer does see the
horizon, where the two pieces

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of material meet.

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You might say, 'Well,
what what's the big deal'?

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Well, you should
start really getting

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into the habit of trying to edit
out anything that is ambiguous

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or that is not giving the viewer
a very clear view of what it

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is that you want them to see.

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So it's much better to just
keep a piece of paper handy,

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and just simply fold
it up towards the back

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and you'll get yourself
a very nice background

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without seeing that
distracting horizontal line.

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I really do suggest
you you start

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doing these kinds of things.

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It's easy with
such small devices.

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Here's a device that was taken
just in the lab, a quick image.

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And once again, the researcher
knows what it is to look

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for, but you cannot expect the
first-time viewer to see what

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you want them to see.

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And so they do see all
the mess behind it.

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So, just take that
piece of paper

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that we used before, and
just put the device on it.

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Lean it against
the same background

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that you had before, but this
time with the paper going up;

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hiding that material
in the back,

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you can see much a
much clearing device.

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Sometimes echoing what
you're looking at,

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it could be very helpful.

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I was asked to take some images
of some copper sulfate crystals

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and so I found a
piece of copper -

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two pieces of copper
actually - and just

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suggested the presence of
copper in this material.

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And here, with
these plastic shapes

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that were fabricated
in a lab, I just

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thought it would be fun
to put it against a grid.

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Not a very [laughs]
clean grid ' by the way,

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this was taken quite
a long time ago.

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But what it did show was sort of
helping to define these shapes

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and how those lines were changed
when these plastic pieces were

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put over it.

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Here's an image I
took for a book trying

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to talk about a drop of water,
which is very complicated.

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And what I did was -- remember
we're using a 105 lens focusing

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on the drop so, as you
probably know by now,

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you can get a very narrow
depth of field when you use 105

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lenses, which is what
we wanted in this case,

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because the
background is blurred.

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The next image shows
you the background.

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I mean, it's something I bought
quite a while ago knowing

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someday I would use
it for a background

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because I like the look of it.

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And I also knew that
with a 105 lens,

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it would become a whole
different thing, as you see.

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Take a real hard
look at that drop

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and you'll see that
the drop itself

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became a lens that has
focused the background.

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So, it's a little playful thing
that I forgot what happened,

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but it did.

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But here's a background
that is totally out of focus

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that you want to
be out of focus.

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Otherwise it would just
be too much of an image.

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On this one image of a
bacillus in a petri dish,

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I just decided to
layer the petri dish

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on a particular
plastic blue, and then

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I put the blue over orange
and I was having kind of fun.

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On this one, we're showing
sketches of the CAD

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that was used to
make these devices.

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And it's just a sketchy-like
idea, which I like very much.

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I still like the idea of showing
some sort of a human hand

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to the fabrication of
very high technology.

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I think that we should use
more of these kinds of ideas

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as my point of view.

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And here's another.

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It's a wafer made
into electronic device

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with one background.

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And I took the same wafer and
put it on another background,

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and then again on
another background .

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And changing the
angle a little bit

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so you actually see a very
different color pallet.

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And that's what
I'm talking about.

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It's all related.

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You make one change in
one spot and then it's

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going to change your composition
or your point of view,

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it's just ongoing,
the permutations.

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For this image, we wanted
to show the ability

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to make these
crystals, and I decided

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to use some weighing
paper against a desk

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and it just happens that
the light is coming in

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from the window and I actually
used it compositionally

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and as part of the background.

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And here, we're seeing material
that results into a powder.

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And again, I'm
using weighing paper

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and make it a sort of
interesting overlay of shapes

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because it's a pretty
boring picture otherwise.

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I think it's a little
more successful.

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And these are things that
are not easy to photograph,

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as I'm sure you know.

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And on this, I used a
reflective quality of glass.

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Ah, it might not
be as successful

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as I thought because
maybe you can't quite

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tell where the glass begins
in the real slide with these.

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These are highly
hydrophobic slides,

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that's why you're seeing
the water bubble as it does.

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I don't know, it's
something to think about.

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And here I used, I
kind of was echoing

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the shape of this material, how
it coils into these nice scoops

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and I decided to
use a small table

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to echo the shape of the
naturally occurring curves.

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Here's an example where I put
the device on stick-ems, just

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a blue post-it
onto which on that

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I put a post-it on
a black surface.

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I think this works.

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I think the next one where
I used a crazy background.

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Look I got a card that
I though was very fun.

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It's fun to look at the card,
but not with the device on it.

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It's just way way
over the top and too

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much with the background,
just really gets in the way.

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I needed to take a photograph
of this very small robot, flying

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robot, which measures
about one centimeter long.

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And, used the box that the (the
plastic box that it arrived in)

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as part of the
composition which I think

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fills the background
in an interesting way.

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In this image, this
was a very quick image

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that I just made
just to see how,

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what kind of depth
of field I was

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gonna get with these devices.

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And it turns out that I sort
of like the haphazardness

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of this image.

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The background just
was accidental.

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For me, it works.

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Maybe not for you,
but for me it does.

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Backgrounds should be
part of your vocabulary.

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There is no question
in my mind about that.