BIO

After college graduation Sam Merrell had the good fortune to walk into a photo-technician job with Brown University’s NASA-funded Planetary Geology program. In their research work products from the four Mars Viking spacecraft, he learned how computers would revolutionize the commercial photography industry. When he moved to New York in the early 80’s, Merrell found computer graphics minicomputer sales offices and made deals to use their demo systems at night. He mashed up video framegrabs with scans of his 35mm chromes and began selling illustrations for magazine articles, medical ads and package design. During the 90's he was teaching digital photo at NYC’s School of Visual Arts, and writing about imaging technology for the now defunct photo trade bible Photo District News magazine. Promoted to associate editor, he wrote feature articles and edited several monthly columns; he also presented seminars at PDN's annual photo trade shows and other events around the country. And as a side hustle, Merrell did consulting work with photographers, stock agencies and image-intensive companies, helping the photo trade convert to digital methods. In 1999 he partnered up to help create the first all-digital stock photo agency, SolusImages. From 2007 to 2016 Merrell became a board member of the now-defunct American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP) where he served as Technology Co-Chair, as their executive director, and as publisher of their Picture Professional magazine. Now retired, Merrell splits his time between New York City and somewhere along the American Intercoastal Waterway (ICW) aboard a small Trawler.

About the ATTRACTORS images

In 2011, Merrell began shooting collage photos using Microsoft's Photosynth app on a series of iPhones (a 3GS, a 5S, and a 6S). Each collage is composed of three to as many as twenty-three different exposures that are digitally stitched together. Each completed collage was stored in the Photosynth.app as a 3-D point cloud, and as a flattened JPEG image. For this project, the flattened versions were post-processed using Snapseed and finished in Adobe’s Lightroom and Photoshop. Interest in Photosynth withered after Microsoft's initial PR splash, and by 2019 the toolkit was deprecated.

Portrait photo copyright (and courtesy of) Susan Rosenberg Jones.