The Creative Year

Declaration of Myself

2011-02-10T07:46:00.000-08:00

Throughout our lives we define ourselves in certain ways. I have always defined myself as scrawny, nerdy, funny (actually only goofy, but the two are so easily confused), religious, and many more. Recently I have had the difficult experience of evaluating many of these assumptions that I have made about myself. Some of these characteristics are easy to pinpoint and even easier to identify why they are changing. For instance, as I edge closer and closer to thirty I realize the graphic tee period of my life is coming to an end while I easily slip into a newer, more age appropriate, plaid phase. However, many realizations are far more complicated than this and rooted in more than only one personality trait. Shall we begin by visiting my grade school formative years? (Hint: we shall)

As mentioned earlier I have always defined myself as being smart (mixed, of course, with an unhealthy dose of nerdiness). This was only partially my choice, the rest is the product of genetics and only being allowed to watch the Discovery Channel (back when that meant something). There is, however, another far more sinister and selfish motivation behind defining myself in this way: an unhealthy desire to please others. My parents (as all good parents should - do not confuse this forthcoming section with criticism) encouraged, and sometimes coerced, me to make good grades. This wasn't an overwhelming assignment as I was happily possessed with a natural precociousness. In fact, I rarely studied and did quite well in every class that didn't grade homework completion (and that is when the aforementioned coercion would come into play). My parents were naturally thrilled. I reveled in their happiness. All this is, in fact, quite normal and could easily describe any number of people reading this post - so I shall dive just a little deeper into my psyche and explore exactly what it is that I have found out about myself as of late.

In our modern western culture it is not so uncommon for the first twenty years of our lives to be shaped and defined by compulsory and then voluntary education. Now, as I mentioned above, this is (for me at least) very closely linked to my desire to please people. So, in effect, I have had a personal history of about twenty years in which I have defined myself in a primarily scholastic fashion which seeks to impress people with academic achievements. Furthermore, I have allowed the impressions of others to narrate my own personal story too often. When I finished my philosophy degree (how I got there is a story in its own right) my professors, being impressed with my academic achievements in religious studies and philosophy of religion, naturally encouraged me to continue on to Seminary. This also seemed like a smashing idea to me - this was certain to please and/or impress all of my family and friends. Thus my future was carved out. It is out of this fertile soil which springs my presently painful realization: I don't exactly care about scholastic achievements. Furthermore, it is unrealistic (not to mentioned colored with shades of narcissism) to suppose that I could ever possibly impress everyone with my intelligence or academic achievements. So, with this epiphany in mind, I would like to briefly cover where I am moving from (and why) in my life and what I am moving toward (and why).

I am moving away from the ivory tower of academia and my unhealthy level of people pleasing. Don't get me wrong, both of these things are wonderful in smaller portions but I have lived for far too long at the unhealthy extremes of both. The most concrete example of this is that I am done with seminary (more on this in a moment). At the top of my reasons why list is simply this: I don't particularly enjoy seminary (in the same way that I didn't particularly enjoy my philosophy studies). It feels like so much parroting and I can't help but feel that I am pulled away from better things. Secondly, I've answered the questions that originally drove me to study philosophy and theology in the first place. I still occasionally doubt as we all do, but I am not plagued by deep troubling issues. And now I am equipped and prepared to deal in an orderly fashion with other questions and issues that may arise in the future. Thirdly, the work that I would like to do with the church doesn't require a Seminary degree. It hardly makes sense then, as a young man who doesn't possess a great deal of wealth or great swaths of free time, to continue going to a costly and time-consuming seminary.

I see myself moving toward some creative and/or multimedia role. I find this work to be naturally more fulfilling and enjoyable. I can work on some creative media project for hours and not feel burned out. I remember having friends in undergrad and seminary who not only did all the required reading but went above and beyond to read all the original source work all on top of high-level and relevant extracurricular reading. I used to think that these people were insane. I haven't entirely ruled that theory out. But it seems more likely that that is simply a part of who they are. The same reading that bores me and makes me long to go outside before I burst relaxes and encourages them. It seems that they are in the right place. For some time now I have been mixing sound and I really enjoy it. It never gets old. I even enjoy the tedious parts like setting up and tearing down. I've even been helping with programming lighting cues lately. These things are stimulating and as natural as breathing. (It is interesting to note that this very blog sprung up in the middle of my most difficult academic challenges. I find this telling. I very possibly would have gone crazy had it not been for this outlet) Therefore, I will begin aiming my efforts at eventually achieving a full time sound, multimedia or worship design position.

I feel some final concluding remarks are in order. When I say that "I am done with Seminary" I do mean for the foreseeable future. I am not saying that the idea of returning is anathema to me - I learned a great deal and wouldn't trade my time there for anything. However, if I do return to seminary it will be on my own terms and for very different reasons. Finally I should be clear that I am not unhappy with my current life. I work a demanding schedule at Starbucks but the hours allow me to pursue other interests and the part-time multimedia work that I already do is quite enjoyable. Unfortunately I recognize that I can't continue with the current state of affairs for too much longer, it is simply financially untenable - especially in light of Amie's ever increasing baby fever and our need to again get a place of our own.

This is who I am. This is where I am going. This is my declaration.

(I know, that last sentence put it over the top didn't it? I told myself to calm down, that I could have simply let the title remain clever in and of itself with no necessary tie-in. But I just wouldn't listen. I hate when I do that.)

Love to all.

Real Rock Star

2010-06-21T14:50:00.000-07:00

Hey guys! Remember that time I said I would be changing the rules for my blog and I'd let you know about it tomorrow? Then I didn't say anything for over a year. Yeah, that's the one. Pretty funny, huh?

In a nutshell, here is why I think I didn't succeed in my New Year's Resolution:

(1)I was too ambitious. A creative work each day? That's a bit much. Sure I was able to learn a lot, but I was never able to put out a “quality product” as it were. Eventually I became frustrated artistically.
(2)It took too much time. I don't mean this in the usual “Look at me I'm a super-busy American” sort of way, but more in the “I can't juggle this with my academic career, friends, family and, most importantly, my wife” way. That is to say, it was a daily priority when it shouldn't have been.
(3)I had a hard time coming up with reasonable things I could do given my daily deadline. In a way, this complaint is a combination of the previous two – I couldn't come up with quick and easy projects that I wouldn't be embarrassed by (I mean, just look at the posts leading up to this one...wretched).
(4)Once I skipped that first week the rest was all downhill. It's easy to admit defeat when you no longer believe in the cause you're fighting for.

So there you have it. I'm sorry dear friends. I hope you soldiered on without me.

But alas! I have remained dormant from shame for far too long! The time if nigh for me, and this blog, to rise like a phoenix from the ashes and, once again, dominate the interwebs with awesomeisity! Or something. So I will again breathe life into my blog, but the only promise I offer is that it will be updated again. Please note that there are no promises as to WHEN this updating may occur. It's imperative that you grasp this. That is all!

Actually, that's not all. But that seemed like a good place to say “That is all” in an exclamatory tone (hence the punctuation). I have crafted a picture for your web-consumption today. It isn't terribly original. I've seen this type of effect all over the place but never really had a picture that I thought would work for it. Well, that all changed the other day when I was taking pictures at a church event.

The person in this picture is none other than the wife of our youth pastor. She's pretty awesome. In fact, she's pretty much a rock star. Unfortunately, her husband, who happens to play a lot of rock type music rather well, is usually assigned this appellation. I mean, he's awesome and all, but I'm pretty certain that she is the REAL rock star. After all, the old saying goes, “Behind every great rocker is an even greater rocker wife.” In any case, this picture makes an effort to capture the sheer awesomeness that is Jen (Last name not revealed to protect the innocent … and that might not even be her real name … or is it?!):

Cheers for now.

BONUS: A few things to note if you like trivial details: (1) I still like old paper backgrounds. (2) This was my first attempt at this sort of effect, I wound up with something very different from what I expected, but I am happy with it. (3) That is my reflection in the sunglasses. I was a little sloppy. Not to mention too lazy to edit myself out... (4) The GIMP rules! Go download it now! (Although I made this in photoshop to keep my skills up, the Gimp is perfectly capable of the same effects.)

Hebrew Quiz II

2009-06-01T20:41:00.000-07:00

I had a Hebrew quiz today. While I nailed the translation (because that's what I do) I struggled some on the extensive parsing section (because that is also what I do). So you can trust me when I say that some of the answers I put on today's quiz were creative.

Plus, I'm changing the rules for this blog a little. I'll let you know more about it tomorrow.

love.

Highly Informative and Nerdy

2009-05-29T08:28:00.000-07:00

Please excuse me while I geek out.

What I did today wasn't necessarily epic in scope, nor did it take a long time to complete, but it does, I feel, require a bit of back story. There were a lot of commas in that last sentence weren't there? There are so many silly details that would help shed light on today's post that I don't know where to begin. I'll just start talking and guarantee that this will NOT be in chronological order.

My wife and I live with my friend Mark and his wife. Mark is what you might respectfully (and with a hint of awe) refer to as a “gamer.” Now I don't just mean video games (though he does play those too). Because while we do have 2 gaming PCs, 3 XBOX 360s (one is mine), 1 Playstation 3, a Nintendo Wii, a Nintendo DS and an iPod touch stocked with quality games it is in fact Mark's prodigious board-game collection that steals the show. I don't know exactly how many there are. I can tell you that it is less than one thousand, but not by as much as you might be thinking. And they aren't games that the average person has heard of either. You won't find these puppies at Target. The majority of them are European. You can view his collection here if you wish and find out about some of the games for yourself.

I never knew such a thing existed before I met Mark. In fact, I made fun of the nerdy kids playing Magic: The Gathering in school. Now I know how to play the game and it is, I am loathe to confess, fun. Mark has done an excellent job proselytizing. I enjoy board games. I even have an account on boardgamegeek.com as well. But I have some quirks that hold me back from being a “true” board-gamer. I want a game to look pretty. It's not enough for it to simply have good rules or clever mechanics. This type of thing is anathema to true board-gamers.

Now for the nerdy part. So as I was ushered into this dark and brooding world of board games I was quickly drawn to “miniatures” games. They involve, you may have guessed … miniatures. So it would be like playing with toys when you were a kid only with rules and a winner. Who doesn't want to play with toys again? These games are also generally very strategic. This appeals greatly to me.

First, models and miniatures of all sorts remind me of childhood. I loved building models with my dad when I was a kid. I especially loved model rockets. My dad, brother and I launched quite a few together. Dad explained the physics and principles of rocket propulsion and my brother and I were rapt in awe and wonderment because what we were doing was very mildly dangerous (come on – it involved combustion!). Dad was also an airplane buff, so we built several models together (my first was, of course, a space shuttle). Yet again, dad explained the forces that act on an airplane to us. My brother wanted to be a fighter pilot. I wanted to work for NASA. And we both understood Bernoulli's principle well before middle school.

Second, I love strategic type games that don't overly depend on luck. I don't know when this first started. I know what is to blame though: chess. I love chess. I have books on chess. I know opening moves. I own several copies of chessmaster and more than one board. I hope you've got the picture by now.

One last side note: I also like Mechs. Or Gundams. Or whatever you want to call them. Giant robots are awesome. Whether piloted by humans or not. To continue the thread of tracing these things back to their causes in my childhood you should know that I loved Transformers. But who didn't?

So when I found a game called Warhammer 40k I asked Mark about it. He told me what's what. I was encroaching on true nerd territory. People lose their minds (and bank accounts) playing this game. Painting figures can take up weeks. And they probably won't even look as good as the adverts anyway. The rule book is an ACTUAL book. And I would have to use a tape measure and do lots of math on sheets of paper in front of me. OH BOY WHERE DO I SIGN UP! Actually, the length of the rules and cost of the game are mild deterrents. But I still thought it looked cool.

So Mark graciously found me a similar game to cut my teeth on to see if I had what it takes. Classic Battletech. There is a cheap introductory box set, complete with miniatures to paint, a moderately thick rulebook, another book on painting techniques and tactics and several stats sheets. It was about twenty bucks. I ordered it last week.

It got here last night. Unable to control my glee I opened the box (I wasn't going to until after my Hebrew quiz). I took out the miniatures. I looked at step one of painting:

PREPARE THE MINAITURES.

And prepare I did. The models are plastic and injection molded. So there is a line around the center where the two halves of the mold come together. Also, there are the unsightly injection points. Little nubs on the figure where the plastic was shot into the mold. They had to go. So I got out my handy X-ACTO knife (I believe you know why I love that already) and cut away the “flash” (fancy word for those aforementioned blemishes that I learned today). Interestingly, after I remove anything the X-ACTO knife missed with an emery board I'm supposed to bathe the thing in warm-soapy water. I'll just have to do that later.

So what did I do today? I prepared two miniatures. The two recommended for the first-time players game between two people. This took up so much time that I didn't have time to do anything else. It completely consumed my creative time quota. So it'll have to do.

Now if you'll excuse me, I really must get back to studying.

Over and out.

Jacked Hoop

2009-05-28T06:29:00.001-07:00

I was wondering how this would work with two "circular"-type images. Not well:

And as I'm short on time, that will be my first and only attempt for the day.

Peace out.

Frontier Tower

2009-05-27T07:16:00.001-07:00

Another layered image:

This composition could have benefited from some simple masking techniques to really make that tower pop. But I didn't have time for that today.

Layers from these pictures.

Cheerio then.

Prepare for Service

2009-05-26T07:10:00.000-07:00

My friend April is very good at these types of images that I'm doing this week. She usually produces pieces with great contrast and color. Very pretty. She loves to use statues in her foreground. So today I thought I'd pay homage to my friend by using a statue. However, while I was meddling with the image I came up with this strange shadowy figure emerging from a uniform background and I rather liked it. It's very different. So I'm still paying homage to my friend April, but in a different, weirder, way:

This is a simple layer combination of these two pictures. Kudos to the original photographers.

:)

Grunge Forest

2009-05-25T08:13:00.000-07:00

One of the coolest things that Photoshop and other photo-editing tools lets you do is combine pictures. Now, this may be in the simple sense of cutting out part of another picture and pasting it into a picture it doesn't belong for simple comedic effect or to produce a brilliant composition. But even easier than that, and with equally cool results, is the simple combination of photos in layers to achieve a dramatic visual effect. For instance today's image combines two pictures: a dirty was and some trees at dusk. With some simple layer tricks you can create something like this:

This effect is popular in magazines, those awful clothes that Affliction put out and Powerpoint backgrounds at church. A simple technique that goes a long way indeed.

And have I mentioned how simple it was? I believe so. Because I'm going to be playing with photo combinations all week while I focus on studying for my next Hebrew test.

Sayonara!

NÜKE

2009-05-22T09:36:00.001-07:00

Sometimes it's best not to ask.

I have no reasonable explanation for this one.

Cityscape

2009-05-21T07:04:00.000-07:00

I went back to my old friend the GIMP today. I'm getting ready for another Hebrew test so I'll be studying more and spending less time on these posts next week. So I figure now would be a good time to get in some tutorial practice and/or add a few new photos to my portfolio. We'll see what happens.

So this is a tutorial that I got out of a great book on the GIMP that I got for Christmas. It's supposed to produce something that looks like a shimmering cityscape. I learned about a few new tools, got to play around under the hood of the GIMP so to speak, and so I'm happy. The tutorial is actually designed to make a much smaller image, so it looks a little funny since I was working on a much larger scale. But it matters not, while it may not look as city-scapey, it is still a cool trick to have under my belt. Check it out:

Mares eat oats
And does eat oats
And little lambs eat ivy
A kid'll eat ivy too
Wouldn't you?

noon

2009-05-20T09:53:00.000-07:00

In a shocking turn of events this week I was asked to design the cover for the newest Stephanie Meyer book, Noon*. It continues the story where Breaking Dawn left off. All the details are tightly under wraps right now, so I can't reveal too much about the story. The publisher told me to let them worry about the font because it costs thirty bucks and I'm too cheap for that.

Here it is:

A few more months 'til this beauty starts flying off the shelves.

*Any resemblance to an actual book bearing this title written by the aforementioned author is strictly coincidental and therefore even funnier. I am kidding about designing the book cover. Though my bank account wishes I wasn't.

Avatar

2009-05-19T17:47:00.000-07:00

I'm a member of a couple or large internet forums where you are expected to have a flashy avatar. Something cool. Possibly animated. I haven't really worried about my avatar until recently (and even then I haven't actually “worried” per se), so I decided to do something about it.

I already knew the perfect avatar that could be animated to loop forever and never stop making me laugh. It's from Family Guy. It's Peter Griffin. When he hurts his knee running home and spends an entire minute sucking air and whining. It is also, coincidentally, the scene that cemented my love for the show. You see, I love the absurd and ridiculous things that they do on that show. And while they may sometimes push the envelope a little, you simply don't find anything else that ridiculous on the air.

So here is my new avatar for these forums I frequent:

I love it.

A Friendly Reminder

2009-05-18T14:05:00.000-07:00

The other day I was at target and I happened to notice a fun little piece of art that said “Wash” which featured a rubber-ducky in the collage art style. It was interesting. I liked it. Not only do I posses a supernatural affection for rubber duckies, but I love texture in art. Did I mention I liked it?

Well, it was twenty-dollars. Which isn't really a lot (for decent art). But I'm developing a theory that you should only decorate your house with artistic works that you have made (or blatantly ripped off...but still created!). So I set about wondering if I could, in fact, make such a charming piece for, say, my bathroom. The cutting of a collage is very similar to cutting a stencil (see last week). Only you use the shape you cut out and not the remaining outline.

Not to mention I have in my possession an excellent resource for all things collage and mod-podge: my wife. I think she would be a fan of the idea. So, like last week, I sort of sketched out how I'd like it to turn out and I may be working on it over the week:

However, the part that says “WASH” would be done in the collage art style as well. You know, stealing letters from magazines...like a ransom note or something like that.

Ta for now.

Full Circle

2009-05-15T10:24:00.000-07:00

And so this week ends the same way it began:

I'm happy with it. If I do another “print” of this one here's what I think I could do better:

(1)Use a canvas that doesn't have a hole in it. Yep. There's a hole in the canvas I didn't see until after I got the canvas home and applied the yellow paint. Oh well.

(2)Use better spray paint. That's Krylon. Not the best for “artistic” purposes. I'm not an awesome stenciler, so I've been skimping, but it's starting to bother me. You can see the where the black seeped under the stencil and pooled a little. Especially in the upper right on the mic. I'll probably invest in some Montana Gold next time I go spray-paint shopping.

(3)Pay more attention to how much spray adhesive I'm applying. Technically I've already learned this lesson. But it was overcast this morning and I couldn't see how much adhesive I had put on my stencil. (btw – spray adhesive helps hold the stencil in place while you spray in case you were wondering) There was a section where the adhesive glopped up and made an icky mess on my canvas. I rubbed of what I could. You can see the last little remnants in the middle of the letter “P.”

Now I need to figure out where to put it.

BJJ Shirt

2009-05-14T09:17:00.001-07:00

If you know me personally, then you probably know that my friends and I are a little obsessed with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. You can usually find us at Leadership Martial Arts on a Tuesday, Thursday or Friday night trying to tap each other out. It's a great way to stay in shape and hang out with friends at the same time. There's friendly competition, but tempered by a genuine desire for each other to get even better. But enough of that for now...

I've been wanting to make this T-shirt for a while. Since making a T-shirt would require cutting a stencil I decided to just throw it in today because this has apparently turned into stencil week. Also, I scanned a T-shirt of mine into the computer to get that texture and made it tileable so that you could seamlessly fill up a whole screen if you ever needed to.

Anyways, I plan on having the coolest new shirt in the dojo soon when I rock this:

Simple yet effective.

A brief summary of color choice: I love the way blue and orange work together (they're complimentary colors!). I darkened them up a bit so that they would be easily readable. But I haven't made the shirt (or the stencil for that matter) yet, so you can suggest other color combinations if you'd like to (April).

Love to all.

Keys

2009-05-13T07:34:00.001-07:00

So I'm cutting my stencil and I can't help but think how much easier it would be if all my lines were straight with no fine details. You see, my X-ACTO blade is beginning to dull and cutting curves into my acetate is getting harder and harder. But I don't want to change my blade just yet. It's got a couple more quality cuts in it.

On the other hand, I'm not so sure that a stencil with only straight edges would be terribly pleasing to look at. So I engaged in a small experiment: make a design with only long straight edges. Also, I've seen a lot of work lately that uses various shades of gray to really bring out the texture, or topography if you will, of the subject. I've never attempted using only shades of gray to design a stencil before. So I gave it a shot today. I, of course, chose to make a piano keyboard:

I doubt I will ever cut this stencil. But it was fun to try out something and see what it would look like.

I think the straight edges here aren't so bad because I chose a subject that is inherently linear. But that isn't the case with most objects. Plus, I like graffiti and stencils that are bubbly and round … almost cartoonish. So this is stretching it a bit for me. The gray does a nice job of adding a little depth to the piece. The next stencil portrait I do will definitely utilize the technique.

That's it for me. Back to the cutting board! (no joke.)

Shellmound Buckthorn

2009-05-12T09:35:00.001-07:00

I have a small announcement to make: this is my 100th post! I'm into May and my resolution is going strong. It's not easy, but I'm keeping up with it!

A few weeks ago I visited my friends Bryan and Abi (there were several posts...I'm sure you remember). Now we spent some time around the island learning about vegetation and birds and whatnot because Bryan is … well, brilliant – and biology is, I believe, his primary field of expertise. So Amie and I got to stop and see all kinds of things that we would have normally ignorantly trampled underfoot or barged past. One of the small wonders we saw was (anagram alert!) an interesting little plant called the Shell-mound Buckthorn. I can't tell you a lot about it. Apparently it needs bits of sea-shell in the soil to grow (don't quote me on any of this). Also, and the reason these photos aren't as banal as they might first appear, the fruit is rarely photographed when ripe because the berries take an entire year to ripen.

I'd link to something about the plant, but I can't find a good article right now. Sorry about that. Also, it'd be funny if Bryan was just messing with me. I wouldn't know this plant from a snipe. Or a jackalope for that matter. Just a thought that made me laugh.

Anyways, I meant to get him the photos a long time ago and I've forgotten until now. Here they are!

I'll return to something I know about tomorrow.

It's fun to branch into material momentarily of which I am totally ignorant. :)

Speak

2009-05-11T09:58:00.001-07:00

I haven't made a stencil in a while, so I thought I might get back into it today. I only had time to do the design this morning, the cutting and final product will have to come out later this week.

If you want to learn about stenicls, you should check out Stencil Revolution. There are a lot of really good pieces on the forums there. Plus tutorials and all kinds of stuff.

So here's my design:

It's destined for a 5x8 canvas.

I think it's cool.

Happy Hill Climber

2009-05-08T07:33:00.000-07:00

A photo I took with some added visual flare:

Tag

2009-05-07T20:46:00.001-07:00

Do you remember when you were a kid how you would spend time thinking about handwriting? How you would marvel at cursive? Actually think about the strokes that made up your letters? Maybe try your hand at other writing styles? I do. But that was just the fancy introduction. Truth is I haven't thought about it in a while and I've always wanted to develop that popular style of graffiti handwriting. So I spent some time looking around and learning, and here's how my first attempt at my name turned out:

Not the most exciting thing...but very educational.

:)

Whiter Teeth

2009-05-06T09:56:00.000-07:00

I figured out how to easily whiten teeth without making them look super-phony (all by myself too!). I had been selecting the teeth and using the brightness/contrast function, which ends up looking ridiculously fake. But if I use the black and white tool instead the results look much better. Let me tell you why … when you control black and white you have total control over all of the color channels and how bright or dark each one is. So when working with teeth you just brighten up the yellows (and the reds help too), and voila! - great looking teeth.

I figured this out today while I was editing this photo from the aforementioned carnival-type-thing. This is Nick:

He's cool. And so is this trick to easily whiten teeth.

Who Will Win?

2009-05-05T18:22:00.001-07:00

If you've been reading along you already know.

Sidewalk Chalk

2009-05-04T09:50:00.000-07:00

I photographed an event this weekend. A carnival of sorts. At said event my wife schooled me on a climbing wall in front of all our friends. It was great.

Sidewalk chalk was a pretty big draw for the kiddies. I snapped a picture of these two while they were busy being awesome. I like the picture itself, but I wanted to try some stuff on it to see how it all worked out. I'm generally pleased, but it's not as cool in real life as it was in my head. But that's just the way things work out sometimes. Like knife juggling.

I'm off to practice climbing.

Colorized!

2009-05-01T21:57:00.000-07:00

So I have a friend who recently asked about colorizing photos. He asked which program people used to automatically turn black and white pictures into color. After a long sit-down-and-talk session where we discussed the limits of computers, artificial intelligence, colors and the lack thereof, I agreed to try my hand at colorizing a photo for him using photoshop.

I know how to do the techniques, but I've never actually before attempted to do such a thing. Now you should know that colorizing is a fickle thing. I have a friend, in fact, who is morally opposed to colorizing black and white images. He thinks it takes something away from (or rather adds to) the original piece. I can see why. And anyone who has ever seen an old movie that has had color added can understand his point. The colors look phony. Too bright. Ridiculous. A travesty if you will (in the truest sense of the word).

But I did it anyway.

Have a good weekend.

Stream

2009-04-30T20:36:00.000-07:00

I don't know. But I like it:

I was fooling around and wound up with this bit of abstractedness...

GSUMC Draft 1

2009-04-29T08:16:00.001-07:00

I was approached the other day by someone at my church about helping out with the dreadfully difficult process of developing a new logo. If you have never tried to design a logo before, then let me assure you, it is ridiculously difficult. Like trying to eat your own head. Though usually with worse results. But when you stumble upon the right idea it can be a rather Zen-like experience. So I'm going to pitch a few ideas into the mix and see what happens.

The church, for those of you wondering, is Good Shepherd United Methodist Church. If one were so inclined, you could see their logo here. It's not overly bad, though perhaps a little dated. I was told to think outside the box. There doesn't necessarily have to be a shepherd's crook involved, a sheep, or even a shepherd. It could be a simple letter logo if I please. So I've let it simmer for a while, and I've got some ideas to try out.

The first is very simple. And even a little derivative. Because I was rather directly influenced by the logo from Go Media. I liked the idea of circular letters, a “dramatic” perspective and the semi-3D feel of it. So I tried my hand using those same ideas. Here's a rough draft:

It got me working and thinking. That's all I really want for now.

(That semi-3D effect was harder to do than I thought. It was fun to try though.)

Throwing Amie Under a Bus

2009-04-28T20:06:00.000-07:00

Today is Amie's birthday. As usual, she was granted supreme power over my will all day and I was compelled to obey her every whim. One of those whims was that I ignore this blog and, instead, go to coffee with friends this morning and generally frolic about for the remainder of the day. I could not refuse her Birthday wishes and therefore did nothing creative today. So now you know: birthday wish trumps New Year's Resolution every time.

See you tomorrow.

Poem?

2009-04-27T19:05:00.001-07:00

It's been a while since I posted my last poem. So here's a new one. It could be my most honest and transparent piece yet:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Hebrew is hard
and so is trying to keep a demanding resolution for an entire year.

I really rather like it. Don't you?

Daniel

2009-04-24T08:45:00.000-07:00

I'm studying Hebrew like crazy today. I took the day off because this week I've been so busy that I haven't been able to study as much as I would have liked to (I have my first major exam on Monday). Since I've got Hebrew on the brain today anyways, I used my knowledge of the language, my desire to finally find and install a Hebrew font on my computer, and the very real need to not spend too much time on today's post to create this wonderful piece of typographical glory! This is my name in Hebrew:

The font didn't start out all fancy like that. By a happy accident I found that the solid letters combined with an outline looked rather fancy. I liked it. More than that – I was happy to have learned a typography trick on accident while I was trying to speed through an entry.

Next week should be less hectic. I hope for a return to higher quality things then.

Running is still awesome. I extended my distance and felt fresh longer today.

Shalom!

8-Bit Spaceship

2009-04-23T06:27:00.000-07:00

Do you remember Space Invaders? Galaga? Super Mario Brothers? Or any of the blocky 8-bit art that influenced a generation of gamers and artists for that matter? Well today I attempted, for the first time ever (on my behalf anyways), to pay homage to the great block-art style. I have, of course, made a spaceship:

Good quirky fun! And there's even a legitimate NASA image in there as the background.

And I'm off! I told you this week was busy!

Résumé

2009-04-22T20:02:00.000-07:00

I worked on my résumé today. That may not sound particularly creative, but I found this article about spicing it up a little bit. Of course these CVs are more oriented toward graphic and web designers, so I had to tone down the design a little. My résumé already had a pretty decent format, complete with tables and everything, so I added some color, chose some bold sans-serif fonts and generally spruced up the thing a bit. I had about as much fun as you can have creating a résumé. Exactly. Not a whole lot. But more fun than I should have been having!

You'll just have to trust me that the thing is awesome, because I can't load up a PDF here...nor would I want to. I know you've come to expect more than mere words here, but that's all I'm serving up today. Apologies.

I'm applying for a job that I almost certainly won't get. It's a dream job. The organization is rather small after all and my wife and mother already work there. Three Berryhills just might be too much. Not to mention we could be accused of nepotism. Which is understandable. But overwhelming odds against has never stopped me from turning in a résumé before! Let us wait with baited breath and see how this ordeal turns out.

Speaking of ordeals. My daily runs are going well. But I've always done well with dramatic life transitions. It's the little things that get me. But back to running … two words: shin stretches. I never knew such a thing existed until last night and now they are my new best friends. No more shin splints! You should really be running too. I'd call it cathartic but for the exhaustion.

P.S. - I do believe I used one of April's favourite words today. A hearty hat-tip to her.

FLAME ON!

2009-04-21T07:44:00.000-07:00

Let's just be honest with each other shall we? This blog, more often than not, proves to be a vehicle through which I can learn to do new things in photoshop. I can experiment. I can learn something new. Then I force it upon the unsuspecting masses (all twenty of you). And if it's lousy, I can always say, “Hey, the whole post took me about an hour, what do you expect?”

The fact of the matter is that I did recently upgrade to photoshop and, while I feel rather comfortable with it now, there is still A LOT of stuff that I can learn. So on days when I follow a photoshop tutorial to learn a new technique or a way of using some old tool in an unconventional way – I hope you can look past this momentary mediocrity to a day when I can combine all I've learned into my own personal Mona Lisa-like works.

Here's the tutorial. And here's my piece:

Since a regular old flame wasn't as exciting as I'd hoped I added my own little flare to it. A text smiley face. 8-bit styling and all. (You should probably be getting ready for some 8-bit artwork. I've been feeling some love for it lately...)

A friendly reminder: “Crayon” means pencil in French. Try not to get confused.

New Profile Pic

2009-04-20T07:27:00.000-07:00

I think it's time, in the interest of good housekeeping, to update my profile picture. The old textured smiley face has served me well, but I thought it was time for something with a little more style – a little more verve. So, first, I thought about the simple effects that I like to apply to images. That was easy. I like fancy gradients and grungy stamp effects (among other things, but these two are particularly well suited to a small profile picture). Next I tried to think of a suitable image to apply these things to. This part was harder than it should have been because I thought about too much. 'Analysis Paralysis' is what my board-gaming friend would call it. Then I remembered who I was married to (the second half of my identity if you will), and I knew immediately what the image had to be: a jumping picture. If you do not know my wife and I personally, let me assure this should have been obvious to me when I was trying to think of a trademark picture. Amie loves to photograph jumping pictures. We have hundreds of them (We might have even breached the thousand picture mark by now). She has additionally shared her burning passion to take jumping pictures with all of our friends and her contagious excitement sparked a revolution. Now I can barely turn around without being assaulted by people wanting to take jumping pictures.

And now, after recounting a brief part of my personal history, you are ready to see my new profile pic:

In other news: I've started running. This morning was brutal. And I only ran a little over a mile. My back hurts a little and I was absolutely wheezing by the end of my run. In theory, I'd like to do one of those bridge marathons sometime in the future. I'm thinking about the one in Charleston. Let's just see if I can even make it two miles without dying first.

Finally, I have a major Hebrew Quiz next Monday. I will be studying like crazy and if the quality of my posts suffer, I apologize.

Love to all.

Happy Home

2009-04-17T07:02:00.000-07:00

I don't generally photograph houses or architecture. I don't have anything against them, it's just that I'm not patient enough to find a good line that I'd like to shoot from. Front-on shots are dreadfully boring and the background tends to play a much larger role than I'd like it to. So, while we were visiting Bryan and Abi in their new house (which is charming and remarkably roomy inside) I set out to get a decent picture of the thing. This shot worked out well because I got to shoot the corner of the house (something I like to do because of the converging perspective lines) and, as a bonus, it was framed very nicely by the tree in the front yard.

There's probably a little more pavement in this picture than needs to be, but I couldn't do much about that at the time. (Note to self: maybe in the future I could shoot looking up and use the perspective tool to even the picture out and crop it.)

Sometimes during weeks when I don't feel like I have a lot to say, I spruce things up one day with some jokes I like. This is one of those weeks:

“I think it's wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly.”
-Steven Wright

“People in the computer industry use the term user, which to them means 'idiot.'”
-Dave Barry

And finally:
“If you think you have it tough, read history books.”
-Bill Maher

I hope you enjoyed at least one of those. I also hope you have a good weekend.

Pretty Pretty Princess

2009-04-16T10:01:00.000-07:00

Amie saw fit to leave me an exceedingly pleasant comment yesterday, so today I fixed up a lovely photo of her on the beach. Seems fair, right?

I played around with some simple lighting tricks and continued my newfound love of processing the foreground and background independently.

Advice: I encourage you to go watch or listen to something Jim Gaffigan has done. I think that he is rapidly becoming my favourite comedian. ACT ON THIS NOW!

ta.

The Standard Baby Shot

2009-04-15T07:15:00.000-07:00

It is, I suppose, impossible to avoid taking the standard baby shot when photographing a baby. I blame the Gerber Baby with his smug expression of surprise – and you should too! [No, not really]

Anna was just playing on the couch and I was able to get a couple of good close ups. She really is a rather smiley baby. I mean, it's practically absurd how easy it is to get good smiling pictures of this baby! See what I mean?

As for the technical details, she was playing on a maroon couch. I had already shot the picture with the background out of focus and darker, but I used some contrast curves tricks to push the background closer to the black color you see in most baby portraits. Also, she had a little rash around her nose that I cleaned up. It was tricky because it was right around her nostrils where I couldn't just copy and paste something in there. I think I did a pretty good job – you can still see a hint of redness, but not bad for a quick morning's work!

Okay, no more baby pictures this week! I will continue posting a few more pictures from the trip though. And a reminder to you all: it is Wednesday. You've made it halfway through the standard workweek. This is cause for celebration. Might I suggest a Wednesday party for you and your office cohorts? I think Michael Scott would approve.

That is all!

Beach Baby

2009-04-14T07:14:00.000-07:00

Another picture of baby Anna frolicking in the surf:

If I were a hardcore photographer I would have lugged a reflector around on the beach with me all day. That way I wouldn't have gotten harsh shadows in all of my pictures. I'll maybe consider that next time. But this wasn't a photo shoot! We were playing on the beach! And it appears Anna enjoyed her ocean time.

To those readers who don't enjoy baby pictures – suck it up! Actually, I was just going to tell you that I've got one more for tomorrow, then I'll be moving on to some other stuff. I think this has been an interesting detour. I've at least learned that Baby Pictures can be fun. But that may, of course, depend on how much I like the baby.

Now if you'll excuse me I've just got an overwhelming desire to go read Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal [for preventing the children of poor people from being a burthen [sic] to their parents or the country, and for making them beneficial to the public.].

Abi & Anna on the Beach

2009-04-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned last Friday, my wife and I traveled down to Georgia this weekend to visit our friends Bryan and Abi (who are awesome). Their baby girl, Anna, celebrated her six month birthday while we were visiting, went into the ocean for the first time and apparently, soon after our departure, was going to have her first taste of baby food (sweet potatoes and split peas were on the menu I believe). Baby Anna is also very very cute. One might even call her photogenic. And the islands of Georgia that we spent our time flitting about were also very picturesque. And might I remind you that I am a photographer. All this is to say that you should be prepared to see pictures this week. Some of them baby pictures (something I have actually never taken before). [For those of you wondering, the pictures count as creative works each day because, while I may have already taken the photos this weekend, I shot RAW – which required post processing and I can't resist a little bit of mucking about in Photoshop anyway.] I want to start off with my personal favourite photo that I took this weekend:

Isn't it lovely! I think so. I think that if you could photograph happiness ... happiness in it purest state ... happiness qua happiness … well, I think it would look a lot like this picture.

And now for the technical details. As I was taking pictures on the beach, all of the sudden my shots started turning out very overexposed. I panicked. I thought I had broken my camera. I should have just kept my cool and read the display on the back of my camera, because it would have simply informed me that the ISO had been suddenly changed to 1600 (ridiculously high for a beach setting). Somehow I had reset the ISO on accident while we were on the beach. Oh well, at least I was shooting RAW because I have so much more control than if I had botched several pictures and converted them to JPEGs using the onboard processor. So to correct today's picture I had to work with two separate copies of the same picture. I adjusted one so that the background would be clear and another so that the foreground (people) would be clear then merged them together using my old friends layer and mask. A simple trick that goes a long way.

I also went kayaking this weekend for the first time. I had so much fun that, for exactly one-tenth of a second, the planet stopped rotating. Sorry Earth. My bad.

Becoming Madame Mao

2009-04-10T07:30:00.000-07:00

I mean, you just can't ask for a better random band name than this! I still can't believe that is the title of the article. It's ripe for parody! Today's random quote wasn't of quite the same caliber as the random band name, but it works. Apparently Margaret Deland (no idea who that is) once said that: “One must desire something to be alive.” She is clearly trying too hard to sound philosophical. Trust me. I have a degree in philosophy. Which basically means that now, in the real world, I have been equipped with the best tools to go about and vehemently deny the existence of blue chairs (something you spend a rather odd amount of time talking about as a philosophy major). But enough of that. Finally, my stock photo was of a simply delightful old radio. I duplicated it, tried to do something vaguely Andy Warhol-esque and added some grunge to end up with this:

And this completes the random album series! I won't force more than a week's worth of those on you at one time! Though I did enjoy myself thoroughly, so I may possibly revisit the idea some time far far away in the future.

I'll see you guys again on Monday. I'm going on a lovely road trip with my lovely wife to visit our lovely friends on a lovely island in Georgia.

California Red

2009-04-09T10:56:00.001-07:00

California Red is not, in fact, the coolest fictional band name ever. Rather, it is a particular brand of sheep. Today's quote comes from a gentleman named George Jessel who once said that, “The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until the moment you stand up to speak in public.” Very witty indeed. And I got the stock image from this guy. Great stuff to work with! I pulled out the red and converted the rest to black and white. It's no Schindler's List, but I think the effect works okay.

I promise that these elements were mostly random (I skip over the pictures I consider unusable). Though I think the picture meshes unusually well with the random band name and album title.

I still hate choosing fonts. Probably because I only have seventeen on my computer. I'll have to see what I can do about that. I found several different free font website and I need to just spend an afternoon one day plumbing the depths of their online offerings. On verra.

The Royal Danish Theatre

2009-04-08T13:22:00.000-07:00

Today's random album cover is an unusual mix of Danish Theatre and Robert Heinlein, who wrote: The motion to adjourn is always in order. This image was pretty easy to work with. I only made the colors more vibrant, reduced the noise, added the text and those fancy little gradient boxes. Final Product:

Totally looks like an early 90s ska album to me. Heaven help us.

Uriah Heep

2009-04-07T06:21:00.001-07:00

I made another random band album today. Uriah Heep sounds like a folk singer, but is in fact a mildly nefarious villain-type character in Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. And the phrase came from a quote by Horace Mann which states: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” Finally, the original picture came up at random and was taken by this fellow who would like some credit where his work is used. I fiddled with his great starting image and ended up with this composition:

As it is, it looks like the cover for one of those annoying political CDs that every band and their mother was releasing at the end of the Bush administration. I'm not talking politics here – I just want to hear good music when I pick up a CD, not listen to diatribes with poor diction when I could just as easily read any newspaper. So now that Obama is in office, maybe Green Day or Flobots will put out a CD that doesn't depress me. (I recognize that music for me is an escape and perhaps not everyone feels the same way I do about political CDs – but I still think they're awful)

End rant.

Was that a buzzkill? I hope not, because I'm having fun. So much fun that I'm going to trail...off...for...no...apparent...

EDIT: Interestingly, Uriah Heep is also actually an English Rock Band. Who knew? How very strange to, yet again, find fiction imitating reality.

Random Band

2009-04-06T10:21:00.000-07:00

So I'm sure you've all seen what I did today making its rounds on facebook. Yes, I created a random band album today. The idea is simple:

(1)Go to wikipedia and search for a random article. Do this until you find a suitable band name. I found Chabówka – which sounds like Chewbacca, but is, in fact, a small Polish Village.
(2)Go to this Random Quotations page. Use the end of some quotation out of context for your album name. I used this apparently unknown quotation: “A gentleman is a man who can play the accordion but doesn't.”
(3)Find a random picture to serve as the main graphical part of your album cover. The recommended method is to go to Flickr and click “explore the last seven days.” However, I don't know the terms of use regarding Flickr, so I used my favourite free stock photo service and found a random photo of an ice cream bar. It made me happy.
(4)Then throw them all together and try to come up with something worth looking at. This was rather more challenging than I had expected. I am no fan of choosing suitable fonts. I decided on these retro-western ones and added some fun pastel colors to accent the lightly humorous feel of this project.

Et voila!
I may do a few more of these. They are fun and I like their somewhat random nature (though I do pick and choose a little more than the facebook directions would allow...). Ta for now!

Wooden Man Gets Back to Nature

2009-04-03T07:37:00.001-07:00

Just taking a stroll down memory lane. I think he grew up in this neighborhood. I remember when he was but a wee sapling in those woods.

Stars

2009-04-02T07:52:00.000-07:00

I spent some time learning about the shapes tool in Photoshop today and this is what I came up with:

Meh.

INCREDIBLE AMAZING OFFER!!!

2009-04-01T18:51:00.000-07:00

Psych. April Fools! (I really can't believe you feel for that...)

Flowers

2009-03-31T07:35:00.000-07:00

The other day I found some very reasonably priced flowers and decided to buy them for Amie. Because she likes flowers and I, of late, have liked reasonably priced things. So it was a good match. I've also recently read a short series of articles about photographing flowers, so I set about photographing these flowers in the natural habitat of my kitchen table:

Even though I wanted to try out shooting the flowers I wasn't able to do 70% of the things the article recommended. First, I do not have a tripod or a macro lens. I am saving up for a tripod and will probably never care to own a macro lens. Second, because I was already throwing out the biggest clarity enhancing tool at my disposal I also didn't use the mirror lock-up function of my camera. What did I do? I used a spray bottle to make the petals look wet. I draped a black cloth behind the flowers so that the background (though intentionally out of focus) wouldn't distract any more than necessary. And instead of taking a picture of the flower head-on (from above), I took the picture at flower level. Then I edited the RAW files in Adobe RAW (which is so cool that it's changing the way I take pictures) to finish.

Ta-Da!

The TMI Post

2009-03-30T08:18:00.001-07:00

Well well well. My last post was entitled “Last One for a While” and it turned out to be rather more prophetic than I had intended. For you see, I was only talking about the fact that I wouldn't return to the topic of my fledgling website for some time – not an actual absence from THIS blog. But nay! Fate had other plans! And I was laid low for three days with a case of the runs. Yes, I was plagued by the 'rhea for three days straight. Diarrhea. Have you caught on yet? Good. So now you know what I've been up to lately.

So I missed two days of posting. I hope you can forgive me. I hope you struggled on. That you didn't wait in vain into the wee hours of the morning. And that your stomachs felt better than mine.

I leave you with this stunning memorial piece:

(I stole the toilet part of the picture from something I found with a Google Image Search, so I have no idea who took it or if I even have the rights to use it. We'll just hope I don't get arrested for now...)

Last Time for a While

2009-03-25T06:35:00.001-07:00

The website now has animated menus. “Animated” in the loose sense. You can visually tell which button the mouse is hovering over. I'm very excited about it. But I'm going to stop work on the website for the bit (because it's so very tedious and I have to learn about every little thing I do) and I'll stop posting about it here for a good long while (because it is fantastically boring to hear about).

After this Hebrew Quiz things should start getting interesting again.

Peace.

Reclining Oppie

2009-03-24T06:46:00.001-07:00

This picture was originally taken at the same time as yesterday's post. Same bat-time, same bat-channel. Heeeeeeeeeeeeere's Oppie!

Well, I've got a Hebrew quiz to study for. You guys enjoy your day!

Little Oscar Head

2009-03-23T07:11:00.001-07:00

The weather yesterday was so ridiculously nice that I couldn't stand it! So while we were outside in the back-yard enjoying the perfectly picturesque day, playing with the puppies and burning old documents with social-security numbers and whatnot for a friend in our firepit I grabbed the camera and took some pictures. Here is Oscar:

And remember, if you'd rather burn your sensitive documents than shred them...well, come on over.

favicon.ico: My Nemesis

2009-03-20T20:18:00.000-07:00

Today I added that little icon that pops up in your navigation bar when you go to a website. It's called a favorite icon, or (as the file name goes...) a favicon. I spent the day struggling valiantly against this vile beast! I could get it to work with Internet Explorer or Firefox, but not both. Frustrating.

Finally, I found a delightful website that let me know how I should be doing things. I used the code and everything appears to be working. I think. Anyways, I think it's a little improvement (only 16 pixels by 16 pixels) that goes a long way.

Let the good times roll.

Template Done?

2009-03-19T08:56:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I worked on yesterday's image a bit. I fixed a few little things that bugged me. I grungified the text. And finally, sliced it up and re-wrote my code. My website is now rapidly approaching something that I can be moderately proud of. I even made the “home” link work – but you can't really tell since it just directs you to the same web-page you are already on. My next big goal for the navigation bar is to figure out how to change the image when you mouse over it. I have a general idea, but I'll need to brush up on my javascript a little more and probably ask Mark a few questions again. I also want to get rid of that box that pops up when you click on a link. I bet there's some simple html code for that that I just don't know. And I want to get my logo to pop up in the tiny little icon space in the browser tab or menu bar.

I would also, naturally, like to get to some actual photography work again soon. I enjoy this web page stuff, but it's a lot of work for someone who has to learn everything from scratch.

As usual, thoughts, comments and criticisms are welcome. (I feel like I'm stumbling around in a foreign land)

Oh Yay! Another Rough Draft!

2009-03-18T09:41:00.000-07:00

That's right. My experimentation continues. I tried out that whole Camera on a stack of books thing today. I should have stopped there but I wanted to see how it would work with some other design elements. This is a sketch of a possible navigation menu and Header (The Banner stays – this would be a floating header and navigation menu over the content). I would, of course, make the text a little grungier with that stamp effect I learned the other day.

But the like the whole “illustration” vibe going on in the banner and might try to continue that in the header as well. We'll see. As for now, here's my design concept for the day (May look a little goofy because of the transparency...you can click on it and get a better view against a white background...):

That's all folks!

P.S. - I figured out that I should be using .png files because while .gif files support transparency, they don't support levels of transparency (no alpha channel). So I figured out one the design problems I was complaining about yesterday! Woot!

Inspiration and Imitation

2009-03-17T09:56:00.000-07:00

I had a horrible time making my buttons today. I wanted to have simple fonts with transparency, but the .gif format caused some pretty severe posterization. Also, dividing the bar width into equal sizes and centering the text looked horrible – instead I had to put the same amount of space between each word. But I feel stuck. I love the overall aesthetic of my design so far, but the main content part in the middle seems to be throwing it off. To see what I mean lets first examine some beautifully designed sites that may serve to illustrate what I may want a website of mine to look like:

K4 Laboratory: This is ridiculously beautiful. I find it inspiring, but I can't do anything like this just yet. I don't have the programming knowledge, the time or the patience right now.

Phizz: this is much more doable. I like the header, but not the page layout. The use of textures is nice too, approaching what I may want my site to look like. Very balanced. A little grungy.

Ali Felski: Marvelous. Textures are incredible. Several are juxtaposed yet not clashing. The menu bar is simple yet effective. Colors work together. I want this website!

So there you have it. A quick peek into what my design inspirations are. So now, viewing Fiction Photo, you can plainly see I've got some work to do. I added the menu bar today (though the links don't point anywhere, nor do they do anything when you mouse over them), but I think the textures clash. Plus, it's very boxy and right in the middle of everything. There will be some sort of banner above it where it now reads: “Website Under Construction” and the content where the Lorem Ipsum is right now.

So what do you think? Is the second texture in the menu bar too much? Should I go another direction? Again, let me know here or in person or whatever. We'll get this thing figured out...

I lied.

2009-03-16T09:55:00.000-07:00

I didn't mean to! I will not, in fact, be doing portraits this week. I had thought I wanted to, but I don't. I want to fix my new website up a little bit more first.

This weekend I made a few tweaks on the website by myself. Adjusting the graphics so they fit together better. Fixing the banner. Compressing my JPEGs a little bit more so that the site can load a little quicker. I also had the privilege of being introduced to a new web design concept by my good friend Mark Faulk. They're called divs (short for divisions I think) and they rock the pants off of tables. Anyways, he first cleaned up my petty attempts at HTML coding and even, at one point, remarked, “I'm surprised that even works!” After cleaning up my code and fixing a banner problem I couldn't solve myself he asked about what the rest of the site would look like. I sketched out for him what I was working on and we (read instead: he) set off coding in a mad flurry of awesomeness that ended in something I could understand and manipulate to my very own special needs. So I've now made some adjustments of my own and the rough layout is now, sort of, in place.

Before you go check it out, know these things: (1) those colors are for testing purposes only, (2) I have not set any font configurations, those are your browsers defaults and (3) “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amut” is a curious Latin phrase beloved by typographers and web-designers everywhere – learn about it here.

Tomorrow I make buttons!

The Not-So-Grand Finale

2009-03-13T07:49:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I finished what I've been working on this week ... kind of. I mentioned last week that I had purchased the domain name fictionphoto.com. Well, after I got it all that was up there was a place holder saying that I owned the silly thing, but nothing else. So I spent this week developing a few web graphics and trying to figure out some HTML. This is just a rough draft for the main website background and header. A very rough draft.

So I apologize for the dreadfully boring week. Over the weekend I'm going to work on cleaning up the code a little bit, adding a table, a few buttons and maybe some content. I dunno. But I'd like to try and do some portraits of people next week that I can throw out on the website.

And that's were I stand.

(So I'm counting the creation of a website as my creative work today. I think that works...)

P.S. - I made the banner smaller so it would load quicker...but I don't know about the blue, tell me how it works (comment or real life...it's all the same to me).

Grunge Stamp Added

2009-03-12T06:38:00.001-07:00

I added the final element to this weeks project: the fiction photo letter logo (that rhymes). I learned how to do the grunge stamp effect from the awesome person at photoshopbrushes.com after being directed there by the equally wonderful people at smashingmagazine.com. Check it:

Have you guessed what I've been working on?

Find out tomorrow!

Birds Added

2009-03-11T06:33:00.000-07:00

I added birds today. Originally I though there would be a massive flock of them on the left so that each individual one was indistinguishable from the ones around him until finally, on the right, there was only one lone bird. A gradual emergence from the flock if you will. I may have been too ambitious and this drastically smaller group of birds seems to do the trick just fine:

The birds were easier than I thought they'd be. I found some simple bird silhouette pictures on stock.xchng (free stock-photo place) and moved them over to my image. I was thinking I'd have to draw them by hand, so that was a big time-saver. But they look like they may be based on a Photoshop Brush or something, so I'm taking it on faith that the person who posted the photo does, in fact, own all the elements of the picture. Only time will tell.

I have one more element I'd like to add to this “picture” before I'm done. I must say I'm enjoying this whole “progressive work” thing because I've got a Hebrew mid-term coming up, but I hope it doesn't wear on your nerves dear friends. We'll pick back up here again shortly. You just wait. It's the nature of things is all.

(My voice was supposed to sound farmer-like in those last three sentences...did it work?)

Sky Paper

2009-03-10T07:24:00.001-07:00

This is the next step in my progressive work this week:

The keen observer may have noted that the paper on which this image rests is none other than the paper tile I posted yesterday. I wanted the blue of the sky to look like watercolors streaming down the paper and being soaked up in great daubs. Then I put the clouds in the corner to strengthen the overall impression of sky-ey-ness. I think it looks rather good.

Do you know where I'm going with this yet? I'll be adding more tomorrow.

See you then.

Paper Tile

2009-03-09T10:31:00.000-07:00

I know what you're thinking: “Another tile? How excruciatingly boring!” On the surface I would agree with you. But trust me this time okay? I'm working on a project that will span the whole week and hopefully be as awesome in reality as it is in my head right now. You may have to wait until the end of the week to see what I'm working on, but you can see this tile right now!

What mysterious ends could I possibly be working towards?

[By the Way: The original file that I used came from texturebits.blogspot.com]

Fiction Photo

2009-03-06T08:57:00.001-08:00

I mentioned a few days ago the possibility that I may start a small photography and design company. Were that to ever occur it would be called Fiction Photo [and design]. I already bought the domain name just in case. Now I realize that turning this idea into a profitable venture will take at least a year and a lot more learning on my part, but I can't sit idly by. There are things I should be doing now like building my portfolio, learning more about my newfangled digital camera and Photoshop (which I broke down and bought yesterday), building a website, branding and generally learning about business. Sounds very daunting when I say it all at once like that!

First, I need a logo. Or something to put on a business card, or something. I'm not sure yet. So today I dove a little deeper into Photoshop and tried out one of my ideas:

A labeled Polaroid with a simple “letter-style logo” on it. I can't even begin to tell you how much I learned about Photoshop today, but it blew my mind (if you're in the know – I explored layer effects today). And while I'm pretty happy with this image, it doesn't quite seem logo-ish enough. It's not scalable (can be made small while remaining recognizable and without losing detail).

So you may be subjected to a few more of these in the coming weeks. I like the idea of a Polaroid. But I also wanted to work fiction into the logo somehow. A camera on a stack of books? A Polaroid coming out of the camera with text on it (just squiggly lines in a logo of course)? I'll be thinking.

I'm also trying to think of a clever spin on the fiction part of the name. Like “Fiction Photo: Our pictures tell a story” - only less cheesy and more awesome.

So now you know what I'm up to.

Erasing Amie

2009-03-05T08:23:00.001-08:00

I traveled back in time today and meddled with the past. The only result I can see so far is that Amie is being slowly erased from this photo:

Fortunately, we have approximately one billion jumping pictures already – mostly including Amie. So not a big loss really.

In other news: I hate cats. Always have.

I HEART COLOR

2009-03-04T08:45:00.000-08:00

Photoshop and the GIMP are very similar, except that their interfaces are radically different. Similar tools have different names and buttons are in different places and some tools are even hidden. It's going to take some getting used to. So using Photoshop I created this desktop background that is somewhat similar to the web banner I did in GIMP. It took longer than I care to mention.

I'm really impressed with the emphasis on non-destructive editing in Photoshop. I'm still deciding about all of that.

Let us see...

The Royal Family

2009-03-03T09:20:00.001-08:00

I'm just goofing around with the camera here. I thought it would be funny to take a “family portrait” of some chess pieces. Three things are significant about what I did today: (1) I practiced my studio photography by arranging the background so there would not be a horizon line present and shot full manual using a few photography tricks, (2) I worked with the RAW file format for the first time and (3) I created this in Adobe Photoshop CS4. Let's look at those items in a little more detail:

(1) I arranged some paper and lights to make a backdrop, mastered the custom white-balance (a hassle for sure) and used a smaller f-stop so that I could get the whole family in focus. I'm getting the hang of the digital SLR.

(2) RAW files are awesome. It's like a digital negative in that it still allows you some flexibility that a straight-up JPEG wouldn't. I really can't explain it, if you're curious just wikipedia it or see what this guy has to say.

(3) Thanks to a deal offered through WACOM, I can upgrade to a full blown copy of Photoshop for $300. Now, that's a great deal considering how much Photoshop normally costs, but $300 is still a LOT of money for me right now. So I downloaded the demo. It appears to be a fully-featured, fully-operational program whose only limitation is that it will only work for 30 days. I can deal with that. So I'm making my decision.

So here's my portrait of the royal family:

I'm going to eat something now. You should too.

New Camera

2009-03-02T09:55:00.000-08:00

Kind of. I've been wanting to buy a new digital SLR camera because I crave a little more control over photographs than our point and shoot camera allows. I've been looking at the Canon Rebel XSi and before I bought a new one mom intervened and let me borrow their XTi. So I've taken a few hundred photos in the past two days. That shouldn't sound too impressive. I'm just trying to figure out the settings: white balance ISO and all those other new delightful things that I didn't have to worry about with my film SLR. All that is to say that I am currently in an odd state of confusion and excitement.

Let me start with the excited part first. I'm very possibly going to start a small photography enterprise in the near future. I enjoy photography, I have a reasonable amount of training and I'm becoming more and more comfortable with photo-editing software. But I have been out of the game for a while. Since I married Amie I've seldom used any camera extensively. It seemed silly to keep using my film camera after Amie got the digital, so I've fallen out of practice. This brings me to the confused part. This new digital SLR is not as intuitive as my film SLR – at least not to me. In addition to shutter speed and f-stops and all the glorious things that made me love SLR cameras in the first place, I need to understand other settings as well, which brings me to the topic of my new nemesis: the White Balance. It might just be this model (I doubt it), but most of the pictures are tinted with some shade of color. I can't stand it! In the automatic picture modes I have no control over this and in the Manual mode the ISO settings are not as intuitive as one would hope. For instance, if I select the icon that looks like the sun, and is indeed designed for just that setting, why does the white balance still seem off in broad daylight? Anyways, I'm confused about all this newfangled technology now, but I'm going to go brush up and hopefully report less confusion tomorrow.

Several of the test photos I've been taking have been of fantastically boring things like tea cozies and walls. I have, however, actually taken some “real” photos. I took this portrait of Amie for instance:

The detail is excellent for a stock lens! I'm quite happy with the camera. It is my understanding of the camera that I am none-too-pleased about.

P.S. - Today was another snow-day! We went outside and played for a while because everything was covered! Everything, that is, except the background of this picture. I'm still not entirely certain how that happened. Oh well.

Cement and/or Concrete

2009-02-27T08:42:00.000-08:00

With road stripes! I wanted to try my hand at tileable patterns again, so I made another simple texture:

I know it looks kind of like a stretched out equals sign, but when repeated the lines match up to make a double yellow line (no passing!). That's all for today, if you come back next week I promise that there won't be any patterns!

“A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.”
-Mitch Ratliffe

Easter Plaid

2009-02-26T07:19:00.001-08:00

Today I wanted to learn how to do a simple tileable plaid pattern. Tileable means that the image can be repeatedly placed next to itself without giving away exactly where the border is. I learned a few important things today – for instance, how truly difficult plaid patterns can be.

I mean, they're an art form. They're more an idea, a perfect form floating in the ether that I can only grasp at and form dim shadows in reality. I think Plato would know what I'm talking about. I used a shirt I have to “inspire” my design and it was still difficult to get a decent looking pattern going. Here is what I ended up with:

And it works! I filled up my whole screen with that repeating pattern. I'm happy. Not bad at all.

I want my Easter Dress to look like this.

j/k

Killer Tomato

2009-02-25T09:24:00.001-08:00

I remember being a kid when Return of the Killer Tomatoes came out. All the kids I knew were excited about seeing the movie. I didn't get to. I thought, until this morning, that this was because the movie was rated “R”. I found out this morning that it was only rated "PG" and now I know why I couldn't see it as a youngster: my parents had good taste. Oddly, after watching a few clips, I almost wouldn't mind watching it now for laughs.

All of this came rushing back to me after I had done this morning's image. I have no idea why I originally wanted to make a tomato with a face on it. But I did. And here it is:

(Eyes and teeth courtesy of Mark)

I'm feeling rather goofy this week. Could you tell? I learned a few important things today trying to make this image work. First of all, eyes need that little shine in the middle of the pupil to look like eyes. I had been taking it out for whatever reason before and it just doesn't look natural. Today, in fact, I had to go back and actually draw the eye shine in because I had edited it out at the beginning of the project. Oh well. That helped a lot with the eyes and I'm mostly pleased with the results. I didn't get to spend a lot of time on the mouth/teeth. In the future I think it would be better to include the lips in the picture. Kind of like they do on Conan O'Brian when they “interview” somebody they could never actually get in real-life. Those always make me laugh.

Anyways, I had fun today and I hope you do too.

HADOKEN!

2009-02-24T07:41:00.001-08:00

So Street Fighter IV came out last week. I don't really play fighting games, but Mark insisted that I get my chops up so that we can play. He's been schooling me. He has something ridiculous like ten years of fighting games under his belt and an insane knowledge of all the technical details of the game. Cue sarcastic Mark voice: “Well, you see, I used a lighter punch so mine registered first because it has priority over the button you were pressing and then I simply cued up a triple awesome combo of death and despair.” He says something very similar to that every time.

Despite all these things I'm enjoying the game. It isn't pushing the boundaries of video game graphics, but it is artistically stylish and I think the playful art style makes it a little more enjoyable. All of that is to say that for the past week I've spent a not insignificant amount of couch time working on my Hadoken (quarter-circle forward punch). Today I went outside in the ole back yard and tried it out in real life. See?

Well that was fun, wasn't it?

[I need to start thinking of these posts a little more in advance so I can use pictures of OTHER people. I mean, you can only work on pictures of yourself so much before you worry you're a narcissist.]

Watchmen

2009-02-23T08:12:00.001-08:00

I can't wait for this movie to come out! I have no idea how it could ever be as good as the graphic novel, but I'm excited nonetheless. Rorschach is one of the most psychologically interesting, realistic and violent “heroes” ever conceived. Who would have imagined that a thought experiment about the psychological profiles of “super-heroes” and the ramifications their presence in the real world would be so blasted good? Alan Moore I guess. But I digress...

I wanted to try out some effects that I could use on text today. So I chose the word Watchmen and tried a few ideas. This is actually my favourite of the lot:

I learned some cool stuff about polar coordinates and whatnot, but I'm not terribly thrilled with the results. I'll have to do something a little more fun tomorrow.

You may have noticed that there was no post on Saturday. Well, the day was booked solid. Amie and I had a great day and when we finally got home at night doing a blog entry seemed out of the question. So I didn't post one. Furthermore, I have decided that I should take off Saturdays as well as Sundays. Amie is busy all day at work on Sunday and Saturday is one of the few days we can spend completely together (if we choose to). Not to mention she is mildly jealous of how much time and effort goes into this silly thing. (An hour or two each day)

So The Creative Year Project is now officially taking the weekends off. I'm not giving up my New Year's Resolution, but I am changing it a little.

This newly modified schedule will not affect tomorrow. I'll see you then.

Happy Little Hut

2009-02-20T08:58:00.000-08:00

There is a house near where we live that looks very much like a castle. This is one of the outlying buildings of that vast province in a field that we drive past almost every day. I like it. It seems a terribly happy little structure. A happy little hut. Look at him and be filled with adoration:

This is the last of the hard drive series for now. Amie's photographs were great and very fun to work with. I also owe you a story about something that happened to me last week.

I work at an Afterschool Program when I'm not busy being awesome. On days when the weather is really nice we take all the kids outside to play. We just moved into a new building in a shopping center and the only wide open space we have is the loading dock area in the back. So we set boundaries and let the kids run wild.

Because this area is actually a loading dock and located near a residential area, we get a lot of cars driving behind the building. So occasionally we yell for all the kids to FREEZE while a car drives by. Pretty standard.

In our same building a few spaces down is a little cafe that has great pizza and sandwiches and apparently delivers also. Well, on this particular day I noticed what I believe to be a Red Ford Festiva driving through the loading dock and I had all the children freeze. I knew this car. It belonged to one of the guys who worked at the aforementioned cafe and occasionally did deliveries. As the car was driving by I noticed a balloon in the passenger side seat fluttering in the wind. Just when the car was passing by me the balloon emerged from the car and drifted lazily for a moment before slowly ascending into the air.

The car drove on. For a moment. Then stopped. About fifty feet away. The balloon continued to rise. I swear all of this happened in slow motion. Realizing the plight of the young lad trapped inside his vehicle so far away I immediately sprang into action. I ran forward leaping into the air and made a desperate grab at the balloon. I must have been twelve feet in the air … moving with grace and beauty ... Like a Harlem Globetrotter … or that Michael Jordan logo. It was an unspeakably epic moment.

A second later I landed on the ground with the balloon in my hand. The pizza delivery guy thrust his arm outside his window, fingers bent in metal horns as he loudly exclaimed, “YOU RULE MAN!”. He got out of his car, ran towards me and told me, once again, that I ruled as I handed him the balloon. Did I mention that all the kids were cheering? 'Cause they were.

It's all like I said: unspeakably epic.

P.S. - it was a fancy balloon.

Cemetery

2009-02-19T07:53:00.001-08:00

Amie loves this cemetery. Not in a creepy way. It just looks pretty. Much like how the word “sepulcher” itself sounds mysterious and full of romance, yet describes something far more macabre and stigmatized. Or something like that.

I'm going to, yet again, bore you with a before and after picture. Because I found this to be far more challenging than I was expecting it to be. Here is the original photograph that Amie took as I found it on the Hard Drive:

The sky is very bright and the foreground is very dim with little contrast. I was hoping that a dab of brightness would correct the whole thing, but I was mistaken. I had to work with two separate parts here: the sky and the ground. So I divided the picture into two parts and edited them separately and then merged them together (Actually, that's not technically what I did, but it's the easiest way to explain it. I used layers and layer masks, but I won't get into all of that...). This was especially tough to do with all the tree branches. Many of which were not in focus. Ugh! Here is how it all turned out:

If you look closely around the branches you can tell that something is up with the color of the sky around them. That bothers me somewhat. But this was taken on a point-and-shoot digital camera in poor-lighting conditions, and by-golly I like the picture and did the best I could (within a reasonable amount of time)!

I'm sorry if I bored you with too much “technical-talk”. If you come back tomorrow I'll tell you a story of something awesome that happened to me last week...

To add a touch of honesty: I just now learned that the word is spelled cemetery and not cemetary. I may have known that before, but forgotten. I think it might be because I didn't read R.L. Stein novels - which I think was a good move on my part.

Sunset

2009-02-18T08:17:00.001-08:00

Amie took this picture in a Bi-Lo Parking lot. The original looks kind of sepia-toned because of the lighting conditions and whatnot. So I experimented with colorizing. I've fooled around with colorizing black and white pictures before, but only to learn the principles. Here is my first full attempt at applying those very principles:

I have to go prepare for an evening of gaming. Mark is planning on schooling me at Street Fighter IV tonight. Great.

Leafy House

2009-02-17T08:52:00.000-08:00

Shortly after Amie and I were married we went on a vacation to Savannah Georgia and St. Simon's Island. The digital camera was new and we both were using it a lot. I remember standing at this house. I remember Amie loving it. I remember taking this picture. Amie does too. So there is some contest over who originally took it. Either way, this house is awesome!

I made some color corrections and fixed the lens distortion.

...and I took this picture...

Foggy Day

2009-02-16T07:51:00.001-08:00

When we got married Amie and I bought a digital camera. It was primarily for her because she wanted a point and shoot that she could take anywhere with her. I was content with my film SLR. Our first Christmas together I got her, among other things, an external Hard Drive for her to store all of her pictures on. She didn't use it for a year. She's continued storing all of her pictures on her computer at work. So last week I finally got around to going over and pulling all her pictures onto the external Hard Drive and bringing them home. Basically I'm getting to see thousands of pictures for the first time. It's like Christmas in February!

So this week I'm going to be working with pictures that I've found. They will mostly be “Landscape” type pictures because I don't really work with those types of pictures much. Amie took this picture on a foggy day when we lived in our old apartment building and I've added my touch of visual flare to it:

I love highly stylized colors and effects. I can't help it.

Go forth and prosper.

Happy Valentine's!

2009-02-14T08:09:00.000-08:00

Poetry Saturday. On Valentine's Day. Imagine that. I've been feeling very un-poetic lately. I haven't been reading any great literature lately. Textbooks, tutorials, forums and other things of that lot. They're all terribly prosaic. And since that's all I've been reading, I've become terribly prosaic too. The gift of ornamented speech has abandoned me of late. And I wrote a love poem of sorts today, so brace yourselves:

It's true that I love you, but why?

I thought, at first, that it was
Your unusual cheerfulness
Or how quickly you label each day
The best day of your life
Or the manner in which you speak –
Incorrectly
And with the addition of many vowels
Or the way you gesture
With giant sweeping motions
Your belief in the goodness of man
And your refusal to lock doors
Or maybe your patience
Which is amazing
But surely and simply I know
Why I love you more than all others:
You always make me smile.

There you have it. It's for Amie obviously. If you know her well, I believe you will understand. I called it a poem, but it's more a list or a simple letter.

I got her Pop-Tarts for Valentine's Day. It's all she wanted. I have the best wife ever.

Evil Egret

2009-02-13T10:25:00.000-08:00

Happy Friday the Thirteenth! Here is an uncharacteristically creepy image:

I don't know why – I just couldn't resist. I want to get back to music Fridays soon – but I need to find and re-install the driver for my keyboard first. It's not available on the interwebs anywhere, so I am unwillingly thrust back into the dark ages of having to locate a physical disk. Tragedy of tragedies. But my trusty GIMP is always working!

The picture of this egret came from PDPhoto. I made him look rather more evil with some clever photo-editing tricks. Then I added a suitably grungy background and added the blood splatter. I picked up a few pointers on the latter from here.

Try and stay alive through this cursed day. I personally hope to make it to Valentine's Day. (Amie is going to buy me a McGriddle!)

I love you.

2009-02-12T07:09:00.001-08:00

You know those greeting cards with dogs on them with the big eyes? That look like all they did was take a stock photo of a dog and use one of those “goo-filters” to make his eyes bigger and THAT'S IT?! The ones with no writing inside and involved almost no effort to create and, despite all this, they seem to have grown wildly popular and are available at every store with greeting cards that I have seen in the past year? Yes. Those ones. I hate them with a burning violent passion. Mostly because I didn't think of the idea first. I mean, those people are rolling in money (at least they are in my head) and their product involved almost no effort. Minimal effort lead to maximum result.

Well I made one of those today. Kind of. Because, for one thing, I went above and beyond and included some actual text! Oh yes, I have one-upped them at their own game! Though I confess my photo was of a rather lower quality. Oppie wouldn't sit still outside. I managed to get this picture inside (bad lighting) and he still isn't quite looking at me. Jerk. I also rushed the image a little. Can you tell? Yes. Oh dear. I thought so.

So this is for all you lovers out there:

Happy Valentine's Day!

...Oppie sends his love too.

Amie Silhouette

2009-02-11T07:22:00.000-08:00

Amie has been getting a lot of face-time on my blog lately – and today I'm serving up more of the same. She took this picture a few months ago:

It's pretty cool. She found a “hidden” field near our house and was playing there when she took this picture. She set the camera to auto and, if you look closely, she didn't quite make it in time to turn around and pose. But I think that makes the image. Her head is bent ever so slightly and her arms are just right for the overall image. I love that she can take brilliant shots without trying – even when she “messes up” they turn out good! I don't do silhouettes a lot, so today I branched out and worked on this image. It wasn't terribly bad to start with, it needed a touch of contrast for sure and that airplane in the sky behind her head could go, but that was really about it. After that I tried a few new things. I added in the sun rays to up the coolness factor of the image and then lightened up the grass a bit because the overall contrast adjustment left it too dark. I also darkened up the trees a bit to strengthen the silhouette feel of the picture. Here's how it all turned out:

I think I like it, but I may need to work on that sunset effect a little more. For that effect, I used the techniques that I found here. But perhaps I should have expected that it would go a little “over the top” since it isn't your average subtle photo enhancement.

...and that's how the cookie crumbles.

It's a Splash-Banner!

2009-02-10T06:23:00.001-08:00

I've got a list of ideas for this creative endeavor, but for various reasons I have to put them on hold. So in the meantime I'm doing some tutorials and learn some new techniques – which is a good thing anyway. Today I found a fairly simple tutorial about creating splash pages (you know – that little box that pops up when you're loading a program or something). I pretty much followed this one step by step because I liked the basic design. I learned about a few features in the GIMP that I had never paid any attention to. Here's how my splash page/banner turned out:

I know. “A Daniel Berryhill Production.” Pretty cocky, right? Ah well. I'm not developing software, and this is pretty much my main website at the moment, so what else would I have done it about?

… aaaaand scene!

Crazy Eye Art

2009-02-09T06:23:00.001-08:00

I just wanted to try some stuff. There isn't any kind of philosophical or religious context to this image. I took a close-up picture of Amie's eye and ran with it. I did decide to use the leaf because, well, Amie likes leaves and it lends a very organic feel to the picture that I feel is in keeping with Amie's love of all things organic (save for pets...which I never have understood).

In order to give this post some length, here is a joke in line with Amie's way of thinking (I think):

“Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.”
-Bill Vaughan

Cue Crazy Eye Art:

Aside from my original photo, there are four other picture in there: the leaf and the sky came from PDPhoto.org, the stars in the eye came from NASA and the paper in the lower right hand corner (I couldn't resist – I was even trying to get away from paper this week...) came from the same place I've been getting my papers from.

In other news: Skiing this weekend was awesome. The snow was unusually nice considering that by the end of the day the temperature was roughly sixty degrees. There were shirtless guys and sports bra girls. It was bizarre. I expect this type of thing when skiing in North Carolina – but usually closer to Spring. I saw some spectacular wipe-outs thanks to a slalom training course set up on the mountain and even managed a few awesome spills myself later in the afternoon when I was trying to do some fantastically stupid things.

Over and out.

Edit: I came back to my favourite old stomping-grounds today: the GIMP! Also, the idea for this post came from this tutorial. I liked the basic idea and I even learned a little about simulating brush strokes using paths.

Amie Desktop

2009-02-07T05:01:00.000-08:00

I am repeating two ideas today: (1) creating a wallpaper that I can use on my desktop and (2) Using the picture of Amie that I took the other day (January 29th to be exact) of Amie in the Red Coat holding an umbrella. This is the image I should have come up with that day:

I found some awesome Free Photoshop Brushes online that I downloaded and successfully used (Brief Aside: Photoshop Brushes work in the GIMP as well). I really like this one. I think it's my favourite creative work yet (on this blog anyway). So if you love old paper, great swaths of color and my awesome wife (or just her picture...) - feel free to use this on your desktop as well. (I don't have a widescreen monitor)

I'm also going skiing today. Right now in fact. That last sentence actually made me late. That one too. Zut! I'm off!

Best Friends Forever

2009-02-06T07:15:00.001-08:00

Let me tell you about Poodles. More specifically, let me tell you about my father and poodles. My father, you see, spent some segment of his life living next to a woman who boarded poodles. I'll never know what this woman was thinking, but I have heard my father's opinion on the subject of these creatures several times. They're yippy little mothers with scarcely the right to live. He often remarks, “They bark their little heads off like they could tear you limb from limb, but I could squeeze the life out of one with my bare hands.” Okay, he doesn't quite say that – but very close.

I have carried my father's loathing of poodles throughout this life of mine. This past week I have had to endure a poodle who, as fate would have it, is boarding at our house. I have been calling him Fitzwilliam. Unfortunately, he is actually a she. Which is fine by me. I get no end of pleasure from barking “FITZWILLIAM!” each time I need the dog to do something and I can only hope that I am instilling within the little thing an identity crisis that it will carry to it's miserable little grave. Wretched beast.

I'm kidding. Fitzwilliam is actually rather tolerable. And s/he might not even actually be a poodle – though surely some remarkably similar breed. Either way, I had gotten the idea of a Poodle and Rhinoceros together several days ago when Fitzwilliam was barking his or her head off. At the time the illustration was conceived it was going to be far more gruesome than this. But today, when I sat down to my computer, I remembered that I want to try my hand at “cute” illustrations – so I made the necessary adjustments and wound up with the following image:

Again, I am displeased! Gray and white! What was I thinking. I live for color! Oh well. Poor planning on my part. Perhaps tomorrow I can draw some cute multi-colored barf to get out of this rut. I just might. You wait and see! (I probably won't)

Tap Dancing Ant

2009-02-05T07:17:00.001-08:00

I do apologize for the deluge of illustrations lately. But you really should have seen it coming. With the arrival of the graphics tablet and all. Fortunately, the tablet is also useful for other things as well – like photo editing (ah yes – my first love of the graphic arts...) and gaming.

Yes, I said gaming. There is a game out called Crayon Physics Deluxe for the PC and iPhone. It is absolutely smashing and you (along with every friend you have ever made in your life) should check it out (there's a free demo available). Or at least watch a video about it. Anyways, the game centers around drawing things and seeing how they react with gravity and whatnot. You can build contraptions and all kinds of stuff. It really is incredible. And very fun to play with a graphics tablet. Probably with a mouse too. You'll just have to find out for yourself.

But I digress. I drew an ant today. A tap-dancing ant:

I don't think he's as cute as the mouse, but that's probably because he's colored in muted colors. The hat, cane, wink and jigging middle arms were supposed to push him into adorable territory, but I fear that I have missed my mark today. He is merely fanciful.

Mr. Mousey

2009-02-04T07:55:00.000-08:00

Fact: I love rodents. A lot actually. It's probably not healthy how much I like them. I would have definitely died from the plague is all I'm saying. So today I drew a rodent. I tried to make him cute:

I've been wanting to draw “cute” things lately and I'll tell you why: Scott Campbell and Pixar. They both have a knack for making unspeakably awful things cute. Scott Campbell, for instance, has done a whole series on Adorable Monsters and Pixar made even the lowly cockroach lovable in Wall-E. I am amazed. So I've been trying to draw more cutely lately. We'll see if that holds up. Plus I'm still in love with my new Wacom tablet.

Reasons why I think my mouse is cute:
He's shaped like an eggplant (or maybe a pear)
He has no legs
He has a fuzzy white belly
He has tiny hands
His expression is slightly quizzical

Yes. I like him. I hope you do too.

Mr. Happy Flower Head

2009-02-03T06:31:00.001-08:00

Some days I just don't have a lot to say. Which is fine really – because the focus of this blog isn't necessarily on the writing. But a silly part of me worries that the void that would be filled by my very words is instead filled by awkward silence. Or white space. Or whatever the background color on this little sucker is. So today I'm going to recount a few (Religious) jokes that I like. I hope you like them too:

I admire the Pope. I have a lot of respect for anyone who can tour without an album. [Rita Rudner]

When I was growing up my mother wanted me to be a priest, but I think it's a tough occupation. Can you imagine giving up your sex life and once a week people come in and tell you the highlights of theirs? [Tom Dreesen]

I was recently born again. I must admit it's a glorious and wonderful experience. I can't say my mother enjoyed it a whole lot. [John Wing]

Either heaven or hell will have continuous background music. Which one you think it will be tells a lot about you. [Bill Vaughan]

Billy Graham has described heaven as a family reunion that never ends. What must hell be like? Home videos of the same reunion. [Barry Steiger]

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. So I ran over and said, “Stop! Don't do it! There's so much to live for!” He said, “Like what?” I said, “Well, are you religious or atheist?” “Religious.” I said, “Me too!” Are you a Christian or Buddhist?” “Christian.” I said, “Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?” “Protestant.” I said, “Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?” “Baptist.” I said, “Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?” “Baptist Church of God.” I said, “Me too! Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?” “Reformed Baptist Church of God.” I said, “Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?” He said, “Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915.” I said, “Die, heretic scum,” and pushed him off. [Emo Phillips]

Whoa. I got a little carried away there. Hopefully you thought that at least one of those was funny. I feel obligated to mention that those all came out of the religion section of a certain joke book I own. I recommend owning a joke book. It can cheer you up and serve as filler material for an otherwise ordinary blog entry. Speaking of blog entries, here is today's image:

I am still on a smiley-face kick. But I'm getting more used to my graphics tablet. I kind of sketched this one in, like I would normally do on paper. That's just how I roll: a bunch of short quick strokes.

So there you have it. Go forth and be happy.

Dramatic Super Hero Pose

2009-02-02T06:27:00.001-08:00

I love my Wacom tablet! It certainly takes some getting used to (I'm still working on that), as you will soon see. I have now done two illustrations completely on my computer. The first is fantastically silly. And bad. I wasn't going to show it, but I think in the interest of full disclosure (and a good laugh) I'm going to anyway. I can't remember the last time I sat down and drew something. In grade school I went to a magnet school for visual arts. I was chosen. I felt very special. But when my family moved away from Virginia Beach, I lost touch with all that. So after I ordered my Wacom I went out and bought two drawing books from a used book store. They were both about drawing super heroes. They were the only books I liked. I didn't learn a whole lot in terms of “how to draw”, but I did introduce myself to the influence of two different comic artists. All of that is to say that when you look at today's image, it is a strange amalgamation of at least three styles. See?

So there you have it. The first image I made on my graphics tablet. I drew this pose, by the way, because it is a combination of all the silly stereotypical action poses that I remember from the comics I grew up reading. I also departed from my beloved GIMP graphics program for this picture and used the Adobe Photoshop Elements that came bundled with my tablet. It's pretty cool and the software is designed to handle the tablet a little better than the GIMP. It hurts me a little bit to admit that. Drat.

Finally, I found a website with free texture downloads. There are a bunch of images on there – including old paper. I love the look of drawing over these images, so you may be seeing a bit of them in the future. Please come back tomorrow. No super heroes. I promise.

Textured Smiley Face

2009-01-31T05:31:00.001-08:00

My Wacom Bamboo Fun (Graphics Tablet) got here last night. I thought that I was prepared for the shear mind-shattering awesomeness of the thing. I was not. Not even close. It has so far exceeded my expectations that I can't help but be delighted with my purchase. And I do mean “delighted” - I'm not just throwing that word around here. So between that arriving, my playing with it into the wee hours of the morning and my all-day birthday extravaganza with family and friends I am not posting a poem today. No, instead I am posting a picture that is a graphical representation of my unbridled happiness:

I actually did use the pen to make this image. But that was just while I was getting used to the thing. I look forward to better things. It was also before I had installed the software and drivers. The thing works right out of the box if you plug it into your computer. But not really all that great (it was initially met with a lukewarm reception – I was still happy, though somewhat disappointed). After I installed the drivers it improved dramatically. I can't even begin to explain all the ins-and-outs of the thing. Not to mention that it came with some pretty good graphics software like Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 and Corel Painter Essentials 3. I look forward to toying with both.

I might make today's image my new profile picture. I like him. And he's a square to boot! It makes perfect sense!

I should also mention that the idea for this particular brand of smiley face came from my happysun wall clock designed by one of my favourite illustrators: Dan Paladin.

Tried and True Punk Chords

2009-01-30T06:54:00.000-08:00

Hey guys. Today is my birthday. So I've got a simple punk guitar loop for you today. It goes: I ii IV V. Man, I bet nobody has ever thought to use that … unless, of course, you're counting every punk band EVER! But don't worry, I kind of added a little pause in the third beat of the second measure. I'm pretty sure Paramore already did the same thing way better anyway. But I'm a little fuzzy. Here it is (repeated four times because that's what I do...):

CreativeYear05 by FURIOU5 D

Let me go ahead and tell you about those guitar strings. They are beyond dead! They are the zombies of the stringed instrument world. They are flat in every sense of the world. In terms of intonation and just sound in general. No life left in them. I'm going to have to fix that before long. But will I let that get me down today? NO! Because it's my birthday! If you'll excuse me I have to go make merry now. Good day to you all!

The Redcoats Are Coming!

2009-01-29T09:39:00.000-08:00

Amie makes her first official appearance on my blog today. She had the day off and was kind enough to let me dress her how I wanted to and photograph her. All of it PG. I've had an image stuck in my head for a while now involving this ensemble. Today I didn't quite get exactly the one I was after, but I did get something that I liked anyway:

I like highly stylized colors when I feel that the picture warrants it. I pushed the envelope pretty far on this one, and I even admit I may have just barely crossed a few unspoken art lines, but I'm just here to have fun and try some new stuff.

Today there are actually two entries because I couldn't make up my mind regarding background color and the presence or absence of the shadow. Amie was a big fan of the shadow. It was actually kind of her idea to take a picture that involved a shadow. Since we were in grass I repainted it on another layer, but the idea counts as hers. Also, since we were in grass I kind of had to draw her shoes … so if her right foot looks a little “chubby” … well, that's all my fault. So decide for yourself which image you like more (thought they are both based, ultimately, on the same material). For myself, I prefer the white image, no shadow, cropped tall and thin.

THE STRIKING CONCLUSION!!!

2009-01-28T08:24:00.000-08:00

Oh yes my dear friends. Today marks the release of the final image from the Ten Dollar Challenge Series. Not only did I buy several toy cars at the Dollar Store – I also bought one monster truck! A brilliant move on my part if you ask me. That way I could stage a fake miniature truck rally like so:

And thus the series ends with a sense of begrudging obligation on my part. I shan't go diving headlong into series or cooking up little challenges for myself anytime soon. But all is not for naught! I learned a lot about my beloved GIMP and managed to try several silly things that I wouldn't have under “normal” circumstances. And on these notes I hastily bid you adieu!

Think More Different.

2009-01-27T10:24:00.001-08:00

Consider this the official unveiling of my new software company: Pear Computer Corporation. Oh yes, we aim for a total fruit domination of the software and computer markets. We aim at producing the trendiest high-tech gadgetry on the market, packaging it in inconceivably awesome ways, having smashing commercials and gaining the support of artists everywhere. We will be known for simplicity, a lack of viruses and real plug and play capability. Did I mention we would be very trendy? Because we will be. And to prove how serious I am I even made this wallpaper today:

The heads of grammarians are everywhere exploding.

You may have guessed by now that I was joking. Good for you. I did a quick sketch of this idea about a month ago and thought I should give it a go. It may not have the professional polish of an authentic wallpaper from some notably trendy company. But it at least gives the impression. And now I can use a wallpaper on my computer that I designed.

I made the whole thing from scratch. The pear I did completely by myself. I'm somewhat proud of that. Regarding the Mac-like background swooshes, I received a few pointers from this tutorial. And finally, in other news, my Wacom Bamboo Fun shipped yesterday! I can scarcely contain my glee!

The Peach Bandit

2009-01-26T06:56:00.001-08:00

To my mind the peach is the most ruthless of all the fruits. I mean, look at it – it has a beard! He is absolutely the rough-and-tumble sort of guy who grew up accidentally hurting all of his friends on the playground until finally, lonely an estranged, he turned to a life of crime. A sad story really. So when I had the idea to do a series of super-heroes and villains based on fruits and vegetables, the peach being a baddie was a no-brainer. I should mention that I'm a little burnt out on series right now so rather than present several at once (as series are supposed to be run), I hope to litter my blog occasionally with them.

I composed today's image in a program that I am rather unfamiliar with: Inkscape. I've used it only a few times before in a manner that can best be described as experimental. I fooled around with a few tools and tried to figure out the interface. This is the first real “picture” I've ever made using the program:

Before I get to the boring stuff, I should mention that, at Amie's request, I have now enabled anonymous comments. So if you are anonymous and you'd like to leave a comment – then, by all means, go ahead! You will find no further obstacles here.

A Few Concluding Notes on Inkscape: I've seen some incredible work come out of this program and I'm very excited to begin using it. It is an Open Source vector-graphics program. To clarify those terms: “Open Source” means it is absolutely free and developed by a team of dedicated people as a labor of love. “Vector Graphics” are different from most drawing programs in that they do not record the color of specific pixels in order to form an image. Instead, they record information regarding lines, shapes, colors, etc. so that you can always come back to any part of the image, click on it, and edit its original components. This is cool for several reasons. First, you know how when you shrink an image down really small you can lose a lot of detail and the image might become fuzzy? Well, not so with vector graphics! All the shapes and lines are simply made smaller while maintaining their original clarity. Inkscape uses the .svg file extension (you should pronounce that “savage” because that's how all the cool people are saying it). Right now the only major vector-graphics program is controlled by a small company called “Adobe” who charges a ridiculous amount of money for their products. That program is called “Flash” (yes, the one your browser needs to visit all the cool sites on the interwebs) that was originally developed by Macromedia before it was absorbed into the Adobe colossus. The .svg protocol is getting more and more popular and is now supported by several browser types. So help fight the man by using Inkscape and supporting the .svg file type! (Because this blog only takes regular image formats you won't see the awesome scaling capabilities here...)

Sorry for the open-source rant. I love you all. Including you Mr. Anonymous. I believe my actions today have proven that.

I Knew This Day Would Come ...

2009-01-24T16:07:00.000-08:00

This morning I was so excited about my Wacom tablet coming that I started preparing my computer for it's arrival. I know how silly that sounds; but I can't help it. I've had a great desktop for two years that I haven't used nearly as much as I should have. It's still a powerful machine because I went overboard at the time of purchase and got something ridiculously expensive. So all it really needs now is a little TLC. Today I finally cleaned out all the junk that comes pre-installed on a computer that you don't really need. Like dial-up provider shortcuts and whatnot. Who needs that? Probably not you you savvy web-browser. I cleaned my registry, updated my virus definitions and finally downloaded Service Pack 3 for Windows XP. Yeah, I'm that far behind. I got rid of all the programs I don't want and downloaded the ones I do. It felt very productive. Plus, now my desktop look strangely organized and efficient. The virtual desktop that is – my actual desktop is, naturally, still covered in myriad papers and assorted artifacts. Apologies for the nerd talk – but that's how I spent my morning.

Then I went to the Martial Arts academy where I work. Today we had our “Kick the New Year into Gear” event. Three hours of cardio! Yoga, Forza, Budokan, Kickboxing, Plyometrics and Tai Chi. It was awesome! But now I'm so very tired and feeling so very non-creative. Amie, who participated in the event as well, also just wants to watch a movie and relax. The only problem lies in this bugger of a New Year's Resolution.

But fear not! I am, indeed, going to keep it. Only today I am going to finally fall back on the “quick and dirty haiku” referenced in the description at the top of this blog. So here goes:

creativity
with but so little effort
has another name.

So there. I've hit rock bottom. Anything else is better than this – and it just so happens that “anything else” is exactly what I'm cooking up for Monday. Hope to see you then!

Synth Bass

2009-01-23T06:05:00.000-08:00

So the Ten Dollar Challenge is soon coming to an end. Part of me is sad to see it go, but the overwhelming majority of me wants to trip it on the way past and enjoy a good hearty laugh at its expense. I believe the idea is solid. My timing and execution were not. The most unfortunate item I managed to pick up was a recorder. Yes, like the kind you learn to play in grade school. I thought it would be terribly clever of me to use the recorder on one of my music Fridays – thus tying the whole shebang together. I wanted to create poetry from a Dollar Store book (and I feel I succeeded), why shouldn't I create music on a Dollar Store instrument. Well let me tell you. The thing is ridiculously out of tune. As in unplayable. It certainly won't be used for making music of any type. I had a shadow of a fear crouching in my mind at the time of purchase that something like this might happen, but I dismissed the thought. Surely the simple science of crafting recorders is so well documented that any reasonably well-informed manufacturer could produce a recorder with properly measured pitch-holes. It's simple physics really. Apparently, I was the one who was misinformed.

Now I feel as though I'm in an odd spot. I want to complete the Ten Dollar Challenge officially – but can I do that without proof that I did, at least, try to create music with the blasted recorder. Surely I could post some of that wretched banshee music, but I assure you neither of us wants it to come to that. And photoshopping seems out of the question – it's so dreadfully boring to behold (or should I only consider that part of the challenge?). Or I could burn the thing – which is what I really want to do. I could video-tape it. Throw in lots of artsy pans and fade-ins and outs. Maybe throw in some negative color effects so it looks like I just discovered filters and effects for the first time ever in my life. Oh yes, that might just come to fruition. That instrument needs to be burned so very badly.

So after I failed (in the most spectacular manner possible) at that I decided to record a bass riff. I played it first on my bass, but decided I wanted to try a synth sound to see what happened. Normally I like only “natural” instruments. Maybe some nice synth pads to fill out the sound – but for the most part I want drums, guitar, piano, bass, etc. So I thought I'd try and overcome my prejudice. I cued up an interesting bass sound and ran it through an effect I've been working on in Reason using the Combinator (all of that is just a fancy way of saying “I'm using a bunch of signal processors that I've hooked up in a specific way” [come to think of it – that probably didn't clear up anything for anybody who is not familiar with Reason]). So today's music sounds a little dirty. A little unpolished. A little out of the ordinary for me. But I like it. It goes well with the drum loop from last week. I guess you'll just have to trust me on that one. I'm looking down the road here. In theory it also meshes with the guitar riff from the very first week – but the frequencies clash, so I'll have to worry about that later. Enough babble! Here it is:

CreativeYear04 by FURIOU5 D

Two things to piggy-back on yesterday's post: (1) If you like graffiti you should head over to banksy.co.uk. It's just cool. And there's so much brilliance to look at. (2) I ordered a Wacom tablet last night. I got a Bamboo fun. Blue. Medium sized. I just peed my pants from excitement...again.

Circuit Board Graffiti

2009-01-22T06:58:00.000-08:00

Have you ever seen what I'm talking about? Graffiti that looks similar to a circuit board? I know I've mentioned the game Mirror's Edge before – but I'm going to do it again. Please forgive me. The art direction of the game is so … so … AWESOME! The main character in the game, along with her fellow runners, have these sweet looking tattoos painted all over their arms. Plus in the soon to be released map-pack these patterns apparently pop-up everywhere! See what I'm talking about? I've already peed my pants from excitement. Twice.

So I hope to soon be able to actually put some original artwork on this blog. But I'm primarily trying to work in the digital medium to build a portfolio and whatnot – so I am at a standstill for the moment. I plan on soon buying a lovely WACOM tablet, so that I can do more illustrative type things on the computer. But for today I decided to do an illustration that I could do with a mouse. So here it is:

I love these designs. I'm not quite yet good at them, but I feel I've got a good start. I figured out a trick today for rounding corners easily in the GIMP, which helped a lot for this piece. Maybe soon I'll try some more advanced graffiti-type images that seem like they would lend themselves well to computer graphics. Like the work of Delta - a graffiti artist from Amsterdam who is considered a pioneer of 3D graffiti. I first saw his work on the album art for Linkin Park's Meteora. He's awesomer than the awesomest possum ever. Remember that.

Mr. Fancy Pants

2009-01-21T06:22:00.000-08:00

One of the items I bought at the Dollar Store was a deck of cards (actually, two decks of cards). As you may recall, the selection was rather thin following so closely to Christmas and I did have to get ten things. I don't know what I was thinking at the time. Maybe a house of cards? Make the characters on the cards fight one another or, at least, appear in a scene together? I even went so far as to consider making the proverbial “suicide king” more closely resemble that appellation. Ultimately I did decide to use the King of Hearts; but for a far less macabre purpose. After looking at the face cards for long enough, I came up with this idea:

I'm happy with it because it makes me smile just a little (it's more of a smirk really) each time I see it. I haven't worked on a .gif animation in quite some time and even then I was only trying to get the hang of it. This required a lot more work than I had expected. By the time I had cleaned up the image and drawn in the parts that were covered up by the hands and everything I realized I should have just drawn a whole new card! But this is the Ten Dollar Challenge – so I suppose I needed to use the scanned image anyway for integrity's sake. [My favourtie part is the creepy smile I gave him and my least favourite part is how the eyebrow I gave him while he is winking.]

Retrospective Side Note: I failed entirely to mention the swearing in of our 44th president yesterday. This is mostly because I try to keep political and religious views out of this particular blog because those things are not the aim of my blogging. Though I wonder if I should mention important events as they happen. I think the inauguration of America's first black president is reasonably important, so I'm mentioning it. I noticed two things about Obama yesterday that I was entirely unaware of. They regard his oratory skills – which are immense. He gave an impressive speech – all of it, it seemed, from memory. He never glanced down. I couldn't do that in a thousand years. I couldn't give a one minute speech from memory. Aside from his impressive memory I noticed that his accent (at least while giving speeches) sometimes had the distinct drawl of a southerner. While he was on the campaign trail I was working at Starbucks with access to all the newspapers I wanted and I lived in an apartment with no cable. So I had never actually heard the man's voice before. Color me surprised. So today I hope he recovers well from those ten inauguration balls he attended last night and that his time in office is well spent.

See what I did there? I mentioned an important political event in our nation's history and you don't even know my political affiliation. Score one for vagueness.

An Absolute Fake

2009-01-20T08:35:00.001-08:00

To begin with: Yes, I know it's supposed to be spelled “Absolut.” Maybe that's part of the joke. Or maybe I was frightened that somebody would track me down and sue me for copyright infringement. Or maybe I just can't stand words that are clearly misspelled. Pick any reason you want. Any reason at all and you win!

In other news: Today is a snow day. Amie and I are thus relieved of work and will be spending the day frolicking about in whatever manner we see fit. On a weekday. So yay for that. I feel somewhat bad for throwing this image together without too much polish (especially after yesterday's “lightweight” entry), but not too bad. No, not bad enough to dampen my snow-day spirits.

I hope you have a good day too.

Mountain Trip

2009-01-19T05:30:00.000-08:00

This weekend I went on a trip to the mountains with a group of friends. I stayed in, what I believe to be, the most rustic cabin I have ever encountered in my life. When we arrived Amie immediately claimed the room with the fireplace in it as our own. Undoubtedly her intentions were pure. The charm of a fireplace! Who could resist? Well, allow me to reveal to you the true nature of the beast: this particular fireplace was designed sans flue. There was no bearskin rug (granted, Amie would have despised it if there were...), there were no late nights spent reading Byron, Shelley or Keats to one another while reclining with a glass of wine nor was there cozy snuggling in front of the fireplace. Oh no, dear friends, there was a room full of smoke and a freezing bitter cold. At night, the charm of the crackling fireplace is replaced by a gaping hole of wintry weather that seeps into your bones like death.

The moral of that story is: you can't judge a room by its fireplace. There are other fascinating tidbits about this cabin that would be lovely to explore in further detail (for instance, the placement of the shower on the outside of the house with a door that can be best described as saloon-style), but I fear that would give the wrong impression. For you see, we had a lovely time. Very lovely indeed. The cabin itself was, despite its quirks – nay, because of them, quite charming. The whole cabin was heated via one iron stove (and the aforementioned fireplace), something I haven't had the pleasure of seeing since my youth. So we all gathered together around whatever source of heat we could and spent some first-rate time together. Amie continued her campaign to introduce people to the game of Things: Humor in a Box and we all cooked for each other.

We spent a significant amount of time outside of the cabin as well. We explored a river or, more accurately, we hopped on rocks over the river while taunting hypothermia with questionable footings and a fantastically stupid love of breaking apart the ice to watch it float away downstream. We also went hiking in the traditional sense. The air was great. Crisp. With a slight snap of cold. Long story short: I enjoyed it.

I'm also rather tired. And I have to work all day today. So today's entry will branch from the Ten Dollar Challenge and simply be a display of photography (with minor photo-enhancements and editing) from the trip:

Final Introspective Detail: I noticed something that I do while walking. I look at the ground. A lot. An unusual amount. I find that I am too often so concerned with the path that I miss the grander picture – a point accented by my lovely surroundings this weekend. Without sounding too emotionally fluffy or anything, I would like to suggest that I do this a great deal. Even concerning life in general. I fear I may be a “detail person” more than I would like to admit. So chin up Daniel. Chin up.

Cheerio.