Intermediate Photoshop class

In class assignment. Using the pen tool to create a light saber. Is my inner star wars geek coming out? Yes, yes it is.

We are ninjas!

During one of the classes that I teach, we got a little silly shooting the images for their final photoshop project!

Camera Phone Photograph of the day.

Sometimes you just have to use your phone because the moment is just too fleeting. My wife called me on her way to work while I was at home with the little ones and told me there was an amazing sunrise happening just outside. Unfortunately all my camera gear was at work with the exception of my phone, a little 5 mp LG. So I grabbed it, but it kept overexposing the background (limited controls) so I changed the setting to sports and it did the trick. I think for a little camera phone it worked out fine.

Daily Photo 3/10/15

Ok when I said "daily" I didn't realize that it would be every day. Just trying to keep up. This shot is from the photoshop class that I am teaching. We are focusing on compositing so as an exercise the students had to take several photos of themselves and composite them into the same image. This obviously is not the composite, but one of the more successful images.

Daily: Snow

Daily Photos, this one was just shot outside of my house. It had snowed last night and there was a fair covering on the ground, and also on the trees. Since whenever I need ice or snow I usually have to create it, this was pretty fun. This was hand held Macro (don't recommend it unless you don't have anything else) so I had to have my lens wide open in order to get a fast enough shutter speed. As you can see my DOF was reduced to about half a centimeter. For this shot I used my Nikon D7000, with a 24-120 lens, and a 36 mm Zeikos lens extender, F6.3, SS 1/250, ISO 800.

Daily: Macro 10,000 hours

We just recently had a great guest speaker at Stevens-Henager College from Disney Interactive. His name was Geoff Shupe and he is a Senior Concept Artist. His presentation was amazing and was very relevant across the board, but especially to my art students. There were quite a few great take aways, simply because it was just so great. My biggest take away was a number, 10,000 hours. That is the number of hours you need to perfect your craft, to get where you need to be to have "arrived" with the exception that when you actually have "arrived" then you're dead in the water. It got me thinking about how much I need to keep working on my photography, so here goes. I'm going to attempt to do a photo journal, where I take at least one interesting photo every day. Here is Day One.

Dance Photography

Here are some images from a photo shoot I did for The Edge dance company in Logan Utah. Most of these dancers are the instructors and it was a cool chance to do some promotional pictures for their web and printed materials.

Animation Class

Recently at Stevens-Henager College we started offering a bachelors degree in web design, which built off of all the classes that were taught in the Associates Graphic Arts program. The new bachelors included a lot of coding classes, and quite a few additional graphic arts classes. One of those classes was Flash Animation. What was really great about the way the syllabus was written (which I had a part in) is that it allowed us to really taylor the course to the strengths of the students and to the software that was in vogue at the time. Since I already knew quite a bit about flash (not everything) I decided to use flash to teach some animation. Now this wasn't just basic animation with tweens, this was embedding animations within animations, and all that fun stuff.

The projects they had to do was to shape tween an eye blink, a flag wave, and then animate a walking sequence. My only regret is that we didn't have enough time to rig and animate a face. Anyway, here are some examples of the students' work.

This one is supposed to be me. My student Gabby did a quick illustration of me and then animated my eyes blinking.

I'm really happy with how this one turned out. Ian (my student) worked so hard to get it right. 

Des Moines

For work I travel around the country managing the photography for the Color Me Rad 5k fun run. On these trips I like to run the course the day before, mainly for the exercise, but also because I get to see some really cool places, and you just don't get that same experience driving in a car. On this day in Des Moines I was almost done with the run (I did a variation on it to log more miles) and the sun was just setting at the right time and it was perfect. The only thing though, was that I was a mile from my camera, and the sun had about 15 minutes before it set. I clocked the best mile I have ever run. It's amazing what a little motivation can do for your run.

Relative Existence Continued!

My body of work that I did for graduate school is entitled "Relative Existence" and it's kind of an interesting name and was suggested by one of the members of my graduate committee. I'm the kind of guy where I really don't like to name things and put labels on them, I just like to make art. Heck it was hard for me to name my kids. I guess these images are like kids, except it took a little less work to get them here (well not on my part, my wife does all the work with bringing the kids into the world, except for my small contribution).

 My artist statement regarding this was whittled down and re-examined multiple times (such is the life and toils of a grad student) and it wasn't until after I kind of snapped one day and finally wrote down what I was feeling about my work and avoided all the art speak crap, that I came up with something that actually meant something. It was eventually refined, and brought to a very concise and understandable few sentences, but I am looking at adding an addendum. 

 The artist statement I had for grad school worked for that time, and it felt complete and good at the time. But since then I have come to realize that an artist statement truly is a living, breathing document, and can be adjusted and added upon as the work progresses. Here is my original statement.

" The imagination is the tool of creation. Before something can exist physically, it must first be envisioned mentally, as an idea. Fantasy morphs into a reality and I am transported to a realm where I can walk along canyon floors and grapple peaks. I am forging these worlds…my primordial creation."

I liked it, but now it seems too concise. I want to say more, and I am starting to understand what I want to say. It's funny how grad school gets you started and it isn't until after grad school that you really start to make sense of what happened to you the past three years. I haven't quite figured out how I want to say the rest of it, but it kind of goes like this,

"Creation and science work hand in hand. One does not defeat the other. Creation defines the why, while science explains the how." That's really pretty rough but the gist of it is that I am a firm believer in God, but I am also a very practical human being and I look at the world scientifically. Science is fascinating, and Creation is inspiring. Then why can't the two work together? It's not a question of who is right and who is wrong, it's more about what is truth. My goal is to try and open up a dialogue between people of faith and the atheist community and let them discover common ground. There will be differences, obviously, but currently there is such an attitude of disrespect on both sides and it really bothers me. This is where my work stands now, by using myself as an example of creator and ultimate scientist when I create these worlds. Enjoy!

Food Photography

After I moved to Provo I thought that most of my contacts up in Logan would forget about me and find someone else. Turns out they still love me. I got a call from my friend Laura. She owns a company called Vivian's Live Again (formerly wheat free nutrition) and she needed some shots done of her products for her labels. Then after we did that she was so happy with my work that she invited me back to photograph more product and some recipes as well. She specializes in gluten free food and is also moving into Dairy free as well. It's really a cool business, and the food tastes great. So if you happen to be a non-dairy person, or if you have Celiacs, I highly recommend Vivian's Live again. Look at some of the photos and how appetizing this stuff is.

The one thing I am not really happy about is how much reflection is on the wood. Other than that I am pretty content.

Little Artsy Potato Shot. I highly recommend food stylists.

This is a photo, of a photo, of some food that I shot for some labels. Yes, I shot the photos for the labels. If you are in Cache Valley, you can find these at Lee's.

No I am not paying homage to Warhol, well kind of, but we needed a shot of a traditional label for her website. She's trying to educate people as well about Celiacs and what to look for on food labels.

For all of these I had the opportunity to work with a food stylist. It was Laura's brother Paul (I don't have his last name right now, but if you want it, I can pass it on to you). He made the day so much more productive. He's a chef who used to work at the Restaurant up Millcreek Canyon. Great guy and very talented. 

Working three jobs

So I have been pretty busy lately, mainly because my wife is in grad school and in order to support the family while she is otherwise occupied, I am a stay at home dad who works three jobs in his free time.

So you already knew that I taught Graphic Design at Stevens-Henager College, but I recently got another job designing sports apparel for a company called Fit Athletics (www.fituniforms.com), and another job photographing 5k fun runs for a company called flo-foto (www.flo-foto.com). I've had a great opportunity to expand my portfolio, meet some really amazing people, and travel all over the country. Below are some samples of my recent work.

Walking Dude animation.

That's what he is. I wanted to see if I could animate a dude walking (in Flash), and I did it. I learned a little bit when I did it. Of course it's not perfect, but when you're using inverse kinematics it's not exactly an exact science (at least it isn't for me yet). I took about a half hour and put this thing together (drawing it in Illustrator, setting it up in Flash, and animating). This is something I want to do a little bit more of in the future. I really like animation and it's something that I wanted to do when I was little. Kind of a dumb story but I decided not to go after it when I was a sophomore in my High School careers class. We looked up the salaries for the jobs we wanted to do and animators were like in the lower echelons of pay scale (like $10 an hour, it really sucked) and that changed my career path to, well nothing at the time.  But it wasn't animation which is sad because I really wanted to do it. I spent most of my younger years drawing all the disney characters, and, like any talent if you don't use it, I lost it, or at least most of it. I can still kind of do it. 

Anyway, the animation was just kind of an experiment, but I can do a lot of other things as well. Making someone walk is pretty difficult (well to make it look natural is difficult).  Since my focus before has been on photography, it's been a real learning curve working in graphic design (Oh I don't know if I said this before, but I am freelancing as a graphic artist). I mean I know all the principles and how they apply, and also all the software, but actually putting it into practice is something else completely. I have a huge respect for the full time graphic artists. It's hard work.

Here's another one I did. Most of these were done as examples for lectures in my classes, but it helps the students get the idea of what they are supposed to do.

The above video was just a quick one I did (in Flash) for Stevens-Henager College just to put on their video displays. We needed some recruiting videos for the graphic arts programs (everyone was going into medical specialties) so we made this one and it worked, the program grew.

Mountain Bike Photos

My students at the college are working on an advertising project. They decided to focus on a specific bike pedal that allows the rider to both clip in and use a platform. So in order to do that they needed some images to create their layouts. I brought in the photo gear and they art directed the photo shoot. It was pretty awesome and I think they did a good job. I'm excited to see how their final project comes together. 

Xtremeguard Promo Video

I haven't posted in a while because I have been so busy. As much as I wish I was busier with more work, it sure is fun to spend some time with the family. But when I made this video, I really was pretty swamped. I was teaching 4 graphics classes, as well as freelancing graphic art and photography. I was originally going to turn this down, but thanks to my wife she convinced me to do it. And because of that I could go out and buy a new bike. I didn't use all the money for it, just a little.
Some other fun news that has me stressing a little bit (just a bit) is that my wife was accepted into grad school, so we have to move. This means I have to leave my job teaching and follow her to pursue her passions, and I am totally cool with that, because she did the same thing when I wanted to do grad school. It was tough, and it probably will be tough at first but we are excited for this opportunity. Anyway, enjoy the video. I made it for a company called Xtremeguard. They make screen protectors for cell phones. Great company to work with and very accommodating.
www.xtremeguard.com

Dragging your shutter

Over the Holidays (which are still happening) I photographed a 50th wedding anniversary, and while I really like to do live events like that, there is inevitably some down time. During that down time where there are no pictures to take (I've photographed everyone in the room, the food, the decorations, even the building) my brain starts to think of different things I can do with my camera. This night I was thinking of Picasso's light paintings. So looking around I saw several Christmas trees that were just sitting there with tons of Christmas lights on them and I thought, What the heck. So I set my exposure to 5 seconds, focused, and then moved my camera in fluid motions, thus creating light paths from the Christmas lights. Here is the result.

Frozen Macro Landscape Photography

Yep you read right. FROZEN. This took a few days of prep work to get everything set, plus a quick run to the grocery store to get some dry ice. First I had to get a bowl (I know real scientific) and fill it with some sand so that my "Trees" would stand up while they froze. I "planted" the trees and then filled the rest of the bowl with water and set it in the freezer to, well freeze. After it had solidified a little bit I went back with a spray bottle and misted more water on the trees and on top of the already frozen water to create some texture.

After that I used some dry ice to create the blowing snow effect. I think it turned out pretty good, and it feels good to get back to doing more macro landscapes. I usually have to block out a whole night to do these things, but this one didn't take me too long, probably because I have done them so much before I've got it down to a science on how to set it up and get the desired experience.

I ran out of dry ice for this last one, but I still think it works. especially the piling up of the snow in the bottom right corner.

Food Photography

This last week I had a great opportunity to work with Leslie Smith at Carmela's Cottage (carmelascottage.net) and Simply Sweet by Leslie (SimplysweetbyLeslie.com) to photograph some of their delicious cupcakes. Food photography is a lot different than Portraiture, number one because the subject doesn't talk back to you. There are lots of tips and tricks that you can try to make the food look appetizing. One that I learned about recently was to use WD40 to make the food look shiny (I haven't tried it yet, maybe I'll give it a go on a non-client project first just to make sure that it works). Other things are using wax to make a bottle look icy and cold, using a food stylist, etc. I was lucky to have the entire staff of Carmela's Cottage helping me with the food styling. Let me tell you, these girls could make ANYTHING look appetizing. Everything was absolutely amazing and well taken care of. I brought a few tools with me, like tweezers and picks (which came in handy more than I thought they would) but it was great having these experienced Pastry Chefs there to help make their food look AMAZING! So here are a few of the cupcakes and other treats that we photographed.

www.SimplysweetbyLeslie.com
www.carmelascottage.net

I think this one is Rocky Road

I can't remember but I think this one is Hazelnut, but don't quote me on it.

Coconut with an Almond? I think they called it an Almond Joy!

Yes that is Bacon on top. It's a Belgium Waffle Cupcake with Maple Syrup!

Quick shot of my set-up in Carmela's Cottage.