I took a handful of photos on a recent trip to Washington, DC so I thought I’d post a few. DC is a really fascinating place and I think it would benefit anyone to go and visit at least once. The museums are really amazing (and free!) and there’s nothing quite like standing in front of the actual Declaration of Independence. It will give you chills.

I didn’t expect the monuments to be as powerful as they were. It’s a well spent afternoon to stand in the same spot as Martin Luther King did in 1963. Just standing in front of the White House was quite the experience, too, when you start thinking of all the people who have lived there.

Other highlights of the trip were the Holocaust Museum, Museum of Modern Art, the Allen Ginsberg photography exhibit at the National Gallery of Art, the National Archives, Ford’s Theater, the Museum of Natural History, and lots and lots of great food!

I also did a little post-trip reflection over at our work blog about finding storytelling inspiration in museum design.

I recently took a trip to Holland, MI to do some art direction for a short video documentary. I stayed in a cool hotel while I was there, so I thought I’d share a couple of shots I took. The hotel is City Flats and it’s the first hotel in the Midwest to achieve LEED Gold Certification. It’s an eco-minded hotel with really nice interior design including bold colors, clean lines and high ceilings.


Here’s the hallway by the elevator.

A view of the bed which was REALLY comfortable!

I loved the sliding door that covered the bathroom and closet.

It was nice to see some non-typical hotel artwork on the walls!

View of the bathroom…

… and walk-in shower.

I had a great stay there and the environment was really classy!

The city of Holland is a couple of hours outside of Chicago and about 35 minutes from Grand Rapids, MI. Lake Michigan is about a 5 minute drive to the west. The population is about 35,000 people and it was recently named the 2nd happiest city in the U.S.!

Every year, they have the Tulip Time festival which is the largest tulip festival in the U.S.

There are tulips EVERYWHERE and it’s really beautiful.

I thought this would be a fun way to learn ABCs!

We also have some great robot artwork from friends of ours. The Howdy Robot print on the wall is a piece by Tad Carpenter. The color match was purely a coincidence, but it’s a perfect fit! The orange robot was hand-knit and has been a guest in the house for a couple of years now. We’ve appropriately named it “KnitRobot”.

It’s been a pretty quiet week around here and I’ve definitely enjoyed the relaxation time. Other than seeing the Jayhwaks play, I’ve been busy taking care of things around the house and finishing up some projects that desperately needed to be finished. More photos of the project below coming soon!

I hope everyone had a great end to 2008. I have a feeling that 2009 is going to be a great year! Stay tuned in the next few days for an exciting new studio visit and Happy New Year!

Sub-zero wind chills here in Lawrence this morning. I think it’s safe to say that winter has arrived!

There was a lot of buzz yesterday online about a new photo resource, so I thought I’d mention something about it. LIFE magazine has teamed up with Google to archive thousands of photographs taken by LIFE photographers over the past several decades. This amazing collection includes photographs and etchings dating back to the 1750s and by the time everything has been put online, there will be more than 10 million photos available worldwide. The archive includes photographs taken by some of the most well respected photographers in history including Margaret Bourke-White and Robert Capa .

This is a continuation of a trend that gained a lot of motion in early 2008 when the Library of Congress put a section of their collection online and invited Flickr users to help them in the massive task of adding tags to the photos. Shortly thereafter, several other institutions followed suit and helped create the The Commons on Flickr.

UPDATE: Wow! Here’s another great online collection of historic photographs from Tibet from the past 30 years.

Happy browsing!

Don’t forget to vote this upcoming Tuesday!

http://maps.google.com/vote

http://www.voteforchange.com/

This week (May 12-16, 2008) is Bike to Work Week here in Kansas. I’ve been biking to work nearly every day for the past 2 years and so it’s always fun to have a week where I see other people head off to work under their own pedal power. I’ll try to do a couple of posts this week related to bicycle commuting and some tricks I’ve found to be helpful. Whether for environmental reasons, health reasons, or just for fun, biking is a great way to get out of the house and enjoy the outdoors, so head out to the garage and pump up those tires this week and give it a shot. For those if you who commute a long distance, you can still make a difference by replacing any car trip with a bike ride.

Here are a few links to help get you started…

• If you’re paying nearly $4/gallon for gas, here is some food for thought!
• Sheldon Brown – everything you want to know about bikes online!
• Great tips on commuting from Paul Dorn
• www.commutebybike.com
• Map My Ride – check here to find a route

For a tune up, visit:

• Sunflower Bike Shop – Lawrence, KS
• CycleWorks – Lawrence, KS
• ACME Bicycle Company – Downtown Kansas City

Also, if you have some tips to share, drop a comment below! I’m always looking for new things to try on my way to the office.

*sniff*

There is some pretty amazing work that has been done with Polaroids and a quick Flickr search will bring up a TON of great examples. Two artists I’ve been looking at lately are: Heather Powazek Champ and Mike Brodie (aka The Polaroid Kid). Of course, there are tons other great artists that I’ll link to in the future and I hope to post some great new Polaroids of my own here soon!

And, of course, a special thanks to Mona since she was the source of the camera. I promise it’ll be put to good use!

Earth Day is always a good day to stop for a moment and think about what you love about this planet. The non-treehuggers out there can do this too! Is there one small thing that you can change in your lifestyle that will make a positive impact on the environment? If nothing else, head outside for at least one minute today and look up in the sky or down in some grass and remember what nature really is all about!

I really don’t think today is about a political agenda or guilting others into changing. It is more about how we want to leave this planet when we’re gone. A pretty simple question, really.

Here are a few links that might be of interest today: Earth Day 2008, Treehugger.com, Ideal Bite, and the 11th Hour or click the image below for a great site from Chris Glass and Wire and Twine.

Oh, and we were even featured on the front of a few newspapers you might have heard of:

This Saturday, KU will face North Carolina in their first Final Four appearance since 2003. The excitement has been building here in Lawrence all week and this will either be an amazing, fun-filled weekend, or it’ll be “depression city” for the next few weeks. Let’s hope the Hawks win it all this year!! ROCK CHALK!

UPDATE: What an amazing game! KU over UNC 84-66. Monday night is the championship against Memphis so keep the KU vibes coming!