Well, it’s finally full-blown summer here in Kansas! It’s hot and humid and there’s very little escaping it. It’s been hard to keep my basil growing in my backyard, but it seems to be making it so far. This is good because I used it tonight in my all time favorite recipe! Sooooo good! That one’s for you, Jenny!
Image © 2008 Designojek
One of my favorite projects that I do every year is the summer newsletter for the KU Band Department. This year, they were wanting to emphasize the football team’s win in the orange bowl and the basketball team’s national championship win, so I tried to integrate elements of both in the cover design. This year’s letter will hit mailboxes in a couple of weeks, so this is just a sneak peak!
I ran across this video clip today and thought it was too good not to post. Ira Glass is the host of one of my all time favorite programs, This American Life. If you have never heard the show, go to the website now and check it out! I cannot recommend it enough.
In this short clip, I think he nails it on the head in terms of starting out a career in a creative field. I feel like I’ve been doing this for a while now and I still can relate to what he’s talking about. To a certain extent, most creative professionals run up against this their entire lives. As frustrating as it can be, I think it’s a good thing because it constantly forces you to evaluate your own performance and continue to improve. There 4 parts to this total which you can watch in the related clips at the end.
Things have been busy around the ol’ studio lately. I’ll have some neat design work to post soon, but it’s not quite ready yet . . .
So, in the mean time, I was cleaning up my office a bit and I came across a camera that I’ve been using off and on for a while. There was half a roll of film in it (your guess is as good as mine as to what’s on the first half!) so I took it out to do some shooting this weekend. I’ll try and have some photos developed to post soon.
The camera is a Yashica Electro 35 rangefinder which is from the early 1970’s and is considered by some to be a “poor man’s Leica“. It has a beautiful lens which stops down to 1.7 so it’s a great camera for low light and for street photography. Since it’s a rangefinder, there is no mirror that flops up when you press the button, so there’s a barely audible click when the shutter opens which makes it nice for candid photos.
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My apologies for the lack of posting lately! It’s been busy, busy around the studio and I’ve been working on lots of interesting projects. I should have some more things to post soon!
I did take a little time out to spend some time with my new camera and I’ve been loving it! It’s been good for me to get back to shooting on film and I find that I make much different choices on how and what I shoot when it’s a dollar per click! It’s great to have such rich depth of field and, although the Polaroid film almost has a mind of it’s own, the photos have a great quality to them. The colors are really dependent on temperature, light, etc. and so I can try my best to get it “right”, but it’s still a mystery to me what I’m going to end up with. Below are a few of the early test shots I took and I hope to have some more up soon!
I also wanted to point out a couple of wonderful articles, one is called Gone in Sixty Seconds and gives a very interesting history of Polaroid. The other is called The Branding of Polaroid, 1957 - 1977 and it’s great reading as well.
Last weekend, I was asked to help shoot photos of some family members. It was a lot of fun and I was excited to be able to shoot in all natural light with just one lens. Those facial expressions are priceless!
I’m extremely excited to announce the launch of a new website that I’ve been working on for jazz drummer, Matt Wilson! Matt is an educator/drummer/composer & band leader and a winner of several Downbeat and Jazz Journalists Assn. awards.
Over the past month or so I’ve been working along side my good friend, fellow sax player and web programmer/designer Greg to design this site. I first saw Matt perform live with his group Arts and Crafts in 2007 at the IAJE conference in New York and was blown away, so when Greg approached me about working on his website, it was a total no brainer. Matt’s a great guy and an incredible musician, so if you ever have the chance to hear him perform, be sure and check it out.
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Last week, I was working out in Oakland, CA and, outside of a couple of trips to Seattle when I was younger, it was my first time to the west coast. The majority of my time was spent on an island city called Alameda which is right next to Oakland and across the bay from San Francisco. The weather was absolutely perfect while I was there and I met some amazing people during my trip.
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