Daniel Heywood

Happy Holidays!

2010-11-16T11:26:00.000-08:00

Introducing: Pearl Jane

2010-10-08T19:53:00.000-07:00

My wife, Karleigh, and sister-in-law, Kacie, have opened a new shop on etsy, Pearl Jane. They had me shoot the product photos a few days ago, and the shop is now up and running, with new items yet to be added in the coming days.

Playing with a New Style

2010-09-09T10:20:00.000-07:00

Sadie likes candy apples, while Benjamin craves the candy corn.
Halloween isn't all that far off, and thought I'd use that theme to kick off a new style I've been playing with.

Pretty nifty. N.E.E.T., even.

2010-09-02T09:17:00.000-07:00

Along with a handful of other They Draw and Cook contributers, I am featured in the September 2010 issue of N.E.E.T. Magazine, "an online publication dedicated to showcasing independent talent - design, art, and general fantastic originality." However, to my male eyes at least, it views much like a fashion mag for most of the 250+ pages leading up to the They Draw and Cook feature in the issue. Just so you know. After clicking through the pages what caught my eye was the feature of a few of Sophie Blackall's illustrations in here Missed Connections series. I've seen some of them before, and these are just as great. Fun stuff.

Tyler and Jessie

2010-08-25T08:17:00.000-07:00

I recently photographed Tyler and Jessie's big day, who were married in the Manti temple. It is always a privilege to be part of such an important day.

heywood-photography.com

Liddie's First Flight

2010-07-27T11:06:00.001-07:00

Flight no. 17

2010-07-24T17:51:00.000-07:00

Four Owls

2010-07-09T21:19:00.000-07:00

Hey look, it's four owls!

Another Owl

2010-07-08T21:25:00.000-07:00

Everybody who's anybody likes yellow owls.

Owl

2010-07-06T19:31:00.000-07:00

Everybody who's anybody likes owls.

Catch and Release

2010-07-05T21:24:00.000-07:00

Thagomizer: defensive weapon, fishing rod.

No Hand Catch

2010-07-02T19:34:00.000-07:00

They wanted him to play running back, but his skills as a receiver couldn't be denied.

Bonito-saurus

2010-07-01T18:01:00.000-07:00

Dinossauro, joga bonito!

Even though you may call him a brontosaurus, this apatosaurus doesn't mind (no, not even a little). He's too busy, to mind, playing beautifully.

Air Pteranodon

2010-07-01T08:44:00.000-07:00

Check out that hang time!

This is an illustration request from a customer from my etsy shop. In addition to my already made T-rex Pitcher, she requested a brontosaurus (aka apatosaurus), triceratops, and pteranodon, with my choice of pairing each up with either basketball, soccer, or football. Two more to come...

Tyrannosaur on Ice

2010-06-28T19:22:00.000-07:00

"Sleep, eat, skate. It's what I do."

The Tyrannosaurus Express

2010-06-26T15:53:00.000-07:00

Move over Mariano, there's a new kid in town.

Tyrannosaurus Dexterous

2010-06-25T22:27:00.000-07:00

Tyrannosaurus Rex: street performer, eating machine.

Opted for less saturated colors compared to the previous dino. It suits my fancy.

How Graceful is the Tyrannosaur...

2010-06-24T18:58:00.000-07:00

...how softly she touches
her toes to floor and up again
take care she doesn't eat you

Understanding Exposure: 3rd Edition

2010-06-10T07:09:00.000-07:00

A while back I reviewed Bryan Peterson's book Understanding Exposure. In two months, on Aug. 10 2010, the third edition is due to come out.

While I can not say how valuable the updates to it might be for someone who already owns a previous edition, based on my experience in learning from the 2nd edition, I can certainly recommend the book to those who don't own previous editions. It is an invaluable resource to someone wanting to crack the black box of creating consistently good results with their photography. Even if you're a long time photographer, if you don't really understand the basics of shutter speed, aperture, and iso, this will help you fill the void and allow you to take control of the camera when most appropriate, instead of letting the camera making the decisions for you (as the camera might not choose the settings you'd like). And when you tell tell the camera to make the choices, you'll understand what it's doing, and know what settings might need to be changed if the results you are getting are different than you expected.

Understanding Exposure, 3rd Edition: How to Shoot Great Photographs with Any Camera

Or, if you're in need of knowledge now, the 2nd Edition will certainly meet your needs in understanding the ins and outs getting proper exposures. I'm guessing the update might be useful, but not critical. The keys to the book are in teaching how to properly expose your photographs. The new edition isn't likely to improve on it's ability to teach these concepts, although, again, not having read it the 3rd edition, I can't say how useful its new material might be.

Link to 2nd Edition:
Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera (Updated Edition)

Canon Pixma Pro 9000 Mark II: some thoughts in review

2010-06-05T13:44:00.001-07:00

After a few dozen prints made, I can without question say that my Canon PIXMA Pro9000 Mark II creates beautiful prints. If you're considering getting one, I'd say go for it. It produces excellent results.

One caveat:

If you're going to print on fine art paper, steer well clear of Canon brand fine art paper. (There may be an exception, which I'll get to later in the post.) When printing on Canon's fine art paper they impose a 35mm border on each end of the paper lengthwise, so your 13x19 paper gets you no wider than a 16.25", and your 8.5" x 11" becomes 8" x 8.25" (the short side of the paper has a 1/4" border - and two times 1/4" equals 1/2", reducing the short side of the paper to 8"). If you don't mind this limitation, then the particular kind of Canon fine art paper I have used produces beautiful prints. Canon does not impose a 35mm border on you if you use their other paper types.

Here's how the 35mm border is imposed. Canon creates their paper icc profiles with each paper type in mind. So, when you go to print, you choose the icc profile that matches the paper, and you select the paper type being used. These two pieces of information tell the printer how to correctly lay down the ink to produce the image as you have it on screen (if your monitor is calibrated correctly). So, to get a correctly printed image, the icc profile and paper type need to be accurately selected. When selecting the fine art paper types, you are required to choose a paper size that has a 35mm border defined.

You could, however, lie to the printer, and say you are using a different type of paper than you really are. Which means you could tell the printer you are using a paper that does not have the 35mm border limitation. The problem with this is the prints come out inaccurately (there may be an exception, which I'll address in a moment). So, if you are using the Canon fine art paper, but you were to tell the printer, for example, that you are using glossy photo as your paper type, then the print would come out with somewhat different colors than you see on your calibrated monitor. And on the Canon fine art paper I used, when I tell the printer I am using some other type of paper, some of the colors in the print may even bleed into others.

A Probable Exception:

At least one type of fine art paper that is Canon branded (Fine Art Photo Rag 188gsm), is created by Hahnemuhle. On Hahnemuhle's site, the instructions for using what appears to be the same paper (Photo Rag 188gsm) suggests selecting matte photo as the paper type being used (which does not impose the 35mm border), while also using the icc profile that Hahnemuhle created. I discovered this fact by listening to Martin Bailey's excellent podcast on the subject. He is using a Canon Pixma Pro 9500, but I expect that his happy results would be the same when using the 9000. No more silly 35mm border.

Password Security Tips

2010-06-05T11:37:00.000-07:00

Remember the nokiaoo.com scam I posted about? It included some tips about email security. Today I stumbled across an article about choosing and using passwords for the umpteen sites you have passwords for. It's quite informative. Written by John P. at One Man's Blog, How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords.

He mentions password software that will allow you to use a unique password for each site, as well as information like: "Adding just one capital letter and one asterisk would change the [time it would take a hacker to discover an] 8 character password from 2.4 days to 2.1 centuries."

Read it, apply it, save your bank account, etc. from being broken into.

Xubuntu goes bust

2010-06-04T21:44:00.001-07:00

[A post in which I dis Linux (Xubuntu in particular), then return to an interest in it, then consider just going Mac and Adobe all the way now and forever, and by the end of which I turn to the reasonableness of the free Linux and Inkscape software on a less pricey self built system. Note that the idea of Windows does not crop up anywhere in the discussion. Ew.]

I upgraded to the latest Xubuntu, 10.04 (it's called Lusty Lynx or something, as each new release has an animal name associated with the new version number). Now Xubuntu doesn't boot up. Grrrr. Maybe I'll get back to it in a month or two and see if it is a bug that gets resolved. I assume it isn't something that happens on all computer systems. It's been a LOT of work though, trying to set up Xubuntu, just to see if I might squeeze some more speed out of Inkscape. I dunno, maybe I'll dip my toe into the forums somewhat, here and there, and see if I can figure it out. I can see myself one day opting for a purely linux machine, after my current iMac G5 finally goes to its grave. If I can manage to work out the kinks that seem to be a part of the deal (at least with my current hardware and peripherals), it would surely be the most economically efficient option for both hardware and software. If, that is, the time put into getting everything set up (including a driver for my Canon printer, oi, I wonder how difficult that might be) isn't too terribly much more time than I've put into it so for.

I tried the upgrade because, having had a chance recently to get back to my experimenting with Xubuntu, I tried again to get my wacom tablet to work on it. But having to again run the gauntlet of forum posts and jargon and foreign programming type instructions (much like I had to do in order to figure out how to initially install Xubuntu, as well as for getting wireless to work), I opted to try simply upgrading to the recent release of 10.04, as I already stated, hoping (?) this might allow my Wacom Bamboo to work with no special set up. If it would have done it, I can't know. It freezes during boot up.

I wonder if the love linux users have for the various flavors of linux has at least something to do with a love of tinkering and figuring out how to make it all work with various computer set ups. I can understand that, and there's a part of me that likes that sort of thing, but the frustrations that come with so much of it all being unfamiliar (and much geekier than I am presently able to understand, or at least a different kind of geek) leaves me, well, just that, frustrated. But strangely still drawn to it in some way. Are there systems that work with linux out of the box?

Then again, a new Mac, plus time put into learning Illustrator over Inkscape, just might be worth it. I'm thinking this, because the time put into one (a Mac plus Illustrator set up), might be much the same as the time put into the other (Linux plus Inkscape set up). Counting my learning of Illustrator (in place of learning how to make Linux operational), plus the time required to earn the extra dough for the certainly pricier Mac and Adobe software (in place of using the free Inkscape, plus building my own machine at a lower price, which also would require some learning time, or perhaps buying an already built machine, albeit a cheaper one than a Mac would be), it might all be somewhat even as far as time put in, whichever way I chose to go. Well, at least initially. Over the long hall, by my second or third upgrade, the Linux on a self built computer with Inkscape, would be less costly than upgrading to a new Mac two or three or four (and five and six) times. Did I lose you? Are you even reading? It's late. Good night.

Eric Paints Pictures

2010-06-01T18:01:00.000-07:00

Original measures about 30" wide

My brother Eric and I shared a booth at the local Scandinavian Days festival this past weekend, and he did pretty well with his oil paintings and prints. Better than I'd expected, not because I don't think he can sell (I really think he can), but I didn't expect this to be the best venue for his work. Once he goes out and gets his work into a few galleries he'll be selling a half dozen or more paintings a year straightaway. And if his skill continues to progress at the rate it has been, he'll become not only quite good (as he is already), but very, very, (very) good in the next year or two. And within two to five years, a master. Although, he's made such a distinct breakthrough recently, that I may be overestimating. He may be better sooner.

Original measures 13.5" x 8.25"

The work here shows where he's at after about five years of oil painting, not all the time of which has been focused on landscapes. I'm not sure, but I believe he's painted less than a couple dozen landscapes (if that). The one at the top of this post, in person at least, being his strongest of the three shown here. He has one recent painting that he can't bring himself to part with. I rushed to make a reproduction of it, but it didn't come out right, and perhaps I'll share it at a later time once we have had a chance to sit down and get it right. It's probably his strongest painting to date. Although, all the paintings here, on my screen at least, look pretty accurate to the originals in color. They printed out fabulously on my Canon Pixma Pro9000 MkII. Still haven't gotten the smoothest of color management going, but we managed with a bit of a workaround. More on the reproduction process at a later time (no jokes, please). I'll walk through the photographing of the original, through the printing of the print.

Original measures about 30" wide

New Books and Illustrations

2010-05-31T11:30:00.000-07:00

I've made some new books covered with some of my illustrations. A couple other new books are covered with some of my photos, and another has a cover of an old late 1800's photograph of a baseball player, Jack Clements. Now available in my shop. Soon will have 8x10 prints available of the illustrations, probably today.

The craft fair mentioned in my previous post, or rather, Scandinavian Days as its called (local cities were founded by people of largely Scandinavian heritage), was pretty much a bust for us (five books sold in two days), but pretty nice for my brother Eric, who we shared canopy space with. He's an oil painter, and he had paintings and prints of landscapes of the area. He sold four small paintings, and ten prints. He really needs to get into some galleries. He'd do well. I'll write more about his work tomorrow.

Books, books, books

2010-05-10T09:07:00.000-07:00

Preparing books to sell at an upcoming craft fair at the end of the month. May nor may not even be accepted to the event, but ramping up for this one show in particular, and for others during this craft fair season. With this mad bookmaking dash, my illustrating is on hold, albeit I'll soon be printing some already completed ones. I've already been making some into book covers. Soon to share in a later post.

Also, my report on how I set up my iMac G5 to dual boot OSX and Xubuntu will be on hold, and maybe never materialize as each day that passes, my recollection of what I did to do so grows dimmer. Getting it set up required going into what was a foreign world to me, and I really just pieced together information from others and finally got it to work. Haven't even been using it, though, as I set it up to see how much faster Inkscape would be while running natively, and since then haven't been using it heavily enough to justify rebooting into Xubuntu.

The Canon Pixma Pro9000 Mark II is doing me pretty well. There does seem to be some bug that sometimes allows the printer driver to change the page set up. Edit: not a bug, exactly, but if I set up a custom size of 4x6, then the printer driver when it goes to print, switches to its own 4x6, which has three different versions, and it chooses a version that doesn't print as I want it It chooses borderless, which also prints with colors waaay off. But, when choosing the pre-set 4x6 page set up, it works as expected. Happened on two different prints (very frustrating), but I finally was able to print them correctly. Still, it made no sense to me why it persistently switched my chosen page setup to a different page set up on these particular images. Even so, it makes some pretty prints. Not having time to really figure out color management yet, I've just done some trial and error in printing to get good images, but don't yet have it set up to produce a print that matches (as much as can be expected) the onscreen image. Which may be dumb, as it may have taken as much time to get the color management in order as it has to do my trial and error on individual images. I dunno. I'd already put a few hours into learning color management, and my initial efforts left me scratching my head. I have loved the results from printing on Mohawk Superfine, though, and would like to try it on some cover weight stock, instead of the 80 lb weight I have on hand. I like Mohawk's high standard for paper permanence, even if the best my current Canon ink can get me is 100 years in dark storage (before noticeable fading), or somewhere around sixty on display if under glass or treated with a protective UV spray.

New Acquisition: Canon Pixma Pro9000 Mark II

2010-05-01T22:07:00.000-07:00

It arrived a few days ago from California, after a brief visit to Idaho (tip: change your entire address in your online store account profile before placing your order). I've only dabbled with it in the last few days, mostly devoting way too much time to learning about monitor calibration, icc profiles, printer profiles, and such. In the end, after printing only on card stock and some Mohawk Superfine, the Canon Pixma PRO9000 (Mark II) is leaving me very much impressed. Although, I have an illustration that has been giving me fits in trying to get its printed color right, hence all the time learning about color management. I finally got on the right track using a somewhat odd (to me) method, but it could be better. And shouldn't require going some unusual route to get there. Granted, my paper used so far isn't high quality inkjet paper (or at least not marketed as such), and the icc profiles I've used aren't specifically made for the paper I've used, but the four or so other images I have printed were very much on the right track colorwise. While this one illustration has been crazy off. Not yet sure what the issue is. I'll report more on that later, and give more word on the printer once I have a chance to use it enough to say something more. I'll be using it in the next few days for making some book covers (I'm excited about the possibilities), and when I get my Red River Aurora Fine Art paper I'll be making some art prints. This is my kind of thing, tech and art and fine craftsmanship all rolled into one. I feel a little bit giddy inside.

Eureka! At least partially...

2010-04-27T14:33:00.000-07:00

Have been setting up my iMac G5 with Xubuntu, dual booting with OSX 10.4 (Tiger). I've done so as a means of speeding up my working environment in Inkscape. On my limping G5 it's workable, but a bit sluggish. And at times it's downright molasses.

I chose Xubuntu over other linux versions because my understanding is that it's lightweight, putting less strain on computer resources. In addition to being able to run Inkscape natively, that's what I'm looking for in running linux. More pep in Inkscape even with aging hardware.

Simply installing Xubuntu was a headache that I spread out over a few days as I figured it out. At least it was a headache for this non-linux user, and indeed a non-programmer of any kind.

But I got it installed, and today! I got wireless internet to work! and was able to download inkscape! albeit for some reason it was Inkscape 0.46 instead of the latest 0.47 (?!). So, I need to figure out how to update Inkscape to 0.47. Edit: as Esther points out in the comments, the latest Inkscape is available with the latest Xubuntu, so when I upgraded, Inkscape 0.47 became available.It's not like installing on a Mac or in Windows, where you go to Sourceforge.net, find the file, download and install. As far as I've seen, in Xubuntu I can either use the Add/Remove feature which does all that for me (but to an old version?), or open Terminal, type in commands to download, and type in commands to install the software. But, the instructions for that is all gibberish to me.

I also need to figure out how to get my Wacom Bamboo to work. At this very moment I am upgrading to Xubuntu 9.10 from 9.04, and maybe that will solve the Wacom Bamboo problem (?). Not sure why I didn't initially instal 9.10, maybe it just came out in the last few days?

In another post I'll rundown what I did to get Xubuntu to work, at least as far as I have gotten it to (that is, if I can manage to retrace my steps, picking out the information sources that worked for me from those that didn't).

My brief test with Inkscape in Xubuntu seems to show it to be much, much faster in Xubuntu (over running it non-natively in OSX via X11). Still need to work with it more to be sure. It better be, after all this time to get Xubuntu set up :)

They Draw and Cook

2010-04-21T10:36:00.000-07:00

They Draw and Cook is a fairly new blog created by Nick Padvick and Salli Swindell. Picked up word on it via Steve Mack's blog. This here's my submission. Apart from that, there's some really great work being posted there. Have a look.

Roar

2010-04-19T19:15:00.000-07:00

Been working on a series of animal illustrations intended to have some of the flavor of vintage posters. In the beginning I planned on making about two a week, but have pulled that back to about one every two weeks. Other work has slowed this project down a bit. It's still on, and prints and sketchbooks/journals made with some if these images will be available in my shop within a month's time. For now, this lion is a preview of more to come. Roar.

Giddyup!

2010-04-12T13:58:00.000-07:00

Selling Handmade Books on the Internet

2010-04-07T18:34:00.000-07:00

My wife Karleigh is writing a series of Tuesday blog posts over at bookbindingteam.com. I drew up this illustration to accompany her articles about selling handmade books on the internet, or more specifically, on etsy.

Lollipop

2010-04-05T08:00:00.001-07:00

This started as an accident. In inkscape I set the pencil tool to spiro, and scribbled a line, and out popped a shape that when I saw it I said, that's hair. And so I drew the girl to go along with it. She could use a few more details, but I'm liking her well enough for now.

Almost a year ago...

2010-04-03T10:56:00.000-07:00

...is when I made the second illustration below. The one above is my update. I have to admit, it's getting better. For a more direct comparison between the old and new, an update without the background elements is shown beneath the old version.

To be fair, in that old version I was trying to capture the charm of the initial rough sketch, but instead of charm, it just looks sloppy. I have no excuse for the coloring. Except that I was new to the medium (and illustration as a whole, really), so I just didn't have an eye for it when it came to my own work. Funny how I immediately have an eye for the quality of other's work, but my own requires setting it aside for at least a few days, maybe longer, until I can really see it for what it is. But who knows, a year from now, after I improve further, I may come back to this update, and find it lacking too. Edit: Just a few days later, I've already adjusted my update. No dramatic changes, just some details to make it pop a bit more. What's shown above, and at the very bottom image are this revised revision.

Blocking Cellphone Text Spam

2010-03-30T10:46:00.000-07:00

Today we received three spam text messages within minutes of each other. I think these were our first. An internet search for "blocking spam texts" brought up an article by David Pogue, and my problem's solved. Or should be.

Give the article a read, and if your service provider offers the same service, or has since added it, your spam text hassles should come to an end. You may want to contact your provider if this 2008 article states your provider at that time didn't offer this service.

My provider is Verizon, but Pogue's brief explanation may allow the process to be a bit frustrating for a few minutes as you figure out how to navigate to the page you need.

For Verizon users:

Go to vtext.com
In the red menu bar click on "My Verizon," choose your account type, and choose "Sign In" from the drop down menu. If needed, register first. It's easy and free and the "Register" option is available in the same menu as the Sign In option.
After signing in, from the page you are directed to select "My Services" from the top menu bar. Click "Spam Controls" from the drop down menu.
On the page you are directed to, "Call & Message Blocking" is selected by default. Select "Internet Spam Blocking" instead.
Now you will see just above the "Apply" button are two check boxes, one for blocking texts from email, the other to block texts from the web. I checked both, then clicked "Apply." Done.

nokiaoo.com scam

2010-03-29T07:53:00.000-07:00

Edit III: For password security tips, check out How I'd Hack Your Weak Passwords. Great article. Applying what it teaches can prevent your email being hacked (partly killing this type of scam), and saving you in other ways too.

Edit II: This has become a popular post. In light of this, at the end of the post I have added a couple links to books on recognizing scams. For full disclosure, I have not read them, but they do come with good reviews on Amazon.com. Could be useful for staying safely away from other scams.

Edit: the comments contain some email security tips, which can help prevent scams like the following being perpetuated.

Just a warning as this looks like a new one, being that there is next to no word on it when I search for it. I did find an inquiry on Hoax-Slayer's Facebook page from someone who received the same email.

The following email came from the email account of someone my wife knows. No word yet on if that person sent it, or somehow her account was hacked.

Email subject line: "Share Surprise!"

Body of email:

"A friend of mine bought a laptop at a online store [a link to the website was here], he has received it and it has very good quality,this online store also sells TV,cellphone, and etc....
Recently this online store is making their promotion, they can offer very good discounts, and this promotion will be available for 30 days! If you like, please log on their website and have a try! I am sure you will get lots of surprises there, please always remember to share good deals with friends!

Greetings!"

That whole email sounds scammy to me (english a bit off, clearly not written from a friend, and it ends in "Greetings!"). Flag one. When going to the site you see an actual site. Looks nice, seemingly well made, and low low prices. Ridiculously low. Flag number two. Click on the "About Us" and the english used is clearly from a non-native english speaker. Flag three. Claim that "all our products are produced from Korea." Flag four. Click on the "How to Payment" [sic] link and you get this line: "You can use online bank to pay, or go to your local bank or any other bank to pay. It is very easy and the bank worker also can help you." Flag Five. They provide info for paying via Western Union. Flag Six. Or pay via PayPal, but you must email them to get info for paying via PayPal "Because there are many frauds in Nigeria that use fake paypal to pay in order to deceive our products,so if you want to use paypal payment please enquire customer service MSN or email for paypal account." That's a direct quote. Flag Seven.

What a great scam. Built an entire site to enhance confidence, and because of it will likely nail a lot of people before word gets out on it. Then when word gets out, they'll now doubt port the site to a new domain and do it all over again.

Edit: With this post being quite popular, I thought I'd offer a couple suggestions for books about scam recognition:

The Truth About Avoiding Scams
Scams & Swindles... How to Recognize And Avoid Rip-Offs In The Internet Age

custom day in the life drawings

2010-03-02T17:47:00.000-08:00

Not my drawing. More on that at the end of this post.

Working on some more illustrations to show, but it may be a few weeks. Or six or eight, as I'm only working on a couple or so a week. To maintain the energy I have toward working on them I'm waiting until several are complete. There is something about sharing before more are done, one at a time, about two a week, that would sap the energy I have for them. I often like to have something fairly substantial to show for in an idea before sharing it, since I've found that often, not always, but often, an idea shared before polished and at least significantly begun (if not complete), often loses some of the energy I have for it. Sometimes killing it altogether. This seems to be one of those cases. Plus, they are something I expect to include in my etsy shop, and expect it to be a better marketing move to unveil them more closely together than just a couple a week. Plus, I like to let each of them sit for some time so I can see them with new eyes after a week or two, and make changes they'll inevitably need. The giraffe in my previous post, for example. It's under renovation (I still like the giraffe, mostly, but not the rest of it). So the illustrations are under wraps until the series of illustrations are more complete.

In the meantime, check out the above illustration. I think it's a lot of fun. It's by mummysam and you can even purchase your own through her etsy shop.

Giraffe Revisited

2010-02-13T08:20:00.000-08:00

P.S. Happy Birthday, Jadon, not that you can read this. He's three today!

Jump

2010-02-12T11:06:00.000-08:00

A multiple exposure (made in post) from Haleigh's senior portrait shoot way back when.

Giraffe

2010-02-06T15:48:00.001-08:00

Love Bob Staake's work ("stack"). Was looking at some of his stuff yesterday, and came across a couple videos of him making a couple illustrations. I loved his method of creating shapes, and decided to play a bit with that. While I was still pretty fidgity with my lines, creating shapes this way was a lot of fun. While he uses Photoshop 3 (!), a fact I find way cool, his creating shapes by cutting into shapes with other shapes method works well in other programs too. My program of choice is Inkscape.

I made my own video, built with screen shots of most of the steps of the process.

For the videos of Bob Staake illustrating, see the bottom of this post.

PoGo ala Hockney?

2010-01-28T08:34:00.000-08:00

After seeing my previous post, my wife asked if Polaroid makes a bigger PoGo. They don't as yet, but you could go David Hockney with it. The image below is not his work, but is much like it, created by Bob Scoverski. Not made with the PoGo, I don't expect, but digitally. You can see more of Bob's work here or here.

Vacancy
It would be cool to combine this collage style with the handmade effects shown in the photo manipulation video by frenky.

I wanted to show David Hockney's stuff, but the "only authorized" site said I couldn't use his photos anywhere. Even to give him exposure and some link love? 'K? I'll give him a link anyway. David Hockney's only authorized website. Or you can go directly to his composite polaroids.

Photo Manipulation with the Polaroid PoGo

2010-01-25T12:09:00.000-08:00

Until today, I hadn't heard of the Polaroid PoGo (Instant Mobile Printer). Now I want one. And under fifty bucks, might just have to get one. Today.

Edit: My wife asked if Polaroid makes a bigger PoGo. The next post talks about that.

New Photo Website, Sort Of

2010-01-16T16:24:00.001-08:00

Zenfolio.com recently upgraded their service, and I likeitalot. Now a beautiful portfolio slideshow opens the homepage (instead of being a bunch of dully placed icons that act as a directory for the areas of my site). I'm still exploring the new options, but check it out in the meantime: heywood-photography.com. As of this writing, I have a portait slideshow in the homepage. I'm going to have to get back into doing portraiture. Hmmm, now which other project is going to have to have its time cut to sneak portraiture back in...?

Two new projects

2010-01-15T17:41:00.001-08:00

forgotten remains of a giant half-made.
by nas chompas!

Edit: one project is on indefinite hold, and the other is gently paused. The first may not be returned to (?). The second project most definitely will be returned to.

Two new projects in the works. The biggest, you'll have to wait a little longer to hear about it. But it's big. Real big. "The next big thing" kinda big. Well, maybe, I dunno. At least for me it will be ginormous.

About the other project, you can get a teaser by clicking here. It might be somewhat big, too, who knows. I like the idea though. It's in the works without a certain launch date. It's been brewing in my head for a few months and feel ready to get it going now. Will be working on it as time permits, but hope to have it in working order within the month or so.

Here's to not allowing these two big projects ending up like the the forgotten remains of a giant half-made.

Leather Journals - Cloth Options

2009-12-16T20:45:00.000-08:00

Edit: Please take care and number carefully, first photo is photo one, last is photo four. Number each fabric from left to right. Easy peasy.

For those coming over from etsy, here are your fabric lining options for the lambskin journals.

Choose you first choice, choose your second choice, and let us know in your message to seller at checkout.

Indicate choices by naming the row (the top photo is row one, next photo is row two, etc.), and numbering the fabric from left to right. Also describe it if you would. Supplies are limited, so first come first serve. We'll try to keep this updated, but no guarantees your choice(s) will be available. Thanks!

Click each photo to see them larger

Second photo, third from left (musical instruments) is no longer an option.

The last one (colorful money) is out of stock.

Also, note that the first one in this fourth row turns quite transparent when adhered to the leather, an example of which can be seen on this gray journal. Also, the fourth one in the fourth row (paisley) is no longer an option. Also, the first photo(row one) numbers 2,3 and 5 are no longer available.

Etsy Busy

2009-12-16T08:24:00.000-08:00

So, the Boutique was a bust - zero sales - But Karleigh's shop and my shop on etsy have been smokin of late. Thanks in part to her genius idea to make these lambskin wrap journals ($25, free shipping, different colors available), which we have both been making and have both been listing in our shops. Two days ago I noticed tons of people hearting (favoriting) my shop, and a jump in sales, too. After a google search for my shop, up popped a link to The Storque, etsy's handmade blog. Guess whose photo graced the top of the article? Guess whose book the photo was of?

Another big seller were these rustic tied journals ($21, free shipping), which we made intending to sell like hot cakes at craft shows, but didn't do much there, but have sold quite well on etsy.

While these priced to sell items are doing just that, even the high end books are moving, including this dear skin journal ($76, free shipping) I made with scrap leather, and leftover nideggen paper from two fancy custom artist sketchbooks Karleigh made. Click the photo, and look at the weaved lining I made for the deer skin book:

Karleigh's second year thus far has had triple the sales of her first year. About 100 in year one, to nearly 400 to date. Could year three triple year two?

We have seen his star in the east

2009-12-03T07:00:00.000-08:00

Show this Weekend! Thursday through Saturday

2009-12-02T10:19:00.000-08:00

In Pleasant Grove, Utah. The card illustrations in the previous three posts will be sold alongside my wife's books. Or, you can just buy online. :)

A Christmas Tree (is often green)

2009-12-02T10:08:00.000-08:00

Made in Inkscape.
For printed cards, or a file you can print yourself, see danielheywood.etsy.com.

Happy Ho Ho Whoo!

2009-11-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

Made in Inkscape.

Christmas Tree (in Blue)

2009-11-24T08:44:00.000-08:00

Made in Inkscape.
Printed cards are available at DanielHeywood.etsy.com

If You Ever Meet a Whale

2009-11-16T19:09:00.001-08:00

If You Ever Meet a Whale

(Traditional.)

If you ever, ever, ever,

If you ever, ever, ever, meet a whale,

You must never, never, never,

You must never, never, never touch its tail.

For if you ever, ever, ever,

If you ever, ever, ever

If you ever, ever, ever touch its tail,

For if you ever, ever, ever,

If you ever, ever, ever

If you ever, ever, ever touch its tail,

You will never, never, never,

You will never, never

Meet another whale.

Ugly Pictures Part 2: Gamma problem, or something else.

2009-11-15T21:44:00.000-08:00

Edit: I do now think it's just a difference in how some monitors are displaying the images, some look right, some are skeewampus, and probably because the monitors are set to too high a contrast or brightness, overpowering the somewhat light colors in some of my illustrations. I think that's it. Maybe. I'm considering that I'd like to use bolder colors anyway, which would also help out with the illustrations displaying acceptably on other computer screens.

In my last post, I was alarmed about my illustrations looking waaaay bad on another monitor. Not good bad. Bad bad. I set out to figure out why.

I researched a bit, and although I don't have the computer on hand that was displaying my illustrations much too brightly, I think that that particular monitor's brightness and contrast settings must have been way out of wack. I now suspect this because I created my images with a monitor gamma setting of 1.8 (brighter), and most other monitors should display at a gamma of 2.2 (darker). Thus, that monitor should have shown my images darker, not brighter. Even if that monitor was set to display at a gamma of 2.2 (darker), other calibration settings on the monitor might have countered the gamma to create a brighter than usual display. I think. I'll check it out when I get another chance to sit down at that particular computer.

So, if in this illustration you can see the border, and circular shadow shape under the tree, and textured lines behind the tree, and shadows under the presents, then you are seeing a good approximation of what the illustration is intended to look like. And all the illustrations in earlier posts would be displaying just as well on your monitor. If not, you may have a monitor with an out of wack calibration (too bright and/or too contrasty).

I'm not fully settled that this is the full problem. Because other images besides my recent illustrations looked alright to me on that monitor. (?) I'll need look into this more.

Helpful links for those interested in knowing more about gamma and color management, which might include anyone, especially anyone making images on and/or for computer display or for print:

John Nack on Adobe: Why Your Web Content Will Look Darker on Snow Leopard

Lots of pertinent info, whichever OS you use. Read the comments after the article for lots of further info, corrections, and clarifications.

Mac OS X v10.6: About gamma 2.2
Not as informative for me as the previous link, but helpful, especially for learning how to set the gamma to either 2.2 or 1.8 on a Mac.

Ugly Pictures (gamma problem, or something else?)

2009-11-14T22:23:00.000-08:00

Edit: Okay, I researched a bit, and have some more info. See what I learned in my next post.

So, just saw my recent illustrations in earlier posts on a different computer, and they look terrible as compared to on my screen at home. Something's haywire with how they may be appearing on your screen as compared to how they should look. I have a couple ideas on what to do to fix that. Stay tuned.

Whales and Baby Books

2009-11-06T14:07:00.000-08:00

My wife, Karleigh, had a custom order request for a baby book with whales on the cover. So, I created a pattern in inkscape.

Halloween Shmalloween. Let's Eat Pie!

2009-10-31T11:10:00.000-07:00

All that is missing is enough whipped cream to hide the pie. Yum!

I've been going about it all wrong

2009-10-09T22:38:00.000-07:00

Well, not all wrong, but halfway-ish wrong. As mentioned before, a favorite illustrator of mine is Steve Mack, and I've been playing around with the idea of illustrating with texture within Adobe Illlustrator (and Inkscape) as he does. I struck upon a different means of going about it, much speedier than the way I'd been trying, and with what I expect will be better results once I get a chance to really play with it. I'm excited!

The Halloween illustration in the previous post won't get the texture treatment until next year, I'm afraid, but the first illustration with this new found technique will be posted soon, I hope. May be a couple weeks, though. (Dashing through the snow...)

Trick or Treat!

2009-10-01T13:50:00.000-07:00

So, life added more, and just now feeling somewhat adjusted to it, so maybe I'll post again with some greater frequency. In the meantime, here's a partially finished illustration for Halloween.

Trick or Treat! This is "halfway finished," as it still needs to be textured.

I Love My Brain

2009-08-26T22:01:00.000-07:00

Stumbled across super*dd's work on flickr. Her style rocks, sorta retro-disturbed.

Cards for Sale

2009-08-21T19:54:00.001-07:00

The illustrations from the previous three posts (monkey, rhino, ogre) are now available as greetings cards and invitations at zazzle.com. If you check them out, you'll find that the text on the cards is fully customizable.

I did make some changes to the illustrations, and these may be seen by clicking through to my zazzle store, threeholedesign.

If you wish to link to my store, you may do so with http://www.zazzle.com/threeholedesign*

Ogre Birthday

2009-08-05T11:54:00.001-07:00

Green ogre, or linebacker? Either way, he wishes you a happy birthday. This is the one that started it all. That is, the precursor to the previous two illustrations/posts, yet it took me the longest to finish. Had to set it aside to get a fresh look to figure it out. Well, I guess I did decide that the monkey needs something more, so that will actually be the last to finish. Still not fully pleased with the ogre. But still having fun with the texture. It began with him wearing Laker purple and gold, but since I didn't finish it in time for my bro's birthday, I went with different colors since I was having trouble making the original colors work together with everything else. Hmmm, what if I made the monster's skin purple and gold?

Click image to enlarge.

Edit: birthday card now available. Read my post about them. Buy one.

Red Rhino

2009-08-01T21:58:00.000-07:00

Red rhinoceroses are the life of any party. After finishing this rhino, I'm more certain that the monkey isn't quite done yet. The monkey might need some more balloons. And as I look at this, I might have to do away with the multi-color happy birthday. And put a kink in the party hat.

Edit: balloons at to monkey, and kink added to rhino hat, multi-color happy birthday gone. See the changes.
Also, now available for purchase as a birthday card. Read my post about them. Buy one.

Happy Birthday, Monkey.

2009-07-30T22:11:00.000-07:00

New illustration here, inspired by my brother's 30th birthday. (Silly, I know.) Actually, I began a different illustration similar to this one, but didn't finish on time. The illustration I began for my bro was a monster, in the same setting, wearing Laker purple and gold. Still toying with that one, but in the mean time I started and finished (I think) this one. Probably will tweak the feet and hands, though. I'm pleased with how my experimenting with texture with vector is working out. Still using inkscape. Click image to see it larger.

Edit: added two more balloons. See the changes.
Also, now available for purchase as a birthday card. Read my post about them. Buy one.

Trigger Point Therapy: Foot Pain

2009-07-24T06:48:00.000-07:00

The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook: Your Self-Treatment Guide for Pain Relief, Second Edition

Foot Pain: I had foot pain that began inexplicably. No moment of injury, just pain that came out of nowhere. I found a name for it, plantar fasciitis, but no cure. Plantar fasciitis, it seems, isn't much more than a description of the area of pain, without doing much to say about its cause or how to heal it.

It was really weird pain, more so than my knees, which had been somewhat inconsistent, but always there if even slightly. But my foot pain would disappear almost entirely when I would run hard in a game of ultimate (frisbee). I'd feel it now and then in the course of the game, but for the most part it went away, but came back strong afterwards. And this was pain that was sometimes excruciating to the point of barely being able to walk. Over a long stretch of days when the pain remained fairly high, I was concerned I might even have a stress fracture. But this highest level of pain would usually only come if I was on my feet for long periods of time. So, it hurt if I walked, but largely went away if I ran. Say what? Some days it hurt, some days it didn't, others days it came an went. Strange.

I ultimately attributed the source of my pain to a pair of shoes I wore that were cushy, but mushy, and didn't provide the support my feet needed. But, I don't really know if the shoes were the main factor, or if perhaps my part time job spent walking around the bookstore and frequently going up and down the stairs combined with my often brisk walk to class up a hill were the main cause. I ditched the shoes for another pair, but it didn't cure me.

Eventually I discovered plantar fasciitis discussed in The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook. My foot pain had nothing to do with my feet, but with the trigger points in my lower leg muscles. Go figure. Properly treating the trigger points relieved my foot pain, but I wasn't as diligent as I needed to be, so it never fully went away. However, I stopped experiencing the occasional stop-me-in-my-tracks pain. Later on I developed the same pain in my other foot, but I just didn't work on the trigger points sufficiently to get anything more than mostly relieved. Being that it wasn't a pain that was constant, but only occasional, I didn't think about it often enough to treat it as frequently as necessary.

Foot Pain Gone
The pain finally went fully away, strangely enough, after an athletic tournament where we played six games in two days. My legs were pushed to their limits, and my only explanation for the foot pain going and staying away after these two days was due to the muscles being stretched and worked to their limits, and for whatever reason, this released the trigger points, which are small nodules of contracted muscle. I'm assuming the contracted muscle, these trigger points, couldn't keep their hold through being pushed through such a rigorous athletic effort. Certainly, whatever the full explanation, the foot pain was certainly not due to any sort of injury, but the trigger point explanation seemed to me to fit perfectly. The trigger points were finally released somehow through vigorous, force-my-legs-to-get-up-and-move-again-for-one-last-game tournament.

I don't recommend that as a treatment, but it may work for you, who knows. But I can confidently recommend trigger point therapy.
-------

Scribble

2009-07-23T18:03:00.000-07:00

Over at abduzeedo.com there is a an article written by Ahmed Alrefaie aka owaikeO, detailing how he created his illustration titled Scribble. It's longish, but an interesting look into his process.

Beets

2009-07-17T18:44:00.000-07:00

What with a family reunion last weekend and getting some kinda stomach bug, I've been running behind schedule in the blogging world. By necessity I've kept up on the garden (minus weed control), and harvested these beets the other day. If you've never had beets, you gotta trry them at least once, if only for experiencing the pink colored pee. If you do like beets, you may be interested in reading about how I prepared them with orange sauce here.

Baseball History and More

2009-07-08T15:26:00.000-07:00

This here photo is of Jack Clements, putting out the vibe even as he throws the runner out at second. It's no wonder that historian Al Glynn said that Clements "certainly was the best left-handed catcher in all baseball history."

Over at the New York Public Library (NYPL) website, they have a nifty digital gallery providing open access to over 685,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs and more."

The above photo is from this collection.

It's a fun browse, and if you have a hankering to use an image for editorial or commercial purposes, you can do so for a reasonable fee. Pricing can be seen here, but note that while my Firefox 3.5 wasn't opening the pdf link today, my Safari 4 did.

Choux Buns, Food Photography, and Strobist

2009-07-07T20:18:00.001-07:00

Strobist is a smashing good blog for learning photographic lighting. Presently, the author is putting his readers through a boot camp, the second time he's done so. The above photo of choux buns is my current submission for Strobist Boot Camp II. Although, I've another idea I want to try. If you're interested in this kind of thing, I did a small write-up on food photography over at Cooley's Kitchen.

Cooley's Kitchen Is Alive and Kicken

2009-07-01T19:44:00.000-07:00

My new cooking blog is now live and rolling. If you'd like, check it out here.

Wisdom

2009-06-30T07:53:00.000-07:00

Andrew Zuckerman's Wisdom: 50 Unique and Original Portraits not only contains beautiful portraiture, but is packaged together with a 60 minutes of the portrait subjects discussing the meaning of wisdom. At wisdombook.org there's video excerpts from the interviews, plus 'making of' footage and commentary, and even has portraits of all the subjects. The book, however, has large, beautifully printed pages of these portraits, plus other images of each portrait subject, along with text, wisdom, from each person photographed. It is a beautiful book, and is on my wish list.

From a photographers standpoint, I found it fun and instructive to watch the Making Of: How It Was Made video (click link in upper left when you get to the site). Catching glimpses of the photographer at work, seeing his use of light, and seeing a bit of how he works with his subjects, all good stuff.

A few favorite quotes from the interviews:

"One of the reasons I haven't slipped into some sort of retirement is I always feel I'm learning something new all the time." - Clint Eastwood

"I always thought that inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work." - Chuck Close

"I don't know if political change can affect that much. Change has to be in the heart." -Kris Kristofferson

It's fascinating to see in so many of the commentaries on wisdom, how frequently the comments stem from the professional experiences of those who are being interviewed. Maybe that's obvious, but, there is something about it that I can't yet put my finger on... I just found it fascinating, one person of one background juxtaposed with one of another.

Blog, blog, blog

2009-06-29T19:15:00.000-07:00

Funny, but I already broke my weekly blogging goal, but that's not what's funny. What's funny is that I broke my blogging goal because I was blogging. Been ramping up to launch two new blogs, one anonymous, the other to be found here. It's tough work getting all things ready to do what I plan to do for these blogs, but it's gonna be fun. Within the week they'll be launched. 'kay, gotta go, and blog some more.

I Miss Photography

2009-06-18T21:21:00.000-07:00

I was posting the photo at left to flickr in order to submit it to a contest , when I peeked at my recent activity (comments to my photos and such). I looked at the favorites of one who favorited one of my photos and then spent the next couple hours looking through photostreams on flickr using this list of favorites as my guide.

Here are a few of my favorites from my viewing.
(To see larger, click each photo to go to the photographer's photostream.)

salt flats by antimethod

I Think I'm Falling For You... by GoodMolecules

There's No Escaping It by stephaniedan

Morelle by Elle Moss
Elle Moss is also on etsy, where I became a fan of her work.
Finding her on flickr was fun to see some work that's a little different from her stuff on etsy.

Wacom Bamboo Fun, Not Just for the Kiddies

2009-06-18T14:52:00.000-07:00

After a month or so of illustrating with a mouse, my shoulder had it. It ached. So I looked into getting a tablet. Glad I did.

Quality Counts
Second rate products don't cut it with me. Much rather spend double for quality, than half as much for junk. But I crave value, and can give up the best for something still quite good at a more easy to swallow price. So I looked at the competition, searching for a great value. In the end, I couldn't bring myself to go for a second tier brand. Reviews too mixed, and the build quality was pretty much universally considered sub par. I went with Wacom.

Price Counts Too
But the Wacom Intuos 4 is just so dang pricey. This illustration gig is still experimental for me, and the Intuos isn't set at an experimental price. I looked at the Wacom Bamboo Fun. Then I read every review on Amazon. Seeking for the only reviews that I could rely on: those who use the Bamboo as professionals. I found, I think it was two (note that different colors will have different reviewers, so I read reviews from all available colors). They were sold on it. So was I. Now, nearly two months later, I still am. It's a great little gadget.

Beautiful Design
On opening the box, I could see what a sexy piece of peripheral it really is. A few years ago I used a 12x12 Intuos 3. Huge, thick and clumsy for me. This Bamboo Fun is sleek at an 8.75" x 5.5" active area (11" x 9.25" total size) and feels nice in the hands. Drawing on the surface has a nice pen on paper feel. Very nice. If I could, I'd go for the new Intuos 4, only to get it's extra buttons. I don't need it's extra levels of pressure sensitivity, as I don't use this feature but occasionally in Photoshop, and not sure if it would make much difference for my style of use anyway.

Buttons: customized
The four buttons on the tablet are customizeable. Make them a keystroke, a couple keystrokes, run a script, whatever. I have mine set for undo, redo, shift, and control. My two pen buttons are set to alt (for dragging and zooming), and the second one opens my custom contextual menu. I could use one more button on the tablet. I'd make it the delete key, and then I'd rarely touch the keyboard. But otherwise, I haven't any thing I want more from the Bamboo. There's also a zoom and scroll pad on the tablet. Don't much like the scroll, but very much like the zoom.

Contextual Menu: customized
This is what made the Bamboo better than I hoped for. I set one of the buttons on my pen to open a contextual menu, in which I can put anything I want. Tools, dialogs (palettes), save, etc. All of my 'most used' can be placed in this menu, so I don't have to use the keyboard, or reach all the way over to the tool palette. Click, select tool, get to work. Repeat. Time saver. Patience saver. Arm saver. Love it.

Size
The medium is just right for me. Not too much space to travel the pen across for clicking on menus, and not too small for drawing. Any smaller would be too small, and my experience with the 12x12 Intuos 3 a few years ago, tells me bigger isn't always better. It just didn't suit me. This 8.75" x 5.5" active area suits me fine.

Black, Silver, or White
I chose the silver, because at the time it was the least expensive of the color options. I looked at other sellers, but Amazon was within $10 of the cheapest seller, and I trust Amazon. Other than the cheapest seller, all other sellers were no better priced, and usually pricier.

Wacom Bamboo Fun at Amazon.com
This has been a Wacom Bamboo Fun Review

How I Became An Illustrator

2009-06-10T13:01:00.000-07:00

Okay, so that title is a bit of an overstatement. Illustrator. Time will tell if it becomes an accurate description of what I do, but to date, I have only just begun learning to illustrate. Here's a brief telling of what actually is a, well, a brief tale.

For about sixteen months I had been contributing occasionally to a microstock photo agency. (Aside: If you're a creative that's down on microstock, I can understand, but I've come down on the "I'm cool with it" side of the microstock model. Times, methods, models, and technology changes. I figure those who don't appreciate the change, and don't adapt, risk falling behind as others take their place. Those who do adapt, succeed just as well as they did before. They can succeed by doing things how they used to, albeit with some modifications, or they can take the new road altogether. But some sort of adaptation must take place. For certain professions in this blink of an eye technological life we live in, that's how life seems to be. But this is a whole other topic. I'll discuss it further in depth at another time.)

So, I've been contributing photos to microstock, and wanted to take it further, so that I might be able to make a living this way. I submitted to other agencies, which brought more sales, but realized I needed help to do this at the scale I needed to. But I didn't have built-in help, and couldn't yet afford to higher help. So, I figured I'd supplement my photography with illustrations along the lines of Nick Monu's fantastic work, which is an image style that doesn't require illustrative skills so much as design skills. I thought, "I can do that." (After a little dabbling, I have yet to do that kind of illustration, as you can see by the few images in this post.)

Enter Inkscape 0.46, a free, open source vector illustration software (0.47 will be released within the week). Free is a whole heckuva lot cheaper than what I believed was my only alternative, Adobe Illustrator or a similar pricey package. Inkscape rocks. More on this nifty piece of software at a later time.
So, I downloaded Inkscape, dabbled, looked up tutorials and instruction from many sources online, and over the course of a few weeks felt pretty comfortable, and in a few weeks after that, even more comfortable. I studied the work of others, found a lot I liked, and few I really liked (including Steve Mack, Bob Staake, and Russell Tate), and began to make some work that was somewhat alright.

It's late, and I'm not feeling well, so I'll finish this up Thursday sometime, including a few illustrations.
---
Thursday: Okay, feeling worse, and better at the same time (Thanks D. Fish), and it's late again and so I'll get back to this post on Friday.
---
'kay, I'm back, six days later...

The topmost illustration was my first complete one. It was inspired by Maurizio Santucci's sweet 3-D paper illustration in the April '09 Popular Mechanics (an interesting article, to boot, about the improved technology that is behind the latest 3-D movie craze of late).

These last two illustrations are my effort at using texture within the vector software itself (click any image to see it bigger). Steve Mack uses Illustrator 10 to do his illustrations, from sketches all the way through to the final illustration. Even his texture is done in AI, which is significant, since everyone who uses texture so heavily takes the vector image into Adobe Photoshop or some other bitmap software to add the texture. That's how he used to do it, but to streamline workflow he developed a means of texturing within AI. I wanted to emulate Mack's work somewhat (he has such good stuff), and the texture was key. Since he was hush hush about his vector texture technique, which by all appearances seems unique to him, I went out and tried to figure out what he might be doing. These final images are my first efforts. The last one, too, serves to counterbalance all the cheeriness in the first four illustrations above it. Bah humbug.

I've more to say about what I've learned and am learning about illustration, but that's the beginning, and enough if not too much for now. Good evening, and goodnight.

Karleigh Hits 200

2009-06-08T11:50:00.000-07:00

My wife Karleigh creates handmade books. Journals, photo albums, notebooks, sketchbooks, guest sign-in books, and so on. You can catch another glimpse of her work in the sidebar, or visit her shop by clicking here.

In less than six months she reached her second 100 sales at karleighjae.etsy.com. The first 1oo took about a year. She rocks.

In addition to selling her books, she sells lambskin leather, the same stuff she uses on her hard bound, leather bound books. It's soft and supple and sells at a price much cheaper than you can likely find anywhere else. She buys in bulk to lower her per hide cost, and then sells the extras at a low price for a quicker sale. People have bought her leather for bookbinding, purse making, and clothing. For those interested, you can see her current color choices in her shop, or make a request for the color you're looking for.

White Mamba

2009-06-06T18:33:00.000-07:00

It wasn't my doing. I was dubbed. There's the Black Mamba, and now there is me. White Mamba. Okay, okay, okay, let's put this in perspective. Three games of two-on-two. Me and my early twenties brother, against our late fifties Pop and our mid thirties bro. Hey, that's the way the free throws fell when we shot for teams. Although Pops can still compete, he started out tired, and our older bro has been training for marathons, not for leaping, cutting, picking, in your face two-on-two basketball. He's got all the stamina in the world, but he felt like he had no quick, no hops (not to mention no shot). Me? I had my way. Driving, shooting, rise up over the screen and put it in the cup from twenty. That's the way it goes. I don't touch a ball for months, and then the first game back, I got a sweet shot like no other. If I play again within the week, look out, bricks be fallin' from the sky. That's just the way it is.

After three games of two-on-two, same teams each game, it was 3-0. White Mamba. Pops bailed, and the three of us played three games of twenty-one. Would you believe I ended the night 6-0? White Mamba. Cutting, driving, corner threes, reverse left-handed layups. Fall away jumpers. Even a few Magic over the Celts baby hooks. White Mamba. I haven't done much of anything athletics-wise since Vegas, so by endgame, my legs were like jelly. Doesn't get better than this.

Another bro is coming tonight. Gonna play again. Watch your head. Bricks be fallin' from the sky.

Edit:
Second night recap: White Brickamba

Conversations with a two-year-old: Teasing Mom

2009-06-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

[Earlier in the day, Jadon had been playing with the dog, Rizzo. Jadon came inside crying after he got bumped on his head as they played together.]

[Later in the day, on the back porch, eating lunch]

Jadon: It cold.

Karleigh: Yeah, It's cold from the wind. I have goosebumps. You have goosebumps too.

Jadon: I have bump.

Karleigh: Where's your bump?

Jadon: Forehead. I got hurt.

Karleigh: How did you get hurt?

Jadon: Rizzo. Tail. Bum piece wood.

Karleigh: [laughing] Rizzo's tail is not a piece of wood.

Jadon: Tail hurt. Piece wood on bum.

[Two minutes later...]

Jadon: [points to his bum] "I have bum." [He laughs] "I tease mom."

I love my Lotto Primatos

2009-06-04T16:00:00.000-07:00

About two years ago my cleats died after a long, action packed life. One of the cleats broke off during an intense game of ultimate (frisbee). I lost the cleat on the same play I lost my lunch, having sprinted the length of the field twice, on back to back plays, at the end of a long point. But you don't want to hear about that (and neither do I since I was scored on to boot). I was bummed, but it was the best thing that could have happened to my feet. The old cleats had probably been best retired much sooner, but I tend to wear things into the ground, even when I shouldn't necessarily do so, such as with athletic footwear. The old cleats were Adidas brand, and I had a high opinion of them, so expected I might replace them with the same.

I lived in a small town with few store options. Nothing I could find was suitable. So I turned to the internet and three different stores that rock when it comes to shipping and returns:

shoebuy.com
shoes.com

zappos.com

If I was looking for cleats today, I'd add another store to my shopping list, one owned by Amazon.com:

endless.com

Free shipping, free returns

What's great about these stores is that I was able to buy a half dozen shoes, try them on, then return what I didn't select without paying shipping, not even return shipping. Sweet deal.

What I tried

In looking to buy, I researched a great deal, as I tend to do, but can now only remember two of the boots I tried but did not end up choosing:

Adidas Predator (I forget which iteration of this model) - These were stiff, kinda plasticky feeling, and the toe didn't fit right. A soccer cleat should fit to the toe, and this left too much space in it's pointy end.

Adidas Copa Mundial - Nice fit and feel, but just couldn't justify the $100 tag. In the end, the Lottos I bought had a similar feel, but at a better price. In fact, I think I liked the Lotto's sole/cleats much better.

What I bought
Lotto Primato. I love, love, (love) these cleats. Instantly comfortable fit. Light weight. Clean, classic styling. And I almost never slipped on dry or damp ground. They just bite into the turf. In about thirty games, and three times as many practices and scrimmages, I've gone down to the ground due to slipping only two or three times while wearing my Lottos. They work equally well on grass or artificial turf (the new stuff that looks like grass with rubber bits that fly in the air when you cut hard).

About Fit
A soccer cleat is designed to fit to the toe. The shoe conforms to your foot, and you shouldn't have any excess room at the tip. Because of this, as you wear them they leave the foot looking much smaller than you may be used to them looking. With my Lottos I came to realize how much excess room there was in my old cleats. With my old boots, my toes tended to drag too frequently, but with a proper fitting cleat I felt much quicker just by reducing this unnecessary toe room. These fit true to size. I bought a size ten, which is the size I usually wear.

Lotto Primatos come in black or white.

-----------------------------

Movie Review: Bella

2009-06-03T08:13:00.000-07:00

I'm a tough critic when it comes to media. If I'm going to spend time and money, I want the material to be well crafted and to have a worthwhile message. I'm even cool with something light, and silly, if it fits my sense of humor and doesn't leave me feeling scummy. But not much out there gets past my quality filter and into my "wanna own it" list. I like a lot of movies okay, but many don't appeal to me beyond a first, or maybe even a second viewing, as its flaws just don't end up seeming worth my time.

Having said all this, I think that Bellais just about perfect.

Beautifully filmed, written, and acted, with an inspiring message to boot. There are a few bits that were flawed. I noticed two minor visual technical weaknesses, which were a touch distracting for me during those scenes, but nothing terrible, and they seemed more due to the film's lower budget as an independent film than any inability of the filmmakers. The storytelling and acting were so strong that they more than overcame these two minor visual weaknesses. Atthe end of the film there is a passage of time that didn't seem very well conveyed, and thus left me a bit confused for a few moments until I realized that it wasn't the next day, but a few years down the road.

I should say I sat down to watch the movie with no previous knowledge of the film other than what the cover had to say. Coming to it with no great expectation allowed the film's simplicity and nuanced performances to do what they were intended to do. That is, tell a good story, without pomp, but with dignity, warmth, and an eye and ear for what is beautiful about life. That is, what is beautiful about real life, rather than movie life.

I considered embedding a trailer, but the trailer was pretty weak. Better than this is the interview with star and co-producer Eduardo Verastegui at Amazon.com. The interview is on the left hand side, just under the movie images on the left.

“A Perfect Film, An Artisitc Masterpiece”
Tony Bennet, Grammy & Emmy Award Winning Singer/Songwriter

Warm, sweet and funny.
Roger Ebert, rogerebert.com

“The Best movie of the Year. Everyone should see this film.”
Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life

“A sweet, life-affirming picture”
Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times

“A bear-hugging embrace of sweetness and light”
Stephen Holden, The New York Times

Versategui is a natural on the big screen, a compelling presence.
Ruthe Stein, San Fransico Chronicle

Powerful and moving… a true inspiration.
CNN, Ana Maria Montero

Bella

New Edition

2009-06-02T17:08:00.001-07:00

Meet our second! Ethan Alexander, born May 30, and weighing in at 7 lbs 5 oz at 21 in. long. I know, I know, he's cute, right? Notsofast. This is the 26th of 28 photos taken of him over his first two days on earth. And the only cute one of the bunch :) Hey, it's true. I just don't think newborns are especially cute looking until about two to three weeks into life. My suspicion is most people secretly feel the same, but wouldn't ever admit to it. It's okay. We still love him.

Dust Furniture

2009-06-01T19:49:00.000-07:00

This is too cool. My wife found Dust Furniture on etsy, and when she showed me, my whole insides smiled. I felt a twinge of envy, as the woodworker in me oggled over their work. Give them a look and see if you don't come away smiling inside and out.

Dust Furniture website
Dust furniture on etsy

Your pain, gone.

2009-05-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook: Your Self-Treatment Guide for Pain Relief, Second Edition

I can't say enough good things about this book. It's not perfect, and it isn't a cure all, but the application of its precepts does wonders on a great many types of pain. Now, if you're bleeding, or have a purple lump the size of a melon, or some other clearly identifiable injury, that's a different story. But otherwise, this book stands a great chance of getting rid of your pain by getting to the source of it. With well over 200 positive reviews on Amazon.com, I got past my initial skepticism, and bought the book. I've never made a better purchase.

The Gist of Trigger Point Therapy

A trigger point is a small, persistent contraction within a muscle, commonly called a knot. Often times these knots, or trigger points, cause pain, sometimes disabling pain, at the point of the trigger point, or more commonly, at points away from the trigger point. Consider a headache. It can be caused by trigger points, or knots, in the neck. So, to get rid of the pain, the point of pain is identified, which leads to a search of probable locations of the culpable trigger point. One trigger point may be the cause, or multiple trigger points may be contributing. Then self-applied massage is applied to the trigger point, each session lasting for about twelve short strokes. Five or six such sessions a day and soon enough the trigger point will release and the pain will be relieved. Sometimes one session will be enough to do the trick, sometimes it can take a few days or weeks. That's it. Simple. From headaches, to a frozen shoulder, to an inexplicably painful toe, all of these and more can often be relieved with self-applied trigger point therapy. It's inexpensive, and easy to do, and so may often be the best first thing to try to rid yourself of most any pain you might have.

The book goes in more depth on what I've said here, and provides diagrams aplenty, so within a short time you can be seeking out your own possible trigger points and finally ridding yourself of some unnecessary pain.

Knee Pain, Be Gone

During a season/semester of ultimate (frisbee) I developed knee pain early on in the season. I didn't have the pain to start the season, and didn't have it after the first couple days of tryouts and practice. But the pain came on by the end of the first week.

It wasn't getting worse over the course of the season, but stayed about the same. I did curtail my efforts at practice, in an effort to heal, but for me it was an odd pain being that it didn't seem to get better with rest, and giving an all-out effort in games didn't seem to make it worse. Throughout the season the pain was sometimes more, sometimes less, but the increase or decrease wasn't obviously connected to more or less activity. Strange.

I chalked the pain up to having spent about six months prior to the season doing little more than sitting in a chair for about 6-8 hours a day, with little to no exercise, and then suddenly practicing and playing hard once the season began. Ultimate (frisbee) requires lots of running.

Yet, this didn't explain the actual source of the pain, but just described the circumstances in which the pain developed. Although, these circumstances of prolonged inactivity followed by intense activity later helped me understand exactly what had been happening with my knees, once I got a hold of The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook.

At mid-season I bought two books, The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook, and Treat Your Own Knees: Simple Exercises to Build Strength, Flexibility, Responsiveness and Endurance. This second book wasn't the answer for me, but the exercises in it would have helped prior to the season, and might have been useful in conjunction with trigger point therapy, but I never did much with the book once I found that my pain was really due to the trigger points. I also tried knee straps like the one shown in the photo at left, which seemed to provide some relief, but in the end they weren't the answer for me, and I ditched them by season's end once the trigger point therapy proved to be helpful at easing my pain.

So, like I've been telling ya, it was trigger points, or more commonly called "knots" in the muscle, that caused my pain. While sitting for hours on end for several months, my muscles lost their luster, so to speak, and when I started running hard, they didn't react kindly, and these knots, or trigger points developed in the muscles that supported and operated my knees. A common attribute of trigger point pain is that the pain is often (but not always) experienced in a location other than where the trigger points are. So, a headache can be caused by trigger points in the neck, and my own knee pain was caused by trigger points along the front and sides of my thighs.

Conclusion

I've got two other stories about pain I relieved with trigger point therapy. One for so-called plantar fasciitis, or foot pain, the other being a pain in my neck. As this is running long already, I'll share them in future posts.

Until then, you may want to consider getting the book, and I expect you'll be glad you did, if not for your current hope to cure pain, then for other pain you're sure to experience due to trigger points.
-------
Here's a list of tools that are suggested for treatment of some of the trigger points, although many can be treated effectively with supported fingers or sometimes even a knee or elbow:

A lacrosse ball
A tennis ball
Knobble
Backnobber
TheraCane

The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook: Your Self-Treatment Guide for Pain Relief, Second Edition

Goooooaaal! Renewed.

2009-05-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

So, it's been about two and half months since I last posted. My goal of weekly posting, which I almost did for a while there, got set on hold as I set aside not only blogging, but my photography as well. The time that had gone to these activities was swallowed up by my recent efforts at illustration. The thing is, I had to learn how to illustrate. And also to learn the software that I use to finalize those illustrations. So, amidst learning the software, studying other illustrator's work, and working through the tedious process of picking up drawing when I've never done much of it before, all kind of took up lots and lots and lots of my time of late.

And then I went and decided I needed to increase the complexity of my illustrations, which required my developing my own technique so as to emulate to some degree the texturing technique of one of my current favorite illustrators. The thing is, he's hush-hush about his process of adding texture to his work, a process which is unique amongst illustrators insofar as I have seen (and I've been seeing a lot lately), and so I had to go out and figure out a means of emulating what he's doing. I've fairly well got it figured, somewhat, I think, albeit my development of the technique as well as how it relates to my own style is a work in progress that I'm polishing up and likely will continue to evolve for... well, indefinitely if it's to hold my interest for long.

More about all this later. But now, I want to talk about your pain. Coming in the next post. Off to write it now...

Senior Portaits: Part Two

2009-03-17T20:51:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago I stumbled across a couple John Michael Cooper videos about one of his shoot's and his post-production for that shoot. It was a new idea for me, and one I wanted to try asap. Take a look if you'd like to see him walk through his shoot. Or, you can continue on and get the ten peso version (I don't have a cameraman just yet) of my own first effort at this lighting technique.

The photo above (click it to see it larger) is the big idea we went out with when we headed to shoot Haleigh's senior portraits. I knew we'd shoot something more conventional afterwards (see previous post), and would probably even shoot again the next day (just for fun), but I wanted to shoot this idea whether or not she decided to use it. She was excited about it too.

And she had a great location in mind. Several old concrete and steel buildings, or what was left of their tumbled remains, largely hidden from view in a narrow span of trees tucked between one city and the next. After we arrived I wanted to stop and shoot everywhere along our way as we walked to the place we ultimately decided to shoot. The place isn't great because it's pretty. Because it's ugly. But cool ugly.

Here's the quick rundown of the shot. Camera set two stops under the ambient during a cloudless mid-afternoon (in the photo above you can see that it was actually bright and sunny outside). Lit using only one strobe. Twenty frames, put together in post with Photoshop. If you're a quick study, the picture, and the previous three sentences are all you need to know to go and try it out yourself. If you're still not quite sure, read on.

Composition
Once we picked a specific location, I spent a few minutes composing the scene precisely. Which was different than my usual perpetual exploration of the composition throughout a shoot, as I explore the interaction of the subject and his or her surroundings, getting different angles and looking for something that works. But this particular shot required sticking the camera on a tripod and sticking with the one composition.

Pose
Next we decided on a pose. Important to get this right too, since we were essentially taking one shot. In a way this is restricting, but also refreshing to be able to make the choice, and be done with it, and focus on other things besides choosing different poses throughout a shoot.

Light the Face
Then we took several different shots of Haleigh as I held a speedlight to light her face. I was in frame, but that would be taken care of easily in post. Dang it if she couldn't sit still! She did maintain the same general pose, but she's so animated that she kept leaning forward and back up again as we tried getting several different expressions to choose from for the final image. I was concerned that her movement would make it a pain to blend her face into the final image, but it was cake, largely thanks to the darkness of much of the image, which made it easy to hide slight shifts in her overall posture.

Light the Scene
After that, she maintained her pose as I went throughout the scene and popped the strobe wherever I felt like would be a good place. Note in the photo above that I was actually in frame as I did this, but I'd be easily removed in post because I only used the flashlit portion of each frame. We took about 35 shots (some redundant it turns out), but didn't like all of them and ended up with nineteen or twenty frames that went into the final composite. As we shot, I came back and checked the camera screen after I took several shots, then shot some more.

Composite
In post, I selected the images to put into the scene, and with layers in Photoshop combined the flash lit portions of each image all into one composite image. Some of the flash pops were too bright, so I didn't layer them all in at 100% opacity. I also darkened the sky some, to help keep the high contrast of that area from being a distraction. Although I went for a low-key image, this technique could very well be used to create an image full of light.

Some notes
You can do this any time of day. Noon, sunny, whatever. Just manually set the camera under one or two stops, then an unmodified speedlight is more than powerful enough at close range to overpower the sunlight. You'll need something to wirelessly trigger your strobes (click here to learn more about speedlights, how to trigger them, and to learn a great deal more than you bargained for).

We shot again the next day, without any strobes. I think I may talk briefly about that in another post.

John Michael Cooper's site

His how-to videos

Senior Portraits: Part One

2009-03-14T19:27:00.000-07:00

Haleigh wasn't interested in what is typical for senior portraits in the area she lives (often cheesy). So I presented her some photo ideas that weren't the norm, and we went and played with a few of them. In the end, she did choose to have her guitar in some of them so as to appease mom with a symbol of her talents without cheesily holding a paintbrush.

These photos here are actually not one of the original ideas I presented to Haleigh. But, after the first part of the shoot, which was more involved, I quickly scouted out this location to make a lighter and cleaner portrait from the more dramatic and moody image we shot first, thinking these would be more to the taste of Haleigh's mom (in my next post I'll cover the first part of our shoot, which I think turned out pretty cool). The series of photos in this post were shot pretty quickly, only a handful really, and we stopped when we had something that worked since she had an appointment to keep.

For both series of photos we were at an old abandoned building, what was left of it, and the wall-less second level is raised up on concrete slabs and covered in dirt and soot. Nature was reclaiming the place, and I used the upraised level of the building to get a shot of tree, sky and mountain in the background, so as to avoid the grungier post-earthquake-rubble-fifty-years-later look that surrounded us.

Being mid-afternoon without any clouds, I tamed the hard light by bringing the ambient down with my exposure settings, and filling from the opposite direction with flash. Because I was using flash, my shutter speed maxed out at 250 (the max sync speed of my camera), so I took the exposure down the rest of the way by closing down my aperture. The trick was to stop down far enough to prevent blowing out of the mountain behind, while still being able to have enough strobe power to get through my smaller aperture. To offset the sunlight coming down from camera right, I stuck three speedlights in a silver umbrella, each at half power, coming in from camera left. (I ended up at about f/11 at 1/250 sec.) Since the strobes were close to Haleigh, they were a close match to the intensity of the sunlight.

I could also have gone a bit faster with my shutter speed, which would have the flash taking no effect on the edge of the frame where Haleigh was not standing, but that's a trick I have yet to try and it wasn't on my mind at the time.

I used three light stands, one for each light. The tri-legs of the lightsands were closed up, and they were all clustered together and held by my lovely assistant, as they fired into the umbrella. If I had one, I'd have used a TriFlash bracket, just to un-clumsy the set-up.

Time for a confession. The original images were darker than these, but I pushed up the exposure in post. The slight darkness was a mistake on my part, but fortunately a small one which shooting in raw helped to be amendable. My error was in not shooting either my hand or the subject or a stand-in up close, which would have allowed me to get an accurate meter reading for the light that reflected off only her skin. Instead, I mistakenly metered from far back, thus metering for the whole scene. My histogram gave me a good read, but the mild nagging unease about whether or not the exposure on her face was bright enough didn't get through to the part of my brain that should have told me to go meter up close on her face and use that histogram to tell me how to adjust my camera and/or lights. Later, when I got the images on the computer screen, I saw I had a good exposure for the background (having taken the mid-afternoon light down to an early evening level of light), but her face was a touch underlit from what I wanted. I had adequately balanced the strength of the ambient light with the strength of my strobes, but what I really needed was to either have the strobes be a touch brighter, or to have the whole scene brighter (by opening up my aperture to allow more light in from both sources, or by increasing the ISO). A wider aperture or higher ISO would have threatened to blow out the lightest parts of the mountain, which I'd prefer to avoid. So, increasing my strobes to full power, or adding another light would have been my preferred first option at bringing up the light on her face.

In the end, with the top photo, we got something fun and that showed a bit of Haleigh's personality, while being a bit different than what she normally thought of as a senior photo. In the next post I'll talk about the first photo we made just prior to this series. It's a bigger idea that was even further from typical, and I think looks pretty cool.

Slideshow

Active-Isolated Stretching: Better than you might think

2009-02-28T07:36:00.000-08:00

The Whartons' Stretch Book

You've been stretching all wrong. That is, if you've been stretching at all. And stretching's not just for old guys, either. The more flexible you can be at any age, the less often you'll be injured. You'll play better, run faster, sleep sounder, and sit more comfortably, all thanks to active-isolated stretching (AIS).

Who Benefits?

Most anyone, really. My brother runs marathons. These stretching exercises do wonders for his legs before a run, and especially if he does them again after a run.

My dad, in his mid-fifties, performs physical labor on his feet all day. Just this week he began AIS in the mornings, and it has been a stark difference of increased energy and feel-goodness for him throughout the day. Now, instead of slugging out the end of the day, he feels like he could work longer if need be.

Me, I recently trained for an ultimate (frisbee) tournament (seven games in two days), and the key part of my training program were these stretches. I did the upper and lower leg stretches, and sometimes the feet. Yep, the feet. Ankles, down to the toes. Compared to last years tournament (only six games), this year I felt some stiffness and sluggishness by the beginning of the end game, but not the rigor mortis stiffness in my legs by last years final game. This year, by the time the last game was over I was ready to play more.

Sleeping Restless?

As people get older, the authors note, they become less active. So when bedtime comes, they may be mentally ready for sleep, but physically they have not had enough activity to be fully ready for sleep. So a tossing and turning throughout the night often ensues. Performing these exercises in bed before sleep can be light enough exercise to prepare the body for rest without being overly stimulating so as to make getting to sleep difficult.

Active Means Active

These are not the static, reach-and-touch-your-toes for thirty seconds kinds of stretching. But it isn't so active as aerobics, either. As for activity level, it's on par with some of the milder exercises of a pilates or yoga routine. When I first began doing these exercises, being a bit inactive in the months preceeding, I would work up a light sweat. But, that's a good thing. As noted by the authors, warming up before stretching is a misnomer. Stretching is the warm up. At least when you do the active isolated kind.

Why It Works

Each exercise focuses on stretching one muscle area by contracting the muscles that work in the opposite direction. This contracting of the opposing muscle, allows the muscle we want to stretch to relax, and therefore stretch it without forcing it to do so. Example: I flex my quads (thighs), and the hamstrings (back of thighs) relax.

Each exercise is performed in reps of 10, and held for 2 seconds each rep. The 2 seconds allows for a healthy stretching of the muscle before the stretched muscle kicks in it's natural protective response to contract, at which point further holding of the stretch would just fight against the muscle we are trying to stretch, and that's not so effective.

Sample Stretch

The book has easy to follow illustrations, as well as written instruction. But following are my own words on how to do one of the exercises:

Lie on your back, both legs bent so your feet rest on the floor. Lift one leg so it is in the air, but bent at a 90 degree angle, your lower leg parallel to the floor. Your upper leg will be perpendicular to the floor. Now extend your lower your leg upward, bending at the knee until your whole leg is straight. Depending on your flexibility, you may not be able to raise your leg fully upright, or you may be able to extend your leg past upright as you stretch it in the direction of your head. Hold for 2 seconds, then return your lower leg to be parallel with the floor, keeping your upper leg perpendicular to the floor (your leg bent at the knee, forming a right angle). Repeat 10 times.

Rope and Variations

The authors do suggest the use of a rope (see cover) to lightly assist with some of the stretches, but it is possible to do them with out it. I do the exercises both ways, with and without the rope. It's a little faster without it (not having to re-secure the rope on my foot for each exercise), and sometimes I just don't have the rope with me. A thicker rope is better, as it's easier to hold. Try a rope approximately 1/2" to 1" in diameter.

If you're not so flexible, you can vary the form of stretches to make them easier. For example, one of the quad (thigh) stretches asks you to hold one foot forward, while bringing the other foot backward as you lie on your side (if that isn't clear, it will be when you see the illustration and read the books description). If that's too hard, just don't hold the one foot forward, and the exercise becomes easier.

Disclaimer: Before beginning any exercise program, talk to your doctor, yada yada. There, I'm legally safe. But if you ask me, if you don't have a broken bone, or a torn ligament, AIS is as safe for anyone as is walking up the stairs. And perhaps safer because when you're done with the routine, your looser and stronger, and more prepared to do what you gotta do.

The Whartons' Stretch Book

Arches National Park, and parts round about

2009-02-18T13:23:00.001-08:00

This weekend we went to Moab, visiting my brother and his family who live there.

We hiked, talked late into the night, saw beautiful country, and had a good time. I had forgotten my wide angle lens at home, and so I had to make do with my 70-200 (on a camera with a 1.6x sensor, if you now what that means). Not having a wider angle lens worked out better than I thought it would, and in a way, was better, at least for the above panoramic shot and similar ones I took. Otherwise, I likely would have focused on shooting stuff that was closer, and missed these panoramic opportunities.

Hiking outside Arches National Park

The panoramic at top is in Arches National Park, 10-15 minutes from my brother's house. It's a four shot panoramic of the ancient sand dunes there. I'll soon be making a polished final image, as well as of some others I took from the same vantage point. For now, you may see the large version (width: over 10,000 pixels) of the top image by clicking on it.

Hiking outside Arches National Park

Bouldering in Arches National Park

Double Happiness

2009-02-11T22:37:00.001-08:00

That's what this weekend was. Yes, you astute ultimate players will have recognized the title of this post means a defensive knockdown, back to back with running to the goal and receiving a pass for a score. But that is not the double happiness I speak of. But my weekend of double happiness does include ultimate. I went to the Trouble in Vegas tournament, otherwise known as "The best and worst idea ever." Three days of frisbee, back to back to back. Our team, not one's to play on Sunday, played only on Friday and Saturday. A total of seven games. Great and glorious fun.

The second part of double happiness was eating at In-N-Out Burger. 'Nuff said.

Moving

2009-02-02T22:07:00.000-08:00

It's the pits. Especially when you don't have a place to move into just yet. Finished school, so we're moving to be near family, but for now we're staying with family, until we find a place. Here's hopin' we find a place soon. Very soon.

ecodazoo.com

2009-01-26T12:16:00.001-08:00

Perhaps the coolest site I have ever seen. Check it out.

Never Forgets

2009-01-19T22:22:00.000-08:00

I went to San Diego two summers ago with my wife and her family. We towed along our then six month old son Jadon, going to Sea World, Balboa Park, the beach, and the zoo. I shot this elephant photo then, and just now got around to doing something fun with it.

The image further below is what it looked like out of camera.

Here's what I did to create the image above. In Canon's raw software, Digital Photo Professional, I made a sepia tone and upped the contrast, then cropped it square.

I didn't care for the original background, it was too distracting for me. So I thought I'd play with blending the elephant head and another photo, a close up of it's skin. The skin close-up was to be used as background, blending it into the head photo using a mask in Photoshop. This wasn't working for me either, so I took a break from it. I often think my creative best when lying down with my eyes closed, and so I killed two birds and thought about this image as I lay down to rest my weary eyes from this mornings photo excursion (more on that in a later post).

To clean up the visual mess surrounding the elephant's head, I decided on adding a background of an old textured wall. Adding this wall image as another layer in Photoshop, I used a mask to cut out where the elephant was, allowing it to appear in front of the wall. Then I played and played and played with also blending in the close-up photo of the skin, giving another layer of texture on the background. Ultimately, that proved too distracting, so I just vignetted the image of the wall, added to the wall a gaussian blur at 3 pixels, and then it was nearly done. I cleaned up some white specks on the elephant's face, probably bits of grass, and that was that. I wonder, though, if the fact that it is eating hay is a detraction to the image. I may come back to this and try painting it out, but that'd be quite the Photoshop workout.

[Note: the above is slightly simplified, as there are other adjustment layers in the image, and a few blendings of redundant layers, one altered one way, the other altered another, all to give a somewhat different look than what the above simple description would have given.]

If someone you know struggles with this whole computer/internet thing, this'll bring a smile

2009-01-12T11:14:00.000-08:00

Perhaps you know this guy? Perhaps you know at least three or four people like this guy. All is not lost for those new to such newfangled gadgetry. Call the helpdesk.

About the video: Helpdesk support back in the day of the middle age with English subtitles. Original taken from the show "Øystein og jeg" on Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) in 2001.

The "official" version (posted by NRK) may be seen here, but to me, the text is harder to read than in the version above, although, there are a few seconds more in this official version that add one more joke to the skit.

It's that time of year...

2009-01-05T11:50:00.001-08:00

...where resolutions are made, only to be broken within a matter of weeks, if not days, or even hours. For any who wish their resolutions to stick, here are some suggestions for increased stickability:

Make sure it is attainable
Design it so it is measurable
Set a realistic plan for achieving it
Be accountable to someone for it

1. I might be able to realistically set a goal to put on 10 pounds of muscle in the next 6-8 months, but I know me, and if I were instead to set a goal to put on 25 pounds of muscle any time this year, that wouldn't be realistic.

2. I could set a "goal" to be nicer, but that wouldn't be measurable, and thus not really much of a goal. I'd have to design it such that my niceness is measurable, so that I could keep track of my progress. If my ultimate aim was to be nicer, I'd have to set goals of hugs given per day, or count the number of fist fights I get into each day (to find a baseline) and then reduce that as time goes by.

3. Part of this includes not setting too many goals all at once, because too many might very well be unrealistic to plan for. Make sure any goals you do set can be realistically worked in to the available time of each day, week, and month. In many cases, setting a goal will require cutting some other activity in order to make time for achieving your goal. If I want to read the complete works of J.R.R Tolkein this year, I have to plan time for which to do it, which will require that I choose what other activity I am going to cut out to allow me time for my reading. Some goals are complex, and will require a succession of steps to attain it, all which have to be planned out, with enough flexibility in your expectations to allow for setbacks or stalls or changes in your plans.

4. If you're married, discuss with your spouse what goal or goals you have, and have a daily or weekly accounting with him or her. If you're single, discuss with your parents (whether you live at home or not) your goal or goals, and have a daily or weekly accounting with them. Be sure the person who you choose to be accountable to has a genuine interest in your attaining the goal, or this step won't be much of a motivator to continue to work on the goal, but instead could actually be demotivating. If the goal isn't directly important to your "accounter," then explain how important it is to you, and why, and he or she may then be able to understand the importance to you and therefore have a desire to help encourage you to achieve your goal.

Honestly, these are pretty theoretical for me, but others have had success by implementing these (and often times other) principles in their goal setting.

Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm

2009-01-03T18:56:00.000-08:00

Do you forget stuff? Then this Wired article may be of interest. It's worth reading just for how well it is written. It's about Supermemo, a memory enhancing piece of software.

Supermemo really is an incredible concept. For me, the author of the software, Piotr Wozniak, is a wee bit extreme about using it, but even using it more lightly for a few things here and there could be hugely beneficial.

Here's an excerpt:

SuperMemo is based on the insight that there is an ideal moment to practice what you've learned. Practice too soon and you waste your time. Practice too late and you've forgotten the material and have to relearn it. The right time to practice is just at the moment you're about to forget.

(Tip for reading the article: click the "full page" link, at the bottom of every new page of the article, if you don't want to click the "next" link after reading each page.)

Words I looked up while reading:

misanthrope
episteme
Esperanto
hangdog
visceral

For Mac users, try mindburn, based on the same concept.

Semifinalist

2009-01-02T08:55:00.000-08:00

Last year I submitted this image to the 2008 Adobe Design Achievement Awards, for which I was selected as a semifinalist. I also submitted another image, that I'll show here when I get back to my own computer where it's stored.

The above image was made with five different photos, then mixed together in Adobe Photoshop to create the final image.

For lighting, I used two or three Nikon SB-80 DX flashes, with dome diffusers on them, behind the mother. She is in a small 4'x5' "hallway" that connects three different rooms. This 4x5 space was closed on three sides by doors and a wall, creating a light tent effect, wrapping her in glowing light.

In Photoshop I blended the photos of each leg, one of each model's head, and one of the mother's arms and torso. The infant photo was actually taken several months prior to the mother photo(s). I warped the mother's torso to create a more upright and squared look to her back and shoulder. Several different adjustment layers created the coloring and added to the high key effect of my lighting. Also added lighting effects to the infant's head to help it look more like a part of the image.

I think I need to revisit this image, to try and achieve a more natural look to the infants head, making it look less like it was added in to the image. But overall, I'm pretty pleased with it. Thanks to my wife, Karleigh, and son Jadon for modeling.

New Year's Eve Eve sledding

2009-01-01T07:16:00.000-08:00

We went sledding a couple days ago, along with a couple of my bros and nieces and nephews. It was my son Jadon's first time. I took him on three or four runs, the first time he came up crying (a bit scary maybe, or perhaps the snow spraying his face) but he came up smiling the second time, saying "snow" "face" and "jacket" over and over again, pointing out where the snow got him, amused by the spray in his face this time.

cleanplaydvds.com

2008-12-26T13:36:00.000-08:00

Frustrated with your ClearPlay breaking down? Bugged that CleanFlick got snuffed? Here's an alternative.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-24T14:00:00.000-08:00

On this eve of Christmas in which we celebrate the birth of the Savior, I wish you a Merry Christmas.

Photography by Mark Mabry: Reflections of Christ.

Reflections of Christ DVD
ReflectionsofChrist.org

Don't slip on the ice, it hurts

2008-12-24T11:37:00.000-08:00

Famous Footwear sent me a card for $5 off $5 or more. So I thought I'd stop in the store and get some free socks. Instead, I used the card to reduce the price on a pair of Yaktrax for my wife. And of course I had to put them to a test. I walked a couple miles in them after it dumped a couple feet of snow. I walked on ice. I walked on compacted snow. Verdict: awesome. Pretty much like walking on clear ground. I think I'll grab a pair for myself.

Yaktrax

Letters from Mojave I and II

2008-12-23T20:31:00.000-08:00

These are my most recent photographic images, having worked on them over the last couple of days. I find it often takes several different sessions of work to complete an image, making an adjustment here, an adjustment there. Coming back after even two minutes time can help to see it fresh again, to see what needs adjusting. This is true for something more produced as are the following two images, as well as for a straight photo without obvious manipulation, which still requires adjustments to saturation, contrast, hue, etc.

The original image that these two images are products of, I thought looked pretty good after the initial lengthy work session. It didn't look so good when I did a second one. That second one needed quite a bit of tweaking, and then the third one, too, needed a bit of tweaking. These final two images are the results, with the original image being scrapped. These two may get altered again after time has passed allowing me to see something I don't like, but for now, I'm kinda liking them.

I initially titled them Letters From Nowhere I and II. I was thinking that the joshua tree indicates desert, and the desert is "the middle of nowhere," but that seemed too negative. So I changed it to Letters From Mojave.

The envelope that is blended with the joshua tree image is from 1929, if I can read the year correctly. My wife received it when she purchased a set of old postage stamps. The joshua tree image is from near my aunt and uncle's home in California. I photographed it nearly a year ago, during one morning of my final trip to visit my grandfather, my dad's dad, before he passed away.

Soon to be available at etsy, they are now available here.

The perils of CF card readers

2008-12-22T11:56:00.000-08:00

A while back I posted about Photorec, file recovery software that I found to be stellar at recovering corrupted photo files from my CF card. Not only is it good, it's free. (Although, if you use it, and love it, the software author does accept donations.)

But, how do files on a CF card ever get corrupt anyway? Although my investigation didn't provide the exact answer, I did find enough info to be of help.

Why do files get corrupt?
The answer: card readers.

The two times I have experienced corrupt files on my CF card has been when I have used a card reader to try and upload photo files to my computer. Not all card reader use has turned my files unreadable, but two of the dozens of times that I have used the card reader, files have been corrupted. Not sure why, or how, but that was my experience, and in my brief investigation I found a few other people across the internet who had similar problems when using a card reader.

The solution: use the camera and it's USB cord to upload any irreplaceable photos.

I still use my card reader all the time. I use it to transfer files easily from one place to the next, or when I am uploading photos from a photo shoot where moving the camera would ruin my set up, and the photo is easily replaceable since I'm doing a studio photo shoot. But if I have wedding pics, or a location shoot to transfer to my computer, I ditch the card reader, and connect my camera to the computer using the USB cord. I have uploaded photo files using my camera's USB cord hundreds of times without a hitch.

If you're concerned about this sucking your camera's battery, consider buying a spare. A spare battery will give you extra juice for file uploads, while still having enough power for shooting Billy's birthday party.