Brick Update Finished!

I just finished a video update to EWU's Pass Through the Pillars Brick Campaign website. EWU is paving the Hello Walk with engraved bricks to provide student support funding. I think this update will be successful due to the fact that donors can already see the bricks that others have purchased on the walk.

Depth of Field

Here is another Photoshop tutorial I Stumbled upon. I found it at psd tuts plus. It is a type effect that I am seeing a lot of lately in modern website design. I add a bit of noise to soften up the edges and give a more realistic look.

The Trouble with (Apple's) Color

I am a big fan of Apple's Final Cut Pro video editing application. I have used FCP since its first version that I bought installed on a close-out G4 that I bought in 1998. Since then I have bought two other updated versions and a third for work. Since version 5 FCP has come bundled into a "Production Suite". The suite includes FCP, Compressor, Soundtrack, Live Type and Motion.

With FCP version 6 there came a new potentially ground-breaking application bundled with the suite- Color. It is a stand alone color corrector that is touted to rival expensive Black Magic's Da Vinci. This application could possibly revolutionize the way film and high-end video were produced and color corrected.

Problem is... it isn't all that good. Color's UI is still unfamiliar to me after 2 years. It bears no resemblance to other applications with the FCP suite. Navagating it is more like using Shake than FCP. The cool things that Apple has done with other apps within the suite have no relevance to Color.

One thing that really kills me is the lack of an eye dropper color picker to select a point of color for white balance. FCP has one in its Color Corrector filter... why did they not think it was important for Color? Another gripe is the lack of sliders anywhere. Motion, Soundtrack, FCP all make use of sliders. Color uses a scrollable positive numeral that is accurate to six positions after the decimal point. This is probably a hold over from the professional color-grading application that it originated from.

Overall I like the concept of a stand-alone application to tweek/finesse color other than the built in Color Corrector of FCP but Color falls short. I hope in the latest version it is rebuilt to be better than the original.

EWU Athletic Lettering

I found a tutorial on creating athletic lettering at The Design Playbook . I created an example of my alma mater Eastern Washington University in Cheney, WA.

Merchants Use flickr to Feed Sites

Here is an example of an online merchant that uses flickr to propagate their web pages. In this instance Bike Mate uses it to feed a flash rotator. Using this technology, a business could make an online catalog of current products using item numbers as metadata tags within flickr. You could start with an excel spread sheet of current products with quantities and item numbers. You convert the spreadsheet into an html table and have the item numbers pull in the photos.

Kittitas Sunset Over the Oats

Here is a series of photos I shot in Kittitas this summer. Kittitas is the epitome of rolling hills and wind-swept prairie. I shot it with a slower shutter speed and from a tripod to emphasize the movement. My Nikon D60 captured the oats as they flowed in the breeze. In Lightroom I did something I seldom do which is to reduce the Clarity of an image below a value of 0. Clarity values below 0 create an edge softening effect reminiscent of old large format board cameras.

URC Architectural Details

Here is a photo I shot yesterday while walking around campus. I was asked to get photos of architectural details for the back cover of our alumni magazine. The concept is to use small thumbnails of various buildings to form a grid. Then the reader must guess where the photo was taken.




Here is a shot of Monroe Hall. The giantic Sugar Maple towers over the hall.

Fall EWU Photo Walk

I shot this on a photo walk last week. It is of an architectural element of the University Recreation Center at EWU. I used Lightroom 2 to pull out a more punchy, dynamic exposure. The cranked Saturation and Vibrance make this pop.



Here's a shot of Showalter Hall. I love the way a 17mm lens distorts the perspective.



Here's a shot of Patterson Hall. The oak trees turn a nice orange color in the fall. The 80mm lens setting forces the background nicely out of focus.

Candid Portraits

A candid portrait of Dr. Rodolpho Arévalo I shot during a faculty awards ceremony. The mixed lighting gave a bluish halo to the subjects.I like this kind of photography I like. It shows a subject engaged instead of staged.

Audio Post Work

I just finished another audio mix for a television commercial to air regionally in the Inland Northwest. I mixed it on Apple's Soundtrack.