Web Shooting

I have been working on a series of marketing photos for my employer's new website which is several years in the making. The images are to be used for the rotating flash banner. The banner is to have it's graphic element on the right side. The banner is 960 x 321 pixels. Subsequently the Rule of Thirds is out the window. I am basically shooting "Halves" where I cut the photo down the middle and stuff on the right is in focus and the stuff on the left is a blurred out.

In my camera cabinet I found a truly great lens. It is a Nikkor 85mm 1:1.4. I had the University pick up a Canon FS-72U lens filter set with a ND 8 neutral density filter. With the combination of the super fast 1.4 aperture and the ND 8 I can get extremely tight depth of field. Here are a few examples.

Study Abroad: Cross Boundaries

Here is a video that I just finished for Eastern Washington University's Study Abroad Progam.

Another New Eastern Theater Ad

Here is another ad that I mixed.

Moving Keyframes in Motion

I just happened upon a strange quirk of Apple Motion 3.0.2. Maybe it's existed all along in previous versions but I just found it. When you keyframe a behavior, in my case keyframe the speed of a Motion Path, and move the behavior on the timeline the keyframes don't move. They stay rigid to the time of their creation. This causes problems when you want to move a layer with a behavior to a different spot on the timeline because all that beautiful motion you just created has to be redone.

But, I found a work-around!!! Simply slide the behavior to the new time you want in the timeline. Place the play-head on the first frame of the moved behavior and then select the clip the the behavior is attached to. Simply press the letter "i" to set a new In-point. The clip should start at the same point as the behavior. Now go to the end frame of the behavior, be sure to left arrow key back on frame select the clip again and press the letter "o". This sets the Out-point of the clip to the same as the behavior.

Challenge Course Leap of Death

Here's a shot of me jumping for a trapeze on Eastern's Challenge Course.

New Eastern Theater Ad

Here is the newly completed theater ad for Eastern Washington University. It will play regionally in theaters before movie. Eric Galey and Stu Steiner created the spot. They asked me to come in and mix the piece which I was glad to do. I hope you enjoy it. Tell me what you think about it.

Cross-Processing Effect

This is a shot of author Pat McManus I shot earlier this spring. I StumbledUpon an online Photoshop CS3 tutorial recreating the Cross-Processing effect. Back in the days of film, chemistry was a big deal. Each individual film stock had precise chemistry and processing recipes that had to be followed to generate the desired look. Occasionally, photographers would have happy mistakes where they followed the wrong recipe for particular emulsion. Colors would shift dramatically, grain would enlarge.

This is my attempt at recreating the effect. I had to tweak the tutorial a little bit . I think it looks like a lot like The Matrix.

From Lightroom to flickr by Magic

I was given a link to this great Lightroom 2 plugin by a good friend that throws me tidbits of social networking goodness occasionally. This plugin allows you to export directly to your authenticated flickr account. It is truly a timesaver.



This talented programmer is living in Japan. His name is Jeffrey Friedl. After downloading and installing the plugin I was having trouble with it enabling. I sent him a bug alert and he emailed me with a fix within a few hours. Great customer service for a guy that was just demo'ing his plugin.

The plugin basically puts the functionality of flickr into the export section of Lightroom. You can not only upload the exported media to flickr but you can click about a million option boxes to totally optimize the way your media is handled by flickr. You can put your photo in a preexisting set or create a new one. You can send the photo to a group photo pool. You can specify the level of permission the photo gets and then send a tweet about it.

I love it when software goes above and beyond by not only giving me what I want, but giving me 100 extra things that will give me new ideas for working. That's what makes great software. Check him out .

Big Projects: Good Riddance!?

I always love/hate big projects. I have been working on a large video project for the past six weeks and it is coming to an end. It entailed all of my production skills: writing, scheduling, shooting, editing, recording, mixing, and nearly endless tweaking. This project is the kind that has many management types contributing their opinions, and only little old me to carry them out. The piece is quite good and I am happy with it.

So now, I am moving on to another project that I have to have to manage from start to end. What this next project will hopefully lack is the layers of approval the previous project required. What I have been learning about video production lately is not how to make an effective three-point edit or how to trim a clip by three frames but how to get the client to tell you what they want. The client needs to understand that what they want is not the finished product, but the intended consequence. That is a major difference.

If your client walks in and wants a seven minute video, you will have a hard time pleasing them no matter what you give them. If what they want is clearly defined such as a marketing video that will appeal to an 18 - 24 year old male that will increase direct traffic to a website promoting a sports drink you have a definite strategy that is measurable and attainable.

The hardest part is still having your client understand your vision. There is no way around it. Non-creative people just don't get it. Their brains are not wired to understand creative people or creative things. They may nod their heads in agreement, but you might as well be speaking a foreign language. They just don't get it.

Twitter a Passing Fad?

I have recently become bored with Twitter, the social networking site that gives you only 140 characters to tell your story. Although forcing one to 140 characters has added succinctness to web correspondence, it limits you to speaking in "teasers". In news terms, a teaser is a when you set up a problem for the viewer right before a commercial break in the hopes of the viewer returning to the program after 2 minutes of mind-numbing marketing. An example of this would be "Stayed tuned to see if this tornado wipes out a school bus filled with second graders..."

You can see that if you set up an expectation in your audience then fail to meet that expectation you disappoint them and they will move on to another channel. The same thing happens with Twitter. Who really cares what you are doing at the moment? Why should I care that you found something cool on StumbleUpon and want to reTweet it?

I guess that I really don't care what you are doing. If you have created something interesting then tweet it. If you have nothing to say that is interesting or personal to you then don't.

I think this is the reason that so many tweeters are giving up on the process. Check out this article for more details.


http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,,25406742-36418,00.html