Archive for September, 2010
Every couple should have an up-to-date family picture. It’s always a good idea to have a recent picture that shows your love is still strong between the two of you. I recently took a new photo of my parents that I think nicely demonstrates their bond. A lot of that has to do with their smiles, of course, but also their pose. I posed them both turned toward each other which cements their togetherness. He has his arm around her back physically connecting and keeping them close.
I darkened the background and used a shallow depth of field to isolate them. This puts them at the forefront of the image as they are the most important element in the picture. This keeps the viewer’s eye on the subject.
For the lighting, this was shot in the shade. The light coming through the trees becomes diffused and naturally bounces, giving a consistent soft look. bounces. This can create some of the best lighting for portraits when taken outdoors. It is generally best advised to stay out of the strong direct sunlight if possible.
If you have anything to add about this photo please do so in the comments below. I am certainly open to criticism. If you would like your work professionally and constructively critiqued, use my submission form.
Tags: couple, family, husband, love, man, wife, woman
Posted in photography | 2 Comments »
I’m happy to finally announce my studio remodel of the old granary building is one step closer to completion. If you missed the first post on this, you can view the initial studio photos (including outside) here. I have just finished step one, which was to clean it all up and a little bit of demolition. I am actually about 95% complete, because I still have to pressure wash the entire thing, to remove all the cobwebs and bird nests and their little presents on the floor and, hopefully, some of the oil from the floor.
So here you can see some of the space. The first one here has me sitting on the table to help judge space and scale. I don’t have a really wide camera lens (lowest was a 38mm effective) so it was difficult to show the entire area.
As for the demo work, I removed all the rigged up counter tops and the short walls in the main room. I do still have to remove a few screws and nails from where I tore boards off, but those will only take a couple minutes.
I am super excited about this step Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: granary, remodel, studio
Posted in Updates | No Comments »
A few months back I held a contest to win a custom name illustration to one lucky subscriber and showed an example of such. Tanner L was the winner and a while ago I finished his illustration, and thought I should share it here also. It works as a great example that the illustration can have any kind of names, not just family. Tanner chose four directors, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorcese, whose work has influenced him and his own work. I am rather happy with the result and Tanner was very much so as well. He left the color choice to me and I thought it was fitting to put this one as various shades of red on a black background as it fit with Tanner’s personality as well as the darker nature of the work of the directors.
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Tags: commission, custom, drawing, illustration, name, typography
Posted in illustration | No Comments »
- or a comparison of New Baskerville and Times New Roman
The majority of you, right now, are seeing this wrong. The reason? You probably don’t have the New Baskerville font installed on your computer. That is what I designed this website (and all of my branded materials) with, unfortunately you are probably seeing the inferior Times New Roman. The poor circumstance is a result of the majority of the web is still only able to see a handful of typefaces. The major reason is that unless you are a designer, you probably don’t have any fonts installed beyond what came with your computer. For those that do have extended fonts installed, designers can put a font hierarchy (@font_face) into their CSS code. This basically means that if you have any of the fonts installed that are in the list, it will show the highest listed font you have in your browser. So if you have ITC New Baskerville Std installed, it will show that as the best possible choice. If you don’t have that it will go through the list until it gets to one you have, for most it will be Times or Times New Roman. There are other ways to get around this by embedding javascript and other things that may or may not break the licensing of the font, but this isn’t actually what this post is supposed to be about.
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Tags: comparison, font, type, typeface, typography
Posted in Design | No Comments »
