photo-a-day 21/30

Late one night near my house I took this with my point and click, and when getting it back from the developers was pleased that it actually turned out about what I saw in the view finder.  I tilted the camera enough to give it a little more action and to better capture the reflection in the window behind the neon.  The colors are cross complimentary, but very unbalanced I feel this lends to the overall unbalance of the composition with the big negative space in the bottom left corner.

photo-a-day 20/30

My desk top's hard drive committed suicide last night when I came home from work, and thus a double photo post today.  These sea stars and anemones were found on the Oregon coast at Oceanside.  Nature provided a nice selection of rich almost cross complimentary color and texture for me to capture.  I was attempting not to focus too much on one single creature, though the oranges do stand out the most, but capture the scene as a whole.

Skool: Energy Drink Label Design

We had to choose one of three energy drink names in concept development, one of them being Tiger's Blood Energy Drink.  I drew a bunch of thumbnail sketches as was the requirement for the assignment, and  the professor asked me to further develop about six of my ideas.  I ended up going with two that he chose, and a third that I thought might help identify the brand a little more, and mashed them together into one better final piece.
The large "T" and the blood dripping "b" are the major brand identifiers, along with the unlike any other energy drink color scheme.  I included a syringe to reference blood and an extreme, almost disgusting theme, as I'm sure the target audience of adolescent youth would feel help rebel against authority.  To further the blood image, I used a blood splatter, but to make it a little abstract I made this white.  Enforcing the blood splatter is a repeating title "tigersblood", radiating out like the background.  The three seemingly random "t"'s to the left of the syringe are to help identify the large almost abstract "T' is in fact the same letter, and thus the repetition.
The tag line of "inject the beast" was used mostly for comical effect and to help balance the overall composition, as was the thai tattoo style tiger in the bottom right to help balance out the bottom text a little.  The tiger was also included as a secondary brand identifier.

photo-a-day 19/30

When I was a child I would get real close to the moss in my grandmother's front yard and dream about the tiny world that existed.  Who lived there, if they had culture or not, or room for me if I shrunk down real small and joined them?  That is why I like these close up shots, it reminds so much of that magical escapism.

photo-a-day 18/30

Here  I concentrate on three elements that seem to be favorites of mine; reflective surfaces adding depth, multiple structures creating intersecting lines, and the juxtaposition of both organic and inorganic materials.  I had some reserve publishing this one as I don't feel it is my strongest work but there is a lot of interesting things, elements that interest me, going on in this that I felt it was worthy to be addressed.

photo-a-day 17/30

Micro worlds always fascinated, and when I came across this plant I think last summer and noticed the aphids and other denizens of this tiny planet I decided to take some macro photos of this aside from the usual plant study pics I took of this subject...

photo-a-day 16/30

When taking action shots such as these I tend to tilt the camera as to add more movement to the action.  I also have a tendency to do that with still life as well, as stagnant straight on photos bore me.  The subject is Rachel Brice dancing with The Indigo, a bellydance troupe (http://www.theindigo.net/rb/Welcome.html) that graced the Oregon Country Faire a couple of years back.  I took a ton of photos of them as the mid afternoon sun through the trees and colors of both the costumes and the canopy did wonders for an intimate performance.  Nothing entrances me more than movement of the body, especially in dance.

photo-a-day 15/30

Generally when spring comes around I take a slew of macro photos of flowers.  These are intended as studies for other art, mostly for my pen and ink and illustration work.  I felt like being a little more creative and took this.  Foreground relationship hierarchy was utilized to draw the focus to the obvious subject matter.  I was also looking at creating a color relationship between the really bright yellow of the flowers, the blue sky and the green trees in the back.  The background colors thus creating a secondary hierarchy by highlighting  the foreground one.

photo-a-day 14/30

Sorry for the delay again, things got out of hand and busy yesterday.

It was a typical Portland gray day when this was taken, and the subject matter's lack of color coupled with the low lighting caused this to look like a black and white photo from a distance.  My aim was to capture a dominant inorganic structure, hence the trees in the foreground to help illustrate this.  I also enjoy the reflection of glass building and how it offers more depth to a seemingly flat surface.

photo-a-day 13/30

This is the floor of the same display of color, but taken at a different time.  I really love the texture of this, and how the light bleeds through the colors suspended above.

photo-a-day 12/30

This is an accidental self portrait.  Really I was trying to capture the color, but I also got myself in the photo faintly.  In the end I don't see this as a failure, but more of a bonus of depth.

photo-a-day 11/30

This is another one taken with the point and click and develop camera.  I had switched to color film exclusively around this time, some what having to do with the rising cost of developing b/w film, but mostly to do with my wanting to explore color more.  The crappy camera seems to lend a little to the subject matter and yes I did find myself with elbows propped on the ground for this shot.

skool werk

This was made for image manipulation.  The assignment was to create a collage of current events and use some basic techniques that were taught in the first two classes.  I went a little further with it than required thrwoing in a couple of blending modes to create a ghostly effect of the child who had his hands cut off by rebels in either Liberia or Sierra Leone and blend the rebels of Lybia into the nuclear reactors that were tied to a story on Japan (it was not very clear if these are in Japan).  Compositionally wise I stayed with a simple central hiearchy, albiet with a slight complication of the nuclear reactors and the boy almost sharing the same hierarchical space with the boy only winning out due to him being in front of the power plant.

photo-a-day 10/30

Texture, texture, texture.  The local telephone poles lend themselves to a wonderful amount of texture from the years of posting flyers of lost pets and shows.  They remind me of nkisi nkondi from the Congo area, a wood statue that has nails pounded into it by those who want a certain affect to happen in real life.

Skool werk...

My first assignment for Concept Development was to make a calling card for a super hero or villain, I went the bad guy route even though I don't think my DJ name is very evil.  So pretending to be a homicidal maniacal type, I went with a juxtaposition of playful and mechanical...as if she was some sort of cyborg with a loose wire...

I had to reverse the A in Alice to make it fit better, but I think it added to the look I was going for, as well as the general flow of things.

photo-a-day 9/30

I can not for the life of me remember what the context of this photo is, as I tend to experiment a lot with light and movement in dark or night time settings.  These tend to fail a lot but I keep trying.  I don't know the exact aim of these are save for the abstract nature of the piece produced, which reminds me of some of my earlier painting, and maybe that is what I am ultimately reflecting with this type of photo:

photo-a-day 8/30

On Maui there are a lot of derelict structures that have been reclaimed by the island.  This is taken from inside a school that had warnings to stay out and how unsafe it was.  The school itself had primitive stick figure taggings, colapsed roofs, abandoned lockers and all sorts of sad and lonely memories.  It was quite a pretty sight and I will later post more of my derelict photos from this time period.

photo-a-day 7/30

Who fell asleep at the wheel last night?  There is a time when your body just knows better than you wish it would.  Here is yesterday's photo:

This was made using a really bad point and click camera, in fact all my old work was made using this camera.  I can't remember the brand or model but I didn't care at this point, I was trying to prove that it was the photographer and not the camera that made the difference.  This led to a lot of wasted film, but some of the end results have a nice and lo-fi gritty feel to them.

photo-a-day 6/30

Busy busy busy.  Thinking of new ideas for both personal, work and school related projects I lost track of time.  So in celebration of that here is some time elements as subject matter.

I really like concentrations on texture, and texture being the biggest focus of a piece.  I also like juxtaposition, and probably say that word at least twice a week (maybe a little obsessive?).  Although these are two opposing elements, there seems to be a similarity between the two, the grass of course being organic, but the rust as well feels like earthen ware and lends itself to an organic quality regardless of the shape of the iron.

photo-a-day 5/30

Well I almost went to bed without doing this, damn long days of work and school.  This is in an art poll (for lack of a better term of a telephone pole that has had sculpture and random bits attached to it) in SE Portland.  I took several shots of this as I do if I have time and I think I like this one best due to the depth from the foreground that is out of focus to the mechanical wheel and the street behind it.  Real 3D not this everything in focus garbage, but how the human eye is supposed to see.

photo-a-day 4/30

I like chaotic lines and I like making them more so by giving them odd angles...

photo-a-day 3/30

Today when going to Samurai bento I passed this window, and it reminded me that on a nice sunny afternoon I took a photo of its display:

I was really hoping the reflections of light and objects in the window would add complexity to something that seemed so simple as a row of sake bottles on a wooden shelf.  I'm big on texture and depth in photos, and I hope this captures both.

photo-a-day 2/30

I don't like photos of me, mostly because I don't feel I am very photogenic:

This is maybe 2 or 3 years old, soon after I received my digital camera.  Looking through some of the earlier photos with this camera I was still getting used to the new technology.  It handles way differently from the old point and click that I was using and I will post some of those photos within this series as well.

photo-a-day 1/30

So I've decided to post a photo a day for 30 days.  These will be culled from multiple sources, including old prints, my digital camera, and my iphone.  Here is 1/30:

This is a bench in Director's Park in downtown Portland.  The sun was hiding a lot the day I took this, but I found myself on a little walk during a break from the salt mines, when the sun was as good as it would get  (a lot of tall buildings surround this park and give limited time for the sun to actually be good to my liking) to take this with my iphone.

More Skool Werk

Here is the third project for my Intro to Computer Graphics class.  There was an issue of transferring it from InDesign 1 to InDesign 5.  Again I used the stripped down color scheme of the poster but added a bit of grey for contrast:

Business Card

Just dropped this off at the printer on Thursday:

 Front

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