Unmarked Blog

Before my good friends Josh and Valree moved out of southern California and back to the midwest I was lucky enough to spend the day with them and take a few shots of their twin boys. I had a great time and it was so interesting because I had never really shot kids before. They didn’t seem to think much of it, probably because of their dad they are used to it. I did have to dodge a few choice projectiles in the process though!

For the shots above I used my Canon 50D and borrowed Josh’s Canon EF 85mm lens which has a large aperture (f/1.8) so I could get a ton of light and a really short depth of field. All of the post was done in Adobe Photoshop.

I’m also experimenting with placing a logo/watermark on my photographs. Up to this point I’ve been strictly against it; I’ve always felt that if someone’s going to steal your photography they’re going to do it regardless of any watermark. That being said I can totally understand why photographers use it, and not being a professional photographer myself I don’t have total authority on the subject. Part of my contempt for the markings has been that a many of them are so bad (oversized Arial or Times with a drop shadow, for instance) that it totally takes away from the photo. So my goal was to put a nice mark that feels like it belongs with the photo in a way. Some really good examples of this on this site.

The mark I’ve chosen is just a small portion of some Unmarked Vehicle re-branding I’m working on and hopefully rolling out soon.

Great poster design from UK designer Mike Lemanski. See all of his work on his site and read his blog.

Matt Maust is a Cold War Kid who also makes beautiful graphic art. In a post-post-David Carson era he keeps his style feeling fresh and new with hand made mixed media. I’m always a sucker for this type of work, it feels very connected to the artist’s hands while being compositionaly rooted in graphic design. In my early days as a graphic designer I was completely taken by the idea that you could create art from the practice of graphic design and it has remained one of my ideals throughout my career. Matt’s work is a great example of this.

You can see the rest of his work on his Blogspot page.

Avi Buffalo are a band I’ve watched go from playing the vegan restaurant down the street to selling out the Troubadour for their record release show. If you take the time to listen to their self titled debut you’ll get why. The track below, What’s In It For? is offered as a free download from their website. You can also buy their entire record in several formats as well as stream the entire record here.

Avi Buffalo-What’s In It For?

Oh, Snap! is a photography/t-shirt project that mixes two mediums with fantastic results. From their website:

Oh, Snap! started as a fun side project, by one of the founders of No Star Clothing in December of 2008. While sharing photos with friends during the holidays, he realized how the availability of affordable, high quality digital cameras was allowing amateur photographers to compile large collections of good, interesting photos and that these some of the images would be pretty cool on tees. He had his friends and friends of friends (some of whom happened to be professionals) submit their favorite photos and compiled the first season of Oh, Snap!, titled Vol. 1.

You can check the rest out and purchase one here.

The Canon 50D arrived today and the above shot is my very first with it. So far I love the feel of it and I’m super excited to put it to work. I’ll post more shots as they happen, I have a lot of experimentation to do!

Excellent photographs and technique by Kamy Lisy. I’m in love with soft washed out colorful images of people and landscapes and she achieves this very well. Check out her photo stream on Flickr.

I can recall a time when the only tool I knew how to use to search the internet was the ubiquitous Internet Explorer. This was also a time when you didn’t just turn your computer on and automatically connect to the interwebs…you had to make the computer dial a phone number and hope that it connected, and when it did it would charge you by the minute for the “call.”

Now here we are in 2010 on the heels of Google’s release of their web browser Chrome which is giving the other two browsers of choice, Firefox and Safari, a run for their money. I’ve decided to strictly use Chrome for a week to test it out and compare it to my experience with solely using Firefox over the past few years. Ever since Firefox’s last few updates it has become painfully slow on OSX which sparked the need for change. My initial thought was to start using Safari again as I had done exclusively when I first got into Mac. But after talking with some recent converts I decided to give Chrome a try while also considering the alternatives.

In picking a browser that works for me I had to consider what tools I primarily use on the web. Mainly I’m into collecting things I find, websites and images. All the websites I’ve bookmarked over the past few years I’ve been syncing with Xmarks, a bookmark syncing tool native to Firefox but one that also works with Safari and Chrome. So it was no trouble to get all those bookmarks on another browser. For collecting images, I’ve used ImageSpark to save anything visually interesting or exciting I find on the web. They make a plugin to upload to your account that only works with Firefox so for that reason I’m at a big disadvantage in making the switch. There are also hundreds of plugins and apps that are only available for Firefox since it is an open source web browser, an advantage it has over the proprietary Chrome and Safari.

I notice first that Chrome and Safari launch in less that 2 seconds while Firefox takes about 10 seconds, and in internet time that’s forever. While Firefox syncs up nicely to all of it’s open source apps and tools, and Safari syncs nicely with everything native to your Mac (if you’re running OSX), Chrome makes it very easy to use all of Google’s tools and apps, naturally. Not that it’s difficult to use them with the other browsers, I have yet to come upon a Google tool that doesn’t work in any other browser, but maybe just from the perception of like things with like things Chrome is like any other Google app, the difference being that you run it off of your own computer.

I also wonder where this will take Google in the next five to ten years; how dominant of a force will they be once a giant part of the world’s internetting population makes the switch. It seems likely that whatever browser you use, companies like Google will be developing many useful tools that will eventually make everything, including applications like Photoshop and Illustrator as well as virtually all of your files and data storage, able to run on the web. Matrix, anyone?

For now I will continue to keep all the browsers on a trial basis until one outshines the others in all aspects of how I use the internet. I do like having choices and it seems all have their advantages and disadvantages, Thankfully with each new browser release/update the others are pushing to catch up or out do the competition making the best results for the end user.

Oh Yeah Studio is one of my favorites of the last couple years. I first saw their work published in Computer Arts Magazine and have been really into it ever since. I love the juxtaposition of organic drawings with geometric shapes and the super minimal color palette. Their work looks like a more much more restrained and refined Joan Miro. Check out the rest of their work.

Lately I’ve been doing a shitload of research and comparisons on cameras and have a few options picked out for the one I’d like to have in my studio. I’m pretty well sold on Canon for my DSLR addition, especially after borrowing my friend’s 5D MKII for a recent shoot (more on that soon). While I can’t afford that particular model and all of its full-frame goodness, two of its siblings are under heavy consideration: The Canon 50D and the Canon 7D (pictured above). The main difference between the two for me is HD video capability (1080p, 30 fps) which the 7D has and the 50D does not. While I’m not totally equipped for editing and using HD video I think it would be a great investment. BUT I do own a Canon Elph that has video capability up to 720p in HD and if I really decide I need to shoot a video I can always borrow that 5D MKII again. Since my main purpose for this camera will be to shoot photographs it may make more sense to save a few hundred bucks and opt for the 50D and spend the extra money on a good lens. But its a tough call when there’s speculation of a 60D to be released later this year with video capability.

On the other side of the spectrum, a camera I’ve wanted ever since I shot with one a couple years ago is the Lomography Diana+ medium format plastic toy camera. And it just so happens that there is a brand new Lomography Gallery store in Los Angeles (see pictures below from Kitsune Noir). I realize I can go to Urban Outfitters and buy one also, but this new shop looks fuckin’ insane…I’m just afraid if I go in there I won’t want to leave without several new toys and all the film I could possibly ever use.