Ixnay on the Owerflay

I've decided to nix the flower in my Project Blended logo. It's pretty, and it will always hold a special place in my heart as the first decent thing I was able to make in Illustrator. But it doesn't really say anything about the project - if anything, I look at it and think "Hawaii."

So I'm experimenting with different ideas for the logo. Right now I'm keen on circles. I was thinking of doing three circles coming together to make different colors - like when you see explanations of the RGB color model, and the three red, green, and blue circles overlap to make cyan, yellow, magenta, and white.

But it doesn't look so hot when you substitute various shades of brown, since I've decided to use a skin-toned color palette. So I came up with these five rings, which I like. For now.

MSNBC Multiracial Article

MSNBC has an article about the growing multiracial population in the United States. There is also a really cool interactive feature that has pictures of mixed race individuals, couples, and families along with a few words sharing their experiences.


I want to grab all these people and photograph them!

Project Blended is chugging along; I photographed another couple over the weekend and will post those pictures soon. The big goal now is to get a website up, so that I have an easy place to direct people towards.

CSS Zen Garden

CSS Zen Garden is a fun site. Different programmers/designers take the same website and give it their own design. The following images all contain the same text, but radically different designs.

You can browse through all the designs here. You can also look at designs that have been rejected. Both sections provide plenty of lessons in good and bad design.

Little Flowers

I've spent the better part of the weekend playing around with Adobe Illustrator, and this is what I was able to come up with. A flower and some text. And it took uh-looong time.

I've been using The Adobe Illustrator CS3 Wow! Book, and just making it through the first couple chapters has made me look at illustration in a whole new way. Rather than seeing things in terms of complicated lines and patterns, I am learning to see things as a combination of shapes. (Don't laugh at me, all you art majors!)

For example, the flower in my Project Blended logo is made of only two shapes that are copied and combined to form a flower. After some gradient fill and different layering styles - voilà! A nice, geometric flower.

I'm not sure if I'm going to stick with the flower, but for now it's good enough to go on the promotional postcard I want to make for this project.

I've also started reading my 1000 page Dreamweaver book so that I can at least get a basic web page up. I see things like XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, FTP, PHP, ASP, XML, ActionScript, Spry . . . and I feel my stomach turning. Maybe I'm too old to learn how to design websites.

But I trust in the good people who published this book and I'm determined to plow through it. And after Dreamweaver, it's on to Flash!

The Migrant Project

I listen to KCRW's Good Food weekly, and while the focus of the show is (obviously) food, they also run interesting stories on the way food intersects with different areas of our personal lives, culture, and society.

Last week the host, Evan Kleiman, interviewed photographer Rick Nahmias, who spent time traveling with migrant workers in California. His work, called The Migrant Project, has now been published in book form. The interview is really interesting, if you have time to take a listen. (Scroll down if you only want to hear the interview with Rick Nahmias.)

This episode also has a story on colonics, which - after making your stomach turn - will make you want to go eat a salad.

Portraits: Rickert Family BBQ

I took some portraits for a large family gathering on Mother's Day Weekend. The weather couldn't have been better, the family couldn't have been friendlier, and the kids . . . very adorable!

I Say Letter, You Say Parcel

I always thought that if something was in an envelope, it was a letter. If it was in a box, it was a parcel.

But no . . . apparently that's not the case.

I mail CD's of photographs to my clients. I place the CD in a cardboard sleeve, write a letter full of pleasantries, and place everything in a 6 x 9 envelope. And it usually costs about 60¢. But the other day when I went into the post office, the clerk charged me $1.35 - more than twice as much money!

I asked her why, and she explained that if the envelope is not bendable, then it's a parcel, even though it's an envelope. And how it has to do with the machinery used to process letters, and they've been enforcing this for a year, and it's so confusing for everyone, etc. etc.

Hmmm. So the next time I go into the same post office to mail CD's, a different clerk charges me . . . 60¢. Apparently it is confusing for their own employees.

So I found this little pop-up on the USPS website. Yes, envelopes that do not bend easily incur an extra charge, as do square envelopes or envelopes that contain pens (?). But I don't know why that clerk charged me the parcel price, instead of the extra 20¢.

Not that I usually get bent out of shape over 75¢, but who wants to pay more money when they don't have to?

Self-Published Photography Books

I've been hunting around the internet looking for companies that produce albums for photographers. So far I've looked at materials from AsukaBook, Zookbinders, and Renaissance. All look promising. I'm mostly interested in albums that are like books, rather than more traditional matted or mounted styles, where actual prints are in the album.

Which is why I was especially interested to read "Turn Those Bytes into Books" in the New York Times. The article focuses on Blurb.com, but lists several other related websites, such as companies that sell templates and illustrations, or those that offer design services.

Price-wise, Blurb.com is very affordable. They also offer an on-line bookstore where you can sell your creations at whatever price you wish. All very intriguing.

Of course, my first thought with all of this is self-publishing my Project Blended book - once I have enough portraits to fill a book. But I also want to have album options for clients. I'm sure that for weddings, people will spring more for AsukaBook or Zookbinders. For more casual occasions, however, such as birthday parties or family portraits in the park, a Blurb book may better suit the occasion.

Illustrator and the Mighty Pen (Tool)

When I bought Adobe's Design Premium Suite, I was mostly interested in Photoshop. Of course the products are packaged so that it's cheaper to buy a whole slew of software rather than just two or three program. So I'm finally getting around to learning the other programs.

I want to learn Illustrator so that I can design promotional materials. I managed to design my business card by just playing around with the program and looking stuff up on Google. And this simple design - a symbol and some text - took forever.

So I finally bought a book on Illustrator, and after just a few pages I've had this huge "a-ha" moment: Bézier Curves. I had no idea how the pen tool worked. When I played around with it I just got these random curvy lines that seemed to go all over the place.

But now . . . now I think that with practice, I can become more creative with my designs. My immediate goal with Illustrator and Dreamweaver is to design a website for my mixed race photography project. If I can pull that off, then eventually I would like to move away from the template that I have now for my main photography website.

I purchased my site from BluDomain. And while you can find plenty of people on the internet who curse BluDomain up and down, my experience with them has been good. It just irks me that so many other people out there have the same website that I do. So I really would like to have something unique and that is a better expression of my personality and style.

First I gotta hit those books!

Portraits: Blended #4

I photographed Mike, Candice, and their son Blake at their home in Los Angeles. As you can see by the pictures, they will soon be welcoming a new member to the family! I met Candice through a friend from Cal Poly Pomona, and took photos at Blake's first birthday party.

The Power of Images

I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts the other day - Slate's Political Gabfest - and they were talking about the lack of images coming out of Myanmar in the wake of the cyclone disaster, and how that contributes to the fact that the story really isn't on Americans' minds. Above is satellite imagery showing Myanmar before and after Cyclone Nargis.

It's really horrifying how high the death toll could be. The Los Angeles Times has an article stating that 1.5 million people are in danger of dying due to food and drinking water shortages and from disease, as bodies lay decomposing instead of being cremated.

But the government won't let aid in. Why? Because they don't want to be shown up by other countries. They want to save face no matter the cost. Which is why state-run media shows pictures of soldiers delivering aid, rather than of dead floating bodies. The Associated Press has an article on how difficult it is for media and aid workers in Myanmar.

Another reminder of how powerful images - and the lack of images - can be.

Portraits: Blended #3

Annie and Adam are the third installment in my Blended photography project. I met Annie through a friend several years ago; Annie and I were both in the drumline at UCLA. Her first year was just after my last year, so we never played in the line together but had friends in common and eventually became friends in our own right.

We took these pictures at Annie and Adam's home in Los Angeles and at the Los Angeles California Mormon Temple.And their dog, Bella.

To Kubota or Not to Kubota?

I recently received some promotional materials from AsukaBook, and included was some information about Kubota Image Tools. Of course the images look beautiful, and the website has many more examples - with before and after pictures - of various actions.

But all these action packs get me to thinking - how many do I need? I really do love Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 and Alien Skin Exposure 2.0. They allow me to make quick adjustments to a photo, I can edit each individual filter for more control, and I can combine various filters on one image to get very cool, unique effects. So how different could I make my images look with yet another set of actions/filters? And should I just spend time with Photoshop creating my own actions rather than money on more and more software?

The professor who taught my Photoshop class used his own laptop with the overhead projector, and he had a million plug-ins. He said that we could play around with Photoshop and try to figure out the effects ourselves, but he would much rather pay the money for a "quick fix" and spend more time and energy shooting.

Of course, either route requires "playing around" - even armed with tons of filters and actions, it takes time to figure out which combinations look good with which images. And in the end, most people don't want cookie-cutter images that look like everyone else's. So as I toy with the idea of Kubota, I'm still dedicated to learning a little something new about Photoshop every day.

Master of Disaster

As in Photoshop Disasters. A must read!

The African Presence in Mexico

I went to the California African American Museum on Sunday to view their exhibit, "The African Presence in Mexico: From Yanga to the Present." Definitely worth checking out because a) it's free, and b) the topic is fascinating.

The exhibit is a mix of painting, photography, and sculpture; of course I was drawn to the photography, but there are some amazing paintings as well. Back in my college days, I took a course on interracial matters, and the professor discussed these parts of Mexico where clearly the people had African ancestry. But Mexicans don't want to acknowledge it because they have this view of la raza cosmica, that they are all just one race. So it's something that most people don't know about, inside and outside of Mexico. The exhibit also touches on how race has been dealt with differently in the United States versus Latin America. Very interesting stuff.

The exhibit will be up until June 1.

Portraits: Blended #2

I've finished editing the pictures I took at my second Blended photo session. Kristie and George were so much fun to work with. They were very comfortable in front of the camera, did a few costume changes, and were even willing to lie down on the grass for me! We took these pictures at their home in Los Angeles.