In the process of making something real big

Since this space is a place I use to share things that I make, I figured at some point I should mention that I'm in the process of making something real big. It wont be done til sometime in March or April, it takes some time to create. Roughly 9 months worth of work. I'm happy to say we're about 1/2 way into the process. I'm practically bursting with excitement and there are a million other things to finish in the mean time. For now, here's a hint of what's to come. Can't wait to share more in the future!

19 Weeks in!

Tees for the nieces

Here's a work in progress, an idea for a couple of tee shirts for my niece's for Christmas (ages 5 and 2). I'm not completely sold on this design.... luckily there's still time for more ideas. Thought I'd share attempt #1!

New Work Blog

After much thought and deliberation I have finally come to the conclusion that it's high time my blog was split in two. Now instead of one blog containing all things that I make, I will keep up one for more 'work' related posts and another for my various other past times. Of course since my hobbies and my work tend to overlap in many areas, there will be some crossover, but for the most part if someone in the industry is interested in my work I wanted to make it so they didn't have to wade through recipes and random arty projects.

That being said, if you're more interested in the 'work' related stuff than everything else I post here you may want to follow amykingman.blogspot.com instead of this blog.

I intend to keep a feed of work related stuff on the right hand side of this blog in case anyone is curious about my work life. Thanks for all your comments and support as this little space on the web has continued to grow!

Today's Rainy Day Songs

Scatteredtrees

Photo Challenge: Composition

Last week I chose to work on improving my photos by focusing on specific compositional elements. The two elements I focused on most were light and point of interest. I tried to emphasize the point of interest by using depth of field mostly, but lighting played a big role as well. Lens flares, sun spots, and rim lighting, are all things I played with to highlight my point of interest. As I looked through my camera, it was a fun to force myself to think of what I could do compositionally to push my point of interest. My shots became more thoughtful. An obvious point of interest, I realized lately, is something that is missing from many of my compositions. There's still work to be done, but it's a start to get my mind thinking that way.

(Time of day: noon)


(Time of day: just before sunset)


(Time of day: late morning)


(Time of day: just before sunset)


(Time of day: early morning)


In addition to these photos, the photo of the forgotten painting, the flower in the abandoned lot, and the wind chimes were also taken. You can see the complete set on my flickr site.


This week I was joined by Steph and my dad. They both took some awesome photos. Thanks for joining in you two!

Steph chose to focus on mostly lines and negative space.
My dad chose to focus on contrast.

Untitled

Forgotten artwork in my small town's alley way.

Beauty in an abandoned lot.

Chimes

Happy Friday from my back yard.

Photo Week Challenge

I am in the mood for another photo week challenge, and I'd like to invite anyone out there to join me. Over lunch today I was reading over a few principles of photographic composition and I thought I would pick one to focus on this week. This challenge is WIDE open to interpretation. Pick ONE area to focus on this week, keep your camera with you wherever you go, and post your top 3 shots by next Monday.

Comment to this post with a link to your flickr page, blog, picassa account, or wherever you've posted your images online along with the principle you focused on and I'll compile the list of participants with my post next monday. Choose from any of the principles of photographic composition from the list below and have fun!

balance, of elements & color (symmetrical/asymmetrical)
light
point of interest
perspective
harmony
contrast
movement
rhythm
line and curve
positive/negative shapes
patterns


PS: this isn't an official list of photographic composition, it's just a collection of things I found interesting as I searched around for information. If someone has a nice comprehensive list, I'd love to see the link!)

Summer

#16

I decided it was time to take action and start chipping away at 'the list' this week. I've definitely been keeping busy this year, but I haven't made much of a dent into the list of things I set out to accomplish and there are only a few months left. It makes sense. Most of the items on the list are things that I really want to do, but for one reason or another I find an excuse to put off doing them. When I wrote this list in the first place I figured that if I include a few of my challenges and see them over and over again throughout the year as I check on my list, it might be the extra incentive I need to actually tackle them. I guess now I'm starting to feel the pressure of time to tackle everything, which seems to be the missing ingredient that I've needed to get these items accomplished.

Yesterday Alex helped me out with #16 on my list and it made for an amazing evening!

We tackled 4 different tapas recipes and spent around 2 hrs total chopping and prepping, running to the store for missing ingredients, and of course sampling a delicious bottle of Spanish wine. One can't be expected to make tapas without sharing wine, in our case it was a Tempranillo generously given to us by my coworker and wine blogger extraordinaire Jeff Lefevere. Thanks Jeff! It was delicious!
Amazingly, everything timed out right so that all 4 tapas meals finished cooking at the same time and we ate like kings, with food to spare (even after halving all the recipes).

I am so happy to be one item closer to completing my list, but even more so, I'm so happy that the list required that we make time to spend an evening together experimenting in the kitchen and learning about some amazing foods.

So now for the menu. After looking through recipes here we decided to make the following:

Ceviche using salmon - Fish 'cooked' by the action of acidic lime juice
Patatas Bravas - Crisp Spiced potatoes

Bread with Mushrooms and Alioli
and Prawn and Bacon Brochettes
All of the recipes were delicious, and so different. The shrimp and bacon was by far the easiest, but it was incredibly flavorful, it felt just as special as the other recipes. The bread with mushrooms and alioli tasted so refined, and I loved the garlic and mushroom combination. Next time we'll add more mushrooms per bread slice. The patatas bravas were amazingly seasoned and pure comfort food. We decided that we could probably lessen the ketchup/mayo taste a little by adding more of the seasoning and it would feel a little more gormet. The light fresh flavors of the ceviche was a nice compliment to all of the other rich foods. It was amazing to see how the lime juice 'cooked' the outside of the fish. It's basically raw inside though, so if you dont like raw fish/sushi, this may not be the thing for you. The bed of avacado and tomato with the peppers were a fantastic combination with the fish.

If there are any Spanish readers out there that could share information about tapas in Spain, I would love to learn more or hear your thoughts!

100% Freshness

As I'm typing this my fingertips are sending up tiny little scent packets of basil left over from my harvest tonight, and it makes me incredibly happy. I'm a beginner when it comes to growing things. I dont have a giant garden, but I do have a couple of small pots growing little vegetable plants and herbs on my back deck.

Tonight, I came home to three bright red tomatoes peeking out at me from the middle of the plant. They're just little guys, but they sure taste delicious. To accompany the tomatoes, I also harvested some basil, oregano, rosemary, tomatoes, chili peppers, and peas. What a satisfying feeling!

Here are a few shots of the produce photo study I did of my humble harvest this evening.

Train Graveyard

So Saturday night I went with Steph to this train graveyard. I have no idea how long it's been there, but the tracks were overgrown, it was covered in rust, and the interior was rotting and stinky. I wasn't creeped out at first, not until I climbed inside.

(Photo courtesy of Stephanie)

Once inside I saw that I definitely wasn't the first person to venture inside the train, nor was I alone. I stepped carefully, making sure that the floor could support me and as I moved I stirred the smell of rotting wood, urine, and birds.

I kept hearing muffled rustling sounds inside the train, then I noticed that the overhead luggage compartments were lined with bird nests. I didn't go past the first car. We were pretty far away from any civilization, and I figured if all I encountered were birds in the train, that was enough. I had a feeling they weren't the only ones living there.

Before we left we managed to snap a few shots in the evening sun. You can see the entire set here.

Hazy Summer

This weekend 3 of my sweet friends and I got together for an afternoon to play around with our cameras and attempt to take some editorial style photos. Of course, before we got started, we had to enjoy some fantastic home-made cheese filled crepes, zuccini bars, and bloody marys. Not only can these girls shoot, they can cook too!

The idea for taking editorial style photos came out of the fact that most of the photography I do is more still life. It's hard to set up a time to organize a shoot where you're more in control of the way the set and subject matter looks that also involves people in some way. This was a fun challenge for me to take photos of people without taking portraits per se. We grabbed a couple props for some extra color, but didn't really have a theme of any kind. The main things I tried to focus on during this shoot was composition and color, playing with soft focus, lens flares, and movement. We tried to use props that could demonstrate movement in the photos like the dresses, hair, balloons, bubbles, and a scarf. We were lucky to have a nice breeze most of the day. It was definitely fun to put time aside to do a shoot like this. I know that I personally learned a lot. Especially after looking through the other girl's photos and critiquing what I liked about them. They're all so talented (and pretty too, aren't they)! I put a sampling of the photos we all took together up on my flickr site.

Thanks so much for an awesome afternoon girls! It was a great time on a muggy summer day.

Just playing around with the alphabet.

Here's a work in progress. Once I find something I'm happy with, this might be good subject matter for another gocco run.

Dug up some old stuff...

Here's a Lichtenstein-esque version of my sis-in-law that I did a few years back. It was long forgotten, but somehow came into conversation recently so I dug it up and decided to throw it up on a post. I think she may end up using it as a facebook profile pic instead of an actual photo of herself if she decides to part ways with the stock icon they provide. We'll see. :) Well, happy Friday everyone!

July Desktop

Time for me to switch up the 'ol desktop background. I tossed a few different sizes up on my flickr site for anyone who wants it. Viva July!

Download the size you need here: 1024X768 | 1280X960 | 1920X1200

the carnival is in town!

I'll tell you something, Lebanon does it's patriotic duty when it comes to celebrating the 4th of July. The entire town comes alive for a week long festival. Live music plays at the bandstand every night, teams of family relay race participants make their way to the park in matching brightly colored t-shirts, red white and blue decorated golf carts put along the streets, and from the open window of our 2nd story office we can hear the muffled sound of the carnival til late into the night. Compared to the usual quietness of our small town, the sound causes an excitement and kind of haunting all at the same time. The wind brings the sound in waves of silence, then screams, unintelligible shouts of carnival workers, and bursts of music as the rides begin, followed by more silence as the wind carries it away. I'd been aware of the carnival for an entire week without visiting. I'd seen the employee's campers from the road outside the park, and the tops of the tallest rides over the trees. But I hadn't gone in for an up close look until the 4th had come and gone. We rode our bikes down to the park on the 5th to see what we could see up close, and here are a few of the things we saw.

Timeline Animations In Flash are Fun!

I love putting together a fun timeline animation in flash to add some bells and whistles to slick interface animation. You wouldn't want me animating the entire site, but I like to think of what I do as like the sprinkles on top of the cup cake. Tiny bits of amusement here and there to add a little fun. Here's a sneak peek at our new Basement website. We knew that we wanted the buttons in the 'who we are' section to have some personality so we came up with the concept of these pipes building a sign of sorts. I sketched the thought, drew it up in illustrator, then animated it in flash. This is a type of task that makes my day go by quickly because I have fun doing it. I'll be sure to post when we've got the site up and running! Until then!

Long Exposure Light Writing

Lots of fun this weekend experimenting with long exposure light writing. Steph had been wanting to play around with this technique, so Sat night we busted out the flashlights and colored tissue paper. Phase 1 was playing with different light sources and techniques for writing, phase 2 we plan on heading out to the park and stage some more shots. Can't wait!

Sweet nieces and egg fun

This weekend my sweet niece, Margot, and I spent a couple hours making eggs pretty. We did a couple 'blow out' eggs and dyed the rest. Good times!

by hand

Designers, I'm sure you've scoured dafont.com for the perfect handwritten font at SOME point or another. Some designs just call for something less structured and more alive. Not to mention the whole DIY look has been super trendy for a while now. I guess it's the charm of something created by hand and the flexibility of the digital world. It's nice.

These handwritten fonts are nothing new. If you can't find something that you like on dafont, or you don't want to risk seeing the font you use on another design, there are hundreds of different ways to do create your own. I've known this was a possibility, but it wasn't until today that I finally took a moment to give it a try.

I can't believe I hadn't done this before. It literally took 15 min. I created mine with the online font generator at www.yourfonts.com.

Let me sum up:

1. Go to www.yourfonts.com and print out the character template
2. Fill out the template in a thin black sharpie (or thick if that's your bag)
3. Scan the template you just filled in at 300 dpi
4. Upload it
5. Get custom handwritten font to install on your computer!

Here's what my character template looked like all filled in:

In my haste, I did not pay as much attention to the hashmark guidelines as I should have, and as a result a couple characters (the lower case u and the . ) are either a little too high, or a little too low, but for the most part it worked out flawlessly.

Even if you're not a designer, this could be a cool thing to play with. I can see scrapbookers getting some good use out of this, and maybe cooks who want to preserve recipes in their mom's handwriting but are a bit too much of a search junky/technophile to rely totally on recipe cards. I realize this is cheating, and it's no where near as close as a scan of the card or the real thing, but it could be better than straight up Arial. Just an idea.

Any other ideas for how a custom handwritten font could be used?

(The above photo was taken through the viewfinder of my kodak duaflex II camera with my Digital Canon Rebel. I processed the colors in photoshop and used my fancy new handwritten font to label it. Talk about combining the digital with the DIY. Alex's grandfather worked at Peerless for nearly his entire life. This building has a special place in the hearts of his family. It feels nice to have a picture of it.)

Girl's Weekend: Tropical Mimosas, Artie Fun, and Mexican Food

These girls, they are such amazing, creative, talented girls.

Winter can suck it, we say! Finally, we fight back against the cold! Pump up the heat! Break out the mango juice and champagne, rock the pajama pants, and grab that stinkin list of projects we've been meaning to do all winter long if only we could crawl out from under the blanket and find the motivation.

Sometimes you just need a little help from your friends to kick the winter blues.

This day, was awesome.

You can see the entire set with finished projects on my flickr stream. More photos of my necklace yet to come.

Aperture Priority

In honor of Jen's continuing photo week series exploring camera settings, here's my aperture priority shoot. This weekend we journeyed to Bloomington, IL and did some rock climbing in the silos at Upper Limits. It was a lot of fun, but super tough to get a decent shot in the low light conditions without using a flash.

Looking back I can't believe that I didn't have the presence of thought to increase my ISO. I probably would have ended up with a very different shoot. Oh well, as it stands I ended up with some pretty dramatic looking photos because it forced me to wait for my subject to enter the harsh yellow ring of light that was cast on the side of the silo or else deal with some wicked motion blur. I didn't mind the motion blur in all of the shots, though, it added a bit of excitement.

I used my 50 1.8 lens primarily because my adjustable lens simply wasn't fast enough. I would have really liked to use a wider angle, but again, it forced me to consider the best composition I could get within the limitations of my view. Thanks for hosting another photo week challenge, Jen! It was fun!

Wednesday Desktop Background Freebie

Select your screen resolution: 1920 X 1200 | 1280 X 960 | 1024 X 768

Who doesn't love free things!? I personally like to change my desktop backgrounds often. Sometimes I make my own, other times I really like having another artists work to look at.

A week or so ago, I was playing around with the photo that I used in the processing tutorial and created a simple desktop background with it. I got to thinking that if I love free high-quality desktop backgrounds made by other artists, maybe I should contribute one of my own to the community. So here it is! Take it if you want it! Totally on the house.

Sue's Series Photo Weekend Challenge

I know that sledding is total copycat of Steph and Scott, but this series was too fun not to share. :D Thanks for heading up the photo challenge this weekend Sue!

(Click the 'All Sizes' button above the photo on my Flickr page to see it big)

Vintage Ribbon Camera Strap

It's been a long time coming! I posted about this pretty ribbon and my desire to add it to my camera strap months ago, but with my sewing machine on the fritz, and Christmas presents to make I hadn't gotten around to it. This weekend, though, Steph was kind enough to allow me to borrow some pieces of black fabric for the sleeve and her sewing machine to finally put this together. I'm so thrilled to finally have my custom strap complete! Thanks Steph, you make dreams come true!!!

Now I just need to figure out what I've done to make my sewing machine behave so badly and I can finish up other 1/2 done sewing projects. :) (see #1 on the list, sewing bag, you're next!)

Twinkle Soft and Chunky Yarn Rocks!

This yarn is SO soft and really, really warm. I was surprised at how warm it was for being such a airy scarf pattern. This scarf is way better than any scarf I own as far as keeping out the cold, that's for sure.

I just finished this scarf tonight while we watched LOST. A co-worker of mine commissioned it as a gift for his wife. (I hope she likes it!) I really am a big fan of this yarn, it's definitely NOT cheap, but it makes all the difference in the way these scarves turn out. I made one for my best friend for Christmas with this same yarn, but I didn't get any decent pictures of it so I thought I'd post a couple of this one. I wanted to share what a difference having the right yarn makes. If you're interested in getting some of your own, check out Yarn Market they have a ton of beautiful colors to choose from. Happy Friday Everyone!

Playing with the mood of a photo

After looking through the images I took during my antique camera photo shoot, I thought it might be fun to pick one and try to play with the tone of the image. I wanted to keep the effect subtle, but still give it a bit of a mood. For this tone I chose to draw from the look of film developed in the 70's. Here's a tutorial of the techniques I used to achieve these results.

Here's the original photo

New 50 mm Prime Lens

I can't believe what a HUGE difference this new 50 mm prime lens makes! I did a photo shoot of a couple antique cameras we have in the house today and was really excited to see the results. The cameras are so beautiful! I think I'm going to have to print out the series and hang them all together somewhere. It might even be cool to see if there's a coffee shop or something that would be interested in the series as part of a local artist gallery of some sort. I'll have to look around. Thanks for the extra inspiration to make the purchase, Steph! I love it!

Red Velvet Birthday Cupcakes

This weekend we had a birthday party for my little sister who's favorite cupcake is the ever so popular red velvet cupcake. I asked the most knowledgeable baker I know for a recipe recommendation and she referred me to a red velvet layer cake recipe posted on Smitten Kitchen. Since they were cupcakes, and not cakes, I baked them at 350 for only 25 min.

I have to admit there was a fiasco involving red food coloring and my favorite jeans, and I was a little nervous about the whole buttermilk portion of the recipe as well as the vinegar and baking soda you add at the end. I thought for sure I'd get something off balance and my poor sister would end up with red bricks instead of cupcakes for her birthday. I'm totally new to the whole baking thing and haven't quite accumulated any confidence for it. Fortunately for her, they actually turned out fluffy and not at all like bricks. Yay!

I made a cream cheese icing and topped them off with stemmed maraschino cherries for maximum cuteness. I was worried about the cherries bleeding on the icing, so I rinsed them off and let them dry out on paper towels.

My sis said that she really like the cupcakes, so to me that is a success! Here's to happy birthdays to very much loved little sisters!