I made a postcard of the Muskegon, Michigan South Light House. Shot using a Canon 1DS and colored using Lightroom, Color EFX and Photoshop. Muskegon Light House postcard
August 2nd, 2010
I made a postcard of the Muskegon, Michigan South Light House. Shot using a Canon 1DS and colored using Lightroom, Color EFX and Photoshop. EAA Airventure
July 31st, 2010
I made a series of images focusing on the Warbirds and vintage aircraft parked on the grounds of the 2010 EAA Airventure, at KOSH, Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Going in I wanted to get a vintage look matching the aircraft, so I used a swing shift lens. Then in post, I originally was going to use a custom sepia finish, but the aluminum of the aircraft led me towards blues and greens. Workflow was Lightroom, Color EFX and After Effects.
2010 Tour de France
July 24th, 2010
I like using any available device or method to capture images. Frequent visitors to my site know I use a variety of cell phone cameras, odd film cameras and other means to capture an image. The other day I remembered I have a camera built into to my very own computer… on MAC OS X it’s CMD SHIFT 4. That brings up a nifty crosshair enabling users to make an image of any portion of the screen. I figured I may as well make some images of my favorite topic, wait for it… cycling. I have been streaming the Tour de France and made some images of my favorite scenes including the Col de Tourmalet and the Stage 19 time trial from Bordeaux to Pauillac. Brought them into Photoshop for some post work. Enjoy.
iPhone 4 Southwest 737 wallpaper
July 14th, 2010
High resolution Southwest 737 at altitude, made for the iphone and iphone 4. Click any image to download to your hard drive. I captured this plane above Portland, Oregon. Sky and contrails were made using CGI. Enjoy.
Arcadia Bluffs GC, Arcadia, Michigan
July 8th, 2010
Hole by hole landscape images of Arcadia Bluffs near Arcadia, Michigan. All images are from the white tees, 6,244 yards. Played July 4, 2010 at 10:10am. I toted a Canon Mk2 1DS to make these.
From the yardage book, “Arcadis Bluffs Golf Club was founded in 1999 in Arcadia, Michigan. The course is built on the bluffs above the shore of Lake Michigan and sits on approximately 245 windswept acres of lakefront property. The course drops 225 feet from its highest point down to the bluff, 180 feet above sea level and has 3,100 feet of Lake Michigan shore frontage.
The golf course was designed to resemble a seaside Irish links, with rolling terrain and windswept natural fescues throughout. Players will be reminded of their favorite holes at Lahinch and Ballybunion, while enjoying breathtaking views of Lake Michigan from all points on the majestic layout. A Warren Henderson/ Rick Smith design, Arcadia Bluffs offers players a golfing experience unlike anything in the United States.”
No. 1 tee par 5 459 yds
New website
June 30th, 2010
Not again. Yep. I recently overhauled my website. Bottom up. For those keeping track, this is my third major overhaul in as many years. Let’s call this 3.0. My last site (2.0) featured horizontal scrolling which was different unique. Certainly not used much. Confused some I’m sure. It also had a very basic menu structure. I deployed 2.0 in March 2009. Prior to that was 1.0, which was 100% Flash. I spent considerable cash developing that site but 86ed that after finally coming to the realization that Flash is just plain terrible to SEO or manage reasonably. So moving from Flash to a nice, standards compliant HTML site (2.0) was refreshing. Not to mention my SEO climbed from obscurity to somewhat respectable in short order.
Two factors prompted the current version, 3.0. I was tired of maintaining four different websites, my main site, a stock site, a print site and a blog. All with completely different logins, front-ends, back-ends, styles and subscription cycles. I became increasingly interested in utilizing the WordPress CMS to construct an entire site. So I basically created a theme from scratch that pushes the typical WP blog to the back and uses the CMS to power my home page and portfolio. I built the custom theme on a grid system making future expansion painless.
The second factor was retaining visitors. Analytics showed that visitors were in and out, time on site was down, bounce rates were about 55%. No good. I built 2.0 to be efficient, I wanted busy creatives to be able to get in and get out fast, which it appears they were. It was too efficient. 3.0 offers some more meat on the bone.
There were casualties of course. I completely dumped my Blogger blog and all of its tidings. After much research, I decided there was no way to “port” all of the posts, comments and assets from Blogger to the WP platform, without major headaches and the prospect of being dropped from Google for double posting. So, if you didn’t read my shit there, tough. You missed out. All those posts bye bye.
Also, my stock site, which was run on Photoshelter proved is be to much of a hassle to keep going, much less try and shoehorn into WP with success. Not entirely sure how I am going to proceed with my stock library. I am thinking about building a database and doing it myself.
If anyone needs some resources on building a custom theme over the WP CMS, drop me a line. I’ve got plenty bookmarked on the toolbar.
Black Earth Creek postcard
June 25th, 2010
Black Earth Creek postcard. Made this quick image while I was fly fishing the Black Earth Creek near Cross Plains, Wisconsin.
500 miles
June 21st, 2010
The odometer on my 2010 Nike Pegasus 26 running shoes passed 500 mi the other day. I usually get new shoes after 400, but put on another 100 since they were holding up well. Enter the Pegasus 27. Side by sides.
