I’m trying to start posting more of my daily workflow on the blog, but since I don’t really have any shots of me pushing paper or sitting in meetings today, I’ll go with this image from Friday’s promo shoot at Miller Outdoor Theater. On that afternoon I had a chance to play with some wicked, new lighting equipment.
For an impromptu still image (I was shooting video at the time) I think it came out rather well. Though I can’t take too much credit. Between Dominique and my Canon 5DII being awesome, all I had to do was push the button on top of the camera.
Is it just me, or did you also recently think to yourself: “I can’t believe it’s already mid March!” Seriously. I can’t fathom where all the time has gone (except those hours unselfishly sacrificed to the altar of the TV God in my living room). In order to catch-up with y’all for all the things that I neglected to blog about, I’ve prepared this handy list:
1I’m a “Mac” now. That’s right, after years of being one of those dudes who would recite a rehearsed list reasons as to why I would only use PC computers (customization, computer gaming, etc), I’ve finally made the switch. Or “found my way” if you believe the Apple zealots I work with. Basically, after over a year of working in Final Cut Studio, and witnessing first-hand how much easier my Adobe products work in the Mac OS, I realized that I was having a much better experience than with my PC products. So now I have a kick-ass 27′ iMac, fully juiced and loaded with all the fancy photo/video stuff I need. I got it loaded with Aperture 3, and right now I’m dabbling around in the program to see if I like it better than Lightroom 2.
2I’m back in the MMO world. Yeah, so now that I have a powerful-ish computer again, I’ve decided to check out some of the online games that I’ve been reading about online (or attempting to play their terrible, low-res demos on my laptop). Right now I’m plotting a course for adventure in Star Trek Online (screenshots coming soon), and hoping to meet-up again with some of my old MMO pals in World of Warcraft.
3Lost is rad, as if you didn’t already know. I look forward to the new island adventures each week, but I’m also dreading the end of the series. I have a feeling it’ll be crazy right up until the final moment, but I’m hoping that there’s a little “breathing room” in the final episode (much like the BSG finale) so that we can properly put these characters to rest – some quite literally, I’m sure. Also, I’m hooked on Spartacus: Blood and Sand on Starz, and eagerly awaiting the return of Party Down.
4I’m getting back into the “social media” scene. After becoming somewhat of a hermit, and half-assed Twitterer/Facebooker, I’m finding my way back to the glow of the computer screen. Thank, my iPhone, I guess. I think I sorta had to take a step back after being overloaded with all these people I know suddenly surging into the ‘new media’ and driving me nuts – not to mention all the SEO and “Social Media expert” douches that are coming out of the webwork.
5I bought cowboy boots. I’m not really going to go into it, but I have a pair of “shit kickers” as I’ve heard them called by gentlemen at the rodeo store.
Last year’s carnival food discovery was “deep fried Oreos”…this year I wandered upon this glorious abomination:
I sorta took this photo in a hurry, as I was eager to rush off to our table and have bite, but also because I had a hundred cowpokes in line behind me getting annoyed that I was nerding out and taking photos of my food. Anyway, let me say it again in case you missed the headline: Chicken Fried. Mother Fuckin’. Bacon.
[On a completely unrelated note: I'm getting really fat lately.]
I was just cleaning up my laptop, preparing it for the transition to Windows 7 (aka “Operation Futile Performance Upgrade”) and I came across another one of the creepy photos I took in my parent’s orchard on Thanksgiving.
This is a companion photo to the “Tater in the Orchard” pic that I posted here (and everywhere) previously. It was hard to get a good shot of Cody looking all creepy because he’s always such a smiling, pleasant kid. I started to do some antiquing and film damage to the photo, but lost track of the project so the above photo is all I got until I find the rest of them.
It’s actually called the “10PM to AM” promo internally at the station, but somehow “Dusk till Dawn” stuck with me. (Unfortunately, the anchors don’t turn into vampires halfway through the promo)
It’s like 99% shot with my 5D, except for like three shots. I’m not terribly happy with the encoding I did for this Vimeo upload, as it’s choppy and contrasty. But it’s a decent example of what I’ve been working on – the standard, thirty-second version of this spot is crazy fast compared to this extended promo.
Here’s the first spot in our new promo campaign that began Friday night during the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. I shot about 95% of it with my 5D2, except for a few HD stock shots of people that I needed (so that it wasn’t all news people looking rad).
If I were someone that used the disgusting phrase “get your creative juices flowing” then it would certainly be used to describe my sudden growth in productivity and killer work I’ve been doing in the past few weeks. Though, being that a good portion of my job is working on secretive video projects, I can only really show some random photo I’ve taken – like this one here:
Man, I have become a sucker for Lensbabies and tilty lenses lately. If there’s a support group I need to join it – LIKE NOW – especially since I’m about to get another lens. I took this photo from atop one of the hotels in downtown Houston for three reasons: 1) I was on a weird creative streak; 2) I also was able to shoot some much-needed HD skyline footage; 3) The “bathroom committee” at work was looking for some ‘Houston-ish’ artwork to hang up in the men’s room. (They ultimately picked a different skyline photo I shot)
Anyway, I’ve been working hard lately on some very special promos, and by the end of the week I should be able to post the video, and a cool behind-the-scenes thing I’m putting together.
Time to log off the blog and go look up Lost spoilers…
