I’m not an incredibly experienced photographer, I’ve actually only shot one other concert before a few months back at the Multi-Cultural Festival. Grand Funk Railroad was playing at the Parkersburg Homecoming this year so I thought it would be a good subject/practice. Grand Funk plays some good music, I’m not really familiar with them but they play some gritty old rock songs which I really love. The only negative side effect of this kind of music is its inbred cousin, country music, which attracts a not so friendly crowd. The closer I moved to the stage, the stronger my contact drunk got and the angrier the growling grunting crowd seemed to become with my presence. There were already 40 or so people standing and a handful of dudes easily as tall as me so I don’t completely understand what the problem was, but that is just the nature of the redneck. I gradually grew nervous being there with an expensive camera hanging around my neck, so I wrapped it up and peaced out before anything bad happened.

The photos are pretty grainy due to a few things, it being night time, increased shutter speed to avoid any rock & roll motion blur, shooting most of them all the way out on the telephoto end of my cheap lens and being to cheap to drop two grand on a professional telephoto lens =/

But after trying to work with them in Photoshop I discovered converting them to black & white I could increase their levels without worrying about the increased grain because it matches the gritty rock & roll style and they actually look better with grain. So, what do you think?

“…without it, you’re at best able to make a website that looks like a website—rather than a design that tells a story in the form of a website.”

Jason Santamaria

I haven’t even read this entire article yet, but from what I have it is pretty enjoyable. A lot of times I feel like I am missing out on the art of web design while chasing after complicated code to accomplish things. It has become too much of a job and I’ve lost that innocence of looking at the internet and technology in awe.

I hate to sound like a hippie, actually I don’t, but its like that old problem of selling out and loosing the love for something. I’ve always been in love with creativity and creating things. I slowly started falling in love with web design and graphic design in 2004 and eventually got experienced enough in these things to find work doing it, the greatest thing that could ever happen I thought at the time, but then that evil poison of selling out began to take effect and soon that love faded away and it became more of just an average thing in my life that I didn’t hate.

It became less about doing something really good and more about convincing people to stop forcing me to do a poorer job. I know that is just part of the job everybody goes through, but the artistic side of anything is uncompromising and that is what makes something great and that is what I miss. I miss being in love with a craft and loving (not patting yourself on the back) the results of my work.

I’m really just rambling right now but it feels good so I’m going to try and finish this up while I’m still making sense. I guess my point is that I think I am going to start some new personal projects of some kind. A part of me normally hates this because it doesn’t have a hirer purpose or point, but this other part of me now is throwing a temper tantrum like a little kid that just wants to go outside and play. Okay well maybe its not that bad, but it sounded better that way didn’t it?

I don’t need to tell anyone how small the Mid-Ohio Valley is and how little opportunity there is in a place like this, so when someone from here actually does something cool with their life it is pretty amazing.

Three friends of mine from Marietta that I use to skate with back in High School all got the hell out of Dodge as soon as they received their diplomas and moved to New York City. All three are doing well, but I recently saw some photos on Facebook of one of these three friends during the premiere of a film he had directed. So to keep things short, I’m stoked to see Will doing well and hope things continue going that way for him.

He also directed a horror film a few years back that I was going to review on here, but something happened and I never got around to it, I’m not much of a horror movie type of dude so I think I was worried I would give it a mediocre review which it wouldn’t have deserved.

I’m a slacker when it comes to keeping up with this blog any more. My initial inspiration to build and keep up this web site was always to find work, and I’m pretty happy with my job now so I suppose I just don’t have the motivation I use to. But here are a few of the better photos I’ve shot over the summer. I shot so many during the Parkersburg Multi-Cultural Festival I was stumped for a good while picking the best of the bunch that I wanted to show off, but here they are, word.

I’ve been watching this short section of pro skate John Bolino non-stop since it hit the web waves a few days ago.

Those giant cups of whipped cream and coffee that McDonald’s always advertises look delicious. Today I was going through the drive through and had my eye on one, but I wasn’t really sure what they were called. I saw something that said mocha, which if you don’t already know tastes like carrot flavored coffee but people drink it anyways because it sounds fancy. I was at the window ordering and running out of time, the pressure was on, so I just blurted out cappuccino. When I got home I popped the lid out only to discover a cup of especially bitter McDonalds coffee and a tall layer of flavorless bubbles, I was let down to say the least =/

It’s not about what you are paying attention to, its about what you are able to not pay attention to. If all of your focus is on what you are trying not to pay attention to, at best you will be focused on nothing at all.

Going to lunch the other day I noticed while drive over the Belpre bridge that the land of what will become the new Riverfront Park was starting to take some kind of shape finally. So on my way back to work I walked out to about the middle of the bridge and shot some photos. I originally had no intentions of shooting a panorama, but I guess my camera had a mind of its own. I really love the way it turned out with the vivid clouds, which probably had something to do with the new polarizing filter I forgot I was using and don’t completely understand yet. At the same time I cut and pasted and photoshoped this panorama together on my laptop and my wrist started getting cramped up and there are a few small, but in my eyes major, boo boos with it so I don’t completely love the way it turned out either.

This is the second contest page I worked on for WTAP going through the same 3rd party developers as mentioned in my previous blog. This time I had a better grasp on how their application worked, plus a basic contest page was already put together from last year which I really just stuck with completely just added a few small images like this, similarly to how I did the first contest but this time with a much better understanding of how to go about doing it.

I was actually pretty happy with the graphics design, I have been wanting to use a halftone pattern in something professionally for a while now and I finally got my chance. At the same time I’m not entirely happy with my use of it, it doesn’t quite pop like other’s use of halftone that I have seen and was attempting to mimic here.