Bohemian Musings

I love this.

This is a lightning storm in Cali – Salvation mountain to be exact. Lucasberg used his Canon 5D MKII to capture the storm and it’s just amazing…

Andy sent me this video, and I fell in love with it for multiple reasons. You can tell the first one as soon as the first note of the audio hits. :) My favorite song.

This makes the pictures that Jenny and I did look like child’s play.

Jenny… we have to step up our game.

So the hdr is from the trip to acquire Sara. I just saw the colors in the clouds and knew I had to stop and take the picture. I love the way it turned out.

Out of about 300 pictures from tonight’s Tift Merrit concert, there’s probably about 120 that turned out the way I wanted, I’ve gotta go through and pick out 15 to go on the site. Here’s one of them in b/w because let’s face it, folk singers… b/w…. it’s like they were made for each other. :)

Kerouac reading Vision’s of Cody to Steve Allen’s piano & the opening to Woody Allen’s 1979 masterpiece, Manhattan.

Beautiful.

So Jenny is in town. You know what this means. I think it means Pepperoni is going to acquire a little friend…

For those of you who don’t remember Pepperoni…

Stunningly perfect isn’t he?

They made a musical out of Lord of the Rings. I’m speechless. This has to be the most difficult story to make a play out of…

Oh a slightly more cynical note, how can they make this, something that is surely the most expensive production ever in the history of theater, and not make Newsies? A production that would some of the most simplest sets ever. *shakes head*

In all serious though, I really really want to see this. It looks absolutely incredible. Too bad it will probably be 3 years before it gets around to the states, and by states, I mean New York, probably more like 5 years before it gets here. The below video is broken into several parts, so hang in there past the black parts.

Andy and I went to the Annie Leibovitz exhibition at the High yesterday. Her work absolutely blows me away. She’s by far my favorite photographer, which I guess makes it sad that I saw several photos yesterday that I had no idea that she had taken.  I always talk about capturing moments with photography. Capturing emotion. It’s hard to do, you usually have a flicker of a second, and you just have to hope your shutter speed is quick enough to capture it. All of Annie’s photographs are moments frozen in time. A perfect example is one that she took of her daughter in the pool (which I can’t find online anywhere, but if you go to the exhibit you’ll see it a couple times). They had a video going in the exhibition, and they showed the whole family in the pool, there was nothing particularly beautiful with the scenery and the kids weren’t really doing anything that worthy of photographing, but Annie took this picture that somehow completely capsulated youth and innocence through just a brief moment in Sarah’s eyes. It was absolutely incredible. When I left all I wanted to do was take pictures.

Surprisingly though, her most famous piece was not on display. The image of Yoko Ono and John Lennon, which was taken a mere 2 hours before he was murdered, was not on display. While it’s definitely not my favorite, I think it was a piece that should have been included in the collection. Not sure I could pick a favorite out of the ones on display actually… Although the image of the Nile on Susan’s 60^th birthday and the image of her daughter I described above are definitely among my top picks from Annie’s personal collection.

All in all, Annie’s entire collection is stunning, and I highly recommend the exhibition for those of you who haven’t checked it out.

Wow. So I’m finally finished with the convention. I almost didn’t attend this thing, and I couldn’t be more glad that I did. I learned how to do things I didn’t even think possible with my current software, learned about different designers’ and designer firms’ histories, learned how to handle various situations with clients that, luckily, I haven’t had to endure yet, saw the newest stuff coming down the line from Adobe, saw some of the coolest art work, listened to famous designers speak, loaded (and I mean LOADED) up with free samples and tshirts and other swag (pictures to come) saw an old friend from freshman year of college, hung out some with Danny (since his company was doing all the video/audio/lighting/stage set up for the event) between sessions, networked my little butt off during the networking meals, hit up the aquarium for the closing gala (they rented out the whole freakin’ place), and ended up leaving the convention completely refreshed and renewed and anxious to get back to my computer to play around with the new stuff I had learned.

Not since bd4d in 2003 have I felt like this. It rocks. :) This being my first conference of this type that I’ve attended, I understand why it’s important to step away and make time for these things, at least once a year.

Over 4,000 people attended the event. This of course made the exhibit floor (or as I liked to call it, SWAG HEAVEN) a nightmare. I couldn’t really take a picture that expressed this, hopefully one will surface. But until then, this will give you an idea of one small section of one small row of the floor.

So I fully know that none of you will get the blue sky, blue sky quote. :) It comes from Chip Kidd’s presentation which was absolutely incredible. I rate it almost as high as the amount of times I heard him say “fuck”. It’s amazing how laid back designers are, one of the speakers used that word 42 times. Danny’s group said they had never heard a speaker even say that before, much less use it to that degree. Anywho, blue sky, blue sky is Cali talk from an employee at Adobe who corresponded with Chip on a poster that needed to be designed to get students to enter the student competition they host annually. If you want to know the rest of the story, ask me, I’m too tired to type it out. heh :)

The sessions were packed out though, I have a video that I’ll upload later to show the shear mass of people that were in there. The below picture doesn’t illustrate that at all. But when people were finding their seats, they usually had the lightning dimmed, awesome music playing (I even heard the Decemberists once!), and they were playing various reels from the designers who were going to speak. And you guys know how I am about the reels. It was just freakin awesome.

Here’s a complete list of the sessions I attended (I included the speakers’ names next to the best ones):

Sunday, June 10

2:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Pre-Conference: Organic & Interactive Motion Design - Steve Holmes

5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
Networking Kickoff

7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Ballsy: Ways to Score Extreme Business Success

9:00 pm - 11:00 pm
Opening Reception; Resource Center Open (AKA SWAG HEAVEN)

Monday, June 11

9:00 am - 10:15 am
A Number of People - Chip Kidd

10:45 am - 12:00 pm
Inspired By Our Passions: The Pursuit of an Enriched Life

2:00 pm - 3:15 pm
Perfect Imperfection—Lessons of the Handmade in Design

3:45 pm - 5:00 pm
Self-Promotion and Portfolios in the Digital Age - Dave Werner

Tuesday, June 12

7:30 am - 8:30 am
The Russell Brown Show for Photoshop Users

8:00 am - 9:00 am
Continental Breakfast

9:00 am - 10:15 am
Universal Principles of Design - William Lidwell

10:45 am - 12:00 pm
What Do You Do When…? - Scott Wadler (creative team from MTV)

2:00 pm - 3:15 pm
Copyrights and Trademarks on the Internet: Do’s and Don’ts, Rights and Wrongs

3:45 pm - 5:00 pm
TOAST: How to Make Burnout Delicious - Kevin McConkey

8:30 pm - 11:30 pm
Tuesday Evening Reception

Wednesday, June 13

8:30 am - 9:30 am
Continental Breakfast

9:45 am - 11:00 am
How to Rule the Web with Flash® and Humor - Chopping Block Studio

11:15 am - 12:30 pm
Balancing the Work You Love with the Life You Want

During the times between sessions that I couldn’t find Marc or Cindy and Danny was busy or absent from the venue all together, I amused myself by taking pictures of me making funny faces with my name tag. I’m sure this made me look quite charming to those passing me by. :)

The event at the aquarium last night was pretty awesome. They rented out the entire place, had drinks and finger foods, and a 9 piece band playing in the center. It was called the Descenders Ball. Which if you know typography, you should know the term, and you will find it pretty amusing. :) We were supposed to wear shirts with our favorite fonts, or be more crazy with costumes, which some people did dressing as mad libs, some with 3-d letters glued to their head, and others with amusing font joke shirts.

So next year the event will be in Boston, a couple blocks from Harvard. I totally plan on attending. :)

P.S. Pictures of free stuff still to come! :)

I’ll post more tomorrow or Tuesday, but here some of the ones I’ve downloaded from the Canon. I’m really happy with how they turned out. My inspiration for this set was from Viggo Mortensen’s book ‘Mo Te Upoko-o-te-ika’. It’s my first venture into the world of time-lapse photography, and Vegas was the perfect place for that venture.