Nicaragua

A friend and fellow Returned Peace Corps Volunteer recently asked me to donate some of my images for a scholarship fundraising event. I happily obliged. Here are a few of the images from my time in the Peace Corps that I have come to love.

Photo Collage

This is a photo collage I am in the process of making for a course I am taking called Interactive Multimedia Design and Production. I call it Fun With Photoshop. Let me know what you think. The second version is not, in my mind, as successful as the first.

Photoshop & Textile Designs

I recently took on a new position at The University of Texas as a teaching assistant for a computer assisted textile design course. The course uses Photoshop to create unique designs by methods of color reduction, color replacement, and a myriad of other techniques. Here is a sampling of a quick color reduction and replacement from lab.

To me this process reminds me of silk screening t-shirts. When you color reduce to just two or three colors you can get these really great effects with minimal effort.

As a teaching assistant for this course I am excited to learn the creative techniques they are applying to textile design. In journalism these kinds of alterations would be out of the question as it is unethical to alter a photograph's content.

Fireworks and the Fourth

This Fourth of July we spent at Auditorium Shores in downtown Austin. It was our son Christian's first; he was fast asleep midway through the show. I am not particularly patriotic but this year is different. My mind wandered to the soldiers deployed. One soldier, my brother, is in Afghanistan this Fourth and God willing he will home for the next one.

My Sweet Sweet Baby

I recently photographed my little baby in the studio. Here he is crawling as fast as he can. He was much more interested in the backdrop than letting me get a good shot of his face.

E=MC2

I'm working on a piece about the "grid." The grid refers to the network of public utilities that urban dwellings connect to. The experiment in off the grid living is a way of life that encompasses green building techniques, organic gardening, and sustainability. Nationwide the phenomenon of off grid is growing. Entire websites and blogs are dedicated to forming online communities and information resources for those who are aiming to live off grid. One of them is Off Grid.net This website is dedicated to the transition of energy from cheap fossil fuels to harnessing the power the sun, wind and water at a hyper local level, your rooftop.

This project is enlightening. It asks the fundamental question, to what extent will our nation survive without cheap energy. The U.S. is entering a time of change, a period some refer to as 'peak oil'. This idea of peak oil in says that we as a nation and a planet have reached our maximum output of fossil fuels and that from now on we are running out of things like coal and petroleum.

As you may have learned in grade school coal and petroleum are the product of organic materials compressed under layers and layers of sediment and naturally converted into fossil fuels. That process takes hundreds of years. Our planet's energy needs cannot sustain itself on fossil fuels for much longer.

Thousands of people world wide are now living sustainable lifestyles with minimal energy consumption by going off grid. Some are using solar power to keep their homes cool and t.v.'s on while others are using wind power to do keep the E=MC2 flowing through their wires.

One part of this project that I never considered until more recently was the fact that our wastewater and wastewater processing is responsible for consuming huge amounts of energy. An answer to this is composting toilets. A composting toilet is an environmentally conscientious answer to the grid wastewater.

What is Multimedia?

Do a Google search for the term multimedia and you will get thousands of results that don't give a clear definition. What is multimedia anyway? Is it a Flash gallery on a website, SoundSlides? Animation, sound, and text in a combined slide show? Video on the internet? A gallery of photographs that are navigable? Is it all of these?

Multimedia is many things. It is multifaceted, multifunctional, multicultural, multifarious, multinational, multidimensional, multidisciplinary, multilingual, multipurpose, multiplayer.

As a photojournalist today potential employers want candidates to possess skills in producing audio visual slideshows, short video clips in Final Cut Pro, and flash presentations. The National Press Photographers Association offers a Multimedia Immersion Workshop May 18-22 in Syracuse, NY.

Like learning a new language photographers learning Multimedia must be immersed into it. In today's competitive job market it is sink or swim. For students like me it's great to have a resource like the website www.MultimediaStandards.org