Kimberly Sandie gets a full page! Nice! (Taken with instagram)

Nice one by Carrie Scechter.

(Source: carrieschechter)

The Roots : View all 40+ backstage GIFs at Late Night With Jimmy Fallon & the Roots!

(via theastonishingpost)

sfmoma: SO. COOL. See the photos on LIFE’s website here.

(Source: kelsography)

CNN has featured a photo series by friend and photographer Kyle Monk. This dude is good (that’s why I had him shoot my wedding).

I like kids but they are not in the future plan for my wife and I.  Kids as models/props for photoshoots goes in the “PROS” column for the kids debate. Hilarious. Check out the series by photographer Jason Lee HERE.

I am feeling very fortunate this morning. And must thanks my parents for that. Thanks Mom and Dad.

I just received two gigantic boxes, full of all of my past creative work from high school through college. I knew this was on it’s way here but had no idea how much there actually was or what I saved versus what my parents saved.

What I discovered was a treasure trove of all my past inspirations, experiments, successes, and more importantly, failures. I got hit in the gut when I when through the first thing I grabbed - my photo negative binder. I discovered that it contained almost every single roll of negatives and the corresponding contact sheets for every black and white photo I took since 1996. Whoa. Memories abound.

What I also came across in that binder was the very first thing I ever did with photo paper - my first photogram, which is what that image with this post is. Oh how excited I remember being about this assignment as the direct translation from 3D object to flat graphic was something so purely simple and beautiful. And something I could easy understand.

Armed with a piece of gauze, a couple drywall screws from my dad’s workshop, a Lego gear, a scrap of 35mm film, a flat gear key chain that came with my tennis shoes, a ball-chain, an old watch back, and most importantly, the packaging sleeve from my very first set of turntable cartridges (needles) - the Stanton Pro Disco 500AL-MP (matched pair, oh yeah!). It had type screen-printed on a thick clear sheet of plastic that just seemed too good of an option not to test out.

Looking at this image, I can still clearly remember hovering over the table, staring down at the components and rehearsing exactly what order and where I was going to place the items when in the dark room. I still get the same sense of focus and clarity when committing to the creative process in the work I do these days (as long as no one calls or knocks on the door…) - a focus that never came from reading history, doing math, or learning a new language.

But I was learning a new language.

I didn’t really know it then, but this was my first step towards becoming a designer. Or visual communicator, rather. And learning to speak visually, with intention. Seeing the word around me with the tools before me, and finding my own way to combine those two elements into something that I was happy to see the result of.

And that’s what it’s really about. Doing the work, experimenting along the way, and trying to reach a place where what you do makes you happy. It’s all really about happiness, isn’t it? Whether you dabble in numbers, or words, or big scientific lab experiments, underneath all the layers we are all trying to find what makes us happy.

And I am. I am happy to get to see all this old work that played a big part in making and keeping me happy over the years. And I’m happy that I get to work with amazing photographers and illustrators at my job now. Sure, not everything is always rainbows and butterflies, but finding ways to do the things that give back to and fulfill yourself are what make it all worth it.

So there ya go. Blah blah blah, crappy old work from high-school, snore, happiness, blah blah. I’m no writer and this is probably the longest public thing I’ve written but here’s to not knowing how to properly end things! Awesome. Now back to work…

Here comes the sun. It’s alright.

Creative Quarterly 27 Winner

http://www.cqjournal.com/winners.html

Just got word that I have a winning piece in Creative Quarterly’s graphic design section as well as a few runner-ups. A cover photo by photographer Kelly Nicolaisen was also a winner. Can’t wait to see everyone else’s work that won!

ZOOOOOOOM!!!!! Scroll around the ultra-high res version of the latest cover HERE. Watch out for

Indie On Top: February 22nd, 2012.

Photos by Amanda Lopez

There are 47 different images for this week’s cover. Why? Because I had an idea I wanted to try and never thought about having to color correct all those images before they went off to press. Maybe I should have saved the mayhem for some other time when the photoshoot of 19 different people didn’t have to happen the day before our press deadline. Maybe then I wouldn’t have ended up WAY past our final deads. Yesterday sucked but all that frustration still left me satisfied with what Amanda and I managed to accomplish in a 2 day time period.

The Photo Art Of Leslie Ann O’Dell.

via theastonishingpost and Design You Trust.

Behind the World Press Photos

Amazing photos over at CNN’s press photo contest. Watch out for the rhino photo - it will hit you in the gut or tear through your heart or both.

Behind Photographs – The most famous photographs presented by their photographers by Tim Mantoani

(via cavesoflilith)

Rednose Studio makes awesome stuff. From tons and tons of pieces of other stuff. Then photographs it so that you can see how awesome it is. There are better examples than the image above but that is one of my favorites (since I ride a motorcycle and all).

Check out the portfolio section as well as the blog as there is tons of great process documentation. Quality.