Author: John Herd

water lily at springbank park, london, ontario

Right out of the Box (or Camera)

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I love using Photoshop. Ever since I began to learn the program 10 years ago I have enjoyed importing my photos and improving (or completely destroying) them to test Photoshop’s filters. Despite this love of Photoshop there is something extremely satisfying about taking a picture and realising it doesn’t need any changes. This photo is an example of that happening to me.

I have recently purchased a Canon 50mm f/1.8 prime lens to augment my 18mm-55mm and 70mm-300mm kit lenses I’ve been using for the past 5 years. While I’ve taken decent images with these lenses I thought it was time to take a more advanced step into the world of photography and this lens was relatively cheap and has good reviews. I decided to test it at Springbank Park, London, Ontario.

There is a small garden at Springbank Park that has a water feature containing water lilies. I snapped some pictures of the water lilies and was immeditaly pleased with the results. I loved the pink flower contrasting with the water, I loved the reflection, and I loved the bokeh. I’ve taken too many flower pictures over the last few years but this one stood out from the others.

A water lily and it's reflection at Springbank Park, London, Ontario.
A water lily and it’s reflection at Springbank Park, London, Ontario.

While I enjoy Photoshop and continue to learn it (Photoshop is one of those programs you continuously learn, no matter your skill level) I always have a feeling of satisfaction when I take a picture I love right out of the box (or camera).

Design Ideas with pencil and paper

Experimenting with a new Layout/Theme

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I am going to work with Bootstrap (a popular HTML, CSS, and JavaScript framework) and/or Boilerplate to develop a new theme. If I like the results I will incorporate them into my proper website to move aaway from the stock WordPress look. I like the minimalist black and white scheme I’m using now so most of the changes will be in the layout and typography.

UPDATE 1

After looking through some themes I realise the “sparkling” theme from Colorlib is the basic layout I had in mind so I will use it as a child theme and make modifications. I have already switched over to the basic theme.

UPDATE 2

I’ve changed the header colour to the same red the default scheme uses for links and accents and I’ve changed the header font to “Merriweather” from Google fonts. I also added a logo in place of the website name but it’s placement looked strange and while it looked good in Adobe Illustrator it did not look good on the website so back to the drawing board.

UPDATE 3

I’ve added a slider to the homepage and changed the accent colour to blue. I also made white the predominant colour of the website. Until I have a satisfactory logo design I am using an italic, handwritten style font for my website logo. I feel it adds a nice bit of contrast and casualness compared to the other font styles.

Thank you,

John

 

3D clock built and rendered in Cinema 4D.

Simple 3D Clock

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3D Clock, CInema 4D
A simple 3D clock built and rendered in Cinema 4D.

This is a 3D clock I built and rendered in Cinema 4D. It’s a very simple design based on a real one owned by a family member. Here is the real one:

Interesting clock
A clock owned by a family member with a cool, simple, design.

The moment I saw this clock I knew I had to recreate it with a 3D program. It consists of very simple shapes which could be made with simple poly and spline modelling. I was also interested in creating a realistic light and shadow setup without using V-RAY (I don’t have V-RAY installed on my computer). The lighting and texturing took longer than building the clock.

Cinema history, Star Wars infographic

History of Cinema Infograph

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A movie info graphic showing how hero's have always been instantly great.
An info graphic showing hollywood hero’s have always been instantly great.

 

I thought the Star Wars: The Force Awakens was an enjoyable, if flawed movie. My rating is around 8 out of 10. What really annoys me are the complaints that Rey is a “Mary Sue” (she’s perfect at everything, beats Kylo Ren, etc.). On one hand it is a slight flaw in the movie, on the other hand male characters have had uber quick learning abilities for at least a century. If someone is only noticing this phenomenon now because Rey is a woman that is a bit troubling.

I put a few movies on this graph that share the same “problem” as Force Awakens and just so everyone knows: I like all these films. The 2009 Star Trek reboot has the worst case of this trope since Captain Kirk never really grows through the course of the movie, a problem the filmmakers tried addressing in the less successful follow up Star Trek: Into Darkness.