Haiti Relief Benefit

Art Can Help, a local organization that uses the arts to raise awareness about particular subjects, is planning a benefit for Haiti. I've gotten involved on both sides, with Art Can Help and with this actually event. It's a great idea and I'm happy to be donating my time and graphics to this cause.

It's an all-day event held in Redfern Village on St. Simons Island, on March 20. It'll be a progressive party of sorts... starting at one location with a band and specials, and heading to another one, than another, etc... each location will have special events, live music and proceeds made going to the benefit.

Check out the Facebook page for more info, or just email me and I'll get you an answer. Cheers and hope to see you there!

SNOW!

I know, I know... another damn post about snow. If you live anywhere in the southeast, that's all you're reading about on blogs, tweets and facebooks... so here, one more...

We just came back from our annual President's Day Weekend trip up to our family cabin in Blueridge, GA. Man what an awesome time we had! We made it OK up there, the roads were pretty icy past Elijay, GA... so it was pretty slow going from there. It snowed a total of about 4-5 inches, and it all stuck. Luckily the Jeep has 4wd and we had no problem getting around. There's gravel roads all around the cabin, and they were all frozen and when the ice melted on Monday, it got really muddy. But with 4-lo kicked in, we creeped up and around just fine!

We didn't do much, just hung around the cabin. Ate a ton. Cooked a beef tenderloin Sunday night... dry-rubbed with salt, red and black pepper, garlic and brown sugar, wrapped in bacon... pan-seared and finished with indirect heat, my all-time favorite way to cook my favorite piece of meat.

This week has just been a blur with work piled high. But it's all good, busy is good. I'm just trying to focus on knocking stuff off the list.

I'm going fishing tomorrow. Really excited. We're putting the boat in at Coozie's in the morning and are looking for whatever we can find... trout, reds, etc.

Here's two pics from the past weekend. The cabin, covered in snow, taken from the bank of the creek (right behind me) and Anson, with his girlfriend Leighton. I guess it's pretty apparent that Anson is quite used to the camera by now. HA!

lots of animation

One thing I've always really liked but never totally got into was video. I took the required video courses in college for my Visual Communications degree, but opted for all the photography course over the video ones... hell, Kelly actually took more video courses then me. With that being said, I think the same art applies to both. It's just a different technical hurdle to overcome. One that is very different than photography, and photo processing in MANY ways.

I've been doing a lot of video lately. From 3 minute audition clips, to HD b-roll for Jekyll Island. My newest project, while only partially video, has me real excited. Jekyll's requested a time-lapse video of a four month construction project. They are going to remodel the old indoor tennis court and turn it into a state of the art conference center. So, after doing a lot of research I've figured out my angle of approach. I looked into wildlife trail cameras, thinking they would be best... already set up to do that right out of the box, waterproof and can last for months on a single set of batteries. Problem there is the lens isn't wide enough. It's pretty much telephoto. After much research I stumbled on the Canon Hack Development Kit (CDHK). It's an open source firmware that you install on a canon digital camera that really unleashes the potential of it. You have to hack into the camera basically, but once it's all installed, there isn't much you can't do. You can use the camera's microphone to trigger a photo... say, when someone walks by and the sound is picked up.... snap! In my case, I'm using it to take a photo every 15 minutes for four months. Then, I'll string all the photos together and it will be an animated short film of the whole construction process... much akin to those flower-growing videos we all watched in BIO 101.

So I bought a Canon SD1000, a little point and shoot the smaller than a pack of cigarettes (used for a $100!), a wide-angle conversion lens (because I need a WIDE shot) and an AC power adapter. I'm going to work on the CDHK this weekend and will test the video out in a day-in-our-office setting the early part of next week. I'll be sure to post it.

So for now, stay tuned!