pseudofluency

Frame Timing Test

2012-02-28T15:18:00.003-06:00

Here's a little pre St. Patrick's Day spirit for all a ya'lls. This test video is a series of quickly shot and edited still images placed head to head to create a jerky sense of stop-motion. I envision a more creatively choreographed version of this style for a "behind the scenes" ad video for Amkar Photography. It's in the works! Production is tentatively scheduled for spring and summer this year... hoping to be complete and publicized by the end of the year!

PS - there may be issues playing this video for some reason, probably copyright issue on the music I used. If it doesn't work after I publish this post, I'll try to go find some other music. If that also doesn't work, oh well! Wait for the final premiere!

An Order Of Muchness

2012-02-11T15:27:00.005-06:00

Mad Hatter: [to Alice]
You're not the same as you were before. You were much more... "muchier". You've lost your "muchness".
Alice:
My "muchness"?
Mad Hatter: [Points to Alice's heart]
In there.

Sometimes worrying about what life may or may not have in store for me wears me out. Why do I worry so much? Why do I always live 3 weeks out from today? Where is my Today? And when will it get here?

I try to remind myself that what I have is good, and what I have going for me is good. What is "good"? You may think it's a comparison with what others have, but it actually is really quite relative. I think the real definition of a "good life" is living and loving exactly what I have, and not being influenced by what others may have, emotionally or physically, or which may be expected of me which I may yearn for. What I have is good. Even if I go throughout my life with only what I have currently (or less), I can be happy. It's a true thing. It only takes the correct psyche to realize and live by it.

A thing called longing screws up the picture of already existing goodness, and the Want for something one doesn't have comes in many forms: a job (or a better job), a nicer neighborhood, a perfected relationship, a child, more money, a nicer body, a means to retire, the latest technology... the list is endless. But it's only endless because we think we need these things. Well, some things are basic to proper functionality in this society, but once we obtain those things we're always looking for something more. I think American society molds us this way. *shaking fist* If I have good credit and I'm happy responsibly making payments with my credit card as I've always done, my credit card company is already scheduled to contact me for an upgrade and to entice me to spend more. This analogy applies to lots of stuff. And by stuff I mean static.

I have an announcement to make: I've decided to stop worrying! Yes! I know it's been a long time coming... ever since I heard about elephantitis in 3rd grade I've been worrying about future, rare, obscure or totally implausible scenarios, diseases or failures that may happen to me in life. Lucky for me, I somehow survived fairly successfully even with all that static in my head for 20 years.

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Start Loving The Bomb

And by "bomb" I mean my own worst enemy: Myself. I owe my decision to a light bulb God placed over my head. I simply want to keep happy with what I have and to continue my life with optimism, passion, ever-go-luckiness and adaptability to whatever may be thrown at me. These things I otherwise define as "muchness". Henceforth, if there are things I feel I need or want in order to complete my life, I shall know that if I do not receive them, God does not feel it is right for me. It doesn't mean I shall not try, but it also means there's a limit to trying, beyond which something may not be destined for me.

In the end, it is all about living and loving, and experiencing this world for what God has laid out for us. I feel pretty good about it.

Field of Springs

2012-02-03T14:36:00.006-06:00

A sip from a creme de menthe mocha at my top favorite coffee house while gazing out at a continuously improving downtown Springfield, MO, the title of this blog instantly sprang to mind. It's true. This city is where I began as an adult. And also where I treasure my youthfulness. From higher education sprang forth confidence in career, motivation in art, fluidity from life choice to life choice.

Other than education, this place runs much deeper. Mudhouse was the very first coffee house I ever came to know. I socialized here with roommates, ruminated here about philosophy, art, dreams, quandaries, boys, cities, and even mindless banter that didn't mean anything at all but was hilarious because it was shared with hilarious friends. This is the coffee house by which I judge all other coffee houses. (And we all know how highly I regard coffee houses.)

This town was my exposure to dating, international people, Indian food, vintage clothing, cow tipping, and Christianity in its many forms. Here I had my first kiss, managed life with roommates, learned how to live with rambunctious felines, and found the closest bond I've ever known with my twin sister... the likes of which I'd never known prior, and never known since. We have hilarious novel-worthy stories, which may never occur for us again.

I am still making friends here. Offshoot friends' friends who've told me they wish they'd known me sooner when I was living here. I used to call this town "Springpatch" because it felt like it was out in the boonies, in rural country, where "big city" ideas aren't as well oiled. It's different to me now, and different developmentally as well. Downtown as been cleaned up really well. A lot of the antique junk shops are gone. A lot of artist studios, chic bistros and contemporary apartment complexes have moved in. Of all the downtowns I've seen, I would live in this one.

I visited this weekend hoping for a retreat to my nostalgic Springfield. I always find it. I drove by my old apartment on Elm, #8. Good memories... spying on the crazy frat house antics just down the street, a male friend posing as a romantic and climbing our balcony, dumping a mattress down said balcony when moving. I also drove by campus, but resisted the urge to go into the old photography dark room halls.

I could sit all day in this coffee house if they'd let me. It's good to just sit and reflect.

Color Space

2011-12-11T12:26:00.008-06:00

Are we ready for some depthy, abstract conversation? Put on some gloves and roll up your sleeves. Let's dive.

As we sat admiring our Christmas tree, Anindeep and I had a curious conversation about color and perception. I posed the notion upon observation that our color changing Christmas lights only cast shadows on nearby objects when they were in a red/yellow phase, and that no shadow was cast when the lights were in a blue/indigo phase. This phenomenon reminded me of the ol' ROYGBIV spectrum we learned whereabouts grade 7, which comprises all the colors visible to the human eye. Too far "in the red" gives us infrared light, and too far beyond violet gives us ultraviolet light, both of which humans cannot perceive with the naked eye.

The inevitable Christmas couch time conversation came to this. What color would "new colors" be to us? How blown would be our minds to discover that we can perceive colors we've never seen before? It's so inconceivable, because all we know is currently based on our knowledge of ROYGBIV (or as my dad would say, "Crayola box of 8"). This is a wild connundrum to me, and it blows my mind whenever I think of it. I envision "new" colors to be like a puke gray/olive green for some reason, but I can only relate it and envision it based on what I know. In the furthest depths of my imagination, I might envision a "new" color as ALL colors, such as something that constantly flickers or changes, and as such one wouldn't be able to define precisely what color it is at any particular given time, and therefore its "new color" would be the flickering state, however you could define that.

We also discussed how color might be perceived differently by individuals. Who knows? And how can you prove it? I'm sure there's a biology and a science here that may undermine my next wonder... something to do with optical rods and cones in the retina. However, and regardless, what if red to me looks like blue to you? If I suddenly could jump in your head to see your perception, yet retain my own knowledge base of color, would my normal color lips look like they're purple or blue from your perception? Thereby you'd perceive me with purple lips and yellow skin as normal? Wild!

Another realm of color I find fascinating is Color Space. If you've ever utilized a graphics program such as Photoshop, you'll be familiar with this color palette. It's technically called "color space", a three dimensional diagram which represents the full range of known colors on an x,y,z axis:

The more red you get, the more positive the "a" factor; the more blue you get, the more negative the "b" factor. Likewise the more white you get, the more positive the "L" factor, and etc. What's also fascinating (as learned in the November issue of Professional Photographer magazine) is that this system was in development from the 1930s through the 1970s... way before Adobe Photoshop came into existence as we know it today... even way before the personal computer was personal. Interesting! In reality, we've been trying to figure out what Color is since the 1800s, which is when scientists discovered and labeled the primary colors as such (red/yellow/blue).

Analyzing color space, my new notion is that there are no new (humanly perceptible) colors in the world, but it is Time and the evolution of design which brings forth "new to us" colors for us to get excited about. Consider the 1950s' pastel and chrome color schemes, or the earthtones and avocado greens of 1970s contemporary design. Colors and designs are always changing, and technologies to access and recreate those colors are ever changing too. Since when did grey and white come to be stylish non-colors? Since Apple products. Also, have you noticed that there are new blues available now in Christmas lights? What! In recent years I've seen them in holiday displays, and the luminosity of those blues is striking! I almost can't believe those colors are existing before my eyes, and I can't figure how I am able to perceive them. Maybe they are bordering on ultraviolet spectrums.

Aside from design, color is a science I'm intrigued to learn more about. With color space, I have every color in the humanly visible spectrum at my fingertips to play around with. What about the humanly invisible spectrum? How many more colors are there in the world? Do they go beyond infrared and ultraviolet? Is there supergreen or phenomenyellow? How do we see those?

Wow! My mind just blew up again.

Optimum Creative Drive Mode

2011-11-16T11:26:00.007-06:00

5:35 a.m.

I dreamed about something fantastic and romantic that struck my mind artistically. I thought of writing about it, creating a story around it. I thought of photographing something like it. Image compositing. Large format prints. People, places, faces, angles. I want to make a movie. Scriptwriting, storyboarding, production, direction, sound... A book? I could publish something.

5:40 a.m.

By biggest creative kick of the day comes to me within about 5 minutes post-dreaming and pre-waking in the morning. My brain is the most active, carrying over energetic synapses from dream states. It's literally the "eye" of brainstorming.

Since I quit working for "The Man", i.e. "corporatude", my brain just exploded with an overwhelming burst of creativity and project ideas. Amazing, once my mind grasps the "time for creative freedom" concept and totally runs free and rampant with it. I have too many ideas for my own good now. Business ideas, personal ideas, cooking ideas, relationship ideas, story ideas, holiday ideas, fashion ideas, spiritual ideas... Anyone need some ideas? I got some.

Would we all be like this if we all quit our day jobs knowing we needn't stress over finding another one? I've always felt that God's desire was for each of us to be infinitely creative beings. Does adhering to society, working for corporations, working under someone else's agenda stifle our true and free Godlike nature? Does order repress disorder? Does disorder breed innovation? That's a quandary I'll think about as I consider "School of Athens" hanging in my hallway.

I don't even know where to start on these projects I have in mind. The past few days have been business as usual (discount the fainting spell) as I plot timelines for longer term creative projects. I'm planning to produce a video to interpret my brand in photography. I'm also tentatively planning a longer term project to create and publish a "look book" of sorts, about creative posing for photography. It'd be something of a reference book for budding photogs learning how to manage people and compositional shapes with posing structures. Both projects will require a lot of research and brainstorming.

First and foremost OCD: I can't start any projects until this place is spotless and organized just how it needs to be for Optimum Creative Agent Handling. I was organizing my desk drawer junk and stumbled upon a box of brass fasteners (used for binding screenplay pages). Oh! Nostalgic thing! I bought this in college when I was writing a screenplay which I had submitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the one I hadn't copyrighted, and then Mel Gibson's similar story film came out (Apocalypto) and I figured he stole my idea, hmpf). Anyway, inside the box is a quad-folded note upon which I had written the margin sizes and industry standard format parameters for writing a screenplay.

I miss screenwriting. There was my ultimate joy in conjuring fantasies and creating worlds with characters and themes close to my heart.

INT. OFFICE, NOON

Amanda pinches a brass fastener, rolling it between two fingers. The amorphous image of her own features shine in the fastener's head as she loses herself in thought.

AMANDA (V.O.)
This box of fasteners is full.
I should have written more screenplays.
Where's my noir dialogue?
(sighs and laughs, but mostly sighs)

...

Ok, lost in thought, back on topic. I've been like that all day! I feel like a kid in a candy shop of ideas, smattered with other regular business things to tend to. However, I feel I have a good handle on when to get lost in creativity and when to get other things done, and when to spend time with my husband. This regime still has yet to be put into action when a full blown project gets under way. I feel that I'll be able to manage it swimmingly.

"Here's looking at you, kid."

How To Faint with P'zazz

2011-11-14T16:57:00.004-06:00

(Subtitle:) A Novel.
(Well it isn't, but it could be.)

I pretty dramatically fainted today. First time my husband has ever witnessed such an event, despite it's fairly often happening over medical anxiety throughout my life. I think it traumatized him, and ever more made him cherish my life, as fainting appears to me somehow to be a minor slice of death.

Here's the short story:
How to Faint with Pizzazz. A.) recognize faint-y feelings, B.) lay oneself down, C.) make it through the weirdness, D.) collect yourself, E.) tell the story.

Here's the long story:
Raj and I went to the doctor today to get some blood work and general health checkup things done for our health care provider who pays us reward money for doing these sorts of preventative checkups (i.e. bribing people to keep healthy here in the U.S., yes). Fasting was required in order to assess blood sugar levels. I think my downfall in the end was the fasting, because I have given blood before without fainting.

I hadn't eaten since dinner at 6pm yesterday evening, and this appointment (doctor delay) didn't end up being until after 10am today. That is 16 hours, people. I was pretty starving, complete with hunger headache. My doctor recommended I get a TB test since I'd never had one, and I had in recent years been to India (apparently there is a TB scare over here if you've had yourself in India or China). I wasn't prepared for that, and the wonder of what tuberculosis is made me feel weird. Last time I fainted was during a tetanus vaccination.

The administering of the TB test was ok. I had warned the nurses that I'm prone to fainting so they propped up the examination table so I could recline. Shortly after I started feeling sick to my stomach. I knew the faint was going to happen soon. I told Raj I wasn't feeling well, and somewhere between checking out the ceiling lights and some heavy warm weightiness in my ears, the taste of blood and a random weatherman showing up somehow dreamlike, I was out before even realizing the line between reality and surreality had arrived.

I came around to reality with Raj at my side holding my hand, and a nurse in my face putting cool wet cloths on my skin. I was sweating more than anything makes me sweat, but I didn't feel hot... I couldn't feel anything at all. I was told I had gone so white, that my lips turned blue, eyes rolled backward and that I was convulsing.

They still administered the blood draw after that. I was like, why not? I'm already half dead and where are my arms, huh? I felt really sick though. Feverish. All I wanted to do was sleep forever and never wake up.

Fainting is the weirdest thing I've ever experienced. Luckily, nowadays I'm smart enough to know the precursors and find a horizontal surface before the weird stuff happens. The weird stuff is some hippy-ass jumble of unfiring synapses, let me tell you. There's no fading into faint dreams, it's not like fading into regular dreams when you sleep at night. The blood leaves the brain and immediately nothing is recognized. Then these crazy semblances of reality creep in, like a weatherman - ?! Ha. What in the world. My head feels hot and cold, heavy, black, dead and numb all at the same time.

I wonder if my soul leaves for a brief second during fainting? What makes me ask is an experience I had when my wisdom teeth were removed some years back. I actually fainted before they could administer the anesthesia. I know because I heard a nurse say "Look at her eyes!", then I was out again due to anesthesia on top of the faint. When I came to in the recovery room, I had an out of body experience, literally. I could see myself on the recovery bed from the viewpoint of the ceiling. I had never seen that room before. When I rejoined my body, it was the same room as it had appeared from my perspective on the ceiling.

"Coincidence? Perhaps. Baloney? Perhaps not."

Now that is what I call a weird day.

Pump Kins

2011-11-04T09:07:00.003-05:00

Better late than never. Yesterday we carved pumpkins in belated Halloween and Dia de Los Muertos tradition.

Best part was putting candles inside, sitting on the couch, watching the glow, and never once turning to look at a computer, television screen or cell phone (except to take the above photo), and munching oven baked pumpkin seeds. This was my belated Halloween.

Worst part was that I noticed a gross spider crawling on my pumpkin as I relaxed on the couch. I was pumped that it added to the creepiness of Halloween spirit, but annoyed that since it added to the spirit, I let it go without annihilating it, and thus my arachnophobia now acts up because I know there is an unsmashed spider somewhere in my living room. *shaking fist*

Away Thou, Demons!

2011-10-13T09:20:00.004-05:00

I have to preface this post by sharing my view on the realism of demons and evil manifesting itself into reality. Regardless of what anyone tells me to the contrary, I inevitably believe that ghosts, evil, demons and devilish beings do exist in this world, and that they can (and do) infiltrate our thoughts and dreams, frightening us and/or herding us away from righteousness. My rationale is thus: for all matter, there is antimatter. The same is true of paranormal and intangible spiritual matter too. If there can be such a Good as is God, there also can be such an Evil as is the Devil. As far as ghosts and paranormal activity, that is a shady realm easy to pshaw, but nevertheless deserving of respect and careful attention.

This subject was sparked in my mind today after listening to a radio show I tune into every morning on my drive to work. The host, Beau Vighn, and his cohost, Katie Cruise, normally discuss pop media with much hilarity. Today the topic was on the new television show, American Horror Story. This lead to Beau and Katie discussing the realism of paranormality and demons. As they discussed how foolish a person would be not to believe that these evils exist, I listened with an intrigued spiritual mindframe. Beau Vighn has often (in previous shows) highlighted his very Christian background. Today he highlighted an actual honest-to-God experience he encountered with a demon trying to physically work itself into his body and mind, and how he physically felt strengthened by his belief in God and the protection of Christ to keep the evil out. (He didn't go into detail, but said he'd tell the full story on the Halloween show later this month, daw! Can't wait for that.)

My. Gosh. Beau said it was giving him shivers just to vaguely recap his experience, and as I sat listening, I shivered just hearing him talk about it. He said he was brought to tears when this happened to him, just knowing that having faith in Christ literally and tangibly repelled a demon from entering him. I couldn't believe it.

I told the story to Missy later, and she recalled similar situations some Christian friends of hers also had, regarding demons being present and trying to enter bodies. She also mentioned that one of these friends said demons can manifest themselves into our dreams, try to manipulate our subconscious thoughts, or simply just frighten us. Whoa. This is heavy stuff! And frightening.

I had a dream a couple days ago in which a frightening and very unfamiliar presence was whispering into my mind. The voice was clear but somehow extra-terrestrial, and with it came the vague image of a non human face. The voice simply said to me "It is the end", and I figured the implication of that to be "...of the world". It scared me to waking and sent my heart racing.

How do you ward off these demons that enter one's subconscious? Prayer. And faith. I never thought on this before, but normally I pray for my loved ones, for things to work out for them, or for myself, so that I can correct my mishaps and live peaceably in this world. I never thought to ask God to protect me against demons, but it's such a clear and obvious request. Demons are so ever present among us, in many forms. I trust that God will deliver me from evil. If I ever encountered such deliverance on a real, physical level during waking life, I would break down in tears at the beauty and the power of God. I wouldn't know what else to do with myself. I must pray more about these things!

In memory of past loved ones, in hopes they have passed peaceably and without demonic intervention, and also in recognition that the true spirit of Halloween is to frighten away the demons which plague us, Happy Halloween! And go God, for being an awesome shield against antiGod.

Basement Projects Excavation

2011-10-10T07:49:00.018-05:00

And now, the basement excursion. This weekend I repelled down into the cave of my parents' basement in attempt to dig up some old projects I had created as a kid. Many of the things I made back in the day were clay sculptures, either recreations of movie props, recreations of Egyptian artifacts, or props related to Star Wars movies. Still never found my Boba Fett helmet, never even took one photo of it. Also never found my plans for constructing a Stormtrooper helmet, which I was hoping to find.

Here are the things I did find, as well as some items that were used often during "playtime" with my sisters. (Click images to enlarge.) Excuse the horrible layout with these pictures and text, Blogger is being really janky on this computer.

The encyclopedia bookshelf, trove of reference and classification of all things archeological and Indiana Jones related. The bookshelf itself lent to the creation of cavelike atmospheres when once it was moved out from the wall to create a tunnel-like walkway behind it. We might have been reenacting the "two dead people down here!" scene from Temple of Doom.

The Auryn, protective amulet worn by the child warrior Atreyu in The Neverending Story. I read the actual book, and loved the concept that reality was seamlessly mixed with fantasy inside the story itself. I created this amulet of bronze and copper colored bakeable clay, and was quite challenged twisting them to symetrically fit together. I made this in college, and it has since been hanging on the rearview mirror in my car.

Rogue II Gold Leader flight goggles. Oh yes! There was a period when my sisters and I would roller skate in the basement, pretending to be space craft from Star Wars movies. We would hunch down low to the ground and be pushed around the basement as if we were gliding through space. These "flight goggles" (a.k.a. dad's work bench glasses) were once Sharpie marker colored orange and worn when battling Tie Fighters. You can still see a tinge of the orange color.

Han Solo's blaster (a.k.a. caulk gun).

Kingsnake sculpture, Amanda Correnti, Age 11. I always put my age on my artwork. I guess it was a classification (to myself) of skill advancement from age to age. When you're a kid, there's a HUGE difference between 9 and 11 years old. There were two types of clay I used for modeling; it was either plasticine (shown here) or it was bakeable clay which hardened in the oven. Plasticine was good for stop-motion movies, but the bakeable clay was best for longer lasting sculptures.

My favorite pc games. Sorry for the upside down image, this computer is janky and won't save my image correctly. My favorite of these was Grim Fandango, a strategy game that mixed 1940's era styles with Art Deco and Day of the Dead references. 3D Moviemaker was my second favorite. It simulated all the aspects of creating a film from choosing characters to directing, editing, adding music and dialog.

This one is still a mystery to my family. It's a time capsule I made around 1996. All I remember is that there's a wine bottle inside with a scrolled up note in it and a container of my parakeet's feathers taped to the side of it. It says 2026 on it, so I guess you'll just have to wait until then!

I'm sure this was used as part of a time machine or space ship at one point.

Couldn't tell you the inspiration behind this one. I think I created him as a good luck charm. I like his unassuming face and mismatching eyes.

I guess this is supposed to be Shiva? During my Egyptian and Indian art phase, I made quite a few sculptures like this one, attemtping to create my own "artifacts". This looks horribly inaccurate now.

Scarab beetle courtesy of the Egyptian Art movement. Painted and laquered clay.

Young Indiana Jones's backpack (a.k.a dad's boy scout bag).

La Coeur de la Mer: The Heart of the Ocean. A PRICELESS giant blue diamond necklace (fashioned out of clear beads and shimmer blue clay covered in laquer). You know it's sitting at the bottom of the ocean with the Titanic now.

This guy is a character from the 1969 animated Yellow Submarine movie (The Beatles). He's made of colored bakeable clay.

Wildfire! Fun times had with 1970s hand held pinball machine.

The "A" Encyclopedia, "Animal". Our source for choosing what animal we wanted to pretend to be when we were playing "Forest" or "Desert", or whatever section of the world we wanted. This was earlier, an activity we did when we were 6 or 7.

And the kicker... Sea Monkey preserved on a slide in my microscope kit! I was so intrigued about Sea Monkeys (mysterious fantasy pet name for "brine shrimp"). The kits gave you packets of "eggs", food and vitamins for the sea monkeys. We always called them "powdered life" because who knows how they come to be born when you're just sprinkling dust in a tank of water. This guy was a dead one I had extracted and was ever so curious to see what it looked like under a microscope. Might I say: CREEPY! You can see its eyes even on the slide in this photo.

Well I hope you all enjoyed my basement excursion. I was sad to learn that some of my projects no longer exist in any form. Also annoyed with the formatting on this janky blog.

Ghosts of Projects Past

2011-09-27T08:10:00.006-05:00

The blog gets a name change. Again. "Amanda's Projects" wasn't so overall fitting because I lately haven't had time for many projects other than photography for Amkar, and there's already a separate blog for that. So I've renamed to "Pseudofluency", the name once known as my college radio show I hosted for a semester. Not quite fluent, but kind of. I may highlight projects here and there, but mostly I will muse and provide perspective on this and that.

I have clearly had less time for piddly projects, which I do miss. But my busyness with Amkar has been successful busyness, and I feel great about that. I've learned so many new things just within the past 9 months. I can't help being stubborn sometimes to learn new things; if not for my partner in art and technological advancement, I would be 10 times less the professional I am today. I have to remind myself to always embrace new ideas, equipment upgrades, workflow simplification, etc.

However, I still miss the piddly projects. They must dwindle now as things of yesteryear. I was looking through old blogs and remembering weird and pointless things I made just for blog intrigue, like the Buddy Skeleton made of rolled and sculpted paper, various Halloween cakes, the Mobile Doomsday Bunker, conceived costumes never worn anywhere. My mind was (and is) always peaked with activity when an artistic project was happening. I feel happy and excited to construct and to problem solve. It's curious to behold what happens when an artist creates. It's a function of the fantasy in me. I realize there is no fantasy that can become reality, but in art there is a conduit and a manifestation.

Before blogs existed, I had created a load of projects which somehow got destroyed before they could make it to digital fame. I wish I had them still, or at least a photo. Some of them still sit, dusty, on a bookshelf in my parents' basement. Some day I'll go reclaim them and give them their 15 minutes of digital fame. I recreated all sorts of movie props and figures, sculpted of clay, paint and cardboard. My masterpiece circa 1994 was a pretty smart replica of Star Wars character Boba Fett's costume helmet. I remember every detail and exactly how I constructed it. I remember creating the sunstone, moonstone and world stone keys from the pc game, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, which in the game were used collectively to open secret doors. The world stone must be in that basement somewhere. It's like a lair of treasures just in itself. I feel motivated to photo-excavate.

I do still have the Neverending Story Auryn, the medalion worn by the main character as a protective amulet during his journeys. The Auryn is hanging from the rearview mirror in my car; two snakes twisting around each other forming a pretzel-like circle. It reminds me of those days when I extracted something from fantasy and brought it to life with my own hands.

Nostalgic. Time to excavate.

FacepalmBook

2011-09-22T10:10:00.002-05:00

Is anyone else feeling absolutely bombarded by the oversaturation of photos, videos, web links, and status updates on Facebook? I guess we don't realize that we all want to individually update something special, but we don't realize that it just contributes to the crap in someone else's news feed. Plus, someone at Facebook keeps proposing look and feel changes to news feeds and profile organization which is actually annoying the people using it. (I personally could care less.) It’s like you’ve got your personal in box all set up the way you want it, and some mysterious administrator comes in and changes it for you. Is it mine, or is it mine? Seriously, A.) who cares?, and B.) forget it.

Facebook seems like the Thing we all love to hate sometimes. The really interesting thing is, the ease of connecting and communicating is so perilously easy on Facebook that no one who realizes this and is already using Facebook will ever truly leave it. There’s too much value in everyone being able to communicate and share with everyone else all in one spot.

But wait, there’s more! (Peril). If you’re NOT on Facebook, OR if you’re on it but you don’t pay attention to it, you miss half of peoples’ lives! People are so solely posting their lives’ updates that the Facebook news feed is the first and foremost broadcaster of personal news. This is a problem because people are not face to face communicating anymore. Telephone? What’s that? If you’re not on Facebook nor checking it regularly, you are not in the loop. Facebook is The Loop. Often you will not even realize that your best friend just found out she’s having a baby or that your favorite teacher from high school just passed away. Truly. Remarkable society we live in today.

Facebook has side bar ads that encourage you to “Like” other Facebook pages and applications in attempt to keep you ever more indelibly intuned to Facebook and to those who follow your updates. One I saw recently was: ““Like” this if you love your husband!” O_O Now I don’t swear much if ever, and that was a wtf moment for me. Why do I need to “Like” something on Facebook if I love my husband? My husband doesn’t care if Facebook knows I love him! Oh my gosh! If a side bar item is not in the ad category, it’s definitely in the stupid crap category.

The ever more interesting thing is, after having said all this AND it being true AND everyone else recognizing it’s true, Facebook has me for life. They’ve found a way to snag me in by making it so easy to keep in touch with intangible friends. They’ve also snagged me on a business note too. Because everyone else is snagged in, I have to jump on the bandwagon and provide a business face too!

Oh, Facebook. How will you end up? How will we end up without you?

Mobile Doomsday Bunker

2011-06-16T15:31:00.008-05:00

So, I've been talking about the End of the World since 2003, but of course now all these media articles are coming out about it, and making it seem ever more realistic. I take it all with a grain of salt; I both believe and disbelieve it. You never know what can happen. I mean, this year alone I've witnessed tornadoes, earthquakes and swarms of cicadas just in my local midwestern area. Maybe the earth is due for a reset.

Anyhow, in my lack-of-ado during the day job, I found some time to sketch a concept drawing of my Mobile Doomsday Bunker:

It's a self-contained, durable rolling shelter which pads its occupants to brace for unpredictable impacts. It comes complete with everything a person would need to survive for so many days. I'm not a scientist, so I can only wonder what materials this thing should be made of. Diamond? What substances can withstand earth core type heats, bouncing impact, can be submerged in water and also have buoyancy to remain atop floodwaters? In the end when all is settled, inhabitants can exit through the escape hatch to a settled worldwide destruction, and then figure out how to make a new life in it.

I asked my husband if possibly I could sell this idea to a scientist. He said probably not, but I might be able to sell it to Tim Burton. Probably.

Aeroplani, Treni e Automobili

2011-05-06T19:19:00.038-05:00

I am a linguist. To me the most thrilling personal experience in the world is the world itself. To place myself into new cultures and amongst new languages, to soak them in and to allow myself to become one of a new population if only for a couple of days. Traveling, to me, is the most endearing, humbling and adventurous activity I can ever hope to achieve in life, and once accomplished, I feel such a sense of accomplishment. To enjoy the experience, one must never expect it to be what he knows. It will always be something different, foreign and new, a phrase to learn, a frantic means of getting around or the inconvenience of communicating with someone who doesn't know your language.

It is possible in only three full days of walking, seeing and taking in everything that one's senses can possibly process, to reap the essence of Rome: The Eternal City. We pressed on with much surprising stamina in order to see as much as possible, a challenging task even for a mere hundred square feet of detail in this city! Although I felt as though the ligaments in my arches would snap, and despite my modified ways of standing in order to ease my foot pain (creating new other pains in my legs), I knew in the moment that pain is temporary. Experiences are eternal. I couldn't miss it. Rome was my first taste of Europe, and I cherished it all the while. I knew even before leaving that I would miss it when it was over.

Roma
The U.S. has nothing on Europe when it comes to history. The most wowing aspect of Rome is truly its mixture of ancient and modern, and the art and design that overlaps and still exists throughout all the artistic periods that ever existed in the city. Ancient ruins still crumble around modern buildings. The Circo Massimo (where chariot races took place) is still in use for public functions. The Renaissance and Baroque period architecture, overexcessively detailed and romantic, exists over your head, under your feet, on the bench you're sitting upon or around the faucet where you wash your hands. There is simply too much to look at! Too many details to take in, too much grandeur to fathom, so much height and so much scale and too much "WOW" to allow you time to figure how those measures were planned or even executed. These things were made by humans, really? How were we ever so artistic and hands-on? Will we ever be that way again? Will we ever have a Renaissance ever again? I fell in love once again with Michelangelo, Bernini, Raphael and Caravaggio. As a creative person myself, I cannot fathom how these men can be so creative, or how they almost singlehandedly created an entire cityscape and nonetheless an entire era via the thumbprint of their particular artistic styles. They make me ideate. I could hug them.

Il Colosseo (The Colosseum)
Pressing past the masses of subway train crowds, a quick plod up the dank metro staircase took us up to the road surface to directly face the Colosseo. Whoa! I was just in a dark tunnel filled with Europeans who don't use deodorant and now this huge fantastic iconic structure stares me in the face. There's no time to stop and stare yet or I might get hit by a bus. The Colosseo is probably THE quintessential symbol of Rome. I say so firstly because it is a masterpiece of architecture. In it's gladiator games heyday, the Colosseo was a stadium that held 150,000 Romans, mixing the poor and the rich, designed in such a way that the entire stadium could empty out all it's occupants in only 15 minutes. (Dad asks, why can't baseball stadiums be built that way today? I say, beats me... Shoulda took a hint from the Romans). The original arena floor to the Colosseo is no longer intact, so we can now peer down into the basement of the structure to see the ruins of where lions were caged, and where gladiators prepared to fight humans and animals to the death in the arena up above.

Below the arena: Once gladiator ready rooms and cage rooms for animals.

I learned that the arena and below areas were somehow plugged up sometimes, and water from the aqueducts could be channeled directly into the arena, filling it up for simulated sea battles with real boats that floated through the center of the stadium. What a sight that would be! Can you believe these Romans? The second reason I say the Colosseo is so symbolic of [ancient] Rome is simply the design time and effort that went into such a structure, purely to create a venue for the entertainment of the high-and-mighties who simply wanted to watch some crooks die fighting, while giving themselves a good name amongst citizens by allowing them to choose if the emperor should let a gladiator live or die. What a society.

Il Fori (The Forum)
The Roman Forum was once the "square" where all the emperors and notable persons had their palaces. It's mostly ruins and crumbled bits of random buildings with interesting etchings all over them. I felt very much like I was walking through an Indiana Jones video game in this area. The image below is a view from the Colosseo looking down at the Arch of Constantine, with the main entrance to the Forum in the far right distance. Check out the two caped gladiators taking a stroll in the lower left.

Ruin details at Il Fori.

Borghese Galleria
This art gallery is probably one of the most extravagant you will find in the entire world. If ever there was a space you could step into and feel you've just gone back in time to the Baroque Period, it would be here. There isn't a nook in this building that isn't over-the-top intricately designed with artistic detail... And that's just the building. Borghese's primary intrigue is Bernini's flawless marble sculptures and Caravaggio's fantastic chiaroscuro paintings. The Bernini sculptures that really left an impression on me were these (and I'll include links since the gallery would not allow photography). Pluto and Proserpina - look at the space and the intensity between the figures. In person you can see the indentations in Proserpina's skin where Pluto is grasping her. Can you imagine how Bernini might begin to create a work like this when all he has to start with is a giant block of marble? Apollo and Daphne - this is my favorite. Apollo chases her and as she refuses him she simultaneously transforms herself into a tree. She looks much more treelike from behind. David - about to fling the stone at Goliath. I love the intensity in his facial expression. Pauline Bonaparte - this work is by Antonio Canova depicting Napoleon's sister. Unfortunately this website doesn't show the detail in this sculpture, but I was most impressed by his ability to chisel marble to look like the bed cushion she is laying upon. I wasn't allowed to touch, but I so wanted to ensure that it wasn't actually a real cushion, complete with buttons, wrinkles and the soft indent made by the weight of her body. So awesome. Boy with a Basket of Fruit - this Caravaggio painting I enjoyed so much we bought a poster of it to hang in our kitchen. Bernini was my Man of Interest while I toured this gallery. He created a bust of the Pope and it began to crack through the forehead. Bernini finished it, but fearing the head might crack, he whipped out an entirely new replica of the same bust in only three days. Three days to create a life sized bust of the Pope! I wonder how long it took him to chisel out two head-to-toe standing figures. Oh yeah and that's not to mention the boys milking a goat sculpture Bernini created when he was 11 years old! Gosh! What talent.

Vaticani
Vatican City is a campus-sized city surrounded by huge 50 foot high stone walls. To a tourist, the interior is basically an art museum housing marble sculptures, amazing and intricate Renaissance ceiling paintings, ancient Babylonian and Egyptian art, lavish staircases and displays of historical Catholic artifacts such as bibles, chalices and tabernacles.

Vatican Museum staircase leading to a hall of marble statues.

We visited the Vatican the day before the beatification of Pope Giovanni Paulo II, an event we didn't even know was going on in Vatican City until the following day (although all the "Beatificazione" posters around town should have given us a hint).

Ceiling fresco depicting the symbolic power of Christianity overcoming an ancient statue of a Roman god.

The piece that spoke most powerfully to me from the Vatican Museum (not yet considering the Sistine Chapel) was Raphael's wall painting, "School of Athens". We ended up buying a poster of this for our hallway at home, but I love the depth in this piece, both artistically and philosophically. Plato (center, in the red robe) converses with Aristotle about his belief on the source of knowledge; he points upward, believing that the source of knowledge comes from the heavens, from a Higher Power. Aristotle, opposing Plato, faces a hand downward implying that the source of knowledge stems from a grounded mindset and earthly observations involving the sciences and mathematics. That's such a beautiful statement, the everlasting Religion versus Science conundrum. The other intrigue in this painting are the other figures that Raphael has incorporated, such as Socrates (at left, in the olive colored robe) in an argument with a Roman soldier. Raphael has also included a discreet self portrait in the lower right (the red cloaked man with the black cap), and even a portrait of his famous competitor, Michelangelo Buonarotti, sitting on the steps in front (purple coat and brown boots), looking as though he's having trouble conceiving an idea. Touche.

Cappella Sistina (Sistine Chapel)
Photography is not allowed inside the Sistine Chapel. If it was, there's no surprise it wouldn't do it much justice. The chapel is not really that large, probably your average church interior size, altar and seating area considered. It is a bit dark as there is no artificial lighting on the paintings, only window light. There were no pews or seats inside the chapel, just a large space for visitors to stand and move about freely (and blindly, due to such upward attention). The grandeur of the Sistine ceiling is not purely the paintings. We know Michelangelo is one of the greatest artists the world has ever known, but the wonder of it all is staring at the space inside the chapel and trying to figure how he accomplished it. Firstly, I can imagine how difficult it is to paint the human figure on a super large scale; but I cannot imagine how challenging it was to paint it while on his back, facing upside down, lying on scaffolding. Remarkable. The significance of each section of the painting is also what makes the work so epic. The collection of paintings surrounding the most famous (God giving life to Adam) depict other stories in the Bible's Old Testament. The large painting on the wall behind the altar is The Last Judgement, another magnificent painting depicting Jesus banishing the damned to Hell and the righteous up to Heaven. All in all, a spiritual and cleansing experience. Michelangelo has a way of utilizing space, scale and master workmanship to depict the power of God in such a way that can only be felt when you're standing right beneath it. It's something I couldn't quite process when I was there, but only afterwards I find the words to describe.

Staircase leading away from the Sistine Chapel.

St. Peter's Square, dome of St. Peter's Basilica.

Appian Way and Catacombs of Callisto
On the third day of touring, thankfully, we had planned a bike tour. We rode up and down the ancient cobblestone path that is known as Appian Way. The structure of the road here is indicative of the first roads the ancient Romans built, bedded with gravel and sand, and topped with large 12-18 inch wide cobbles, sloped on the edges for water run off. The ride was enjoyable on a cool morning. Appian Way is a little further from the city center so I felt it was a little peek into the Italian countryside, which is beautiful and peaceful, lined with lots of cypress trees and old buildings overcome with ivy and vines.

Appian Way lead to the Catacombs of Callisto. This was the only guided group tour we took, and our English speaking guide was actually an Aussie priest, with whom afterwards we had a good chat about cricket, travel, Italy and India. I knew he found it refreshing to chat with us. The catacombs allowed me to satisfy the mini-spelunker in me. They were very cool, dank, creepy and solemn. The catacombs lay to rest various priests, popes and Catholic martyrs and their families. Photography was not allowed, but I snuck a few low shutter speed images of the crypts and graves.

As tested by Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday, "Bocca della Verita" (Mouth of the Truth), which legendarily will bite off the hands of liars. This was a palm reading novelty outside the cafe where we rented our bicycles. We didn't find time to see the actual one in person.

Baths of Diocletian and Basilica di Santa Maria
There are numerous Roman Baths in Rome, ruins of places where the rich would take time to relax , get nude and lounge around. When Catholicism struck the land, the public bathing forum became a sinful concept. This particular location converted it's bath reception area into a church - and a supremely awesome one at that. I found the ceiling architecture to be very similar in triangular shapes to that of the Sistine Chapel. Again, the detail and art work is breathtaking.

God's fingers.

Fontana di Trevi (Trevi Fountain)
One of the most spectacular Roman fountains occupying space in the center of a piazza, this fountain is truly the fountain of all fountains to hang around. We approached it via a long walk through a series of narrow side streets lined with restaurants, gelaterias and peddlers roasting chestnuts (so wonderfully scented!). When the alleyway opened out into this huge piazza, suddenly we were faced with Fontana di Trevi, with huge white winged horses jumping out from the chiseled waves, and oceanic men blowing conches and restraining their horses. One thing I found unfortunate about Rome is that all the grand sights to see are visually littered by too many tourists. I would have much enjoyed a sitting near this fountain with few people around, to just sit and ponder the design and listen to the water. Instead, we had to wait for a turn to sit at the basin. We had dinner afterwards and returned to the Trevi at night, an equally awesome sight.

Pantheon
This building is an awesome feat in ancient Roman architecture. It's construction was instigated by Marcus Agrippa as a temple to all the gods of ancient Rome. Unfortunately we arrived too late in the evening to see the interior, luckily we had insight about its structure from a movie about ancient Roman architecture we had seen previous to our trip. If you could see a cross section of the building, the entire interior is a perfect sphere. The concrete creating the walls and ceiling gradually gets thinner as it nears the top and is lined with hallowed out square designs to lighten the load of the concrete. At the apex of the ceiling is a circular window open to the air.

Looking out from the entrance of Pantheon.

Food
All of our meals we ate on the go, which basically means it was fast food, but it was nothing like fast food in the U.S. What I consumed was not overflavored nor oversugared; it tasted like real ingredients and truly savory tastes. I had pizza twice (10 times less cheese and grease than American pizza, and 10 times more awesome).

Not only am I a bread fiend, but I am also a Nutella fiend, and when you to to Italy and you mix those concepts and it involves Italian breads, I pretty much died. For breakfast at the little bungalow haven we stayed at, they served all kinds of pastries for breakfast. My favorite was a croissant filled with Nutella and sprinkled with powdered sugar on top. They tend to use Nutella in a lot of desserts I discovered. I was ecstatic when I saw a little shop in the city center selling gallon vats of it!

Dessert that accompanied pizza at a nice outdoor sit down restaurant. Real whipped cream aside something like a cupcake, but so much less sickening sweet than the cupcake you might imagine, more like a bittersweet chocolate. Amaretto honey drizzle. Smack! So fabulous. I never want to eat Wal-Mart cake again.

And what is Roma without gelato? I got Cocco (coconut) and Pistacio. Pretty much like gelato is in St. Louis. Way to go, St. Lou! You got an Italian thing right!

Getting Around
90% of our travel was via train and subway, which was pretty convenient and got us to and fro very quickly. We had some excellent maps and also the Rick Steve's travel guide, which is pretty much like a step by step walkthrough for anything you'd want to do in Rome. We took the bus once, and took a taxi once (after 9pm when the trains shut down). I knew enough Italian to tell the cab driver where to take us, and how to stop when he couldn't figure out via GPS how to get to the front of our bungalow park. I also knew enough to figure simple directions (it helps that Italians can speak so well with their hands), and also enough to know how much something was when I paid for it, how to order at cafes, and what the polizia were saying when we couldn't enter or sit in a certain area. Aside from those simplicities, I really wish I had the time to study more Italiano prior to traveling so that I could attempt speaking more with the locals. Adopting the language and shouting out every new fun-sounding word you learn is part of the fun. It's one thing to try it out when you're there; it's another thing to have the time to learn it fluently.

La dolce vita. That's the thrill of the season!

And the Oscar Goes To...

2011-02-11T23:13:00.003-06:00

On February 27th this year, you will hear the sound of my ball point pen scratching out one line through the little piece of note paper I have safely tucked into my wallet. That little piece of paper is my official Bucket List, and the entry being scratched will be "Attend the actual Academy Awards ceremony".

Yes it's true, and I couldn't believe it back in fall of 2010 when I entered a contest to win a fan seat along the red carpet at the Oscars Awards Ceremony, the biggest event known to Hollywood, and won. I only found out about this contest last year, and figured I'd keep entering every year until I finally won it. They hold the contest every September, so you have to watch oscars.com for them to open the contest so you can enter.

I haven't been peeing my pants about this event [yet], but I am pretty excited to be present at such an event! If ever I was to visit L.A. and get a taste of Hollywood, this is definitely the way to do it. I don't think it's really dawned on me yet how awesome it will be to attend. I guess I have this idea that, like most things, when you have an inside view of it, it's not quite as magical as it seems from the outside. I'm curious to see if that's true or not.

I'm pretty stoked to see some celebrities in person. I've never been a jump-up-and-down, slap-my-hands-together, faint-in-the-stands sort of fanatic about movie stars. They're normal people to me, just doing their jobs. Entertaining people. Of course that is what makes them such a fun bunch. Of the films nominated, I will however be very excited to try to catch a glimpse of Leonardo DiCaprio, Natalie Portman, James Franco, Jeff Bridges and Steven Spielberg. I imagine that being on the red carpet will be like a fantasy high school reunion. "Ohh I know you! Haven't seen you in a while!" like I actually know them personally. I figure that spotting them amongst all the other fans and paparazzi will be like the penultimate Where's Waldo experience. In addition to that excitement, I'm also stoked about my photographic potential. I so hope I can capture something worth capturing from whatever random bleacher seat the Academy assigns to me. Here's a picture of the red carpet setup:

I have no idea how to communicate to you all how to locate me if you're watching the Awards on TV and trying to spot me in the background. If I figure it out while I'm there, you might just have to watch my Facebook status, which may indicate how you can spot me. *Praying for the corner spot on the side closest to the giant Oscar statue* You'd only be able to reach a celebrity's hand from the front row.

The El Capitan theater circled just across the street is where the bleacher fans will actually be viewing the awards show. We don't get to go into the Kodak theater, which doesn't surprise me. But I WAS surprised to learn that the Academy will be providing us with breakfast, lunch and dinner, AND a gift bag (no idea what's in it)! How nice of them. I guess I didn't expect that, even with all their Hollywood expenses, they would have much left in their budget for me. Aww, I feel special. I'm very excited to be recognized as "one of the little people" who helped make this production come to fruition.

I'd also very much like to thank the Academy, on behalf of "exceeding expectations" and also providing me with apt and thorough communication about getting there and what to expect. Thanks, Academy! Don't disappoint me later!

Google Wear

2010-10-07T09:18:00.009-05:00

Here's a fun and challenging concept: digitally changing peoples' clothing. I have done it earlier for boredom college projects, paper-doll-pasting web images of clothing onto myself just to see if the fashion suited me. Yesterday's photo business requirement proved that my previous boredom projects were not actually a waste of time, and ended up being quite fruitful in gaining knowledge of digitally painting fictitious clothing on existing portraits.

My challenge was thus. We advertise on TheKnot.com, a website for brides and grooms to shop for vendors for their weddings. Amkar Photography has a profile on The Knot which advertises our services. To entice shoppers to choose to look at our profile amongst 20-30 other ones, we needed a visually catching and interesting image to draw people to click on us.

I loved this shot from my last engagement shoot, and I wanted to use this as the Knot profile image.

Their faces are large enough to be properly visible when the image is small, and it has an intriguing nature being that she is seemingly upside down (they were laying on the grass), and their faces looking at each other tend to have that ying-yang interlocking quality which looks pleasing and loving. I had to use this shot on The Knot profile to attract browsing brides. The only problem I perceived was: they aren't dressed in wedding attire. As a wedding photography business, we need to portray what potential clients expect they will get: wedding photography.

Instant solution: Digital artistry... and clothing provided by Google search. So, I searched online for the proper resolution of a white tuxedo for him and a fitting bridal gown for her, and bam:

Now it's their wedding day! Like magic. They look so nice in their Google clothing ;). The challenge here was made simpler in that I really only had shoulders and chests to clothe.

Since this is a sneaky advertising measure, I decided not to share this on my Amkar blog since this couple might be a little weirded out if they saw this strange change in clothing they wouldn't have anticipated. Well, you have to do what you have to do in order to make your mark and stand out. Plus, this is an advertising measure, and I would never make such a drastic change on a client's photos which would be sent to them for personal use.

Dilly dallying boredom project graphic design knowledge attainment points for fruitful future application: 10.

Steampunk Research

2010-09-16T08:10:00.013-05:00

Oh quaff! All my beloved 19th century explorers, scientists and writers rejuvenated by a subculture of techno punk/gothic fashion and farce? Dreamy! Actually it's no dream, but a relatively new fashion that's been gaining popularity in movies and clothing styles, and it's called "steampunk".

Steampunk Sailor Gal and Beach Gal

"Steampunk" is a style characterized by a fascinating and unique fusion of Victorian era fashion and technology (i.e. riveted, steam powered mechanics and old world physics) mixed with a modern technological spin and a dash of neo punk. If you've seen The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Wild Wild West, The Prestige, The Golden Compass, Sherlock Holmes (2009), Tim Burton's Sleepy Hallow, Around the World In 80 Days (2004), or even 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), then you've been exposed to forms of steampunk. These movies mix a modern day vision of technology with a 19th century means of pulling it off. For example, in Back to the Future when Doc Brown returns to 1985 from 1885 in his converted steam powered hover-train. Too cool.

Dr. Arliss Loveless (Kenneth Branagh)'s steam powered wheel chair from Wild Wild West.

What I personally connect with about the steampunk subculture is reliving the days of my favorite authors and inventors: The innovative exploratory adventures of Jules Verne, the excitement of time travel with H.G.Wells, the breakthrough of inventions by Thomas Edison, the gothic inward musings of Edgar Allen Poe. The 1800s were such a great period of steam-powered innovation and artistic vision. I love the way especially how Wells and Verne thought forward on the technology of their own generations and were able to create these fantastic old world "science fiction" stories, which relates to us even in 2010 because the technology then was so forward-thinking, we still are fascinated today by what they mused about in 1810.

The neo-steampunk fashion of today reminds me of how I felt reading The Time Machine and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, how I wanted to walk through riveted metallic submarines, touch all the barometers and steam powered buttons and dials of a makeshift time machine, slap on a pair of gaudy metal goggles and get to work inventing something with all these impressive gears and cogs and rivets and copper pipes. How marvelous.

How to Be a Steampunk

To dress "steampunk" you really could utilize any clothing style from the Victorian period from burlesque fishnet tights and high laced boots to posh bustled skirts, fitted jackets and top hats... and then jazz it up with some kind of gadgetry or modern appeal made to look antique. I love this one:

Can you believe it? A steampunk Abraham Lincoln; and he's got a sweet looking jet pack on his back. What a creative costume. The style usually highlights 19th century explorers (rifles, navigation devices), inventors (goggles, dials, buttons) or scientists (vials, forceps, magnification ocular devices), but with 21st century means of making their professions just that much more awesome and incredible. You absolutely MUST have the old school lab goggles when you're going for steampunk.

Borrowed from Ichabod Crane in Sleepy Hallow, perchance?

And if you can believe it, some steampunk geeks actually make a profession out of reformulating current technological devices to bear the old world style of items from the Victorian era. Consider the "steampunk desktop computer", or the "steampunk USB drive" for that matter. Complete with rusted copper submarine hatch. Totally awesome. Did you know you can buy assortments of gears and cogs or typewriter keys on eBay? You can make your own steampunk items.

Can we say, Halloween costume inspiration?

Mand's Labyrinth

2010-09-01T15:54:00.005-05:00

The freedom of space when owning property leaves one hefty chunk of a blank canvas staring right at me every time I look at my own backyard :)

Yes, this is a real and severely consuming landscaping idea I had when chatting with Beth about yards. My tentative plan is thus: "the labyrinth garden", 6 foot high walls of shape-able shrubbery, dead ends, concentric circles, mazes, floral items of interest in nooks, vegetable gardens in dead ends, a bird house somewhere, and a "gem in the center" serenity garden for sitting and enjoying not being able to see anything else going on around us.

I drew this up, to scale, based on dimensions retrieved from the property assessment sheet on the right:

(Click for larger image)

My sketch is yet unfinished (the whole left side), but it's in the works. This hedge maze would consume almost the entire backyard, and I estimate it would take about 10-15 years to fully complete. I'd begin with the serenity garden inside the circle. That way, in case we have to move in less than 10 years, at least something of interest would be designed in the backyard to increase property value, and thus building outward to complete the borders would be a slowly additive process should we remain in this house long enough to see this through completely. In the end, the gem of sitting space at the end of the maze would be the oldest part of the labyrinth.

This plan could also be utilized in any space should we ever move, given that the yard is flat and has at least 4,896 square feet of backyard space. A grand idea for lowering backyard maintenance, as hedges would only need to be trimmed once or twice a year, and all the walking space would have either ground cover or mulch, and would never need trimming.

How great would it be to create this mystical little world, right in our own backyard, to which we could go to escape everyday life? And what a nice photo backdrop it would also be. And think of Easter egg hunting in there ;). Fun times.

A Non-Dud Sewing Project!

2010-08-09T20:39:00.003-05:00

I've finally been able to complete a clothing project from start to finish in less than 2 weeks which is actually wearable and desirable! Hah! Well, this one had some kinks, but nothing that left me pushing it into a Wal-Mart bag and letting it hang in the closet for 2 years *glancing at bag in closet*. Thanks Miss, for your live webcam assistance on this project.

Click for larger image.

This comfy side-zipped dress is a dreamsicle orange linen (lined with the backing of my old window curtains). I love the color, and how the shape of the neckline also forms the cap sleeves. I actually deviated from the pattern instructions with the waistline in that I decided to pleat rather than bunch. Not a fan of frouncing! So I pleated in front and back and it turned out looking very smart indeed.

I also enjoy that the neckline isn't low and ridiculous like too many undesirable things I see in stores these days. I'm sure to be using this pattern again in the future for something potentially formal, or just another fun dress like this one.

Ciao! On Italian Sweets

2010-08-05T14:31:00.003-05:00

Italian Peach Plum Coffee Cake

I had an overdue plum and a bruised peach, so I decided to make them feel better by nestling them into this:

Yummy flour/sugar/cinnamon dust!

Clothing from Found Fabrics

2010-07-27T10:45:00.005-05:00

Nothing says "yay!" to a minimalist like finding unused stuff and being able to make useful stuff out of it. As of late, I've had some time to do some sewing and clothing design using old patterns and found fabrics that have been laying somewhere in my closets and such. The below was one of few sewing projects I completed successfully from start to finish. (Click image for larger view.)

This blue sequined top I formed from *almost not enough* fabric present on a skirt which was too large and too long for me, which made too much of a waistline "poof" when rolled up. I loved the fabric, so I made a little ethnic eclectic top with a zipper and a V neck line in the back. I designed my own mini-cuff neck line in front.

I also was finally able to use those hideous black and white polka dot on top and red and green Christmas stripes on bottom curtains (really?) which were left here from the display home. The red and green striped satin from those curtains turned out making very nice printer and sewing machine covers.

Still gotta tackle that Victorian jacket which has been sitting dormant for the past year or so.

Parrot Brooch

2010-07-08T08:35:00.002-05:00

Missy gave me this beautiful brooch as a bridesmaid gift at her wedding, and I recently felt inspired by the colors in it to create it into something more than a brooch. So I decided to add some feathers to it and make it into a feathered fancy hair piece. If there's anything we learn from 19th century fashion, it's that feathers make fashion ten times more posh.

I have been saving up some bird feathers from my Quaker parrot (and no, I have NOT been pulling them out of her!). Over the course of five months, she's had two tail feathers and two flight feathers fall out, so they have become craft materials for me. I simply super glued the quills to the back of the brooch. Her feathers have this parrot green and deep blue sheen quality that I love. I think these blues and greens look so lush and wonderful together. Rainforesty.

I envision the pairing of this piece with a deep blue dress I have, and mint green strappy heels. Outing this weekend! I love formulating new and fresh styles without having bought anything new :)

Webster University Pearson House Cake

2010-05-31T18:46:00.005-05:00

Congrats again to Beth on her graduation from Webster University! This idea had been concepting for a couple of months after I had asked Beth what kind of cake she wanted for her graduation party. Inevitably, the excitement over a "Pearson House Cake" was born. Pearson House is the building where Beth took all her English and creative writing courses, a cute little historic joint of which she's grown quite fond during her college days.

So concepting began, and my construction designs started with two 5"x5" squares of layered marble cake with chocolate filling.

I tried my hand at candy making for the first time, and was able to create this candy glass! It was such fun, and I was impressed with how realistic the candy actually turned out. (Still got leftovers.. would you like some glass to tide you over til dinner?)

Missy was a big help breaking the sheet (poured into a 13x9) into small squarish shapes for the windows. Good job, Miss!

Here am I, affixing and sculpting the rolled marshmallow fondant onto the cake base.

Here's the house front, completed.

...and from above.

Space was saved on the roof for some fancy floral which I ordered from a florist (Webster's colors, gold and navy). More floral went in back to simulate the garden in back of Pearson House. A gold-wrappered white chocolate Lindt Lindor Truffle became the iconic gazing globe in the courtyard behind Pearson.

Here are some shots I took of Beth on her graduation day earlier this month at Pearson House. She requested to do a shoot at her favorite spot on campus. We had fun!

Cricket Pitch Cake

2010-04-03T22:35:00.009-05:00

Today is my husband's birthday! He never tells me what he wants for gifts, but he always finds my cakes enjoyable. So I made him this cake highlighting his favorite sport.

The cricket pitch is trimmed layers of butter pecan cake with a chocolate whipped cream filling and topped with coconut whipped cream green grass. The cricket player I molded of white fondant, and the red cricket ball is your standard mall-candy-stand cherry gumball. Festive candles are on each side just like wickets on the playing field.

These are my batter's limbs, ready for assembly, and my photo reference of a cricket player in a batting pose.

Leveling the "playing field".

He enjoyed the concept so much, he said it was the best cake he ever had :).
And it was delicious too!

And now for a Young Me, Now Me moment:

This pre-teen-Raj photo inspired me to rekindle the receipt of his favorite birthday gift, and he loved it! I look forward to a fierce badminton one-on-one! Don't underestimate me!

And if you're unfamiliar with "Young Me, Now Me", check out this site:
http://www.zefrank.com/youngmenowme/

It's hilarious! More Young Me, Now Me attempts to come.

The Green Meal

2010-03-17T19:01:00.003-05:00

Happy St. Patrick's Day! We celebrate by making things green around here, and that means buddying up to a bottle of green food dye. For dinner today I made:

Green beans, green vegan meatloaf on
green spinach tortilla, and green tea.

The vegan meatloaf was a base of chickpea, quinoa and oats, and also included green peas, mushrooms and some spicy mustard. I attempted adding some wasabi in there - zzzT! If you're interested in the recipe, you can find it as Vegan Quinoa Loaf on Whole Foods Market's web page.

Even the bird was green! (But Qia is green every day.) Here she sits planning her next devious move while Big Brother is watching.

Green cupcakes with green frosting and hand-dyed green sprinkles. I didn't say a word, but the cupcakes are vegan too! Still delicious and you can't tell the difference.

Thanks, Bottle of Food Dye, you made my day!

Living Wake?

2010-03-03T15:36:00.002-06:00

Wow, what a grand idea! How many of us have always mused about what it would be like to attend our own funeral? Well, when you get up there in age, if you're still up and uppity and your humorous side is still being devious, this sounds like a grand idea.

I got this idea from an episode of Ace of Cakes, believe it or not. The bakery received a cake request from the family of a 70 year old man who instigated his own "Living Wake" to celebrate his 70th birthday. The cake was made to resemble his favorite food dishes, like a "last supper" concept. The man laid in some sort of carriage-drawn casket cart and was pulled around town for part of the day - open casket of course, so he can see and wave to people, ha.

After pondering the concept of someone wanting a living wake, I realized what a great thing it is to be old and to enjoy it. This man was in the highest of spirits for his living wake, and that's a unique perspective for an elder these days. No one wants to be old, but what can you do but to reverse the negativity and live it up? You've only got so much longer on this earth, so you might as well celebrate it! I commend people who have this view, it's so refreshing. Do please talk more about living it up than about your prune juices, people!

I am going to be a high-gusto old person. I am making it my vision and goal in life.

And I also think it'd be fun to have a living wake. I'd totally do it, but I'd make a sort of prank out of it. I'd instigate a funeral, and have maybe one other person in on it, pretending that I had actually died, the whole open casket deal, black, solemn, all of it. Then at a calculated moment, I'd spring up from the casket and shout "Did you miss meeee!" And then the funerary area would convert to a huge party shindig and people would be so happy that I wasn't actually dead yet. How grand.

Now, all you who are reading this, you have to forget about my plan within the next 50 years so it'll have more impact. Haha. There's no better person than one happy with her life even when it's almost over and she doesn't care.

Light Painting with Irene

2010-02-04T17:03:00.004-06:00

There simply is no more fun way to spend free time on a lazy afternoon than being experimental with photography. And the most entertaining way to be experimental with photography is digital light painting.

Light painting is done by setting the camera to a manual shutter release mode, to allow the photographer to "record" an image exposure for as long as she desires. Because the shutter is recording light for such a stretch of time (4-8 seconds), motion, in a sense, can be captured. The most interesting way to capture the motion or "streak" of motion blur is with a point of light, such as a flashlight, as what Irene and I used today.

The trick is keeping yourself totally still while moving the hand that holds the light source. One little smile or sway will make the subject blurry due to the long shutter exposure. And due to the "time sensitive" nature of the project, if you change your expression from the beginning of your exposure to the end, it would result in a seemingly double exposure of both smile and frown in one photo... but mostly registering as a massive facial blur.

Depending on lighting situations, you can get some very dramatic effects with light painting. Some very intense images can be captured in a pure pitch black room and a few points of light, but even more fun can be had with a daytime dimly lit background and a storybook way to present the light painting.

Irene's best word bubble.

And a smile.

This was supposed to be curly, scribbly long hair.

A nice idea?

Today's photo tutorial with Irene ended with a smashing good time playing around with all we could do with the light painting. Now, conjuring a way to incorporate this uniquely and non-tacky looking in wedding or portrait photography...

The Stormtrooper

2009-12-15T21:00:00.003-06:00

Did you know cameras depreciate a LOT over only 2-3 years if you're in the industry as a professional user of the equipment? And by a LOT I mean that you quickly find you cannot easily do things other professionals are doing. Deviously important tidbit how fast technology goes from novel and new to faded and slow. Needless to say, my equipment was due for an upgrade, and I wasn't even aware of the fact. Then I held the new piece of plastic and electronic brains in my hands and said "Wow! What was that piece of junk I was using!"

Allow me to introduce you to the Pentax KX (I chose it in white), aka, The Stormtrooper.

... for obvious reasons...

Functionality is clearly faster and processes much cleaner images at higher ISO levels (which compensates for graininess in low lit situations). Playing around with the Stormtrooper, I can already see that my scope for taking low light photography withOUT flash is much more possible. This is a huge boon! Especially for us natural-light-loving photographers.

Me and the 'troopster. Yup.

Infant Photography: Claire Amelia

2009-12-05T20:01:00.005-06:00

The most fun in doing maternity photography is doing infants' first portraits. Babies have no idea what the world is, and therefore they're always apt to do something unexpected and totally photogenic. But they also can give you something quite magical which doesn't really exist anywhere but in photography.

These are my favorite shots from a gig I did today. I think what makes them my choice picks is not only the moment, but the composition. That red velvet fabric worked wonders, and having desaturated the images 80% makes these photos look really nostalgic.

Teddy bear chaperones.

A very squirmy Claire.

Baby hands and feet tend to be really magical for some reason. I personally find them fascinating because these digits have not yet done anything in the world. They're still fresh, untouched, unscathed... and so soft!

Tender moment with dad.
And what is a December baby shoot without Christmas gear?

What's great about my method of portraiture in these sessions is that the parents don't have to leave the convenience of home to have their infant photographed, a huge benefit when baby is crabby because she's hungry or needs messes cleaned up. All the images posted above were shot in the baby's nursery room. The red velvet images were shot on the floor, as baby Claire laid on a velvet covered pillow. I have to also owe some of the success of these shots to my new fixed length camera lens, which throws short depth of field elements delightfully out of focus, and allows for great light capture.

Here's looking forward to more kiddo shoots.

Cake Make: Skull Cake Version 2!

2009-10-31T11:44:00.002-05:00

Wow! What a way to recycle a leftover cake! The skull cake from my previous post has been reconstructed for Halloween Round 2. How and why? Well, the original cake was made for my co-workers in office on Friday. I instigated all cake slices to be made at the back of the skull, preserving Skeletor's face, because I wanted to show the face detail to my family later that evening.

Consequently, I was left with excess cake that I wasn't going to consume, and luckily, I have another Halloween party today. So the skull cake has been reconfigured!

Now Skeletor is just a face, surrounded by exploding brains behind him, and looking totally mad in all his gory. This was accomplished using the excess icingless cake shavings which were originally removed from the infrastructure of the first cake design. The shavings were placed surrounding the existing skull face to create the base shape of an "exploding brain."

Then, using some leftover icing, which I colored pink with red food dye, I created the brain shapes via icing bag, with squiggly shapes. To top it off, some extra red food dye was splattered around the whole cake.

Ready for Halloween party part two!

Cake Make: Happy Halloween!

2009-10-29T21:37:00.003-05:00

Happy Halloween! Have a piece of my skull cake, it's red velvet inside with strawberry filling. This cake project took me two days to complete. Day one consisted of baking and filling 4 layers of cake. Day 2 consisted of sculpting the layers, rolling and shaping the fondant, and painting on details. Slapping on the fondant and painting was the best part.

This was my first 3d sculpted fondant cake. It turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. I was afraid the head roundness would turn out too square, but it rounded out nicely. Now I have a bunch of excess cake shavings I need to pawn off to someone. The melting candle on top turned out looking more like a mini derby, and effect I'm not too keen about. Maybe I should have used another color. Oh well.

This was made for my co-workers tomorrow. They all contributed to ingredient costs, so the project was mostly funded by them! Now they all get to taste my experiment...

The Buddy Skeleton

2009-10-06T20:24:00.002-05:00

As many of you know, Halloween is my favorite holiday. My favoritism is based less on the themes of creepiness and ghoulish things, but probably more so on the fact that dressing up in costume and pretending to be something else is such a fun thing to do. Costumes these days have swayed from their original intent of being something scary (to ward off demons). Nowadays, people are dressing as anything and everything under the sun, from astronauts to cupcakes, to abstract axioms. This year I'm going to be an angel of darkness - a scary character, to keep in tradition with warding off evil demons, which is a fabulous idea, especially in this day and age.

Of all the creepy characters associated with Halloween, I prefer skeletons. As the base infrastructure of our physical selves, they're just interesting. I love the Mexican decor for Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), which is synonymous with our Halloween, during which calaveras (skulls) are decorated and adorned in fun ways. Dia de los Muertos is less a dress up occasion than it is a moment to remember those close to us who have died. November 1st, on the Catholic calendar, is listed as All Souls Day, also synonymous with Dia de los Muertos. Anyway, I think it's a grand idea to honor the lives of those who lived before us.

This Halloween, my decorations shall be fairly frugal. I decided a life sized skeleton was needed, so I made one out of paper. Here he is: the Buddy Skeleton.

I created him out of stiff paper rolled tightly for the limbs, and a paper chain link structure for his spine. I drew his face with black marker. He's hanging in my closet at the moment, waiting for Halloween.

Birthday Toy

2009-09-29T18:52:00.005-05:00

Today I received my new camera lenses! They came in the mail today, so I had to go out on a photo trek to try them out. One is a zoom lens with mild telephoto capabilities. The other (more visually impressive for you all to see in examples) is what I'll show you. This is the 50 millimeter prime lens which has an aperture that opens as wide as 1.4. To those who don't know the photo jargon, that means the aperture opens wide to let more light in, thus taking crisper photos in low light, and also allowing a beautiful background blur effect. See my experiments today:

These are my dad's old Pentax lenses (which don't work on my camera). See how nicely the background comes out of focus? This intentional efffect is called bokeh.

My ring and my backyard.

Some weird milk pod thing. This lens has also been praised for it's accuracy with portrait photography. Me in the sun...

The bokeh tends to look very nice for close ups. We don't need excess confusion in the background to distract from the subject. Me in the shade:

This lens will do the job for those inevitable indoor situations.

Taking People Out

2009-09-15T18:30:00.004-05:00

Once more... the magic of Photoshop! Behold...

This image was shot at the last wedding I covered on September 12. Shortly after, I received an inquiry from the bride checking to see if I had captured any shots of just her and her grandma or just her and her mother. In reality, we were pressed for time to get to the ceremony during this scene, so all I had captured was this threesome of grandma, bride and mother. However, she wanted a twosome of each, and requested me to crop the images to create it.

Her notion of cropping and mine of course are far different. It cannot just be cropped, because the subjects need sufficient surrounding space after they have been cropped, and leftover portions of the cropped-off person is simply unacceptable, so some fancy Photoshoppery was required. Here is the final result: This was achieved by removing the bride from the original and placing her closer to her mother, while tilting her a little so it appears more natural that she is leaning sentimentally closer. Then the background and surroundings were retouched to appear as though they hadn't been sliced and replaced. Essentially, a brand new shot has been digitally created from an existing one. Gosh, how magical is Photoshop? I don't know how I could ever live without it!

Taking extraneous background people out of photographs is also another time consuming part of wedding photography. This wedding was shot at Missouri Botanical Gardens, which is one of St. Louis' major tourist attractions. It is impossible to avoid T-shirt wearing tourists from creeping into a lovely shot of a couple dressed formally on their wedding day. Many shots from this wedding I had to doctor up by removing those tourists. This is done by skillfully copying portions of the background and pasting them over the areas where tourists are present (a procedure known in Photoshop as "cloning"), essentially covering them over with background and blending them away seamlessly. As I like to say, "takin' out tourists!". It is rather amusing to myself to delete them. Two rather shabby looking tourists were deleted from the background of the photo below. And I daresay this couple would use this photo for their wedding album cover if shabby looking tourists were in there.

Movie Review: The Fall

2009-08-24T22:19:00.002-05:00

From the preview of this film, I knew it to be an "art film". It's unbelievably colorful with painting-like cinematography and other-worldly costumes which are yet reminiscent of familiar ethnicities. There's so much more, but the basics first.

The essential storyline is simple at first, and then a layer of density gets pressed on in a single scene. It's the era of silent films, and a Hollywood stunt man is hospitalized, having broken two legs. His meandering unexpected hospital mate is a young girl with an east European accent who has broken her arm. He begins to tell her an epic story. There are five characters: the ex-slave, the Indian, the explosions expert, Charles Darwin, and a masked bandit. All have one thing in common. An enemy: Governor Odeous, who had done something devious in each of their lives to cause each of the five to seek revenge upon him. The story as depicted and imagined by the young girl is the eye candy of the movie. It's fantastic.

Watching the depiction of his epic story is like watching a moving painting. This is cinematography the way cinematographers dream in their greatest fantasies and most aspired-to opportunities. The first images you see in the movie depict a notion of the silent film era, the iconic train robbery story, but it's filmed intensely in slow motion, with modern dramatic angles, and an orchestrated waltz dramatizing the event which you learn later is the scene in which our storyteller had taken his great "fall" and broken his legs. It is black and white, and so crisp and clean you can't turn your eyes away. It's like watching a famous black and white portrait photo, in slow motion.

Once the epic begins, a flood of cultural, colorful, travelesque, and exotic costumes and labyrinth-like sceneries keep you glued to the action. They all move in slow motion, like a ballet of dramatic cause and consequence.

The movie would be a joy even without the storyline, but with the story, it gains an extra dimension. The moment the plot deepens is the scene when our bed ridden stunt man refuses to continue the story until the young girl performs a task for him. She must steal morphine from the hospital so that he can take unauthorized doses. She has few second thoughts about this odd task, as this epic story he's been telling is so compelling, she's willing to do anything to hear the end of it. Little does she realize, on the flip side of her ecstasy about the exciting epic tale, in the real world of drama and psychosis, her storyteller is sincerely looking for an easy path to suicide.

Childhood imagination versus manipulative tricks of an adult mis-aligned psychosis.

As the story progresses, four of the five characters are killed off, fighting for their cause. She gets upset by this, at the point where the last character has come to resemble her storyteller, she has connected the dots, and somehow has realized that what happens in the fantasy, is what he intends to happen in reality. He is the storyteller, he can choose to make happen whatever he wants. In a dramatic scene between the two of them, she and he are both brought to tears. Her tears are because almost all her beloved epic characters have been killed off by him. "Why are you making everybody die?" she asks. His tears are because he feels his life has no meaning at this point, and, as sure as he storytells his character dying, he will be compelled to take his own life in reality.

But the bond between them is key. He realizes that she has realized his plot in the end, and knowing this, he's brought to sense. He realizes that he must save his last character, and thus save himself in reality. She loves him and does not want him to go. He has given her something great: an epic story to which she can relate, and for this she thinks the world of him.

Making Your Own Clothes

2009-08-05T18:56:00.007-05:00

There is some kind of freedom in being able to create your own clothing, polish your own style, and smack your own fashion statement. It's sort of like saying, "Mall, your stuff is too expensive and too same-looking for me." Sewing is truly a lost art in this culture, seeming to have fallen by the wayside and assumed to be an old lady's hobby. I imagine the old lady knitting in her rocking chair, a companion cat playing with her ball of yarn.

I am here to tell you - denounce the stereotype! I gained encouragement from my dear sister, an avid "master" seamstress (my opinion), who continually shows me the "wow!" factor of being able to create vintage trends and unique clothing which accentuates her personality. I recently completed my first ever fully-sewn-all-by-myself dress. The creation process was stimulating. Not only was it an affordable project ($12), but I found that in clothing creation, I can find new ways of expressing myself which cannot be satisfied by the template sameness of store bought trends. I can pick my own fabric, make my own color combinations, experiment with textures and styles you can't find in stores. I can make something contemporary. I can make something vintage. I can make something contemporary with a hint of vintage, or a hint of ethnic. I can make it fit me personally.

Here are some composite images of what I created: The Bronze Dress. It's made of two-toned taffeta, with an embroidered ribbon accenting the sleeves. I may yet put the same ribbon around the V neckline but I haven't decided yet. (Images can be clicked to enlarge.)

Here is a salwar suit variation. These added pants and shawl are from a salwar kameez suit my sister-in-law gave me from India. (I partially made the choice of bronze color so as to compliment these.)

I learned a lot on this project, specifically how to manage zipper installation. That zipper went in and came out three times while working on this. I am pleased with how it turned out.

I'm going to give a shout out to my sister by posting her seamstressing blog. You can see some of her advice for other aspiring seamstresses, as well as images of her process to create her wedding gown, here: http://seamstrissmiss.blogspot.com/

Sandcastle Cake

2009-07-20T12:13:00.008-05:00

Here is the sandcastle cake. I created the base structure of chocolate cake with a chocolate pudding filling and covered it with fine-ground graham cracker crumbs to resemble sand. The turrets are cake cone bases with sugar cone tops, with white cake inside of them. The dark chocolate seashell pieces were store bought.

Everyone liked it and was surprised how moist it was, despite the dry sand appeal to the design of its exterior.

It was fun to throw the "sand" on top of it. After spooning it on, I etched out the edges of the structure with my fingers like you would a real sand castle.

What I would improve if I made this again would be the turrets on the cake itself. They needed better securement. I also might find a castle-shaped cake pan instead of flat squares, to incorporate some brick action.

All in all, people were impressed to the point of saying "I don't even want to cut it, it's so cool!" and the flavor was excellent, so it was a success.

Cake!

2009-07-15T15:57:00.003-05:00

Guess what, folks... I'm thinking of expanding my self-employed services... to CAKES! I am sure you will see this blog turn into a trials-and-tribulations encounter.

Cake designing and decorating has become a new hobby of mine, and sitting here in my cubicle with all the free mental time in the world, I'm thinking about it more. I envision it also being a good and fairly fun business to add to my existing business, or as a separate enterprise.

I want to be a cake maker. And by maker I mean innovator and designer.

The cake you see pictured here is the first and last designer cake I made. It was for Halloween, covered in tinted orange fondant which actually tasted good. So far, it's my only portfolio piece I have as far as cake making goes. I won't begin advertising this new business idea until I have a very good stock of portfolio images, and after I've done some experimenting with chemistries and physics of sugars and things. There is a huge lot to do with this endeavor.

I have this mini vision to become a local Ace of Cakes in my own right. My working business name as of now is "The Sugartiste!" - with an exclamation. Because, well, I am a sugar artiste, and that sounds like the most fun concept in the world. There is a huge realm of sugars and pastes and fondants and fillings that I have yet to unmask. It's not even food to me, which is funny. All these things are basically art materials, and it reminds me of those free and corporate-less days when I was young and simply being creative at "the art table" in my basement, making scenes out of clay or re-creating movie props. Baking cakes is not just baking cakes to me. White flour is a canvas, and sugar and food dye are my paints. Designing a themed cake, whether for someone's birthday or for a wedding or baby shower, is like a mini production, including related creative things put together to create a scene that looks so cool I have to remind people that it's edible.

Today I created a mental to-do list for planning a from-home cake designing business. I wouldn't be able to fully devote my time to it until I leave my corporate job. So this is my aspiration. I have lots to do, such as baking and experimenting, analyzing costs, posing as a client to local bakeries to see what they offer, and to see how I can offer something more awesome. In the meantime, holidays are my clients, and I plan to attempt projects to see how well I can pull them off. Then I can use my photo studio to capture images of my successes, and then eventually create an in-home, full delivery service bakery, called The Sugartiste! (with exclamation).

My plot to overturn The Man and work for myself is almost complete, mwahaa!

Nick and Antoinette

2009-06-09T17:08:00.005-05:00

Photoshop is tremendous. Before the digital age of photography, artists never dreamed they could have such freedom with photos.

This image was taken at my uncle's wedding in the early 1980's. These are my grandparents, Nick and Antoinette Correnti. My father's parents. Neither of them are currently living today, so this photo has special keepsake value aside from the nice photography. Obviously I didn't take this photo, but I did give it a refurbish using Photoshop.

The lighting is lovely. It's very high contrasted and captures the skin tones well with a nice rich brown background. Like a Rembrandt painting. The only thing that bothers me about it is the poor framing. The subjects shouldn't be that close to the edges of the frame. There appears to be too much space between them and too little negative space on the sides of them. The photographer should have zoomed out just a little.

Photoshop time... it was quite a challenge, but I edited this well known family photo to look more proportionate. As you can see, I've added some space to the left and right of both subjects. After having done this, the image was then in need of more space at the bottom to retain its original 8x10 dimension. Honestly, I was hesitant to mess with Grandma's outfit. Adding material that just wasn't there in the original image is kind of daunting. I was in need of extra hair and the whole lower portion of her arm. I crossed my fingers, cloned and copied the existing material, smoothed away the flaws, and wow! I impressed myself. I singlehandedly added a whole new dimension to her. I can only assume this is her proper shape. (Dad, how does it look?)

This retouch is flawless. Now it can be framed appropriately without looking like the subjects want to hide behind the wood of their picture frame.