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So. When do you play?

11 Jun

FROM (a friend)


“At what point does a burnt-out software developer like me take a dive into being a creative professional doing what he really loves? What avenues are there? Does it all come down to a slick portfolio or what? I’d like to think my technical/engineering background would give make me a unique asset, but who knows.”

My reply:

So much of what I enjoy about starting and running KCVideoCore is being able to give away the software! It is a game changer for so many people.

Your question is a very good one… and actually very relevant to my life.

For the past few years I have had the same four jobs claimed (DESE:full time, Channel 2:part-time, Coaching:summer/fall, and Freelance:full time) Add in KCVideoCore, Helping with a movie, trying to further my self-taught education and oh yeah… I am married!

So, when do I get to play? Well the simple answer is: I travel, that’s how I play.

The complex answer is: I incorporate what “i really love” into as much of the work that I do as possible. I really do love all four of my jobs. Obviously as a freelancer I can pick and chose the gigs I want to take. How much will they stretch my creative legs? How much can I push the envelope!?

Here is another example. For coaching, I was trying to advance some Flash skills… I ended up designing some football plays in Flash… to the point where I attached the depth chart to the x’s and o’s. Mouse over the position and the kid’s name/pict pops up. Talk about a heck of a way to learn 40+ kid’s names!

On the rare occasion that I get to combine FUN + NO CLIENT + FUN + MY SKILL SETS it is some of the most exciting/rewarding experiences. The short film Tell-Tale Heart and my little ‘The Jedi’s Sphere’ that I did with my nieces were very exciting.

Underlying message here is do what you love. If you are at the early stages or perhaps have only entry level skills then get another job to pay the bills, but ALWAYS focus on getting BETTER at what you love.

 
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WOW. Adobe CS5 + 64bit + Mercury = POWER.

19 Apr

Premeire Pro in CS5 using Mercury from Landmine Media on Vimeo.

 
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Photography in 100 Words by David Clark

30 Mar

Photography in 100 WordsPhotography in 100 Words is a charming collection of outstanding photographs. Fifty fantastic pieces of art by fifty different photographers. Each spread has one of the artist’s pieces on the right and a write up on the left.

Imagine getting into an elevator, right behind you follows a famous professional photographer who happens to have one piece you absolutely love. A conversation then follows about that piece, then the elevator reaches the floor and the two of you part ways.

This book will take you on that elevator ride with 50 photographers.

I’m not sure how if it was David Clark or the Focal Press team who is responsible for the layout of this book, but they deserve to be recognized for their work. It’s clean, it flows, it is sharp. I question the shrink wrapped decision but the book being a short read may have something to do with it.

Who is this book for? After reading through it, I’d say it will make a nice coffee table book in a studio. Certainly one I am proud to have in my collection.

I wouldn’t call this suggestion a critique, and barely a suggestion at that. More of a curiosity of how this book would have been if, instead of one picture and one short write up, we would have had a series of four or five photographs. Certainly not 50 different photographers in this case, but it probably would have drawn me in to a more personable connection, and not the elevator encounter.

Monkey Butler Ninja gives Photography in 100 Words 4 ninja stars out of 5.

 
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Gaming can make a better world by Jane McGonigal

21 Mar

In some sense I consider myself a visionary (maybe not the best in the world, but one nevertheless). Also, I consider myself somewhat of a gamer (certainly not the best here). One of the key’s about being a visionary is seeing something the majority does not see. Jane McGonigal is a visionary worth watching/reading/following. She is a game designer with a PhD researching performance studies.

I enjoyed listening to her TED video, but have one argument… World of Warcraft. That is the ONLY game she references (that is not one she designed). I understand why she would pick this game, it fits her presentation/argument perfectly. World of Warcraft is an anomaly however. No video game in history has been as successful, nowhere close and it’s been out for five years. 10 million people subscribe to this game… that is around 1 / 700th of the world’s population. You know what that tells me? World of Warcraft is such a rarity, it may be decades before we see this amount of gamers in a single game again. Therefore, I would be cautious about using a group of gamers to solve a pressing issue. I hope the weight of her studies isn’t only in World of Warcraft.

A comparison would be Avatar which has made 734 MILLION dollars domestic (as of Mar 19). This movie touched 60 times more people than WoW… let’s use that as a platform… but wait, ah crap, someone was smoking in the movie. If I asked random people for a movie that literally changed their life, I would get a long list of inspiration. If movies can change individual’s lives, then they can change the world.

Now, because “movies” could do it better than “games” and others, does not mean we should abandon all other sources of human horse power. But I get the feeling after listening to Jane McGonigal talk about solving problems, that is what she is doing, but with the problems. Focusing on solving world hunger is great, trying to figure how to live in a world without oil, fantastic. But maybe, just maybe, we should not abandon all the smaller world issues.

Some reasons gamers play? Well, simple. Kill stuff and build stuff (to be knocked down by someone stronger) oh and escape.

Here are real world fixes that I see games influencing in our near future:
• Amazing surgeons.
• Successful managers.
• Combat where human casualties don’t exist (heck we already do this with UAVs).
• A species that can live without sunlight.

My advice to her, please please please keep pushing. If you could somehow focus the efforts on something smaller perhaps to give the ‘non-gaming’ community (you know, the other 90% of the planet) a result that they can see, your support would grow to mind-blowing numbers.

If you are inspired by her speech (and by the way she is a fantastic presenter) then I would suggest checking out the Folding at Home project [LINK]. They have goals in mind that requires a ton of computer processing power so they decided to create a network where users can ‘donate’ their CPU power during downtime. To apply this to a ‘game’ they created a point system where the leading contributors are rewarded with a ranking ’score.’

 
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Book Review: The Portrait – Understanding Portrait Photography

12 Mar

Monkey Butler Ninja reviews The PortraitThe Portrait: Understanding Portrait Photography is a book void of all personality, which is ironic, considering how ‘personable’ the process of portraiture is. I would rate The Portrait a shade less robotic than an actual manual. I could be a bit harsh because the previous few books had obvious emotion infused into the chapters.

Poor layout of the book shocked me almost as much. Photography is a visual medium, how does a book get published with such poor attention to detail.

Not all is bad and lost in this book. There are some beautiful examples of photographer’s work, nice mathematical breakdowns of complex subjects and a fantastic series of examples for moving lights.

Pros:

Chapter 2 had fantastic examples of different lighting techniques and results they yield.

Early in Chapter 5 the authors describe exposure in mathematical formula that helps simplify the important task! Page 69 in particular is cram-packed with goodness.

The posing chapter is a good read. I found lots of helpful information here, some basic, some complex.

Cons:

The “very brief history” seemed to drag on and on. I’m not a huge history buff but it took a lot to get through these 24 pages (roughly 13% of the entire book).

As early as chapter 2 there are multiple times a sentence gets cut off by the end of the page and does not continue for MULTIPLE pages later! Example: The last sentence on page 34 gets clipped and does not continue until page 40! Six pages! And intensifying this problem was that I wanted to spend time on those six pages.

Some parts mention a method and stop there. No clear instructions/suggestions. Page 72 mentions substituting a gray card for metering exposures, but that’s it. Another example of this con is in the ‘facial analyses’ section. The authors mention how glasses can be a bit tricky but offer no insight to handle the situation.

That all being said, I have to say this book can be skipped. The lack of emotion, distracting layout, and overall ‘manual-feel’ is not enough to overtake the pro’s.

Monkey Butler Ninja gives The Portrait by Glenn Rand and Tim Meyer 2 out of 5 stars.

The layout of this book needs a serious overhaul. Perhaps an additional editor with some layout and design skills.

 
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Book Review: Presentation ZEN Design by Garr Reynolds

20 Feb
Presentation Zen Design by Garr Reynolds

Presentation Zen Design by Garr Reynolds

Who is this book for? Is it the same for the Designer working at Apple versus a high school student. Not really.

Therefore, if you have NOT been formally trained in visual arts or you are one of those ’self-taught’ AND you use PowerPoint (or Keynote) then absolutely 5 stars on this book. It is written for YOU!

If you do have some artistic or designer training you will find this book on the beginner side. The sub title on the cover actually addresses this, “Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations.”

Pros:

  1. Garr Reynaolds has immersed himself in Japanese culture, which has obviously contributed heavily to his design teachings and principles. If you are going to pick a culture, Japan’s is a good choice.
  2. His points are VERY clear (imagine that) and supported by plenty of nice examples.
  3. An abundance of slide examples accurately reinforce points made in the text.
  4. The layout of the book is pretty pleasing in my humble opinion. Maybe a tad to much white-space, but then again, he is the expert.
  5. FAST read that is written efficiently and leaves you retaining the knowledge you acquired.

Cons:

  1. The book fails to communicate one message. It makes it appear as if PowerPoint has NO place in design, but then later in the book the message then seems to counter that. I caught myself actually saying, “OK, I’m not suppose to use PowerPoint, got it… then what do I use?” But I think THIS is the message: PowerPoint is a presentation tool. And in the hands of someone with good design principles and technique, it can be a powerful tool.
  2. Tooooo Japanese. Nothing is wrong with the culture and the examples are very nice. But at times some of the book felt like a tourism brochure. Slight, slight con in my opinion
  3. While so many good examples populate this book, the “slide examples” chapter left me rather disappointed. Some were nice, but most just didn’t do it for me.

Neither Pro or Con:

    As a rookie photographer I have been introduced to the micro stock debate. If that has any meaning to you then you should know iStockPhoto is a huge contributor to this book… even the cover is a photo from iStockPhoto. I have mixed feelings about the debate. On one hand iStock is a great service for this books target audience, on the other, how much was paid to the photographer for the COVER photograph of a book?

Summary:

    This is absolutely a book you can read from cover to cover. It builds on previous lessons fluently. The delivery is done so in a simple, yet powerful manor. I consider myself a decent “designer” and good “graphics-guy” that can say with certainty this book has enhanced my presentation practices.

Recap:

    If you = are an artist; formally trained; use Flash instead of PowerPoint/Keynote = PASS on the book, 2 of 5 stars.

    If ANY of the following describe you: open PowerPoint fairly often; use clip art; think more color and fonts the better; feel like you need a better handle on design = BUY IT TODAY! 5 of 5 stars.

Monkey Butler Ninja Rating:

    Since the book clearly says it on the cover “Simple Design Principles and Techniques…” it should not miss its target audience, therefore the Monkey Butler Ninja says 5 ninja stars out of 5!
 
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Book Review: Visual Poetry by Chris Orwig

27 Jan

Visual Poetry by Chris Orwig

What an interesting book!

A little about me, I’m a long time professional videographer and hobbyist photographer. Recently (4months ago) I began offering photography as part of my freelance services. I understand my DSLR and am gaining experience.

So, that’s me as a photographer, what did I feel about this book?

The bulk of the content is random short SHORT essays. It seems that Chris Orwig is a great teacher and has written down some of his better philosophical speeches/pitches. Collected all those notes organized them into a few categories, slapped a name on those categories and called them chapters. There isn’t a lot of continuity stringing one essay to the next. In fact, if the traditional chapter structure was yanked out of the book it would work just the same.

An overwhelming pro of this style of writing is you can just pick it up and go! Comparable to the Art of War, or the book of Psalms. Lots of great short sections of knowledge. I was reading this book and listening to the audio book for The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People at the same time. If you are familiar with this book, you will find it actually has a lot of things in common and Visual Poetry could be the 7-habbits version FOR photographers.

The book teaches you how to approach photography in a meaningful, philosophical, poetic way. NOT a technical way. If you are looking for details in the technical aspect, skip this book.

Making up for the absences of technical instruction is the ‘Workshop Assignments.’ These are a REAL gem. Mimicking a classroom structure Orwig gives you an assignment with multiple levels to complete. In this section is also a hefty amount of resources (with short descriptions) and sharing instructions (well, suggestions if you DON’T approach this as a classroom setup).

I have probably half a dozen post-it notes sticking out of this book, marking sections to revisit. Nearly all of them are the Workshop Assignments that I plan to fulfill. I believe these are the tools that will actually improve your product. The rest of the book improves your approach.

Chris Orwig interviews a couple professional photographers at the conclusion of the chapters, titled ‘guest speakers.’ He highlight’s their accomplishments and skill sets, then proceeds to ask them questions that I’m sure we ALL would love to ask.

Who is this book for?
1. The person that is JUST starting out and understand the basic technical side of their camera.
2. The pro photographer that is in a bit of a rut and could use some inspiration.

If you are one of the two people above, I’d rate Visual Poetry 4 out of 5 stars! The only reason a star is missing is because of the lack of technical instruction, not just actual photography but the ‘business section’ could have had the chapter renamed to something like ‘thoughts on business’ because there was VERY little content there. Overall great job Chris and thank you for the insight!

 
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Posted in Review: Books, photography

 

Book Review: The Complete Guide to Professional Wedding Photography: Creating a more profitable and fulfilling business.

09 Dec

The Complete Guide to Professional Wedding Photography: Creating a more profitable and fulfilling business. By Damien Lovegrove

Over the past few months I have dedicated a portion of my efforts to Photography, customers seeking a range from baby portraits to weddings. I am a firm believer in the development of your trade, and to walk the walk I grabbed a few books on Photography.

The Complete Guide to Professional Wedding Photography is a stunning book. It is a wide format and hardcover, which makes it stand out from my recent books. Choosing these features screams ‘I care about quality!’ And all it takes is to thumb through a few of the pictures to realize not only does Damien Lovegrove care about quality, he executes.

Stunning photographs populate every page and all are accompanied by some information. Some examples are f-stop, exposure and ISO; then a couple of lines telling you about the photo.

I found myself wanting more, just as the saying goes, ‘Give someone and inch.’ On the photographs about halfway through I started wondering what specific lens was used, what were the settings on the flash. This is not a technical manual however. Another situation I was left wanting more was a point where Lovegrove mentioned a specific style he uses *I believe it was for the first dance* but did not show an example or describe it.

The book is a fairly quick read, mainly due to the abundance of photographs. I do challenge readers to take their time flipping through. Study and see what makes a photograph a piece of art. Lovegrove will be there along the way pointing details and strategies out for you.

Towards the end, the book discusses branding and gives examples on what I consider a mammoth scale that I really would imagine only the top 1% of photographers gets to. It’s nice to see this in the book but wonder if that was executed in an efficient matter. The section (earlier) that discusses goals was a real gem! This example, which was similar, can be applied to everyone.

Over all I’d give this a 4.5 out of 5! So since Amazon doesn’t let a technical monkey like me put in percentages, I will round up. Great book Damien Lovegrove. Photographers; Go out and get it today!

 
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Book Review: How to Cheat in Adobe Flash CS4

02 Sep

How to Cheat in Adobe Flash CS4 By Chris Georgenes

Know enough about Flash to be dangerous? Would you like to pull back the curtain on some common applications of Flash? I suggest taking a look at Chris Georgenes’ book, How to Cheat in Adobe Flash CS4.

There are common elements that span across multiple websites that we mere mortal monkeys do not know how to create. If you ever found yourself sitting in a tree, eating a banana while browsing the web and thought, ‘I’d like to have an effect like that on my site’ but don’t want to spend years learning Flash… this book is for you.

Not a typical reference manual, or cookbook, but it shares elements of both styles. The layout of the book is in a fashion so the user can just open it up and see from start to finish the steps to create an effect, without turning the page! Talk about summing up the important stuff! I know what you are thinking my fellow primates, but rest assured this book is not jam packed with 5 point font from edge to edge. On the contrary, it is beautifully illustrated with graphics that change in style every so often.

This book is for the majority a tutorial book. These two pages here teach you how to do this. Next two pages teach you how to do that. I am not a fan of reference manuals or cookbooks. The cleaver layout did make this book much MUCH more helpful (not to mention an easier read). Chris does go over technique in chapter one, which I really enjoyed and wished there was more of. Technique and style are timeless; the tools will continue to get upgraded.

I think we all know that monkey… he’s the one that just ‘knows’ his stuff. Always seems to be one branch ahead of the rest of us. And we continue to find ourselves tapping him on the shoulder and asking, ‘Hey could you help me create (fill in the HUGE blank here) real fast?’ Well, that monkey is Chris Georgenes (don’t take offense my friend) and this book is what he wrote to show the world some of those creation processes!

Early in the book I got a feeling that really didn’t leave me. This book seems to be aimed more towards the artist. If you are an artist I HIGHLY recommend this book. If you don’t consider yourself an artist and just want to get into web design… check out this book from a Library to see if you want to purchase it. Myself, I don’t consider myself an artist but have a handful of post-it notes sticking out of the pages I want to revisit.

The interludes at the end of each chapter were a really nice touch. These little gems enhance the feeling that you know the guy. Short, sweet, and often entertaining.

Overall well done book! Again, HIGHLY recommend if you are a traditional artist looking to get into Flash. For everyone else, MonkeyButlerNinja gives this book 4 tweening ninja stars out of 5!

 
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Caprica: Movie Review

08 Aug

It has been a couple months since finishing Seasons 1-4 of Battlestar Galactica and I miss it. I miss starting up another episode excited for new plot and character developments. I miss seeing how pieces of the puzzle come together revealing a bigger picture. The drama, the connection to characters, the connection to the environment… was lost on the movie Caprica.

Set 50+ years before the Cylon attack, Caprica fails at creating a world I cared about. My expectations were not unattainably high either, however once the previews started to roll with that introduction music that preceded BSG episodes started to play, my heart sped up a little.

The idea of the virtual world was clever and delivered well. Honestly, I do not think human kind is that far from making that a reality! This consumed a fair amount of the movie and unfortunately is a rather stretch to connect with Battlestar Galactica.

Dialog was sub-par at best in the first 20 minutes but improved to mediocre after that. In my humble opinion, the plot had a couple holes in it that were distracting to me. One of which they could have certainly plugged with some cool material (involves the end, but I’ll not ruin it for anyone reading).

With adjusting maybe 5-10 minutes of the movie, this could have been a standalone Sci-Fi movie that had nothing to do with BSG and I would not have even noticed.

I still miss the ship. Galactica was every part a character in that series as the Admiral. From the series, this environment was home, and felt like so for the viewer. Caprica was not able to duplicate this feeling. Building relationships between characters is certainly harder in one movie vs 30-40 hour long episodes but again, this movie missed the mark.

For the average BSG fan, I’d say you could skip this spin off. The series starting in the Fall/Winter based on this time frame may strengthen the movie. However, I believe this movie is suppose to be the tool to get watchers excited and on board.

 
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