Month: January 2023

I would like to produce a book compiling my Polaroid photographs I’ve taken over the past 10 years. It wasn’t my initial intention to produce a book with these, but I feel the images I produced are worthy of being presented in a book.  

The timeline would be roughly 2-3 months. I would have to re-scan every image to make sure they’re in a uniform format and to make adjustments in photoshop if necessary. I would then stylize and compile them in indesign. I’ve thought about including poetry as a text element, not on every page but something sporadically placed throughout the book. I would have to go through some of my notebooks and figure out what to include. 

The main cost would lie in printing and actually producing the book. I would like it to be something that aesthetically is worthy of being on someone’s coffee table, so I want to produce something of quality and interesting detail. I’ll print a small run of the books to see how well they sell and if successful I could always print more. I’ll need to talk with folks that are familiar with the printing/publishing process and figure out what would makes the most sense.

A recent experience where I had to make a pivot to accommodate circumstances that I did not predict was working on a project for Jason’s indesign class. The parameters of the project were to select a typeface that represented a plant or animal of my choice, seven letters or more,  and create my interpretation of that plant or animal. I could only use those letters only to create my interpretation in illustrator. 

I chose the Maranta plant, also referred to as a prayer plant. I have one and I enjoy the texture of the leaves, with pops of pink pinstripes within. It seemed pretty straight forward, use each letter of the plant name and create shapes using the blend mode or a variety of brushes etc. Once I opened illustrator and started messing around, I soon realized that I chose a very difficult subject to create in this format. I thought for sure that I’d be able to at least get the foundation of the plant set up with letters rotated or blended together, but I was having difficulty with the contours of the leaves. I wasn’t getting the amount of detail I was seeking and nothing was layering together the way I thought it would. 

My pivot turned into completely scrapping what I had already messed around with and choosing a different type face that was smoother than the previous. I then created my interpretation using solely brushes in order to get the detail I was seeking. Luckily I was able to figure out that blending together a letter was able to give me somewhat of a solid line, and then I turned that into a brush to give a solid structure for the pink pinstripes. I then used the scatter brushes for the remainder of the project, which was highly time consuming. Overall it turned out with the level of detail I was seeking, but there are some adjustments I would like to make after looking at it for a while.

These are images I photographed for a fine dining pop up event. Guests chose from a 5-course dinner with hand selected coffee pairings, or a 5-course dinner with full coffee, cocktail and wine pairings. Just 47 tickets were available to the public. It was hosted in the previous roasting space of Stumptown, where the space was transformed for one night only into an extraordinary pop-up fine dining restaurant. It was staffed by a team of service professionals united from throughout Seattle’s thriving food, spirits, wine, and specialty coffee communities.

My approach shooting these images was to create somewhat of a macro-photographic experience without actually using a macro lens. I wanted to capture the delicate nature of the dishes being served, subtly including the surrounding environment. All the lighting used was what was available in the environment so I definitely had to move plates around to get what I was looking for, as well as make adjustments editing in photoshop.