Blog

Asana Icon for Fluid

2011-11-03T19:36:45Z

I know I haven't posted in a while, but I wanted to share an icon I made for Asana (http://asana.com) to use as an application icon while using Fluid (http://fluidapp.com). The team over at Asana have put together an awesome task management tool that I am already putting to work on a number of projects. I'm big on native apps, and since this is a web based application, I decided to wrap it up in Fluid and throw it in my OS X dock. Asana has provided a square icon for use doing this with Fluid in this help article on their site, though it requires you to be a pro member of Flickr to be able to download the file with the appropriate transparency. While I'm a pro member, I thought I could throw something together to better suit my tastes and rather than keep it to myself, here it is for anyone else who needs it.

DOWNLOAD

If this was helpful to you at all, throw me a comment and/or like and tweet this article.

July Gallery Wrap Canvas Sale: 20% OFF!

2011-07-07T00:49:46Z

My canvas supplier just started running a promotion for 20% off of canvas gallery wraps. So, I decided to pass that sale on to you. I love these things and they really do look great on your wall. They are printed on canvas and wrapped around a 1.5" frame. When they arrive you can take them right out of the box and hang them on the wall complete with tyvek backing and hanging hardware. If you have been to either of my most recent gallery shows, this is the way I have started showing all of my photos.

To get 20% off on canvas gallery wraps until the end of July, just enter the code below during checkout:
JULCANV2011

If you are not interested in the canvases but you would like to purchase prints of anything, those are also still available. Go check out the Photography section now.

Ramblin' Rose Tattoo Web Site

2011-03-17T07:56:32Z

Last month I completed a web site for Jeremy Kimzey of Ramblin' Rose Tattoo in San Francisco, CA. When I first saw Jeremy's tattoo work I was excited to do his web site. He's a real talent and I've been lucky enough to create web sites (and get some tattoo work done) from two talented tattoo artists in the Bay Area, Jeremy being the second.

Web Site: http://www.ramblinrosetattoo.com

Please take a moment to go check out some of Jeremy's work. The web site was inspired from pieces of his flash paintings, the colors from his tattoos and old vintage magic and circus posters.

Arsenal FC iPhone 4 Backgrounds

2011-03-08T04:01:53Z

For anyone who doesn't know me, I'm a huge Arsenal supporter. In honor of our second round match against Barcelona in the Champions League tomorrow I made these two iPhone 4 backgrounds. They will also work on older iPhones, but I wanted to make sure they were high resolution for the Retina display, too.

If you use one of these all I ask is you either tweet this story on Twitter or like it on Facebook using the links above. If there is a good response to these I may put some more together later on. Or maybe some desktop backgrounds. Who knows.

Click either thumbnail below for the full size background.

COME ON ARSENAL!

Wordpress Site For Author Alex Palmer

2011-02-14T22:57:51Z

I recently completed a new web site and business cards for author (Literary Miscellany) and freelance journalist Alex Palmer. This project required a quick turnaround since Alex was attending a writing conference in just 4 days. We were able to go from almost zero concept to a Wordpress site just in time before the conference.

Web Site: http://www.alexpalmerwrites.com

The site design was created from scratch versus trying to use an existing template and force it to work for what we needed. Future updates and improvements have been discussed later on as more content is added. I'm happy with the site (as is Alex) and how it turned out on such a short timeline.

Manatee Web Site and MySpace Page Update

2011-01-14T02:40:05Z

I just published new web site and MySpace page updates for Manatee. Their previous web site was based off of their first, self-titled album. It's been almost a year since the album came out, so it was time to update everything while they continue to write, record and play gigs.

Web Site: http://www.manateetheband.com
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/teammanatee

If you're going to SXSW this year, Manatee should be there. Stop by and check them out.

$100 Thanksgiving Family Portrait Deal

2010-11-22T18:00:00Z

The $100 package includes:

2 hours on site in the San Francisco Bay Area, including set-up and tear-down
1 hour of photo processing (plenty for a two hour shoot)
1 online gallery where prints can be ordered and shared with friends and family (a $25 value)

I am offering a two hour portrait package deal for Thanksgiving to get all of your family portraits taken while the family is in town. Basically you are saving $150, which is over 50% off! I've never offered a deal like this and I am not sure I will offer a similar deal or not. Packages must be paid for by Friday, November 26.

Here is a link to a similar set of family portraits I shot last year: De La Rosa Family

If you would like couples, engagement, solo portraits or beauty/fashion photos, I will also honor this deal for those types of sessions as well. If you want to book a session but it is not going to be before the 26th, you can still pay for the session and book for a future date in December or next year.

Due to demand, I will be offering booking for family portraits in the order they are received, so call to reserve your spot ASAP: (925) 237-1110

Corporate Headshots for ClimateWorks and Energy Foundation

2010-09-22T19:29:29Z

I just finished a bunch of headshots for a couple of prominent non-profit organizations in San Francisco that work towards renewable energy and climate conscious policies and development. Both organizations had need for professional photos of their staff and management for annual publications. On-site corporate portraits are not my first choice when it comes to shooting photos... but I was ecstatic to work on this project. I try to do as much work as possible for non-profit groups, and especially ones such as these that I am passionate about the scope of their mission and work.

If you have a moment, please check out the web sites for both organizations below. The photos I took are not on their web sites yet, but there is still a lot of good information about both.

Energy Foundation - http://www.ef.org

ClimateWorks - http://www.climateworks.org

If you are interested in having corporate or staff photos taken of your company, please contact me for examples of past shoots as I do not make staff and corporate photo galleries publicly available for viewing on my web site.

Show Dates Not Showing Up In MySpace Music Pages

2010-05-03T03:05:19Z

I received an email from one of my clients that I designed a page for regarding their MySpace page telling me that they had just added some show dates to their MySpace Music page and they were not showing up. When I visited the page and turned off all style sheets I noticed the upcoming shows section of the profile did not show up anymore. After poking around in the profile, I noticed that they had changed how the music page pulls show data to your profile. The old form in the "Edit Profile" section (see images below) no longer populates show data to your music profile. Why MySpace left this form active form in your profile, I have no idea. If they wanted to allow you to go see past shows in this section, they could have just disabled the form and put a notice regarding the change.

Old MySpace show form

Here's the new location of the new form to post shows to your MySpace Music page:

Go to your home page
Scroll down to the bottom of your friend activity stream
Use the section called Shows & Events to post shows to your profile
You can link other bands who are playing the show via this module plus provide a link to purchase tickets

New MySpace show form

The new area to enter shows into your music profile has been there for a while, but the old location where many musicians are used to entering their gigs has worked until very recently. I hope this post was helpful to some, as I have yet to see any info on this yet via a quick Google search.

I Use PhotoShelter

2010-03-30T22:48:58Z

I don't normally post entries endorsing a product or service unless I am ecstatic with it. PhotoShelter happens to be one of those services. When I set out to create my new web site, I knew I needed to have a fully hosted solution that also had a good ecommerce component. Though I've done so in the past, I didn't want to have to worry about a server and if my MYSQL database was functioning properly, etc.

As a designer myself, the user interface was important. If the product was not easy to use, then it would extend my workflow instead of shorten it. I also needed a service that I could interface with my Squarespace blog I was building at the same time, so design flexibility was also important. Of the three services I actually tested during my evaluation period, PhotoShelter had the best user interface... hands down (the others were not even close). As for the site design component, I was able to best design my site to interface with my blog with Squarespace. The other two services came up short. One of them was almost impossible to work with, and the other had too many restrictions that would have prevented me from building out the pages in the same manner as I had on Squarespace.

Once I made the decision to go with PhotoShelter for my photo hosting and ecommerce solution I quickly discovered that they had far more to offer than just a turn-key print service for my photos. PhotoShelter is a company that isn't satisfied once they have your business. They want to keep it. How? By always adapting and engaging their clients to find out how they can help to support their business growth. Some of the features that PhotoShelter had or has added that are now extremely integral to my workflow are as follows:

Social networking links on every gallery and image page (so site visitors can easily share with friends)
Back-end link tools to help post new galleries on Facebook and Twitter
Back-end uploading services to upload photos to Facebook or Flickr... this is HUGE for SEO
Self fulfillment so I can create my own products such as canvases or framed prints
Coupon codes to offer promotions and boost sales
Three separate print vendors, giving me lots of flexibility in quality and type of print products I can offer
Order approval prior to order... so I can be sure that the cropping on an image is correct

There are other features I use with PhotoShelter, but these are the main features that have now become key for me in reducing the duration of my workflow and providing the best possible services and prints to my clients.

For the developers out there, PhotoShelter also offers the PhotoShelter API which I am going to use to add a feature to my site that also utilizes the Google Maps API. More on this exciting project later.

Basically, PhotoShelter is the way to go if you are a photographer looking for the best way to get your site up and running, with great SEO and with all of the bells and whistles that you didn't know you needed. Luckily for me, they did.