Chaos Love: love, life, design and more.

In news today from America, Starbucks will be shutting down its 7,100 company-owned stores this afternoon in order to – and this is true, I swear!– teach its staff how to make coffee.

Not surprisingly, Starbucks' competitors are having a field day with this, offering half-price or even free coffee to ensure that everyone gets enough caffeine during those dark hours. I could insert some witticism or comment here, but in this case, actions really do speak louder than words.

Read the full story here.

And this is kind of funny too (Not to mention true!).

Posted in: chaosboy, general musings, united states on February 26, 2008 at at 2:55:00 PM 2 comments    

After promising results for their "W+K Seeking" competition by February 15, Wieden + Kennedy finally got back to me today. I didn't get in.

I have actually suspected as much for a while, as another entrant in Belgium received his "golden ticket" by FedEx on the 18th. So it was a pretty safe bet that if I hadn't got anything by FedEx within a couple of days of the magic date, I wasn't going to make it. Part of me was still believing that they weren't in any hurry to notify me that I had won because I lived here in Portland... it's a very silly part of me and shouldn't be listened to in the future!

I like my entry, I really do. But looking at the few winning entries I have seen (there's links to a few in the blog above), it's obvious that W+K are after something more "left field" and "out there" than what I submitted. They're after people who can provide them with that tangential solution to a problem that hasn't occurred to 99.9% of the population, and my entry didn't present that.

On the bright side, now I can concentrate my efforts on other ways to get employed without the distraction of W+K's carrot hanging over my head.

In closing, I also have to say I'm a bit disappointed in the way that W+K lets you know you haven't been selected. It was simply a postcard-sized sticker on card that says "Wieden + Kennedy gave me this sticker" on the front, while the back is simply a rubber stamped (literally!) message that reads:

SEEKING haiku

you shared your story
one in forty made the cut
not this time for you

Ouch! Not only does the front suggest the old "My parents went to Maui and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" joke (or in this case, "The guy from Belgium is going to W+K and all I got was this lousy sticker"), but the back is brutally to the point. I understand they have thousands of rejections to send out, but surely it could be done a little less harshly than this? People have poured their heart and soul into these entries, hoping for a way into one of the best agencies in the world, and this is what they get back?

Posted in: chaosboy, employment, portland on February 22, 2008 at at 2:32:00 PM 4 comments    

Lunar Eclipse, 20th February 2008, originally uploaded by Senex Prime.

As promised, here's my night's work from last night's spectacular total lunar eclipse. This is a composite image of exposures taken at 5 minute intervals from 6:13pm to 7:03pm, by which time totality had been achieved. The moon started very low to the horizon, hence the yellower cast in the first few exposures.

I did a lot of reading on the web on how best to photograph the moon during an eclipse, and was quite surprised to see how little exposure is required to shoot a normal full moon... 1/125th second at ƒ/11 at ISO100! Any more than that and the brightness of the moon causes everything to blow out totally.

So I was armed with a handy table of exposure times by the time we headed out, and it proved to be pretty much spot on throughout the night. Which was good, because my attempts to bracket my exposures by using the Automatic Exposure Bracket function on my camera were a dismal failure... something about using the mirror lock (vital to not getting camera shake and a little ghosted reflection of the moon in my shots) caused it not to work, leaving me with three identical exposures instead of some nice bracketed ones. When I got to sorting my images in Lightroom, the first thing I had to do was simply delete two-thirds of my shots... Ah well, you live and learn!

Posted in: adobe lightroom, chaosboy, photography on February 21, 2008 at at 12:59:00 PM 1 comments    

I cannot recall the last time that I stood and stared at the moon. Sunsets are usually the more dramatic activity, but tonight was different. Cam and I don't get out of town much and a lunar eclipse always makes for a good excuse. It also was a good excuse to visit our favorite wedding hill, Rocky Butte. It was the highest point we could think of and since it miraculously wasn't raining in Portland, we took off, prepared with cameras and food for later.

We rented a Zipcar and got up the hill with plenty of time to spare. I wasn't sure if it would be completely packed or deserted. But it had to be one or the other. As it turned out, there wasn't much parking when we arrived and shortly after, there was no parking at all. Families poured into the park, equipped with cameras, telescopes, astronomy books and of course, all their kids, who couldn't care less about the moon having a shadow on it. One kid was enraptured with the rotating spotlight in the middle of the park and I overheard his dad say "Hey bud, the moon's over here!"

Many people came poorly equipped and were disappointed when the moon didn't show up with their cell phone camera.

I don't think I have ever seen Cam so excited about a photographic endeavor. He took nearly 200 photos in two hours of the phases passing through. I of course, had to do my best with the littler camera that I had and took some of these great beauties.



It was a super fun time and there were definitely a lot of interesting people there as well. But for Cam and I, we will be visiting Rocky Butte for the next galactic event, whatever and whenever that shall be... stay tuned for actual REALLY GOOD photos that Cam took!!

Posted in: chaosgurl, photography, portland on February 20, 2008 at at 9:44:00 PM 2 comments    

I've long believed that the computer, along with photo-editing software like Adobe's Lightroom and Photoshop, acts as a digital version of the traditional darkroom. Instead of chemicals, paper and manual dodging, burning, pushing and pulling we now rely on the power of the computer to treat our photos. I've been using Lightroom as my main photo editing software for just over a year now and I love it. It allows me to sort through the thousands of pictures I take each year, adding keywords and other metadata quickly and easily and then get on to the important task - making the best photos really "sing".

Lately, however, I've been feeling that my photos were a little still a little flat... that maybe I could take my processing a bit further somehow. To that end, I bought Scott Kelby's excellent book, The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book For Digital Photographers, to see if I could glean any useful hints and tips from this renowned expert. While I have a pretty good grasp of what all the sliders and controls in Lightroom do, Scott still had a lot of useful tips and information that will allow me to approach things in a slightly more organised fashion.

But the main thing I got out of the book is that he still uses Photoshop for his final photo editing, something that I have rarely done since starting to use Lightroom – I guess the simplicity of doing eveything in one application was a little too beguiling for me! He has some fantastic techniques that you can use to really make the colours in your image "pop" - he calls it painting with light, and it's not a bad description at all. I'm not going into the technique here: it involves converting images to LAB mode, using the Apply Image command (which I have never used before in all my years of Photoshopping, shame on me!) and then painting on Layer Masks with a screened duplicate of your image. Sounds complicated, but after a few goes it becomes quite simple to understand and execute.

It's probably best if I just show a couple of examples. On the left of each image is the shot exactly as it came out of my camera (a Canon Digital Rebel XT shooting RAW files), on the right is the image after all my processing in Lightroom and Photoshop. Lovely, innit? It really brings out a lot of hidden colour detail that is sorely lacking in the original images, although I must stress that you always have to do some post-processing work on RAW files to make them look good: they are simply showing you the raw data from your camera's sensor, with none of the contrast, saturation or sharpening that you'll automatically get when you shoot JPG. If you click on the pix, you should get to see a larger version of the image...

Posted in: adobe lightroom, chaosboy, photography on February 17, 2008 at at 4:38:00 PM 1 comments    

I turned 35 yesterday! Scary, huh? Here's Christine and me enjoying our joint Valentine's Day/birthday dinner at the wonderful Lovely Hula Hands on Mississippi Ave last night. The food was gorgeous, one of the best meals we have had together. Afterwards, we met up with all of our friends and headed off to the Doug Fir Lounge to see The Gourds, a great all-American party band if there ever was one. Needless to say, I had quite a few drinks bought for me and I'm feeling a little under the weather today... maybe I'm gettin' too old for all this nightlife!

Posted in: chaosboy, music, party time, portland, shows on February 16, 2008 at at 1:54:00 PM 1 comments    

Tomorrow, on February 13th 2008, Kevin Rudd – the new Prime Minister of Australia – will say the following words in Federal Parliament. They constitute a long overdue apology to the Stolen Generations of indigenous Australians, where aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families and assimilated into white culture as a matter of government policy. And it is amongst the most beautiful things I have ever read:

Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.

We reflect on their past mistreatment.

We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations - this blemished chapter in our nation's history.

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.

For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.

A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.

A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.

A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.

A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.

It says everything that needed to be said and more. After such a long time of the previous government's refusal to acknowledge the sins of the past, hopefully now we can move forward as one. At this moment, I feel proud to be Australian.

Posted in: australia, chaosboy, politics on February 12, 2008 at at 12:13:00 AM 0 comments    

One of the worst things about not having a car is that it's very easy to become trapped in the city. Which is made even more horrible in Portland, as it's surrounded by a lot of natural beauty which I'd love to be able to see on a more regular basis. So it was a wonderful day on Sunday when our friend Spencer rang me and asked if I'd like to go on a hike in the Columbia River Gorge. Would I? Heck, yeah!

Now I've been up to the Gorge twice, once with Christine's dad, and once with my parents. Both times we've taken in the views and waterfalls that are located near to the highway (Latourell, Multnomah, etc), so I was pretty excited to have to walk through this beautiful area to see some of the slightly more remote waterfalls.

Spence took me to one of the most popular hiking spots in the Gorge, the Eagle Creek trail, which leads up to the renowned Punch Bowl Falls - about a 4 mile return journey. The path itself was quite difficult, often gouged out of a sheer cliff face. The cliff face itself was home to many intermittent waterfalls, meaning we got an impromptu shower as we passed underneath! Here's a picture, showing the steel cable handrail embedded into the cliff; there's probably a 100-foot drop to the river below at this point.

The path settles down into a more normal hiking trail after this exciting beginning, but going was still difficult thanks to ice and snow covering the path occasionally. The scenery was beautiful, including some very tall and arrow-straight trees, all trying to grow as high as possible as quickly as possible. Light is a limited commodity in this narrow gorge!

Finally, we reached our destination, Punch Bowl Falls. There are actually two sets of falls, the creatively named "Lower" and "Upper" falls. Our first stop was the Lower Falls, a short 10 foot drop only, but still a lovely sight. I was glad I had brought my tripod all the way with me, as hand-held shots would have been almost impossible in the gloomy gorge.

Just upstream of here is a rocky beach that Spencer told me is very popular in Summer, when people come here to swim and relax. Sounds great! People also wade out into the stream to take pictures of the Upper Falls upstream, a classic and iconic waterfall photo. However, late-winter water is a little too cold to be trying that trick at the moment! A reason to return in Summer, though!

So we had to retrace our steps to the main path and continue on a bit until we got to the lookout over the main falls:

A spectacular sight as torrents of water spilled over the cliff into the huge bowl-shaped pond... apparently, these falls gave their name to this class of waterfall (they're the original punch bowl falls, so to speak) and I doubt there's a better example anywhere.

Posted in: chaosboy, hiking, nature, photography on February 11, 2008 at at 4:59:00 PM 0 comments    

So I finally had my interview with 52 Ltd - the main graphic design recruitment agency here in Portland - today. It all went really well, the Talent Manager who interviewed me was very impressed with my skill set and experience and later told me in an email that my interview was the best of the day. Nice! I told her all about my Wieden + Kennedy prospects and that I'm still waiting to hear about that, so I'm more interested in part-time/freelance work at present. To be honest, I'll probably want to freelance for quite a while, just to get a feel for what's available here in Portland, rather than tying myself down to the first job that comes my way. So hopefully, some work will be coming my way soon! Huzzah!

Posted in: chaosboy, employment, portland on February 7, 2008 at at 6:48:00 PM 0 comments    

Yesterday was the day of the biggest sporting event in the US... one that households tune in to watch by the millions, one that true sports fans acknowledge as the ultimate test! And no, I'm not talking about that silly old Super Bowl - this is the Widmer Bowl, contested annually on the same day as that other football game by Widmer Bros employees, ex-employees, friends of employees (ie, me!) and anybody else who feels like joining in.

Having experienced my first game of American football at Thanksgiving, I was a little more prepared this time (shoes with grip and a change of clothes!) and probably contributed a bit more to the team effort. Seriously, last time I had no idea of what was going on and where I should be on the field! I was also helped by the fact that players wore detachable tags around their waists, so you could effect a "tackle" simply by pulling off a tag. It certainly helped when Colin, who is over six feet tall and over 60 pounds heavier than me came storming my way:

Yes, my eyes are closed. But can you blame me? I managed to fend off his palm with my right hand and snag the tag with my left, all without seriously injuring myself. Here's some more action shots:

Yay to Christine for coming and taking some shots for us before she had to head off to work, and for dealing with flat batteries in both of my cameras, whoops!

The game ended at 8 touchdowns all, including a game-tying miracle pass from Colin on the last play of the day, curse him and his athletic skills! Much fine Widmer product was imbibed at half time and after the game, including a bit of a drinking contest to determine the real winner, during which I proved that all these so-called "big drinkers" from the US are nothing compared to a boy from Down Under. :-)

And the Super Bowl itself? Actually a fantastic game of sport (despite my general misgivings about American Football), with the result not determined until the very end. And we always love an underdog beating the overwhelming favourite, don't we? And as a guy in advertising, some of the ads were quite fantastic as well.

Posted in: chaosboy, sport, united states on February 4, 2008 at at 2:29:00 PM 0 comments