Unlike any other logo project I have had the opportunity of working on, this one started off with quite an interesting spin.  The owners of CEVC have an old school graphic designer friend that still does all his work with a real life pen and sketch pad! He drew out several logo designs for CEVC before I was brought on board to help the members of CEVC decide on the best logo design we could electronically create from the drawings.  Once that brainstorming session was complete we ended up liking several aspects of one logo drawing and a couple aspects of another one.  Thus, I was the one that got to figure out a way to scan in both of these hand drawn designs and to make a fully vectored logo with all the favorite aspects!

All in all, I would love to do more work with this old school graphic designer. It was totally cool to look over logo sketches on paper instead of on a computer screen.  Sometimes old school is still the coolest school!

And that’s all folks, at least until the next post!

Capturing a beautiful day was the key to the base of a professional website!

CleanEarth Ventures Canada (CEVC) is a company that focuses on cleaning water for drilling operations.  They asked me to design a simple website as an upgrade for their yahoo website and to provide a more professional and modern look.  I started the search for a good style that would meet their needs by providing a very clean, fresh look and feel for the site.

One VERY cool aspect of this project is that I was able to use a picture I took last summer while driving to Calgary, Alberta.  As I drove I glanced out the window and saw the bluest sky against the greenest fields I had ever seen.  I pulled over on the side of the highway to capture this amazing handiwork of God.  Taking this picture I never realized that I would get the opportunity to use it for the background of a professional business website.

As always, I enjoyed working on this short, quick website project.  For the amount of time put into it I think the site turned out very well.  What do you think?

Check out the next post to see how the CEVC logo came into existence…

How to describe this family photo session in just a few words…INCREDIBLE and VERY CUTE!

When I was asked to shoot the Guynup’s family photos I was super excited.  This FALL I have been busy with every other aspect of Infinity FOCUS and have not had a whole lot of time to take family pictures…and this family has some super photogenic and cute kids!  Well, unlike all my other post I will let the images do the talking for me.  Hope you enjoy!

Very Fun Times!  Thanks for the opportunity to capture such fun memories with you all!

Twitter Works!

I received a tweet a while back from the owners of Yonahs Heart (actually before Yonahs Heart even existed) and was asked if I could build them a website!  I didn’t know if this was for real or some kind of redirect to advertise somebody’s business! I directed the person to my website request work form, and to my utter shock I received an email from my website request form saying that I was being asked to build a website…twitter actually worked!  Now I am happy to say that twitter can be used to drum up business when the focus is on building a business twitter account.

Okay, this post is not on whether twitter is amazing or not…but is about the new creation of the amazing, resource filled website ~ Yonahs Heart!

Over the past several weeks I have had the exciting honour of taking an idea that the Piatt Family had and making it a reality…and, if I may add, a really cool looking reality!  Mrs. Piatt had the idea to create a resource packed website with all kind of tips for homeschoolers and Christians all around North America!  She especially wants to provide resources to Eastern Canada as there is a real need for encouragement in her area!  Thus, the creation of Yonahs Heart, along with the resource filled website came into being!

Yonahs Heart is truly a ministry that I believe will grow and help people in their every day Christan lives as well as provide Eastern Canadian’s with a local source for creative homeschool and Christian resources!

First, I want to say that James Staddon with Lenspiration did an outstanding job of upgrading Dutch Monarch’s logo! I had the privilege of taking the new logo and creating a fully vectored logo design.  Normally my  vectoring jobs are quite the challenge because I am working with old logos that are super small jpg or bmt files, but this job was way better as Lenspiration provided me with a full high res image of the updated logo in a PSD file. (Thanks a million, James!)

Although I had such an amazing and seemingly simple task of just converting the logo into a vectored logo, it turned out to be more challenging then I had first thought!  The text and basic background gradient shapes vectored across quite simply, but then I started the challenge of the Dutch shoes (clogs) and the crown.  The shoes converted across with some hard work…but the crown turned into quite the job.  If you look closely at the crown you will see that there are TONS of shades that make up the picture.  The original image of the crown for the logo was a slightly blurry and grainy jpg image, so when I started to vector the different shades it became quite the task.

I thought I would simplify the crown by reducing the amount of shading, but then the crown just didn’t look right.  Between the incredibly advanced Adobe Illustrator CS5 tools and many hours of maticulous work the crown was finally vectored…and I think it looks pretty good!

Also to come is the very cool and much more user friendly updated Dutch Monarch Website.  Check back to see how that project turns out…

Integrity Tool Company’s logo was a super fun project as it presented me with some new challenges that made it a fun design job to conquer!

As always, my goal in creating is to design a logo that will not only express what the company does and wants to present to the world, but that is also a brand that will look cool and be eye catchy for years to come!  Thus the design work began.  Integrity Tool Company is a company that is run by my Father-In-Law. He installs automotive lifts of pretty much any size or shape to hoist up virtually any kind of automotive device.

With the thought of automotive lifts in my mind I started to sketch on my much beloved BAMBOO Tablet some ideas of how I could express what the business is through a logo.  After many crazy ideas that just didn’t look right I finally stumbled upon the idea of a 3D looking lift in the shape of the letter “t”. Also, putting a big round ball on top of the far left post to look like the the letter “i”, while also looking like something the hoist is lifting up.  A bit of the challenge to this logo was to create a 3D perspective and adding the company name.

All in all I have to say that this was a super cool logo design project! I think that it made my clients happy (always good to have happy in-laws), and I finished off the project TOTALLY loving it!  Will be posting an update soon when the NEW website for Integrity Tool Company is launched!

As a media based guy, I have very little knowledge of rail terminals, transloaders, super-b trucks, etc.!  After taking several months working on this website I can say that I have a whole new respect and understanding for the rail system and for transloader operations!

One small aspect of this website that I REALLY had fun creating was the header animation.  It is a very simple animation that was made even simpler with the amazing Adobe After Effects CS5 software!  I wanted to create something flashy with some kind of movement that would give this site a more up-to-date feel!  I find that a lot of company information websites are just that…loads of information with tons of pages spreading it throughout the website!  I wanted a COOL, yet simple information based website, and that’s what I got!

Check back for more developments as Infinity FOCUS starts down a NEW path of 3D modeling for FLLL….

[Canon EOS 5D Mark II / Canon 24-105mm f/4 L IS ~ f/8, 25sec, ISO 250, –1 stop exposure]

Dusk Fog Photography can be quite the challenge but as long as you know a couple of key things this challenge can be overcome with complete ease!

Of course the first thing to a good dusk fog photo shoot is to find a location that doesn’t have to much light as when shooting with a LONG exposure as we don’t want to have uneven lighting through our picture.

For me it was quite easy to just head outside, into the country, to a place that only had the moon as the main source of light.

Once I have found the perfect location there are a couple of KEY things we will need to have and remember before shooting…

[f/8, 13sec, ISO 250, –1 stop exposure]

First we will need to have a tri-pod or some means of setting our camera onto a solid stationary device that will allow for long exposures without any camera shake.  Because as every good photographer knows that we should NEVER sacrifice clarity for ANYTHING!  Your object always needs to be in sharp focus (this can be argued for motion photography…but as a whole make sure to ALWAYS have a SHARP picture).

[Manfrotto 190xprob Legs / Manfrotto 322rc2 Head]

The Second VERY important key to remember is that if we have IS (Image Stabilizer) on our camera or lens we need to make sure that it is turned off.  I have heard back from many students that have struggled with blurry pictures when they photographed things while the camera was on a tri-pod…and 9/10 they had forgotten to turn OFF their IS.

[Canon 24-105mm f/4 L IS with the IS turned OFF] 

The final critical key to remember about dusk/night photography is that it is imperative that we keep our ISO down (i.e. ISO 100, ISO 250).  Why?…because high ISO (i.e. ISO 800, ISO 1000) creates noise (pixilation) which is VERY noticeable against a black background.  Thus it is important to keep your ISO down and open our aperture up as much as we can to allow in light (or a tri-pod will allow for a sharp long exposure).

I hope these Dusk Fog Photography tips help you on your next Dusk/Night/Fog photography adventures!

[f/8, 25sec, ISO 160, –1 stop exposure]

Please feel free to Facebook Like or Comment on this post with your thoughts or adventures in Dusk/Night/Fog Photography!

    The Bride!

The ring bearers hoofed it down the isle of the church…almost missed them!

The wedding was held in Houston, Texas and the heat index of that day was roaming around 110 Fahrenheit.  So you might be asking yourself what challenges I faced…well when you have a whole wedding party in FULL wedding attire and you are also dressed to the hilt, the combination of this with the weather presents the challenge of working with sweltering subjects while sweltering myself.  Even though the idea of jumping into the nearby cold, refreshing water was ringing in my thoughts, I had to somehow keep the energy alive in the wedding party for the photo shoot!  Well, I have to say that God was totally on my side and allowed my camera equipment to function super well (including the new flash feature of the Gary Fong Lightsphere Diffuser).  Also the wedding party was awesome in focusing on me during the photo shoot (something you normally have to FIGHT for)!

    Shooting with the amazing Gary Fong Lightsphere Diffuser!

I was so thankful during this wedding to have Lenspiration assisting with the photography.  James Staddon is an outstanding photographer and I really look forward to the next time our paths meet in the photography industry!

All in all it was an amazing day.  And like all the weddings I shoot…the couple ended the day VERY married and I ended the day with a camera FULL of wedding memories!

What logo expresses the company name “tiny fingers forever”?  This question coursed through my brain hour after hour as I sketched out brainstorm after brainstorm.  And then the idea hit me…of tiny hands and feet flowing off the end of a logo to give the appearance of a 3D impression.

Following this crazy cool idea came the reality that I had to somehow design and vector this logo…and vectoring shades and shadows is not a walk in the park!  No joke, I would find myself staring at my hands trying to see them in 2D to pick up the extremely slight color differences that give a hand a 3D look.  After hours of staring at my computer screen zoomed to 400% I finally felt that I had achieved a realistic looking impression of tiny hands and feet.

After this was accomplished, the rest of the logo just fell into place with the company name wrapping around the number 4!

Thus the creation of a very difficult and amazing looking logo for tiny fingers forever.