ramblings in between

After about a month of downtime due to issues changing over to a new server, I’ve finally resolved the issue and got my site back on line. It should take about 24 hours to propogate throughout the internet, but you check it out if you’ve been dying to see my artwork. The sites in need of a design update, but the work is relatively current.

Well, I’m off to Destin, FL.

Starting Monday, I’ll be a productive member of the working world. My first ever full time job, besides being a student. Surreal, I know, but that’s how my life worked out. I’ll be working as a typsetter/desktop publisher. I believe I’ll also be learning the 4-color printing process, which I’m really looking forward to. Unfortunately, I won’t be doing any designing, but I’m fine with that. I still have opportunities for freelance and fine art.

Tomorrow, my sister and I are headed off to Destin, FL to attend a friend’s wedding in which I’ll also be photographing. It’s my first job of this kind, and I’m really humbled for her to be putting such faith in my abilities on her special day. But, I get a free meal and dinner cruise along with the deal, so some wonderful shots are bound to come out of the experience. Gosh, I’m so far from packed for the thing, though. . .

I woke up this morning around 7:15 to get ready to go to my job interview. This is only the second interview I’ve been to, the first one with Lewis Communications for an internship. I had gone to be the night before at around 2:30AM. Sad to say, that’s early for me. I think I actually got in bed around midnight, but I curled up with my laptop, and tried to pass the time until I got tired. But then, I was washing some clothes to wear, so I got up twice to switch the load.

All this to say that I didn’t have many hours of sleep. My alarm goes off at 5:30am every morning, but I don’t get up at that time. I suppose it’s just to let me know a new day has started.

So, It’s 7:15, and I get up. I’d had an outfit in mind to wear, some black trousers with a black V-neck sweater and white undershirt with rouching at the top. Looking in the mirror I realized that it was too much black. I mean, it’s winter, but I’m hardly in morning. I changed into a grape-colored sweater, and added a black satin-pinstriped blazer on top (taking a tip from What Not to Wear that a jacket completes an outfit). Bingo! Ready to go.

I get to the office around 8:50. I go in, and there’s no receptionist there to immediately help me, but I can clearly see some people in the other room. Apparently it wasn’t their job to help me. Whatever. I stand there awkwardly for a few moments and then a women comes out and asked me to have a seat while she announced me.

I meet with the owner of the company for the interview, and I guess it went fairly well. I don’t have much experience with interviews, so as cliche’ as it sounds, I decided to just be myself and not say “like” too much, during the course of a sentence. It went pretty well. After I answered a few questions, I was given a little test by manipulated a file in Illustrator CS by making it into business card format, and taking away all the registration information. Then I went back to talk with my interviewer a bit more about what I expected from working at the company and if it seemed like a place I’d like to work (it was). Then it was over.

I should hear from them sometime next week I figure. I hope I get the job, because Sharon needs some health insurance.

I have a job interview on Monday. I’m trying not to be too optimistic or excited, but this is the first one I’ve had since I’ve graduated 2 months ago, so, it’s something.

I’ve submitted some photos for consideration to be published in the next issue of JPG Magazine. I’d be happy to have your support. ^_^ Vote now!

I was very pleased with the responses I got from my last entry. I know that selective focus is a form depth of field. Because of my assignments in school, whenever I see something with shallow depth of field referred to as having great depth of field it’s a little weird for me and I guess I’ll just have to get used to it or something. I also noticed that on the comments on flickr people commented on images with a shallow dof as having good depth of field, and if something has a great dof, they don’t comment on it at all.

So, now to move on. . .

I’ve been so uninspired lately, art wise. However, I think I’ll take a cue from a friend and start just sketching random ideas in my sketchbook for future reference. I’m not really good at that. Whenever I start drawing something, I feel like I have to finish the whole thing right there. However, I realize that art can and should be created in stages, if necessary. That’s what I did with my Soul Powered piece, and it was surprisingly successful.

A few months ago, I resolved to try and draw something everyday. I’ve failed miserably so far, so it’s time to try again. Starting with today, here’s something I drew from a reference photo. Yay for difficult poses and foreshortening. ^_^

This is something that has come to my attention while surfing flickr. More than once, I’ve seen people refer to as depth of field what I had learned to be known as selective focus.

The difference is, an image displaying a shallow depth of field is said to have selective focus. The background isn’t in focus, or blurry, which draws more attention to the subject, which is in focus. It’s usually shot wide open, an f-stop of 1.8-5.6. In actuality, an image with good selective focus is showing a shallow depth of field.

On the other hand, an image with great depth of field is shot at an smaller aperture, such as f11 and higher, which results in the subject and background being in focus. This is good for shooting landscapes or if you want to emphasize perspective.

selective focus: the background is blurry

depth of field: the pillars in distance are still sharp

I don’t thing I’m being elitist or anything, I just have a peeve with people using the right terminology for things, or rather, more specific. Otherwise, it can get rather confusing. Or maybe it’s just me.

WordPress finally fixed it where I could import my old posts from the new Blogger, which I did last night.

I was looking through my old posts and found a quiz I had taken back in June of ‘05. So, I decided to take it again to see if the results were any different.

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Last time I was 65% General American English and 15% Yankee. I think the difference is negligible, since on some of the answer choices didn’t include words that I actually say. I think the most Southern thing about my speak is that I say y’all. However, y’all should not be exclusively attributed to the American South, because it has an equivalent in French, which is vous.