artimeg.com

Taproot

Greg — Thu, 06 May 2010 15:08:37 +0000

On May 2^nd I had the chance to photograph one of my favorite bands, Taproot, at fubar. I believe this was my 6^th time seeing them live and they put on a great show as always. As with every show, the lead singer, Stephen Richards gets off the stage and moshes with the fans, which is always intense. There was no barricaded area to shoot from, which actually worked out fine. All of the fans were real cool about watching out for me and the camera. As you can tell by the last pic, Stephen had some fun posing for the camera.

Keep reading for more info and pics.

Equipment and Settings

I used a Canon 5D with the Canon 24-70 f/2.8L lens.

This was a very challenging show to photograph because the lighting was extremely dark. The Canon 5D was even have a very hard time focusing and kept wanting to hunt and seek. I normally like to shoot wide open f/2.8 at 1600 iso or less with a shutter speed of 1/320^th of a second, but this was no where near enough light to shoot. I wound up having to use 3200 iso with a shutter speed of 1/125^th of a second. The reason I like to have such a fast shutter speed is because I am trying to freeze the action.

Pictures

I highly recommend seeing them live if they are coming to your area and don’t forget to pick up their new album, Plead the Fifth, on May 11^th.

artmonkeyworld.com

Greg — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 06:19:09 +0000

I recently had the pleasure of redesigning the website for a local artist, David Carr. The original site was something that I had done about 2 and a half years ago, so it was due for an overhaul.

Once again I used Wordpress to run the entire site, with the help of a few plugins.

Plugins

We were originally going to just add a store to the existing site, but decided to redo the entire thing. The site is a complete overhaul from the ground up. We kept with the paper feel of the first site, but gave it a much more textured and natural look.

The design takes advantage of some new CSS elements, but not all browsers support them. One that I used a lot was text-shadow, but currently Firefox 3.5+, Safari 1.1+ and Opera 9.5+ are the only browsers that support it. One that I used less frequently, but really helped to blend in some of the images is opacity. Using this I lowered the opacity on some of the images, so that the background behind certain images is able to show through.

Logo

Dave also came up with a new logo, which I took and blended in with the paper. I wanted the logo to have a burnt in look and I think it came out really well.

Shows

Even though the gigpress plugin is designed for bands; we are using it to manage various art shows and other appearances that Dave will be making. In addition the plugin features widget support, which allowed me to easily add the dates to the front page. This is the same plugin that I used on the breaking benjamin website.

Store

As I had mentioned previously, the main priority of the site is the store. From the store Dave is able to sell both his original paintings and prints of them. I chose WP e-Commerce to handle the store. I did have to hack some of the code to get the plugin to act how I wanted, but other than that the plugin was fairly easy to deal with.

Comments

Probably one of my favorite design elements of the new site are the comments. The comments are designed to have the look of an old notecard. They also take advantage of gravatars for the commentator’s icon.

Screenshots

Here are a few more screen shots of the site.

Don’t forget to visit artmonkeyworld.com and please let me know what you think.

Breaking Benjamin (HoHo Show 2009)

Greg — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 05:21:07 +0000

I had the opportunity to photograph Breaking Benjamin at 105.7 The Point’s HoHo Show 2009. This was the third or forth time photographing them and it is always a blast, although a challenge. They use a lot of red, blue and purple lights.

Images were taken with a Canon 5D and the 70-200mm f2.8L IS lens. Although I wish I brought the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L as well. The 70mm was just a bit too long for some shots.

Papa Roach (HoHo Show 2009)

Greg — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 04:23:18 +0000

I had the opportunity to photograph Papa Roach at 105.7 The Point’s HoHo Show 2009 and they put on a great performance. This was the third or forth time seeing them live and they always put on a heck of a show.

Images were taken with a Canon 5D and the 70-200mm f2.8L IS lens. Although I wish I brought the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L as well. The 70mm was just a bit too long for some shots.

whitehouse.gov switches to drupal

Greg — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:54:09 +0000

whitehouse.gov has switched to drupal. It is great to see such a high profile site switch to open source. Many people question the security of open source because it is open and anyone can view the code, but the opposite occurs. All of these creators, developers and users are able to find security holes and can get them patched very quickly.

Wordpress 1.5

breakingbenjamin.com/shallowbay.com

Greg — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 05:16:04 +0000

I know it has been awhile since I have posted anything, but I am still around. 2009 has been a fairly busy year for me, but I will save that for another post.

About a month ago, I was brought in to do the redesign of the new breaking benjamin website. The design started with the art work for the album and I used as many elements as I could into the site as to keep a consistent look. I was responsible for the main design, which meant doing most of the graphic work and all of the CSS. The flash media player was done by someone else.

The design process went pretty well because there were quite a few elements that I could use from the album artwork. We knew right away that we were gonna drop support for 800×600 resolution screens. This gave me a lot more room for the content. Speaking of dropping support, we also are not supporting IE6. It is a very old browser and just not worth the time trying to support it. Back to the design, the date and month tags, on the sides of each post, are images, but the comment count number is normal text. I gave the comment count a small text-shadow that is the same color as the text, which gave the text a real soft edge and helps to blend it in with the date text. (Note: The text-shadow only works in Firefox 3.5+, Safari 1.1+ and Opera 9.5+. Internet Explorer does not support it.)

I created the navigation bar from scratch and I am very pleased with the way it turned out. It was also one of the very last parts completed. The idea was to come up with something that was very industrial looking and I think it qualifies.

The site has been running on wordpress for years and the new site is no different. Wordpress combined with the endless number of plugins gives me an amazing amount of control and power over the site. It is also very important for the site to be easy to use, so that any one can update the site.

All in all, this was a very satisfying project to complete and the band loves it, so that is what really matters.

Here are a few screen shots of the site.

Visit breaking benjamin’s website.

500!

Greg — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 03:58:21 +0000

Finally! Last week I crossed the 500 miles ran mark. Related posts:Running Update Related posts:

Running Update

How to go bankrupt.

Greg — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:44:33 +0000

How to go bankrupt.: “A guide for NBA players.” (Via.)

YouTube – Hellboy on Inside the Actor’s Studio

Greg — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 02:02:07 +0000

Hellboy on Inside the Actor’s Studio: Boo-Yah!

No related posts.

Download Day 2008

Greg — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 01:38:30 +0000

Download Day 2008 has arrived. Mozilla is attempting to set a new world record with the new Firefox 3 by accumulating the most downloads over a 24 hour period. I have been using the Firefox 3 betas for awhile now and must say that it is a great improvement over Firefox 2. The speed and memory improvements alone are worth the download. If you have not given Firefox a shot before, do yourself a favor and give it a try.