Originally posted at My Marrakesh:

It’s morning, and I am meeting my friend Benoit, a French interior designer.

We are meeting at Bab al Khemis, which means Thursday’s Door in Arabic. All around Marrakech’s old city, known as the medina, there are babs, or huge carved entryways. Each bab has its own name, and Bab al Khemis it is the entryway to the city’s equivalent of the flea market. Outside the bab, vendors are beginning to throng, displaying broken bits and bobs, as well as an occasional gem or two.

Benoit arrives, and we kiss, French-style, on both cheeks. For a number of years, Benoit designed interiors for the King of Morocco. Now he and his young family have moved to Marrakech and recently have bought a piece of land. Close friends of ours, Benoit and his charming wife Zoo, also a designer, are giving us a helping hand with our guest house interiors.

In T-shirts and cargo pants, we are ready for action. Today we are looking for antique doors and other architectural remnants that will help give our guest houses some character. We have brought along with
us one of Chris’s employees, Khalid, who can be counted on to negotiate in Moroccan dialect so fast that it makes your heads spin.

{Originally posted at Beyond Megapixels.}
first appeared on Blog Nosh Magazine on June 26, 2008

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One of the most important things your photo should have is an ability to hold your viewers attention. There are a lot of techniques that can be used to help you compose your shot so that people will spend more than a second looking at it. Besides keeping your viewers focused on your photo, the techniques below can also help emphasis your main subject.

There are many ways to hold your viewer’s attention. Here are five that you can easily start off with:

1. VIGNETTE

A vignette is a gradual loss of light and picture quality towards the
edge of the photo due to poor lens construction. Although it is
considered a lens aberration, a vignette is helpful in drawing the
viewer’s attention towards the center of the photo. It also adds
character to a photo since it makes it look like it was taken with an
old camera.

CC Photo by australian overanalyzer

To add a vignette to an existing photo with Adobe Photoshop, refer to our previous article found here.

{Originally published on Grown Ups Are Like That}

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As I reach my hand into the bottom drawer of my desk I pull this out:

rice candy
sun room
honey bear
autumn spirit
october leaves
fall song

and this:

blue overtones
a few brave men
movie star
stonewashed
independence day
ozone

Paint chips are some of my favorite little objects in the world. I love the matte, powdery feel of the sample. Like just-sanded pine. Soft and smooth, their bookmark shape fits comfortably in the palm. The one (and I have many) labeled with names such as submarine, swamp fog, and fizzle has maroon crayon marks all over it. I can close my eyes and feel the transition from chalky pigment to waxy, bumpy lines. I can sit for hours running my fingers over these bits of color that please not only my eyes, but my fingers, too.

In this same drawer I have a small wallpaper sample book from 1978. Like the paint chips, the pages are not just food for the eyes. These sheets are rich with texture. The page called Williamsburg Fruit is durable and thick. They even suggest taking a hard brush to the orange and green fruits “It’s Scrubbable!”

{Originally Published on Artists Who Blog}

Leah Giberson’s paintings are beautiful, and how I wish I could see them in person! I’d love to hop over to Boston and have a studio visit, but for the time being I’ll have to be happy with the possibilities the Internet offers us. Leah is not only a gifted artist herself, she is also one of those artists who encourages others. It’s been great to get to know her online this year, so I am especially happy to have her as a guest this week. Leah sells top quality archival prints of her work, as well as a selection of originals in her Etsy shop. She has a blog, and posts frequently on flickr. Enjoy, and please don’t miss my questions for you, dear readers, at the end of the interview

Why did you decide to start a blog?

To tell you the truth I really hadn’t paid much attention to blogs up until last March when I opened my Etsy shop. Not only did I soon discover a world of other artists selling their work online, but I also found a seemingly endless world of inspiration on their blogs. I’ve had never had any interest in public journaling about my personal family life or reading about others quite frankly, but when I discovered how artists were using their blogs to share artistic inspiration, new work and news, I was thrilled. Then when I started getting visitors to my own blog with their clicks, views and comments I was hooked.

{Originally published on Three by Sea}

This simple little sign hangs inside the armoire in my studio. And by studio, I mean the dining room that I’ve taken over as my studio! That same sentiment is also next to my computer and inside my notebook. I read it somewhere a few months back and it resonated within me. It reminded me that life is what you do, not what you plan. Sitting there pondering, and wondering, and thinking, and surfing the internet, and reading about things you would like to do is not the same as doing them.

Holly at Decor8 wrote a great blog post as part of her Creativity Series about “Analysis Paralysis”, whereby one is so overwhelmed with information that they are unable to make a decision. It seems to be a common affliction among creative types. Holly goes on to give advice for moving from inaction to action. The post is well worth reading. Having gone through this myself, I thought I talk about the things that help keep me from getting side-tracked during my journey of starting a business from home.

{Originally published at Aesthetic Outburst}

I start teaching Book Design again next week and have been searching for interesting images to show my students. Libby recently posted these typographic tree columns by why not associates. They’re being made in collaboration with Gordon Young at Crawley Library (UK) and reminded me of the floors at The Seattle Public Library designed by Ann Hamilton.

{Originally published on Sgt. and Mrs. Hub}

Last night a big group of us friends got together for a delicious taco salad dinner with chocolate cake for dessert. What a great time we had!

I laughed so hard and so much I was afraid my face was going to fall off.

But, that’s the best part, isn’t it?

I was worried that Daniel and I were never going to make friends after we moved here. It was touch and go for awhile. We had tons of people over for barbecues but we just weren’t finding “our type of people.” You know, the good kind. The kind that when your face falls off from laughing so hard, they’ll help you pick it up and stick it back on.

Thankfully, we found them. Or did they find us? I don’t know and I don’t care. I’m happy now.

Here is a glimpse into our fun time last night. You can find more on Flickr.

This is Miss Sydney and her Mama, Kelly. Isn’t she gorgeous?

{Originally Published on Definition Images-Utah Boudoir Photography}

In just about any wedding publication you are bound to run across the article titled “How to Pick Your Wedding Photographer”. They contain important information and can help you avoid choosing someone with little experience or professionalism. Boudoir photography is gaining a lot of popularity and you should look for the same thing when picking a photographer to take you personal photos. Here is my list of the 5 most important things a boudoir photographer should have/do/be:

1. Someone you can trust: While many male photographers do fabulous work, I still think it’s important to have a female photographer. She will understand that you, like all women, will have insecurities and will help you not only look your best but FEEL your best too. Regardless of what gender your photographer is make sure you are comfortable with them. Trust is very important in boudoir photography.

2. Posing Experience: Make sure your boudoir photographer has done this sort of work before. It is so much different than any other type of portraiture out there. Special skills, training, and education are necessary. Posing is critical to how you look, the camera only adds pounds if you are posed incorrectly. A good photographer will know how to bring out your best features and make you look your sexiest.

3. Lighting Experience: Studio lights are a must!!! I can’t stress this enough. Window light can only do so much. Your photographer may be able to work with natural light but they will be limited. Different looks, poses, body types, and moods all call for different lighting. Make sure your boudoir photographer is well educated about lighting. Anyone can run out and drop a few grand on studio lights, but that doesn’t mean they can use them effectively. Glamour lighting is the key to gorgeous images.

4. Photo Editing Experience: Editing images is an art! There are powerful editing tools out there than can do amazing things. Make sure your photographer knows how to use this technology. You don’t want raw unedited images. Boudoir photography is all about looking your best and subtle editing will aid in that. On the flip side you don’t want someone that edits with a heavy hand. You don’t want to look plastic and fake. Obvious photo editing is the absolute worst kind!!!

{Originally posted on Jennifer Kirk Photography}

I’ll forever remember Paolina as the bride who hugged me after our first meeting. She and John told me about how they met and how quickly they fell in love… and they made my eyes well up!

They held the ceremony at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Vancouver, and reception on Granville Island. After a quick stop at Spanish Banks beach, we ran all over Granville Island to create some unique images… hitting our shoot locations at perfect timing for some great light!

Thanks Paolina and John, I had a blast. It’s always extra awesome to photograph two warm and generous people who are a lot of fun to hang out with!

{Originally published at Joie Studio}

Here is Joie Studio’s first anatomy lesson, where I’ll take you through the making of a custom letterpress baby shower invitation from start to finish. Here at Joie Studio, we meld old and new letterpress techniques to get our desired results, and this baby shower invitation, more than many other projects here at the studio, showcases the different techniques we use, making it a great project to use for our anatomy lesson.

Concept
This project is actually for a very dear friend of mine, so Rebecca, the host of the baby shower, gave me a free rein to do whatever I wanted. I knew that the couple were decorating the nursery with a hippo theme, and as there is a hippo in Joie Studio’s upcoming baby line, I decided that it would be the perfect design.

The hippo is part of a safari group that was created and illustrated by the ever talented artist Matt Cox. I laid out the shower invite digitally to figure out how the layout and spacing. Here is the digital proof: