This little predator doesn’t even care!

Stealth Moth.

…yes Virginia, that is how I roll (at the office)!

A new one for today, plus I resized them all to 100×100 pixels so it’ll be easier for you to use these as avatars or icons if you don’t have the ability to resize them yourself. First the new design (free to use as you wish with no limitation or any need for that crap, just take it) followed by thumbnail-sized versions of each:

Thumbs (right click and save the image locations, feel free to link these images from my server):

I don’t now who to credit for the skull itself, I only did the overlays and other adjustments.

Take any and all of these graphics. More to come. No credits or anything, just take them. Maybe they’ll start a conversation about what’s going on here.

This was taken close to my house in Hammond, Louisiana right after hurricane Katrina plowed through some trees. The sign obviously became redundant.

Philly being Philly. Awesome city.

…speaking of awesome cities, this is New York, one tiny slice of the many views you can see from the top of the Empire State Building. Getting up there is super touristy, but the view is worth it. I could stay up there for days.

Ellis Island. My grandparents came through here from Ireland… setting foot here personally meant a lot. To anyone reading this, if you have a day to kill while in the NYC area, take the tour of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. It’s all breathtaking, sobering, educational, inspiring, and helps give you a whole new view of both the statue and the greatness of the people that made it here. They went through a lot, and the on site museum/processing area really makes the historical importance of the place hit home.

I don’t have the names of anyone in this photo, but they were a few of many academics in a bid to get an educational project started up here in Louisiana (the Science Education Center at LIGO). This photo was in the headquarters of the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia.

This pool was in the middle of nowhere, Louisiana.  A family friend was flipping a house that had an amazing pool in the back yard… we made an amazing deal, we had permission to skate it for a month if we’d do the initial cleaning (the pool was to be refurbished so wheel marks weren’t an issue). The pool had been left to its own devices for over a decade, and it was also located very close to a swampy lake that flooded a lot. This meant that a lot of the lake’s animals actually made it into the pool and created an entirely new habitat. The top of the brown line indicates where the artificial pond topped out… we extracted several hundred pounds of sludge, and relocated no less than two hundred catfish from the pool to the natural body of water nearby. In the photo, Small Time Skates owner (and my homie) Kerry Simpson (white T), and amazing skater, artist, and inker of skin Randy Muller.

…speaking of Kerry, this is Senator John Kerry campaigning in Baton Rouge way back in 2000.

Camofrog.

Free to be stuck in traffic, maybe.

Looking down the hotel hall at the Flamingo in Las Vegas, Nevada. Epic gaudiness.

This is Dr. Joseph Meyinsse from Southern University at a meeting in Virginia. My day job has given me the honor of working on some of the same projects that he has (in completely different aspects… he’s a respected administrator and representative of Southern, I’m a computer geek). I really love this photo, and if you ever meet Dr. Meyinsse, you’ll find him to be one of the nicest and smartest people ever. He’s done a lot for education in Louisiana, and he has such a positive attitude every time I see him I get hyped.

This healthy moth stayed on our door for four days. What’s up with that?

w00t!

…with musical accompaniment by the Poo Poodles covering the song “Salvation” as done by Rancid. Enjoy!

This was smoke column after  a chemical explosion in Denham Springs, LA. Shot with a Lumix point n’ shoot:

To take professional quality photos, it helps to have professional quality gear, but you can still do a lot with a little these days.
I have a somewhat dated Canon Digital Rebel that I purchased from a good friend of mine at work (thanks for the hookup, Karthik!).

The CMOS sensor in the chip is good enough for the hobbyist or for anything web-related, but not something you’d want to use for wedding photography unless you just really know how to squeeze the most out of the camera. Regardless, after getting the camera I started purchasing lots of lens adapters (or conversion lenses), which are basically lenses that screw into your existing lenses, changing them from normal kit-lenses to panoramic, super fish eye, or in this case, macro lenses.

The macro used here is an off brand conversion lens that does both fisheye (spherical, exaggerated images that pinch on the left and right, sometimes inside of a black halo called a vignette) and macro, which in this case refers to taking large photos of little things. It’s basically a two-piece lens that you can easily purchase for about $30. It’s and easy way to lose a few hours:

For an idea of what these photos represent in terms of size, the object above is a nozzle that windshield fluid squirts out of.

Lead air rifle pellets in a tin, all exposed to too much weather.

Purple people eaters. Check out the water droplets inside the flower facing our direction.

Furry flying seedlings.

A very tiny worm stretching its way out of view.

Even weeds look cool up close.

Life’s been busy, hectic, and great. Here’s to a fantastic 2010! Below is my first skate pic (taken by the extremely talented skater/photo journalist Gregory Tracy). My only resolution is to keep the fire burning… I turn 35 this month so I’ll be trying to double up on everything, from geeking to skateboarding. If you’re reading this, best wishes for you and yours.

…endorsement might be a better word, but ultimately I think this was one of the most fun projects I ever got to work on. Spitfire Wheels are made by a company in San Fransisco called Deluxe Distribution, a company that makes a lot of products I’m a fan of, and is run by a number of people I consider friends.

I was given the opportunity to speak about and demonstrate some of the qualities of the Spitfire F1 Streetburner urethanes (my favorite skateboard wheel since they came out). As of this moment, the video is located on this page (click here then click on the “video” link at the bottom-center of the page).

The video was filmed in 1080, 60i (HD) by my friends Kerry Simpson, Gnarly Trey, Joshewz, Jordan, with some tripod filming of my own. I’ll make an HD version of this video available after it’s taken down from the Deluxe Distribution site.

I edited the footage using Adobe Premiere (for capturing, clipping, and composition) and Adobe After Effects CS4 (for color correction and enhancement). I did the narration for this video in one of many ways it could have been done… I edited the skating, then while wearing headphones, I watched the edited video and commented while filming myself watching the video. I imported that video, and had no issue with syncing up my narration because I had the best visual cue as to where to place my audio… the video itself!

The online catalog that the video is featured on is always updated, so here are some screen shots of the page it’s on as well as some review screen caps for my own compulsive need to archive:

I didn’t create the above page, this was created and is the property of Deluxe Distribution.

…when you click the video button, you get me.

Some skate shots: