Tag Archives: Podcast

Photo-A-Day

And yet, not a Graphic Designer

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And yet, not a graphic designer
Photo-A-Day #1386

That title is kind of a personal running joke of mine. When I started at my present job I applied to be a graphic designer. I ended up in the implementation division traveling the country and teaching people how to use our software. I started this blog so that I could have a creative outlet and also to track the places I’ve been and the experiences I’ve had. I am completely happy that I wasn’t hired to be a graphic designer. What I take away from that is be open to new experiences and opportunities because you don’t know where they will take you.

Even though I am not a graphic designer I did get to use my photoshop skills the past few weeks. You see, I’m that guy that gets the 11th hour call when something visual is needed. This time I was called upon to hand create 321 yearbookyourself type images. The reason we didn’t use yearbookyourself to do this was that the site closed down on the exact day that the project was approved. So then plan B was invoked.

“Hi, I am Plan B.”

I was asked to take 321 photos from employee badges and then make those photos into yearbook ones. I started with a couple ones and I made a pretty crude attempt at the blending but they were good enough to keep so I got the job. First things first if I am making 321 of these images and making them look good I’d better learn a better way to edit these images. I turned to a very cool podcast called Photoshop Elements Killer Tips and I watched the episode called Clipping mask. I’d explain the process but Corey Barker does a much better job. So watch the podcast to learn how I took the image, changed the background layer to a regular layer, pulled over the other image, added a clipping mask and then blended the two images to make the old yearbook style images.

I wanted to make sure that everyone enjoyed and got a good laugh from their images so I worked really hard on them. I even gave myself the goofiest looking photo just in case someone didn’t like theirs they could look at mine and feel better.

So here is mine, for your viewing pleasure.

My base photo

andrew_bennett_bw

My base yearbook photo

hs_men_004

The finished product.

andrew_bennett_1969

Food, Photo-A-Day, Television

My Dinner with Betty

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My Dinner with Betty
Photo-A-Day #1384

Average Betty that is. I have just started getting into this great food related podcast called AverageBetty. A while back I was at Staples and I saw thing gadget called the Mi book that was basically a video viewer for Food Network recipes, a visual way to see a recipe and cook. After seeing that I thought to myself, I bet that someone had the great idea of doing a show like that as a podcast and I can download it for free on my iPod/iPod Touch. There certainly is a great show and it is called Average Betty.

The way to describe Average Betty is that it is a show with the frenetic energy of Alton Brown – the major food knowledge + great hair + edginess – measures and recipe details + sketch comedy + a cast of “Betty” Characters – long drawn out details of other shows. Betty is fast, entertaining and the food leaves you wanting more of both Betty and the food. Betty has an amazing personality on screen and plays a bunch of fun and funny characters that toss around pop culture references like a pigskin in a backyard touch football game played by overly caffeinated Chihuahuas. It is my new favorite podcast, sorry Cali and GeekBrief.tv but Betty actually tells me about stuff that won’t break the budget.

If you are upset that the videos don’t have the full recipes never fear you can go to AverageBetty.com and get the recipes for the delicious meals and snacks and desserts that Betty is cooking up. There are step by step instructions with color photos. See, save the boring instructional stuff for the written page but keep the sexy (and by that I mean the final images of the food) fun stuff for the videos.

All of these great recipes and podcasts made my BLT and Cheese from D’Angelo pale in comparison even if I did ask them to put in a little thousand island to give the meal a little kick.