A Move, a Trip and a Camera

August 22nd, 2010 | Filed under Blog, Family, Film, Friends, Lawrence, Life, Photos, Travel, Work

A Move

First up…WE MOVED!!!

Two blocks.  Down the street.

Teressa found this adorable rental house that just so happened to open up when we needed it. Fate really. That was back in February, and we moved in late April.  We’ve been spending most all of our free time painting, gardening, settling in and building furniture (more on that in a later post).  Oh, and obsessively catching up on This Old House. Tom Silva is turning into my personal hero.

It’s a great house, and we’ve just about got all of our stuff where it needs to go. Best part of the house?  Teressa and I both have our own workspaces, so now we can both burn the midnight oil on projects and not annoy each other.  Although, I do kind of miss being able to spin around in my chair and annoy her with some thing on the internet…but now I can just yell it out around the corner.

A Trip

In early July we both made a trek up north to Chicago for a joint, but separate, bachelor/bachelorette party for our good friends Zach & Cortney. Since we were already booking flights we decided to stick around for a few days and check out the Chicago scenery and finally drop in on Ben & Martha.  As per usual I forgot to take pictures of the people we went to visit and got hung up taking pictures of the environment.  Here are a few photos from the fabulous architecture boat tour, couldn’t recommend it enough.  I ended up spending most of my time focusing on the gorgeous bridges and towers that line the Chicago river, and pushing them a little further than normal, but Teressa is already planning on framing a few…so mission accomplished.  What can I say, I’m really just trying to impress her.

A Camera

Which brings me to my new favorite gadget.  While Teressa probably wouldn’t admit it my gadget lust has subsided over the years. I’ve been more interested in what I can do with the things I have (ala Merlin and John), and not so much on the latest and greatest.  However, Canon has been introducing stills cameras that have a built in HD video mode…and I finally had to break down and buy one.  The t2i to be exact. It’s fantastic.  I’ve been shooting video personally/professionally since I was about 10 years old but I’ve never owned my own video camera.  One word; revelation. I can get up a 6am and run around town shooting magic hour sunrises and I have zero permissions to obtain to do it.  Well, except for Teressa’s…but I tend to make up for that by bringing back bagels.

If you can’t tell I’m super excited to be able to scratch this itch again, and I can’t wait to show you some of the actual results.  But patients…video/mograph is a dish best served slowly in this regard.  To tide you over dear reader, here is a daily from my matchmove test on some footage I shot from the river.  Now I just need to roto, animate, composite and color correct it.  Who said technology was making things easier again?  Freelancing/Day job tend to get in the way of me making pretty short films for fun..but trust me they are coming.

There’s an update on what’s going on around here.  I’m going to quite promising to post more work/freelance related stuff on here until I’m ready to post it.  Creating impressive demo reels is hard, and I keep getting distracted by actual work (thanks boundaryvfx guys), but I promise it’s coming soon…if for no other reason than my mother might finally be able to understand what it is I do for a living.  It’s something with computers and cameras I think….