Photography

I love taking pictures. Yes, I’m that annoying relative on family vacations with the camera lens in your face. But after my usual 1000 photos I end up taking (I admit, I go overboard), there are always at least a handful of photos that I’m so glad were captured. That makes it worth it – even if they don’t send me a Christmas card that year.

I tend to like photos that are up close and cropped, a candid moment that lasts only a nano-second, a landscape with brilliant color, an angle with the most interesting lines. I by no means think I know what I’m doing with photography, but I’m always learning. 95% of my photos are with natural light and sunny skies. I despise indoor or night photography. I just end up frustrated by all of the missed moments my camera failed to take because the flash went off at the wrong time or the image was blurry. So if you don’t want your picture taken, invite me to a star-gazing party and I’ll leave my camera behind.

Painting

Painterly strokes, bold shadows depicted in blues and purples, overlaying textures and unique visual perspective draw me in every time. Cropped images that push the subject matter at the viewer are my general passion, but layouts that can stand back and find the design from a birds-eye view intrigue me just as well.

I don’t know how I started painting animal portraits. I honestly think part of me knew that a dog wouldn’t freak out if I painted their nose from an interesting angle that made it look larger, which was comforting. I also found myself interested in building structures and aerial views like those in the work of San Francisco artist Wayne Thiebaud and American artist Edward Hopper. Then there’s Toulouse-Lautrec, the fabulous French painter from the late 1800s. I could go on and on about his work: the use of color and negative space, the bold lines, the exposed mistakes that allow you to view the thought process of the final piece…it all entranced me for hours when I visited the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.

Print

I dabble in print. Since it’s not in my everyday job description, I prefer the word ‘dabble.’ In advertising, I think less is more. The graphics need room to breathe and their shouldn’t be 20 fonts crammed into one page.

Websites

I love making websites. Not in the flashy kind of way, but in the clean, effective and with a purpose kind of way. I’m not a flash designer. I’m not a big web concept designer. Instead, I try to create websites that are clean, fresh, effective and easy to maintain. I’ve learned a lot over the years when it comes to web design. It’s not just about how it looks on the outside that counts. It’s what’s in the inside. Actually, it’s both – despite what my mama tells me. You can read more about my thoughts on website architecture and SEO here.

I make websites via HTML and WordPress. I can create websites from scratch, but these days, who wants that? Many argue over using blogging platforms such as WordPress and Joomla! as a replacement to web design. To the true web designer, it’s a slap in the face. To some extent, I agree. But in most cases, a website doesn’t have to be something for the art historians. The real art is creating a website efficiently with quality content and a clean design on a platform that is easy to maintain.