My brilliant design buddy, Kevin Scarbrough (of Robot, Monster, and Ghost Co.), asked me to do a photo shoot with him. Fortunately the photos were not of Kevin, but rather two lovely ladies working with him on his Paper Doll Pinups project. Long story short, Paper Doll Pinups is a burlesque and pinups stationery company. Notebooks, calligraphy and illustrations are all a part of the project, but this photo series will eventually serve as marketing to tie everything together. (Also check out Halloween Pinups, Kevin’s new book project.)

So expect to see more from Kevin and Paper Doll in the future, but for now, here’s a peek at some of my favorite shots. I’m no pinup photographer (at least I wasn’t until now), but we all had a ton of fun putting this together.  I did all of the photography, lighting, and post-processing, but this series was very much a group effort. I’d like to thank Kevin for his planning / organization / awesomeness, and the girls for handling their own makeup / hair / costumes on top of the intense amount of shots we packed into one day at a hotel.

Fun fact: My favorite part of this shoot was me eating an entire bag of cheese cubes while we worked.

Let me know what you think of this shoot in the comments! Stay updated by following @FringeFocus on Twitter, and especially @PaperDollPinups.

I’m no professional photographer, but obsession was indeed strong enough to risk life and limb and venture out into the blizzard last night. With nicknames like “Snowmagedon”, “Snowpacalypse”, “SNOWMG”, and “Snowtorious B.I.G.”, you would be expected to stay indoors. I threw on a lot of extra clothing, and went out in hopes that I wouldn’t break my camera. Some of these shots turned out alright, so I thought I’d share them here.

Some of these photos are available as prints! You can get your hands on some by backing my Kickstarter Poster Project! (Which also includes 6″ photo prints like these)

Even with the tripod at full height, it was often buried up the middle in snow. By the end of the night my viewfinder, and rest of my camera, had ice packed all over it. I believe I saved it with paper towels.

The images above all link to my Flickr as well.

Let me know what you think about these shots, or tell me your blizzard story in the comments! You can also hit me up on Twitter.

This is an incredible shot I pulled off following a storm here in Chicago. The sky was eerily chaotic and orange. There probably wasn’t a single person in the city that wasn’t freaking out and taking pictures at this exact moment.

Sort of a Photographer

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being a baby with a cellphone, and 10 being Ansel Adams, you could rate my photography skills at perhaps a 3 or 4. Nevertheless, I find photography to be an awesome hobby. Normally I’m trapped behind a computer all day, so being creative outside among the other humans is pretty exhilarating.

My Best of 2010

Including the shot of Chicago above, here’s a collection of my favorite photos that I shot in 2010.

Another great shot of Chicago. The sky really was that pink during the sunrise. Looks like cotton candy.

Crazy storm one night, with lightning striking buildings every few seconds. I made sure to have the color scheme feel like Gotham City rather than Chicago.

Update: Some of these photos are available as 6″ Photo Prints on my Kickstarter Poster Project!

Well there you have it. My best attempts at photography of this year. If you want to see more, check out Fringe Focus on Flickr. I’ll be sure to upload tons more photos in 2011.

What do you think of these shots? Constructive criticism is allowed, haha. Drop your thoughts in the comments!

You’re Doing it Wrong.

Many of us, for quite a long time, have been using the word ‘analog’ improperly. As designers, we often refer to analog technologies as being anything preceding digital technology. That’s definitely not the case. So this post is to collectively save us all from ever sounding stupid to technology nerds ever again. And don’t worry, it’s not just us, I’ve seen the same mistake made in the New York Times.

I recall a video that referred to 1950′s classrooms as ‘analog learning’ as opposed to our modern classrooms’ use of computers and the internet. I’ve heard the work of contemporary digital artists and designers compared to the ‘analog art’ of painters. The real kicker, and reason for this post, is those who position film as the ‘analog’ opposite of digital photography.

Film isn’t Analog.

Film is not analog, period. I used to shoot film on a Canon AE-1 from the ’70s. Now I have a digital SLR from Canon, and they’re obviously extremely different. But we have to be careful not to confuse ‘old’ and ‘new’, with two very specific terms like analog and digital.

The word digital, to most people, refers to a device that can capture, store, or display data in a binary fashion. Ones and zeros, on and off, digital is all about numbers. Digital shouldn’t be confused with binary, of course, as digital simply means concrete values. Any system that utilizes solid values (or digits) is digital, binary is simply the most common system. Digital cameras capture light with a sensor, that light is converted into data (numbers), so the use of the word ‘digital’ for your cell phone camera or DSLR is accurate.

Analog, however, is a very abused word. I would venture a guess that the significant amount of readers have used the word ‘analog’ to refer to film cameras. If the new, fancy robot cameras are ‘digital’ then our aging film cameras are ‘analog’, right?  Not at all. Older cameras capture light with film, which is basically plastic, gelatin, and silver halide. When you take a photo (perhaps of your dog drinking a beer), photons hit this material and produce a latent (invisible) image, that can later be brought into view by bathing the film in various chemicals. You could write hundreds of blog posts on film development alone, but the point is that film photography is a chemical process.

Digital sensors and film capture light quite differently, but I’d rather hear the word ‘chemical’, ‘organic’, or ‘magic’ given to film technology before ‘analog’.

Wait, What the Fuck is Analog Then?

Analog, as its name suggests, refers to being analogous to something. If we’re referring to the adjective used in technology, the definition of analog is:

Of, relating to, or being a device in which data are represented by continuously variable, measurable, physical quantities, such as length, width, voltage, or pressure. – Wordnik

So a great example of an analog technology would be a vinyl record. The audio is stored as waves (variable data) within the grooves of the vinyl. Digital audio stores the data as numbers, as finite units of data per second. If that audio is George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, then funk on my brotha’. What’s important is that a vinyl record is legitimately something that deserves to be called ‘analog’. Film is not. Film captures the image physically, there is no data (waves or otherwise) to be found as there is on the record.

Plenty of older (and current) technologies are analog. Just be sure to ask yourself if that device has variable signals/data, or if that device is just really old. A television with a cathode ray tube (CRT) is an analog device; a cave painting of a man stabbing a mastodon with a spear is not. Sound waves being converted into an electrical signal is analog, a film negative is not.

Stop Saying Analog?

I know its hip to be anti-digital sometimes. But before we all drink a PBR and hop on our fixed gear bikes to the thrift store, we have to remember that just because something is old, doesn’t make it ‘analog’. 35MM cameras, oscilloscopes, and the cotton gin are all old technologies, but only one of them is an analog device.

We pride ourselves in the design industry for knowing tons of interesting things about art, advertising, and technology, but this is one adjective we should all cut back on a bit. The good news is we will always have our favorite noun: analogue! We can still say: “A picture is an analogue of a memory”, or “A cubic zirconia is an analogue of a diamond”, and “McDonalds is an analogue of real food.”

Somewhat Related Stuff:

Shake It Photo (iPhone App, makes your digital photos look like Polaroids)

35MM Mondays (Film shots, on a blog by Luke Williams, every week)

Alt/1977 (Alex Varenese’s badass retro posters)

Thoughts? Leave a digital comment!