Archive for October, 2009

Richard and I went to the Clinton Community Nature Center on Saturday morning to learn about tagging monarch butterflies. Dr. Bill Stark, a professor at Mississippi College, led the demonstration. After a brief slide show, the assembled group tagged seven monarch butterflies that Stark had raised with his college students. They had rescued eggs from the recent laying period. Here are some photographs Richard and I took during the process. I captured six shots in rapid succession so Richard and G helped create a flash movie. See monarch movie on my website.

We think the tinkering is done. This logo will make its debut on the website sometime soon. Thanks for all the feedback. We’re happier with this version. One reason I’m working hard on the branding and marketing stuff is that the Mississippi Arts Commission deadline for mini grants is looming. As a roster artist I am eligible to apply for funding to help me advance my career; one of the things I can apply for is money to pay for marketing materials like bookmarks, postcards, and posters.

Here’s another nice leaf we saw on a recent neighborhood walk. I am starting a new arts integration school project with McLeod Elementary School. I am talking with a fifth grader teacher and a support team about doing a project that will integrate the teaching of science objectives with digital photography and bookmaking. I can’t wait to get outside again with kids and cameras. You can read about last year’s project by clicking one of two categories on the right: Davis on the Map or Arts Integration – Photography.

My cousin, Quinn, and his son James visited over the weekend. James enjoyed some of the books we got when our boys were little. This is one of Alexandra Day’s (nearly) wordless picture books about Carl. James also enjoyed getting to know our very real dog, Tanner. Does anyone know what relation James is to me? Also, what relation is James to my sons?

My mother had a running series of photographs she called “Reading to …(whichever of my boys).” So, here’s a new entry: Reading to James.

Here’s another shot at the logo. We don’t think we’ll be able to incorporate a component that says “author”. We’ve simplified some, too.

Well, here’s the latest iteration. Let me know what you think. I haven’t decided whether I want my name to run along the bottom or not. I want to see how it looks in black and white, too.

Stop by my website if you haven’t in a while. I’ve added some more pictures to the rotating headers.

My business cards feature a photograph of a wolfsnail. Now that I have another book coming out, I decided I needed to create a new set of marketing materials. Some, like postcards and posters, will be book specific and feature cover art for Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature. Others, like business cards and bookmarks, will not be book specific. I decided I needed a logo,  a graphical representation of my work.

Richard and I started brainstorming; we wanted something that would say photography, writing, nature, creativity, wonder, and macro-photography. The ideas began to flow: camera, pixels, the letter p on its side, a camera with a magnifying lens in front of the lens, the letter c forming a camera, … I looked through some magazines, paged through some clip-art searches, and browsed some art blogs.

I saw a line drawing of an eye that I liked. Richard took that idea and came up with something I really like. He took a photograph of our camera and pulled up a sunflower photograph he had taken earlier this year. He used his Wacom Intuos 3 to draw, shade, and shape. He still has some fine tuning he wants to do. We aren’t sure whether to put a straight line on the bottom or whether to try to incorporate text. I’ll share the final logo when it’s ready. I plan to use the logo on business cards, my website, bookmarks, flyers, etc.

Do you have a logo? How did you choose it? How do you use it?

I ran out of pictures from the Sunday walk, but I promised you a week of images so here are a few from the Chastain homecoming game. I took D and N and two friends to see Chastain vs. Northwest. Chastain won. It was a beautiful day for a football game and it was nice to be out at dusk celebrating the hard work and skill that go into playing football, cheering, dancing and playing music.

Chastain’s quarterback scored several times on long runs. Middle school football seems to be big play football. Over the course of two games, I don’ t think I’ve seen one sustained march down the field for a score.

The disadvantage of being the home squad was the fact that we had to look into the sun for the entire first half and halftime.

Zipper spiders, or Argiope aurantia, spin spectacular webs. This one was strung on the shrubs in front of my front porch. When I saw the spider, I fetched the new camera, which was outfitted with a Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. I put the camera on a tripod and took a few wide shots to showcase the web. I wanted to get closer so I changed out to the macro lens.

Here’s the best one with the macro. It was taken from the back side of the web. Check out the threads in the web.