Thanks to a little help from Michael’s, and a lot of hot glue, we transformed these two merely hideous sweaters into full-on, interactive felt masterpieces.  Chenin made creative use of bows and butterflies, while I opted for light-up letters and sleigh bells dangling from the waist.  Either way, you can’t go wrong!

Head on over to Jessica Claire’s blog for more pics – she nabbed some of the photos from Vic’s photo booth and posted them earlier today, so that’s the place to check out all the other 3-d sweater-y goodness.

On another note, I had a massive case of FAIL today while putting up the left front surround speaker in our family room.  Normally, fishing wire through the wall isn’t a huge deal.  I thought that, in this case, I could get away with one hole, because a casual survey of the wall with my stud finder indicated what I thought would be 5 studs.  I’d cut a hole in the center and use s flex drillbit to get through the two studs on either side.  Hell, it’s only 6 feet, right… what could go wrong?  Well, about 5 minutes of drilling to the left I started to smell burning wood.  Hmmm… that’s no good… cut an exploratory hole and find out that I’m actually trying to drill through not 1.5″ of wood, but 4.5″ of wood – three 2x4s sandiwiched together for what I could only assume was a relatively important structural purpose.  After a couple more unsuccessful drilling attempts, I basically laid the whole damned wall open to find that there were not 5, but ELEVEN 2x4s in that 6 foot section of wall.  So much for 16″ stud spacing.  Needless to say, I have a disproportionate share of drywall patching to do for a measly 6′ run of speaker wire:

It’s ridiculous crap like that which has kept me mostly out of the office for Monday and Tuesday, as my little weekend project of painting our new media center built-in and routing some wires turns into a 4-day home improvement extravaganza… Ah well, at least I’m not missing any decent surf!

And can you believe it… she actually posts once in a while!  Seriously… Wrigley jumping around and tweeting all day has got to be one of the cutest, most innovative blog features I’ve ever seen.  The gauntlet has officially been thrown down.  Of course, before I worry about getting a spiffy place to soapbox, I should probably do some of the basics.  Like getting business cards.  And updating the recipes section on the TRA site…

Check out Chenin’s new blog at www.cheninboutwell.com!

• TRA2 – The Revenge!  Largely because I was so busy with TRA2 for a couple weeks around launch, I didn’t actually get around to posting about it.  So in case you’ve been living under a rock without internet access for the past couple months… it’s here!  It rocks!  Our second set of Photoshop actions comes with 57 new ways to spice up your images and polish your pics.  The actions definitely have a different overall look and feel from the first – less bright and glowy, more gritty and worn.  We sorta took cues from the direction our photography (Chenin and mine, individually) was taking, mixed that in with some broad industry trends, and distilled it into some fabulous new tools.  BAMF B&W might be the coolest BW conversion ever, IMO.  Check Them Out!  If you like em, Buy Them!  I’m still trying to slot time in to get some recipes up and do a couple video tutorials… soon.  I would have had all that done by now, but I’ve been busy with…

• We bought a new house!  After living in our condo in Ladera Ranch for a few years, we decided it was time to get something with four walls.  I blame the new neighbors that moved in, and bought their kid a drumset, encouraging him to bang randomly upon them for hours at a time in the middle of the day.  The unit next to ours was practically empty for the three years we lived there, and the gal that lived in the unit on the opposite side was never home.  So it was nice and quiet, and a great place to work from.  But my office was in the garage.  The kid with the drumset was in the garage next door.  Those garages shared a wall.  So if I didn’t answer your phone call between May and July, it’s because I knew that I would have just had to tell you to call back later anyway, on account of the “music”.  Maddening.  The worst part is that I’m a drummer myself, and have had to forego owning a kit for years because we lived in condos and apartments.  You don’t get to have a drumset if you share walls, I thought.  Because it’s, well, rude.  So it was like a kick in the balls to have the little kid next door get to bang randomly on the skins while I sat next door, drumless, trying to get work done.  Anyway, moving and home improvement has taken up a disproportionate share of time the last two months.  Basically I’ve only had time to do the minimum with the actions, surf a bit, and play with power tools… but I’m glad the home improvement is getting taken care of now, because…

• I’m gonna be a daddy!  Sometime early next year, we’ll finally stop torturing our parents and give them a real grandbaby (unlike the furry one that’s been an acceptable substitute since 1999).  It’s been a long time coming.  Chenin and I have been married over 6 years, and dated for 7 years before that.  Slowly, relentlessly, our aversion to the idea of having a small person running around waned, and eventually, we decided it might not be the worst thing ever.  Heck, we’ve managed to keep our dog alive way longer than nature would have liked, and he still seems happy… maybe we wouldn’t be awful parents after all.  I mean, I’m sure our kid will hate us once they turn 14 anyway, but until then, we’re super thrilled to be adding another little creature to our family.  Bummer is, we won’t be able to do the tradeshows next year because of the timing.  Good part is, it doesn’t screw with wedding season for Chenin.  Speaking of weddings…

• My little sis got married!  Two weeks ago.  To a lovely young British boy.  And now she’ll be living in London pretty permanently.  We’ve become accustomed to missing her, since she’s been living in the UK almost full-time since college.  But it was different saying goodbye to her this time… I shot the wedding, and it was refreshing to know that I still know how to use a camera.  Kinda.  And Chenin shot some as well, in between being the maid of honor, and lamenting the fact that she was the only one there that couldn’t drink.  And Chenin’s frequent second-shooter Nic filled in the gaps for us, and shot most of the reception, so we could try to relax a little and at least pretend we were just going to a family wedding like normal guests… Check out the pics  at Chenin’s Blog.  Congrats Carrie and Adam!
• Chenin got me a bitchin license plate!  Not that it took up any of my time, but it sure does kick ass.  I do get the occasional dirty look from people who completely miss the irony, and instead assume that I’m just another self-important prick that thinks people should thank me if I condescend to fart at them.  But I’m not, and they’re wrong, and I like it.

• Surf’s been great this summer!  I’ve had a whole lot of super-fun sessions at Uppers, San-O, and even Oceanside, where we expected knee-high mush one morning, and instead found head-high beachbreak barrels.  Almost made one of em, too (they were all pretty much suicide anyway).  Bought a new 6’1″ Al Merrick Flyer II early in the season, and have been trying to break it ever since (rocks in Cabo, rocks at Trestles, rocks at Salt Creek).  I’m surprised the thing still floats after as many times I’ve tried to snap off a fin or bury the nose in the sand at a beachbreak.  Also picked up a 6’4″ Flyer for smaller days.  Super fun board.  And Labor Day weekend was killer, again (last year it rocked, too).  Surfed all weekend.  My arms feel like I just swam over here from Tahiti.

• I have a real office!  Like a big boy!  With furniture that didn’t come from Ikea!  One of the up-sides of all the hassle of moving is that I have an office with a window and air conditioning.  With a fully finished floor.  And I bought some big manly furniture to put in it.  And a new Mac Pro, which means I’m pretty much just another grunt in the Apple Army now.  But it does have its perks… like pretty animations whenever I switch applications.  And ridiculously fast DVD rips for our Apple TV… or my iPhone… or the waterproof headphones for my iPod shuffle that I take surfing sometimes (told you I was Apple crazy).  Anyway, I still have enough PC parts sitting around to coordinate a mission to Mars, but I’m thinking more and more lately of just putting them all on Ebay – “Whole shitload of PC parts – NR”

• We’re Your Favorite!  Bludomain’s blog readers voted the Totally Rad Actions their favorite, beating out Kevin’s stuff, JB’s stuff, Jesh’s stuff, and others.  Quite an honor!  Thanks to all who voted… I promise to keep making kickass tools that you can’t live without.  Or at least to keep coming up with the best names for actions that I can.

• In other, minor, action-related news, we have a new tutorial on the site on using Yin / Yang, Big Blue, and Green With Envy.  It’s been up for a while now, but I never actually posted about it.  Showcases a cool way to use them that you might not have thought of.  And I’m going to be contributing regularly to the new DWFU section of the Digital Wedding Forum with video tips and tricks… the first video is online now, and covers how to use multiple raw conversions to extend the dynamic range of your photos, in a quasi-HDR technique that’ll save your bacon someday.  Check out the Yin / Yang video in the Tutorials section of our site, and the DWF video at DWFU.
• I also just picked up a refurbed Deardorff after my old 8×10 took two successive dives off the tripod, face first, onto the concrete.  Which is fine, because I’ve always wanted a Deardorff, and this was a good excuse to get one.  Also picked up a minty 250mm f/6.3 Fujinon-W to go with it, and to compliment the 14″ f/6.3 Kodak Commercial Ektar I already have (which might not even work properly after taking the brunt of the first fall to the concrete).  Made a new ghetto-style homemade lensboard for the 250, and just checked the camera for light leaks… looks good to go!  Anyway, it’s been way too long since I shot anything, and I’m going to force myself to get back in the saddle, now that most of the springtime craziness is behind me.  And the new lens is a lot more modern than the old Kodak… syncs at 1/400.  Which makes me happy because outdoor flash stuff likes 1/400.  Copal-2?  Dunno… I like it, though.  Gotta get busy making some of those images in my head come to life… Look for some LF stuff sometime soon.  (update – I thought the 250 would cover 8×10, but I’m pretty sure it’s made for 5×7… vignettes pretty bad even with no movements… so I’m back in the market for another wide lens for 8×10)
• Found a really cool old rusted ceiling tin at an antique store, and just screwed it to the wall in our living room last week.  I like it.  Prettiest piece of $50 junk I’ve ever seen.

That’s just about all I can think of for now… Now that life is somewhat back to normal, I’m going to try to get back to posting and shooting some more.  Been way too long.

What have y’all been up to?

And then it’s off to the Providence airport…

One good thing about the Providence, RI airport – they have an arcade…

 

The bad… no Starbucks

I made a lot of new friends on my journey back East, and thanks everyone for listening to me drone on about Photoshop for 2 hours!  Hope to get to see y’all again sometime!

Anyway… it’s New England! Never been to Connecticut, and rarely been to the East Coast at all, but I always love that they have trees there. We don’t have much in the way of trees back home. Sounds silly, but it’s really pretty.

On the drive over there, I saw this little guy stranded in the road… felt kinda bad for him.

So I grabbed him out of the rain, and now he’s sitting in my rental car. Much happier. It was kinda cold out there, even for a stuffed animal.

Mystic itself has a cute little downtown area – sorta an old seaport town, which just looks cool all wet.

Loved the little drawbridge they had. Built in 1922, lotsa steel.

I also noticed this great old graveyard, which was wonderfully moody and somber under the heavy skies and blanket of snow. Graves dating back to the dawn of our country… in LA, something built pre-WWII is considered old, so it was novel for me to get to connect with people from centuries past via the way they chose to be remembered.

This one marker in particular was just wicked cool – looked like it was covered in ivy at one point, which enveloped and wrapped around it like a cocoon. It stood in the middle of a low, circular fence, with headstones arranged around it. Really neat-o.

So anyway, I’m hanging out here at the Hilton, meeting new peeps from the other coast, and waiting till 6pm, where I’ll be giving a seminar on kicking ass with Photoshop. Back in Cali on Tuesday!

• I finished up with my last official wedding for Boutwell Studio a few weeks ago. I think that might make me unemployed…
• Nearly got my face rocked off this morning, listening to Somewhere In The Between by Streetlight Manifesto. It’s the only new release in a while that’s lived up the the hype. And more. And though you’ll probably never hear that band on the radio, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t one of the best damned things going right now. Just means that the radio sucks.
• Took a few random trips to here and there. Napa, Vegas, and in a few days, Hawaii.
• I haven’t been shooting lately. Have plenty of ideas, but just busy with…
• Working on creating some new Photoshop tools. I say “tools” – not actions – because the reality is that the next release from your friends over at Totally Rad Actions will probably be harnessing the power of custom image-processing algorithms, the flexibility of conditional logic, and the raw speed of compiled code… in plain English, that means that plugins and scripts… tougher to write, but orders of magnitude more powerful than actions. Expect great things for your images next year. The downside is that I’ve had to dust off the ol’ C skillz, and learn the ins-and-outs of a somewhat goofy API. The documentation for the Photoshop SDK is like 1000 pages long. Just now getting my head around it all. That, and plugin filters have to do their own pixel-by-pixel processing. Which means learning more than I’ve ever cared to know about things like convolution matrices and finite state machines and other big words.
• We’re also having a Black Friday Sale on the Totally Rad Actions. As a reward for reading this far, use the coupon code “blackfriday” on November the 23rd to get $35 off. That’s the biggest discount we’ve ever given. Buy a set for everyone in your family. Sure beats the hell out of staying up all night just to wait in line in front of Circuit City to save 40 bucks on a DVD player that you don’t need :)

Probably won’t be a ton of updates in the near-term. But probably in the first quarter of next year, you can prepare to take your images to a new level with our next generation of tools…

So, for those of you looking for a scapegoat, blame Chenin’s grandma. Thought it was the Becker curse, but that was just a hoax, as it turns out. So he’s off the hook :)

As we’ve become quite accustomed to saying here in the Boutwell household – “there’s always next year!”