JIC Designs

Mobile Phone Photography

justin — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 01:05:44 +0000

My first smartphone was a Treo 700p. It was a better alternative to many of the other phones out there at the time. It didn't have a camera but neither did many of the competitors. My first smartphone with a camera was the T-Mobile G1. It was Google's first iteration of the Android operating system and the first phone to run it. I loved it. I wasn't a huge fan of the camera, but used it much like any one else does. I used it primarily for quick pix of my kid or ex doing stupid things. It wasn't ready for artistic photography in my opinion. It had a limited market place so there weren't really any applications designed to make art. Its camera was a 3.2 megapixel camera but to be honest this camera felt like an afterthought.

My next phone was an iPhone 3GS and while its camera was still only 3.1 megapixels the apps in the market place made a world of difference. It, along with my old Flip Camcorder and iPad, allowed me to free myself from sitting behind a camera during my first vacation as a single parent. I was still able to capture, what I thought, was some great images and videos of the trip. Link to my pix here for an example:

3GS Disney Trip on Instagram

Recently I purchased an iPhone 4S and have to say that its the first phone I've ever owned that has a camera which is truly on the road to replacing stand alone digital cameras. Look at the price of buying an extra camera, the annoyance of having to carry an extra electronic device around, and the hassle of having to export the pictures to your computer and then having to edit them and upload them from said computer.....I'm winded just typing all that. With the iPhone 4S it has applications for specialist types of photography, editing, and uploading to Flickr, FaceBook, Blogs, and many other options. Below are some shots with the new iPhone 4S, but no Instagram shots...

iPhone 4s Shots

When looking at the specs of the new iPhone 4s its most important one for a potential camera has to be the 2.8 f stop. Its low lighting photographic possibilities just blow away any other phone's camera that I've seen. However, without some good apps a camera on a phone is still kind of a stand alone camera. A couple of my favorites are listed below.

Instagram

Most posts I've seen from photographers on blogs and forums decry how horrible Instagram is for photography. I disagree. I think that anything that helps the masses easily create more beautiful photographs is a boon to photography as a whole. I'd rather look at a thousand Instagram photos than 1 old school polaroid of a christmas around my parent's house.

Hipster

The great thing about Hipster is that it forces you to crop your photos in ways you might not have originally thought about. I like the ability of sharing a location or activity that I'm involved in without having to type a long post about how fun it is. "Here I am, I'm cool"

DerManDar

This has to be one of the best apps for the camera that I've ever used. It creates amazing panoramas using the standard camera on the iPhone and then stitches together the photos extremely fast while giving you the ability to upload to FaceBook and Twitter and a few others. Crazy Awesome!

Tiny Review

This is a new app on the scene but I'm loving its potential. You take a pic, throw in a couple of lines of wittiness, then upload. It allows you to review places and read reviews of others. Its artistic and fun to use.

FilterStorm

This is my go to app for editing photos on the iPhone. Its got everything from layers to levels and everything in between all wrapped up in an easy to use package. If you've ever done any serious photo editing this program will make you feel right at home.

College For Free!

justin — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 23:55:54 +0000

Let me premise this post by saying that I am part of the 99%. I don't mean the 99% protesting and getting tazed right now. I mean the 99% of college graduates that regretted ever paying for college. I learned far more at my jobs, on my own, and on the internet than I ever learned in college. Unless your going to be a doctor, lawyer, or the president I'm thinking you should read below.

In today's highly connected world its easier than ever to get a free education! Major colleges give free classes, podcasts, videos, audio, slideshows, lecture notes, tests, and so on. If you can use the internet, you can get learned. Below I have some of the best ways to get a free education, but remember this is by no means a definitive list. Not even close.

Open CourseWare

Open Courseware is a new framework of thinking. Rather than colleges releasing knowledge only to those who can afford the education some are partnering with OCW to give it away for free. Click the link here to search their huge database of courses. Below you can see some examples of who's participating and what they have to offer.

MIT Open Courseware with over 2000 courses with topics in Astronautics to Foreign Languages.

MIT Open Courseware In Espanol! A lot of the above courses in Spanish.

Open Learning Initiative with only 11 courses, but one of them is learning French.

Tufts Open Courseware with tons of content from medical to dental to veterinarian classes.

Berkley WebCasts.....Thats right, friggin Berkley.

Utah State Open Courseware covers the gambit from anthropology to Physics.

Johns Hopkins OCW...the same people who teach brain surgery are now offering online courses.

UMass OCW...Another top rate university helping out the poor masses.

University of California with a ton of courses including some in Spanish and Portuguese.

Notre Dame brought you a deformed hunchback then Rudy and now Open Courseware!

Awesome Spots on the Web

What's your passion? What do you want to find? The internet is not just for porn. Its chock full of educational content. You just have to know where to find it. Great thing is, its not that difficult. If you can use a search engine, you'll do just fine. For example:

Bing It...Ok sounds lame, but a simple search like "free college courses" brings up a ton of results and at least one or two are bound to not be related to porn.

YouTube might be the place where you waste hours of your life watching kittens, but given the right search terms your going to find an immense number of kitten free instructional videos.

BBC Languages...From the same people who brought you Benny Hill are courses in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Chinese, and other languages.

ASL Courses for all your sign languages courses!

Draw Space...Can't draw? The hell? These courses will take you from square one to Da Vinci!

iTunes University

iTunes isn't only a place to find your latest jam or to find the newest episode of Dexter. Its also one of the biggest and most organized locations on the interewebs where you can find educational podcasts, videos, lectures, and content. You can find out some here, but as an example you could learn to program iOS apps with these three Courses from Stanford Univeristy, Programming Methodology, Programming Abstractions, and iPad and iPhone Application Development.

Once again, these are just a couple of snippets. Enjoy and here's to your future!

Halloween Building

justin — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 03:35:10 +0000

This upcoming Halloween the company I work for is throwing a haunted house for all of the company employee's kids. There will be all sorts of activities as the organizers and employees have donated plenty of money, time, and creativity to make it an awesome day for the kids. My department is doing a few things including a room set aside with a Green Screen to take pix of kids. I had to put together a background for the green screen and came up with this little gem. It has a few dozen layers and uses lots of images and brushes from all over the internet. We'll br printing up 4x6 images to give the parents to take home with them. Should be fun!

Intaglio Sketchpad

justin — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 16:50:40 +0000

I wanted to see how creating vectors on the iPad would be so bought a few apps, one of which is Intaglio Sketchpad. It's pretty easy to use and in just a few minutes I was able to throw together this simple vector piece using basic shapes. The only annoyance I found was the shadows could only go one way. After I finished this piece an update popped up fixing exactly that issue so actually I'm digging the app. I'll do something a bit more elaborate next week at night while I'm in Disney. Enjoy

Bike Portrait

justin — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 16:46:33 +0000

Its not exactly a photo, but its not really a movie either. Its a GIF file. However, this isn't your dad's GIF. This is artistic! This is my first attempt at what is becoming known as a Cinemagraph. I honestly think I'll be spending quite a bit of time working on this type of art. In order to do it you have to set up a shot like you would with a normal portrait. The idea of the setup is to chose something that is interesting in its movement, but only takes up a small part of the shot. Then you film it with a video camera. Using some fancy mumbo jumbo in either Photoshop or Gimp you then turn this bad boy into a GIF. I've got the one here compressed from a starting point of about 300 MB's down to 1.8 MB's. The trickiest 2 parts for me were color (GIF's can only use 256 colors versus the millions that are in our own world) and the arm placement. I did the best I could with the arm, but I'll work on my posing a bit more next time. (click on the image below to view the full size)

New Orleans Photography

justin — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 16:39:59 +0000

So a bit of backstory here. New Orleans was always a place for my ex and I. I decided it was time to turn it into my own place with new memories. I went with my friend Dani and we had ourselves a little road trip. It started out well and on our first day we went to the A Gallery in the French Quarter. At the A Gallery I came to fully appreciate the great masters of photography. I nearly cried it was so beautiful. Dani got to see the work of a photographer that started it all for her. She did cry. It was special for both of us for different reasons. For Dani it was a dream come true to see something she'd always wanted. For me it was an awakening. I've done photography for years, but until that moment I was not a photographer. Every day going forward I will strive to be one. I will strive to give the art the justice it deserves.

After the gallery we retired to the hotel where we rested a bit. I took some photos of Dani which I think came out great. She's a goof so it made my job easy. Went out for dinner with some friends and thats when it turned bad for me. I rolled my ankle on Bourbon St before I even had a drink to blame it on. I spent the next half day in bed miserable and in pain. Dani was a good friend and went out to get me ice, a brace, and helped get me around until I could hobble enough to get around on my own. We then hit up the Aquarium of the Americas, got dinner with some friends again and then retired to The Blacksmith Bar in the French Quater.

The next day we found some amazing new restaurants outside of the French Quarter. On that note, if your ever in New Orleans, do yourself a favor and get out of the French Quater. Go up Canal and hit the Eco Cafe. Then to see some amazing areas, take Canal to City Park drive and hang a right. Follow it to the amazing park, art museum, and beautiful neighborhoods surrounding the area. Not to mention the cemeteries out that way as well as the Katrina Unknown victims memorial. Regardless of the ankle problem it was a great mini trip and accomplished just what I wanted, new memories. And now some pix!

Since I'm a portrait photographer by trade most of the images are portraits of Dani, myself and friends, but there are a few non portraits. Follow the link here to view them: New Orleans Photography

Gallery Night Pensacola

justin — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 16:35:24 +0000

So yesterday was Gallery Night in Pensacola. I met up with a few friends and more along the way and started snapping. If you are one of the people I snapped pix of you can get your copy of a smaller version here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jic-designs/sets/72157625932360264/

Or you can email me if you want a higher resolution version. I'll email back the copy to you. My contact info is here on the site. Either way, enjoy everyone!

Homemade Business Cards

justin — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 16:29:16 +0000

Recently I realized I had no business cards. I also realized that I didn't really want standard business cards. In my opinion most business cards are easily forgotten and tossed away. This does no good for the designer, the card originator, the recipient, or the environment. However, if a card has a use other than advertising a person's contact info then it just might fly. I though long and hard about what would be the perfect card for me. My target audience are small business owners, most of which are not IT's for companies. It struck me that my name, Justin Case, which inspired my design company name, JIC designs, would serve the perfect inspiration for my new cards. The idea being that "just in case you need this card its here."

From there I had to find something that people who are not tech savvy need in front of a computer that will help them while keeping my card in their possession longer than a standard card. I remembered that I typically tape things to my monitors with shortcuts and reminders. I also remembered that helping my mother and ex mother in law, neither knew things like how to copy or paste without doing it the long way. This morphed into my new cards, the keyboard shortcut business cards.

Next I had to decide on how to make them usable as a reminder. A business card fits in the pocket, but a reminder will have a way to stand up or be taped to a monitor. I played with the double sided tape idea, but didn't like the look of it. Then I tried out a perforating blade I had and found that a self standing card would be the perfect idea. Lastly, I put my new logo on the back of the business cards and to add a bit of color to it I decided to paint a small bit on each card.

I got the card stock from Rebinder as they offer recycled paper supplies at a great price. The card stock is very thick, very distinctive, and recycled to boot. It also doesn't hurt that for 17 bucks you get 250 sheets, enough for 2,500 standard sized business cards. I designed the cards in GIMP, imported into Open Office and used a business card template. Once printed I cut them each with a small paper cutter and then ran a small perforator over each corner. Lastly I painted the back of each card with a small bit of paint.

Enjoy and feel free to ask questions if you have them!

Children’s Photography

justin — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 16:19:21 +0000

This summer I travelled up to Nebraska to visit my family and while there I did a quick mini Photography shoot for my brother. His two kids are adorable and I photographed them on his farm (although he doesn't farm). We only had a short time since we had other plans but the portrait session turned out well. His kids really opened up once we got them some keys to throw around at us. Try dodging keys while photographing, its a feat! Little Leilu is one of the smartest and most adorable girls ever. Her only problem was that when a camera goes on in front of her, she puts on the cheesy smile. Since I am a photojournalistic photographer I had to work quite a bit to capture those moments when she wasn't putting on the cheese. She's got such a great smile when she relaxes though. Little tony just woke up from his morning slumber so was a bit fussy, but as soon as the keys came out he was all smiles. He also loved getting photographed on the hammock. His little eyes lit up! I'm so glad I got the opportunity to share this day with them.

New Brand Image

justin — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 16:24:13 +0000

Heather, from Captured Art Photography, decided it was time to change her brand image for her pensacola wedding photography site. She has wanted to go with something more edgy for quite some time. Her style of photography allows for contemporary photography but she prefers to work in more modern styles. The website we had before was set in Flash, was difficult to update, had poor SEO, and didn’t really match what type of brand image she is going for now.

So the new site is based upon WordPress, offers lots of flexibility in redesign, and has great SEO potential, and best of all the new brand image perfectly matches Heather.