Jace & Talia

Jace and Talia are our good friends and neighbors and we all decided to go out and shoot some pictures on a Sunday evening with nothing to do. We just walked around Rexburg talking and whenever I saw a good location, we would just stop and take a few shots and move on. Talia is Canadian and Jace is from California and they have been married a few months but more photographs can't hurt right.

Couple Self Portraits

My wife and I were thinking that we don't have any recent professional  photographs of us since our wedding and so we wanted to hire a local photographer to take some shots. After we realized that we weren't exactly prepared to spend a decent $350 on a basic package deal, I just decided to shoot them myself. So we went to Idaho Falls, bought some new clothes and came home and shot some amateur photos of ourselves. We figured that they may not look amazing, but at least we will be able to eat for the next 6 months with the money we saved.

Rexburg Unplugged

These are some of the latest designs I have made for Rexburg Unplugged. The top is designed for a billboard and the bottom is for a Kiosk. There is actually a them of posters for the Kiosks that are still in the process of being created, but there will be 3 and possibly 4 versions of the wire and plug. One will be a guitar, the other an ice cream cone, a shopping bag/gift box and maybe something else. The point is to promote the businesses in the community by creating an event where all of the new students can come and see what Rexburg has to offer.

Fingers

Each letter was created using a scan of my fingers! The hardest letter was the Q. My favorite is the U for some reason.

Paul Cardall Event Poster

Paul Cardall came to BYU-Idaho to perform some of his latest music and this poster was to highlight the event. He was born with heart problems and wasn't given much hope to live, but did. He later was diagnosed with another heart problem and was given a year to live. He created a blog which gathered over 250,000 followers and after 385 days on the transplant list, doctors found a heart and performed a life saving operation to which he dedicates his "New Life" to writing great music.

Kyle and Claire's wedding

Kyle and Claire were married in the Oquirrh Mountain Temple in Utah and I shot a few of their pictures. They were so fun to shoot and they were always so spontaneous as you can tell in this last pic. I couldn't resist and so I threw in a little flavor of my own. They just broke out into this pose right in front of the temple and later I thought it looked like a great idea.

Self Portrait in Type

Typography or the art of letterforms, reveals and communicates personalities through its design. Typefaces have personalities and communicated differently when they are grouped with other typefaces. My goal was to best represent myself and my personality with the typefaces in my design. I was allowed 2 typefaces, one of which was permitted to be hand-rendered. In this design, the structure is a three dimensional styrofoam cube made of the letters in my name, M-I-K-E. Each letter was custom designed to fit into a 12" grid making each letter a side of the cube. The second typeface used was clarendon, replacing my previous decision of rockwell. Clarendon won out Rockwell because it had a spontaneous characteristic to the rounded terminals. The content that clarendon represented was recent events of my life that make me who I am. M-Marriage and Mission. I-Internship at Stuarts Media. K-Knowledge at BYU-Idaho. E-Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Many other factors were considered such as color, random capitals to represent my spontaneity, and corner suspension to create a dynamic visual.

Fire Font

This is a type project that I had a year ago where we were instructed to design a typeface using abstract materials and different mediums. I cut the letters out of styrofoam using a CAD Hotwire program and covered them with rubber cement. I lit them up and watched them burn. I had to photograph them rapidly to get the right shot of fire per letter. Each letter was ignited and shot individually then compiled in photoshop.

Logo Design

JR Briscoe is a Journalist and Photographer who needed a classy logo to represent his work. I previously designed a logo for his résumé which was a more modern look with slab serifs and inlaid typography. He came wanting an new direction for his personal identity and this was the final product.

Exhibit Design

This exhibit was designed for the Smithsonian Museum. The layout was designed on a CAD Hotwire program by myself and then cut out of styrofoam. Contoured walls give to the illusion of speed and invoke curiosity within the viewer because the curved wall appears to continue. The content and concept is a brief history on how supercars came to be. The center circle is the origin with the Model-T, it spans out to Hot Rods, Classics, Muscle Cars and reaches the climax at Supercars. The platform is illuminated to provide interest and mood for the viewers as well as relate to chassis lights underneath high end cars.

Sculpting Jennie and Lizzie

These are some of the projects I have been finishing. The top two sculptures are of my wife Jennie and a girl named Lizzie. They were two of my live models and patiently sat still for hours while I stared at their faces. I would have felt a little self conscious. This last sculpture is an abstract attempt where I chiseled away plaster and vermiculite from a block that I cast. It is roughly the size of a volleyball and weighs about the same.

HDR Timpanogos Temple

So I was invited to my friends, Jon and Alicia's wedding today and arrived 30 minutes early. I spent the night at my grandparents with my cousin and drove up early so that I wasn't late, so I decided to get the camera gear out of the back seat and shoot a couple HDR shots of the Timpanogos temple while I waited for my wife to show up. I had been trying to shoot the temple a couple of times previously during the week, but I missed the perfect light by minutes each time. Today it was shot in the morning around 10:30, and apparently a huge blizzard is blowing through Utah tonight, so I should be glad I got these shots while the weather held out.

Extreme Home Makeover - Pocatello Idaho

This is the Marshall Sprier house located in Pocatello that my wife and I were able to be a part of this summer. I created this 3D mural that covered 3 walls of a room made for two 9 year old twin girls. The murals are cut from an industrial styrofoam cutting machine hooked up to a cad program. I custom designed and cut every piece, delivered it to Rhino Linings to get it sprayed with the truck bed liner to protect the foam, and painted it. A team of 4 of us installed it in a few hours. The flowers are on wooden dowels and are removable to accommodate for moving furniture. 

This is another part of the project we designed but I was not the original designer. I contributed in the creative design process as well as helping to install the bed and help build, but I was not the lead designer. The bed is about 5 feet high with an arch 12 feet high inspired by delicate arch in utah. The bed sits hidden in the top layer of "rock" and the entire bed is covered in spray cement. 

Work was tough but the free massages and foot rubs were worth the back to back  all-nighters we pulled in 4 days. It was so nice to have the projects installed. When the family finally showed up, about 80 people were still inside decorating the entire house and touching up paint scuffs on walls.

The bus showed up, we yelled it to move and saw the family's surprised and grateful look. We felt like the proper celebration would be to go home and sleep after a long week of work.

Photoshop Painting of Tina

No, I did not just apply a filter. My class was assigned to create a painting in CS5 using the paint mixer brush and this took about 3 hours. Oh, by the way, I didn't have a painting tablet to work with. I did it all too painfully with a mouse. Ugh, but it turned out ok. Some tricks from Lynda.com tutorials helped to to emboss the paint to create more depth. This was a pretty fun assignment.

Boogie Man - The Nightmare Before Christmas

My wife and I carved out our monster pumpkin tonight. It weighs 90 lbs and 3-4 inches thick. We thought that the Boogie Man was suitable for such a big pumpkin. Our apartment complex is having a contest and so far we are only the 2nd couple in our building to carve a pumpkin. Maybe we'll win!

What weighs more, my wife or the pumpkin?!?

Any guesses as to which one of these two beauties weighs more?!? My wife only has it beat by a little. This pumpkin weighs 90 lbs!!! Last night my wife wanted to go get a pumpkin together but Albertson's and Broulims were all out so we went home without a pumpkin. Today she talked me into going back to Albertson's to get a little wimpy pumpkin that they had in the corner and as we turned the corner, she saw the pumpkin truck delivering a brand new load of pumpkins and she was so excited! So we started looking and this monster was hanging out right in front and we snatched it right away. The truck driver and his mexican buddy's helped carry it to the car, but I had to carry it up 3 flights of stairs to our apartment! Happy Halloween every one!

Sewn on to Cord Binding

This is the latest addition to my library of hand bound books. This one is 2.75 inches by 4.25 inches as well. There are 13 signatures I believe of 3 folio's totaling 156 pages of Mohawk Superfine 100 lb paper. The signatures are sewn onto chords, or a twine-like rope and then covered in leather. It looks real professional and feels great to hold. The inside cover pages are made up of orange handmade lokta paper which adds some character to the book. The book took about 4 hours to make.