Recently in Observations Category
Over the past few weeks millions of baseball fans in the tri-state area and beyond have been following negotiations between two of the most recognizable brands in the US, the New York Yankees and regular-season superstar, Alex Rodriguez (a.k.a A-Rod).
During the World Series A-Rod announced he was opting out of his contract with the Yankees to persue the free-agent market, but once he saw that no one else could really afford him (or was big enough for him), he went back to the Yankees sans agent to work out a deal. There was much debate among the fans and press as to whether or not the Yankees should take him back or who needed whom more.
In my mind there was no debate, the Yankees were definitely going to take him back because they needed him just as much as he needed them, which is more than they need a World Series championship.
Lately news has been trickling in from the microstock sites about single image sales in the thousands of dollars. Dreamstime last month sold rights to one if its images for $5,100, and Stockxpert only a couple weeks ago had a $10,000 sale.
On the surface, news of this nature is good for energizing microstock contributors, but what can these sales tell us about the microstock industry overall?
As boring big-box McMansions continue to litter the landscape, it's refreshing to read about architects who have started organizations to retard this trend.
A recent article in the New Haven Register spotlights Madison-CT architect Duo Dickinson who with two colleagues founded the Congress of Residential Architecture (CORA), an organziation whose mission is to educate home buyers on home design and construction and donate time to social causes in an effort to improve their communities.
It's always a treat to discover unique businesses people create out of their passions. In the following case, a couple's love of design, art, and the environment has kept over 15 tons of vinyl out of landfills.
The Spring 2007 issue of Subaru's Drive magazine spotlights Subaru owners Nora and Nicolas Weiser of Denver, CO. The couple is founder of BetterWall, a company that rescues and sells museum exhibit street banners.
At no cost to the museums, the Weisers take exhibit banners and sell them to the public. A portion of the revenue then goes back to the museums from where the banners came.
And who buys these banners? According to Nicolas in the article, people use these banners as display pieces in the their homes.
You can read the full story at Subaru's Drive magazine website.
As most of you know by now I've moved over to the images side of the business doing community development for our micropayment stock site, Stockxpert.com.
This week Stockxpert exhibited at its first tradeshow—Photoshop World in Boston. This was also my first time as an exhibitor, and what a great experience it was!
Citroen Saxo (1996-2003)
Many parellels exist between music and visual design, whether it be in the area of theory, process, history, or even performance. There are, however, times when the two disciplines intersect.
After reading the book "The Devil's Horn", in which author Michael Segell chronicles the dynamic history of the saxophone, I can understand why the instrument has become a ubiquitous visual icon in print advertising and branding across Western Europe over the past 50 years.
You see it all over the graphics.com network, and if you surf other Jupitermedia sites, you'll see it there too. We've been using the symbol for quite a while now, but—I'm slightly embarrassed to say—it wasn't until it popped up on other sites (including one of the preeminent design blogs) did I wonder what the heck it is?
Emotions ran high, tears shed, laughter ensued. We all hugged and patted each other on the back; thanked all the volunteers, of course. The candidate whose campaign my wife and I helped manage won her re-election bid for CT state representative, and it was time to party. A reporter and photojournalist showed up to cover the event.
Of course, being a student of photography myself, I almost always had my eye, at least peripherally, on the young budding photojournalist hired to capture the mood of the evening. Unfortunately, I knew she missed much of the occasion.
I'm from Connecticut. I live in Connecticut, so I've been paying close attention to the internationally publicized race between incumbent Senator Joseph Lieberman and new Democratic challenger Ned Lamont.
The latest campaign faux pas to reach the press and blogs concerns the use of soothing stock footage in a new Lieberman ad.
Perusing many of the online galleries over the past year or so, I've noticed an increasing amount of eye-popping landscape imagery. The rich tones, high saturation levels, and vast range of highlights and shadow areas all indicated to me that these must be paintings, but what were they doing in photo galleries?
Being new to photography, I was shocked to discover that these were in fact photo-based images. But how could that be?!
