Rex

This is my girlfriend's neighbor Rex. He lives in a garage and recycles lawn mowers for his only source of income. Rex makes around $6000 a year. He knows everything there is to know about his craft and even showed me the "Ferrari" of lawn mowers. He also has a large, beautiful garden he maintains. Rex (like most interesting subjects) is a talker. I spent about 2 hours talking with (listening to) him. He struck me as one of those insane genius types. He talked about anything from lawn mower mechanics to Egyptian lore. Crazy or not Rex was fun to listen to and made for great frames.

Scarecrow Inked REMOVED

This post used to contain a piece of digital art I made. It was a poor copy of the scarecrow from Skottie Young’s oz comics. I removed it because I realized that it was offensive. It was wrong of me to replicate his art, tag his name in it, and act like it was something special I did. I am a big fan of Skottie Young’s work and it made me a little sick to imagine he may have seen this image, if so, I’m sorry. I was naive at the time I posted it.

Oodles of doodles

This is my most recent drawing, and by far my favorite so far. It's the Scarecrow from Skottie Young's Wonderful Wizard of Oz comic books.

I'm not the most educated artist and sketching has only recently become a bigger hobby of mine, and it's all thanks to Skottie Young. I had the fortunate opportunity to meet him and Eric Shanower (writer of the Oz books) last October on a photo assignment. Wamego KS was having their annual Oztoberfest and had Skottie and Eric as guests for the festivities. Now having lived in Kansas my entire life I am kinda burnt out on the Wizard of Oz. It seems like the first thing anyone I meet from outside of Kansas does once they find out where I'm from is make some kind of Wizard of Oz reference. So naturally I already had little interest in working this assignment. When I found where I needed to be there were two guys sitting at a table chatting, various Oz books on a table at the side, and an elderly couple looking at the pictures on the wall. Thinking I was in the wrong place I found an employee working there and asked if I was in the right place. She informed me I was and assured me the two gentlemen at the table were who I was there for. In my head I'm thinking "There is nobody here to see these guys, they're obviously uninteresting." If I was going to be sent out of town for some lame shoot (ESPECIALLY AN OZ RELATED ONE!) I was not about to put much effort into my work, so I conceded to shooting quickly and leaving. Once I was about to bounce a couple showed up to see Skottie and Eric, so I figured "Ok, I'll shoot this a little longer because having at least a couple of other people in the my frames will be way better and I can still shoot quickly and roll out." Skottie ended up doing a sketch of the scarecrow for the guy and I was amazed. I was fascinated with how quickly he drew it and how cool it looked. After the couple left I spoke with Skottie and Eric for a little while and they signed a little flyer for me to bring back to my editor and I left. Once I was back in town I looked Skottie up because I was intrigued. Long story short, I was inspired and began doodling in my classes and at work. I wish I could redo my meeting with Skottie now that I know more about who he is. I collected a few of those scrap drawings and am including them below. The first group are all my versions of some of Skottie's drawings.

Dorothy from the Oz books.


Human Torch from fantastic four (cut off because it was drawn on a paper for work.)


Gambit from X-Men.


Tin Man from the Oz books.

The rest are random, most based on pictures I found online but a few of my own ideas.

Assassin's Creed 2.


Boy.


Captain America.


Girl.


Hood.


Spawn.


Wolverine.

Cochlear Controversy

This is an illustration I did for a piece on the controversy of cochlear implants. Took me between 2 and 3 hours to do total, I wish I would have had a little more time to work on it but I'm pretty glad with how it turned out.

Kansas Weather

It had been storming pretty consistently this week in Manhattan. Here are some of my favorite shots from the heaviest part of the weather.


This was probably my favorite frame from this storm. Anyone who knows me knows I have a strong attraction to dead tree silhouettes against interesting skies. This living tree with dead branches kept my eye fascinated.


Just a cool frame showing how intense this storm was. It was very dark on campus.


While shooting the storm I ran into my friend Rick (see post below, three down).


While cutting through a building to keep my camera from getting too wet I saw this wet chain through this long skinny window. So I waited for someone to walk by to give it another interesting element. I actually had to wait a while.


This is one reason I love my campus grounds in the Summer time. Everything is so colorful and beautiful.


I came home and the sun came out, but it was STILL pouring rain! Made for an interesting frame.

Big 12 Vacancy

This is the final edit of my Big XII neon sign illustration. I went out in downtown Manhattan to find a brick wall that would look good for this package. I tweaked my original edit to have an illuminated X because at this time there are only officially two teams leaving the conference. I also reduced the illuminating features on the unlit part of the sign (thanks for the critique Jon). The paper didn't end up using this edit but I really wanted to see how it would have looked so I redesigned the front page with my illustration instead.

What the paper had...


What they could have had...


If you want to read more on this here is a link to the story:
http://www.kstatecollegian.com/news/texas-declines-pac-10-offer-league-remains-with-10-members-1.2274786

If you are interested in trying this tutorial here is a link to the one I followed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGDkai7RTC8

***Note: I tried to get the links as ACTUAL links but for some reason I couldn't get them to work, if I figure it out I will redo them.

Tree top tilt shot

While skating around campus I noticed these kids playing frisbe. There was a tree near by I had climbed the day before to take some self portraits so I thought it would be cool to grab my makeshift tilt-shift lens and climb up to see what I could get.

My name is Rick

This is Rick Violette. He is a retired power plant worker who hangs out on the K-State campus to pick up his paper. I first thought it was because he enjoyed campus but when I asked him he didn't respond how I expected him to. He basically said he came to campus because he knew a few people that worked there, so I assumed he came to visit with them, yet again I assumed wrong. Rick told me even though he knows them he doesn't come to visit them. He went on to say he didn't even know why he even stayed in town. After concluding he was just a grumpy old man who came to campus because he had nothing better to do we began chatting. Rick had plenty of stories to share with me about his life including his time in the marines, his childhood neighbors, his family, the secret to gambling on dog races, and of course baseball (the topic every old man has a story or two to tell). I soon lost track of time in my conversation with him and eventually realized we had been talking for an hour and a half. Having gotten to know Rick for that extra time I decided my conclusion was not accurate, but I still can't say for sure what his reasons for hanging out on campus were. I finally OFFICIALLY concluded I have no idea why but Rick Violette is an interesting person and I regret my initial opinion of him.

Navi Jordan

This is an edit I did of one of my cousins that is a big Avatar fan. Thought it'd be fun to try to do.

Fire's Fickle Fury

This is a long exposure of a small fire we made while hanging out on the porch last night. I added a brightness contrast mask and a colorized saturation mask.

Kansan Lights

Last night we hung out on my porch as the sun went down and made the most beautiful colors in the sky. The only photo that I added some saturation to is the middle one of the power lines down the alley, and only a little since it was just a less interesting part of a very interesting sky.

Lieutenant Dan

I met and shot the actor Gary Senise down at Fort Riley. He was performing a USO concert with his band in honor of Children of the Military Month. He is a pretty chill guy, he even recognized a soldier he had met two years ago in Iraq at one of his older USO shows.

Happy Earth Day

This is an illustration I did for a story about earth day.

Up in smoke

I was riding around with a friend, Joel, shooting stuff for a PR assignment about irrigation and water stuff in the land North of Manhattan and came across this fire. I wanted to shoot it then I saw the guy starting the fire and HAD to shoot it. The flames were SO HOT! At one point a turkey flew out of the flames, sadly I didn't have my telephoto handy, but this shot came out so well I don't mind.

Star trails by fire light

Another photographer, Sara, and I went cruising around looking for a place to do star trails one night and once we got around the Tuttle Creek lake we noticed that on the other side of the lake there were prairie fires so we set ourselves up across the lake from them. We were worried that the fire might blow out the trails but wanted to give it a shot anyway and it ended up working out really well.

Blooming Darkness

All the blossom trees bloomed recently and this was just a beautiful shot, one of my favorites to this day. It didn't take long for the blossoms to fall off either so this was a one opportunity frame I am glad I found.

April Sky

Just some great frames of the sky just after sunset.

Denis' Lament

After K-State's loss to KU in the Championship game for the Big XII conference Denis Clemente walked back to the locker room with his jersey in his hand and his head hung low.

Jordy Nelson

For anyone that doesn't know, Jordy Nelson is a wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers. He used to play for K-State and I picked up a photo for a feature on him to go into the K-Stater magazine.

Hell hath no fury

This is an illustration I did as a secondary for a piece on the roommate from hell.