keep eatin' the paint chips kiddo :: 03.21.08

so a good chunk of my family is out here right now for some family stuff thats goin on this weekend. so what better to do than waste the day away skiing some groomers at dvr? combine that with the new fx35 that showed up this week and one mentally challenged little brother and you'll get a solid post for your blog.

another new toy :: 03.13.08

i'm a huge fan of toys, have been all my life. and despite having worked at a camera store for the better part of a decade, i have never owned a digital camera. but when i saw this sexy piece of foreign-made beauty, i had to have it. to most people i might as well write this next bit in esperonto, but to those who speak my language, check this out. this little beauty sports a 25mm leica f2.8 lens, a 10.1 mp ccd, optical image stabilization and it shoots its video in hd at 720p! (note: the photo retouched into the rear-view was shot on a piece of trash posing as a digital camera, which i have since returned.)

workin' hard or hardly workin' ? :: 03.06.08

today was a good day. one of our clients, deer valley resort, is having us do some local print ads and we needed to get a few shots for reference. so we did what any self-respecting creatives would do. we took advantage of the situation with a half-day of skiing. above and left you are seeing me in my 176mm Rossi Blings. and above and right is one of the wizards behind struck's proverbial curtain, mark rawlins.

wow :: 02.27.08

even those who know me well might not know that i have a quiet obsession with industrial design. as a kid i was always taking things apart, fixing stuff and trying to make things better. and one of my favorite affairs i commit on my advertising career is to regularly visit design boom. design boom is a site that features all sorts of cool id goodies. i've found a ton of brilliant pieces on this site like this and this and this. tonight i was perusing the shortlist from the competition "dining in 2015". the above bit of id inspiration is from the mind of uk product designer, demelza hill. keep an eye out on the site, it's full of little gems like demelza's above work.

ah the holga :: 02.20.08

i was getting an estimate together this evening for a freelance project and, upon searching for an old layout, I found the above shot. this shot was taken in the rural outskirts of my old stomping ground. coincidentally, i bought two rolls of slide film while out to lunch today for this awesome treasure-of-a-creative-tool also known as the holga. it's a cheap (about $20) plastic-bodied, plastic-lensed medium format camera. follow this link to a holga gallery and see for yourself the amazement that awaits...

contributing to ed :: 02.11.08

so there's this dude, ed mcculloch. struck met ed one day when he came in and showed his wonderful book. he's super-talented, as noted in the ever-awkward struck christmas card he helped us out with. ed has a blog that discusses his conquests and consequences in the business of being a world-class photographer (my words, not his) and has asked me to contribute once a month as a guest blogger. so to recap, ed rocks, hire him and check out his work and his blog.

9' in 7 days :: 02.03.08

this site is intended to showcase the work i do, but let me tell ya somethin', mother nature has been working salt lake city. what we have here is me smack dab in the middle of what i've been told is a "10-year winter" – insert Point Break reference here. me and some dudes went to brighton this weekend only to find 30"+ of overnight pow, which was part of a pounding that resulted in just over nine feet of snow in a single week.

blk all up in cmyk :: 01.06.08

holy freakin' berjeezeers, the art director wrote an article! to back up a little bit, this spring i moved to utah to work for struck. struck is my second position out of school so needless to say i learned quite a bit on my little adventure. cmyk was pickin' up what i was puttin' down and they were even so gracious as to include a photo of yours truly with a small bio and not one, not two, but three pieces from my book to include with the write up. the mag is published quarterly, so you've got three months to check it out on a news stand near you, or you can snag the pdf.

fat-flake-freakin' awesome :: 11.01.07

you can see the final work here in my portfolio section, but what you don't get is the full story of how your's truly and fellow struck art director mark rawlins were up until 4:30 pulling screens for these bad boys. they turned out awesome and to be honest, most of the work was done by the 9-and-one-half-fingered-wonder, dave riley. i hear he's the best screen-puller in slc.

cs monitor :: 10.15.07

so the lush project that was finished a few months ago has been pretty popular. it has been featured on dozens of creative web sites and will be recognized in some design magazines in the coming months. in addition to all of this awesome coverage the piece got, we were contacted by boston-based national newspaper, the cs monitor. the monitor was doing a story about "the power of paper rectangles". both myself and my younger brother jonathan, who owns lush lawn and property, were quoted in the piece.

skydiving :: 09.22.07

there were actually supposed to be almost a dozen of us for this adventure, but several struckers decided to be lame. but lameness aside, nick driggs and me weren't deterred. we rocked 13,500 feet of flight time to be exact. this is my second time skydiving and i think i'm officially addicted.

b rolls with the b-roll:: 09.10.07

at struck, one of our larger clients is the utah office of tourism. we've done some good work for these cats, but a huge project this and every summer is their b-roll shoot (the footage that goes at the end of a spot). nick driggs handled most of this stuff, but i did get to go out on the road to the bonneville salt flats, the utah state fair and down to the moab music festival. above are a few shots i took while the rest of the crew was busy working.

us olympic training park :: 08.12.07

i came to utah for three reasons; be closer to my family, do good work and get down with the outdoors. so here we have the us olympic park in park city, ut. me and my buddy jon minori paid a visit to the aerial waterpark and caught more air time than that 70’s show. to be honest, it scared the crap out of me, but it sure was fun. jon was kept busy with rodeo-720-double-grabs most of the afternoon, while my weapon of choice were some pretty lofty back layouts. i even tried a double back, succeeding more at busting my lip open than two full rotations. Perfect training for the insanity that will be had this winter.

taking it in :: 07.28.07

jon and i went to college together in pittsburgh and both started our careers at the 'burgh's creative hotspot, blattner brunner. jon is relatively new to the area, so i figured we should take advantage of this awesome summer day by mountain biking up at deer valley resort. the day was awesome and we managed to come back to the valley unharmed.

what the struck? :: 05.17.07

i've been on the move. that's right friends and family, i am now in cahoots with struck creative in salt lake city. struck rocking hard is just the beginning, their ad department is run by steve driggs. steve headed up the citi account at fallon and has won practically every award possible in this industry including a freakin' emmy. steve, please teach me how to take over the world.