I went to Michaels, and was disappointed to find out that the next size up of foam core was extremely large, and I had to get multiple sheets of it, so I ended up spending quite a bit of money on the the boards.

Nothing actually changed in the images, we just decided to make it larger, and do a better job of cutting out and gluing the pieces together. It took me two days to cut out, glue, and package the board up. Friday night, I glued the images to the board (I found that if you spray both surfaces and allow them to dry, they stick better). This took quite a bit of time, as we had to be careful to not ruin any of the images.

The next step was to cut out the individual pieces. I actually tried a bandsaw, but ended up not using it, as a surgical scalpel allowed me to be more precise.

Finally, we packaged up the board in multiple protective layers, to prevent it from being crushed in transit to Missouri. I used two bed sheets, and tons of corrugated cardboard to create the box.

Anyway, the promotional bulletin board is most likely in Lewiston, Idaho right now, getting ready to be shipped off in a few weeks.

–Scott

This past week, we were ordered to create a masterpiece movie poster for a hypothetical movie called “The Student.” Although the stated goal was to inspire creativity into our projects, I think Twitchell’s real goal was to get free graphic design for his upcoming blockbuster of the same name.

Anyway, about my poster… the design process consisted of every other design project I have ever done: creating a canvas with the correct dimensions (18×24 @ 300dpi). After that, I went to look for inspiration at some of the links provided. I saw this tutorial for a “Trendy Typographic Poster Design“. After seeing this, I started creating text around the canvas with the word “STUDENT” many times, at 45° angles, in different sizes. After creating that, I took an old image and placed it behind the 45 text layers and did 3 gaussian blurs with a 255px radius. Then I cloned out most of the overly bright areas of the blur, then blurred it again. After that, I desaturated the image to create this:

At the time, I wasn’t sure whether or not I wanted to create a documentary, or a horror movie. I kinda decided to go with an ominous-documentary. I added a texture, a free one found on Flickr, of concrete to give it a more distressed look. I also changed the blend mode of the text group to soft light, this made it so that the text fit in with the background.

The next part that I added was text at the bottom. First, I added a semi-transparent black rectangle at the bottom half of the canvas. From there, I added the title, and other text relating to the movie. On the main title, I duplicated the text layer, rasterized it, and added a mild motion blur to give effect to the text, and make it stand out. I then turned down the opacity of the blur to make it less prominent. The credits, which use the font “SF Movie Poster“, at the bottom read:

SCOTT STURGES PICTURES, IN ASSOCIATION WITH STURGES PHOTOGRAPHY, PRESENTS THE FILM “THE STUDENT” FEATURING STEPHEN STURGES AND BRANDON DESIMONE. WITH CASTING BY BRUCE TWITCHELL. DIRECTED BY SCOTT STURGES VISIT WWW.STURGESPHOTO.COM FOR DETAILS.

I also added a MPAA rating. I found this vector image on Wikipedia, and it is under the GPL license. I converted the SVG to a raster format with Inkscape, and imported it into the poster. Lastly, I signed my image with my fancy new Wacom tablet.

The last part of the design was to shoot the photo to go in the main portion of the poster. I knew that I wanted to have an image of a student with books scattered around them, doing something relating to the subject of the photo.

I went downtown with Stephen, went to a narrow alley way, in a slightly shady area of town, with many of my school books and strobes. Stephen had some coffee with him, so I felt that it defined his character. I scattered my books around him, and behind him. I placed a flash in front of him, as I was shooting into the sun, and wanted to make sure that his face was visible.

I took several images from behind, however, after looking at them, I decided that I like the ones from this angle better. So I fired off quite a few, and settled on this one. When I saw it on camera, I knew that this would be the best.

The process for processing this image involved processing the RAW image, doing a little sharpening, and finally working it into the image. I intentionally oversaturated and sharpened the image, as I feel that when it is printed, it would look best with green grass and blue skies. I really like how this image turned out, and Stephen actually wants it for his Facebook.

My inspiration for this poster came from a number of sources, as well as pure creativity from myself. I have already posted one link to the site where I got the idea to use diagonal text for the background, but I also a tutorial called “Create an Intense Movie Poster“. Although the connection is not necessarily there, this tutorial really got me rolling on the project. I do not think, however, that it has any actual influence on any of my current poster though. Finally, I have some obvious inspiration from every movie poster that I have seen in the last few years, as I don’t think I could have had a good idea of what a movie poster should look like without seeing some.

Below are the contact sheets for the images used for this poster, if you blow them up, you can see the different angles that I took photos from to try and get the final image.

Contact Sheet

Technical Information

• Camera: Canon 50D
• Lens: Canon 28-135mm (Just received back from Canon repair center!)
• Lighting: Canon 430EX triggered with Cybersync
• Shot in RAW, processed with Photoshop CS4

The past few weeks, I have been working on some senior portraits for some people. First off, I did some portraits for a friend around September, however, he came back to me and wanted some more prints, so I worked with him and his mom to get those ordered and processed adequately. It ended up taking quite a bit of time, getting all of the images processed to the right size, etc.

I also had another student come to me for senior portraits. Gabby wanted some new ones, because her other studio was too expensive to get graduation announcement photos, so she wanted different ones for those. So she had me take some for her. We went to Hayden Lake and got some great ones down by the water. We decided that since so many people go downtown for portraits, that we would try some other areas.

Out of the 7 final edits, the first two (above) are my favorites, but there are some others shown below.

The photography portion consisted of my 50D, and my 50mm f/1.8 (favorite lens). I brought along my flash, as the lighting really wasn’t prime, so I supplemented it with the flash. I think that with the flash, the lighting turned out great in the end.

In post processing, the editing consisted of importing to Photoshop (CS5 FTW), processing from RAW, and minimal editing. She complained that her old ones seemed over-edited, so I was sure to avoid that.

Finally, I have below the contact sheets with the images from the shoot.

In other news, I have downloaded a trial version of Photoshop CS5, and I used it for editing my photos for the last few weeks. Unfortunately, I have grown to like it too much, and will be sad to give it up. I don’t see myself upgrading from CS4 anytime soon, but it was fun to try out the newest version. Although there isn’t too much that I would use constantly, there are little differences around, such as the MiniBridge, which is actually quite useful. Another feature, that I haven’t used yet, but really want to, is the HDR Pro. I have seen videos, and really want to compare it to Photomatix.

Another thing that happened was that Sadii decided to give me her Wacom tablet, a Graphire4. I used this for the past week and have grown to love it quite a lot. There is something about writing with a pen, vs a mouse or trackpad that is fun. It also has a mouse that comes with it, so maybe I’ll start using a mouse more often.

Last year, I was conned by Mike Mattson into helping present a speech regarding a Promotional Bulletin Board at SkillsUSA State. Our team happened to get second place. We were slightly disappointed that we were unable to go to Nationals. But when we got back to school we had an email telling us that first had dropped out and we were being allowed to go to Nationals in their place to represent Idaho. We didn’t so so well, but I decided that the next year, we would do great… so this year, my brother, Stephen Sturges, and I were on a team to design a new one, and with the knowledge of last year, we created a masterpiece bulletin board and wrote a great speech that gave us First place at state, and qualified us to go to Nationals in Kansas City, Missouri.

If you have read my blog at all, you may have seen that I have been posting brief paragraphs saying that I have been working on this bulletin board… those were to simply let my teacher know that I have been working on the project, so that I could get a grade in the class. Well, now I am going to post the full process of designing the bulletin board.

The SkillsUSA theme for this year was “Connecting the Opportunities,” so we decided to design the board around that.

Planning

The first stage of development, we started sketching ideas in Photoshop to try and get an idea for the board. Below are some of the images to help give an idea of what some of these looked like.

Our first ideas included a road leading/connecting you to city, with a car representing SkillsUSA doing the connection… but we felt that this would be difficult to understand, so we scrapped that idea.

We had a few more ideas, but eventually settled on puzzle pieces that have been broken apart with each piece representing an opportunity that SkillsUSA has connected for the individual.

Design

After we decided on the puzzle, we worked on the design phase. First, I worked on making a background. I wanted to give the board a 3D look, as those seemed to win at nationals. After I did the background, I used Illustrator to create a vector map of Idaho, that way it could be resized unlimitedly.

I decided to use an American Flag in the background of each piece, as the colors of the flag also represent SkillsUSA…

Red and White: Represent the Individual States and Chapters

Blue: Represents the connection between the states and the chapters

Gold: Represents the individual – the most important part.

Then I worked on adding a header, and then integrating the state onto the board. I decided to add some “opportunity words” to the background, as I felt that those represented that SkillsUSA helps people, even when they don’t realize that they are (the Watermark was not included in the final, it is just there to protect my work).

Production

The final stage of making the board was to transfer it to foam core. First we printed 3 20×30 color prints of the board – One with the background, one with the black border, and one with the state.

We then proceeded to glue it to black foam core… this involved spraying the board with spray-on adhesive, then laying the photo on top.

After that, I began to cut out the individual pieces. The border was the easiest, as I just had to cut off white strips where the printer didn’t print. The background was slightly harder, as it has rounded corners. The state was insanely hard though. I used a surgical scalpel to cut around each puzzle piece and glue it with hot glue to the board in the right place. This took around 5 hours.

However, it was worth the work when I was done because it turned out great.

Binder and Speech

SkillsUSA Binder, ©SkillsUSA

The last parts of the project involved putting together a presentation binder, and a 3-5 minute speech.

The binder, shown to the left, included photos of the production, résumés from both chapter members (my brother and I), short essays about the value to the school of the board, and documented proof that we did the work. The proof included signatures of both members, the advisor (Mr. Twitchell), and an administration member (Mr. Nelson).

The speech had to be 3-5 minutes and describe the process of how the board was created, as well as the educational value and representation of each part. One person was allowed to give the speech. After the speech, there was a question and answer session, where they judged you based on your ability to answer questions regarding the board.

Back in Lewiston, it was the speech that caused me to lose (in my opinion). I literally blanked when I went to give it, and totally bombed it. However, I prepared a lot more for the Boise competition, and I wrote out the speech on paper to practice it (The original speech ended up being 8 minutes long until I shortened it).

When I gave the speech at the competition, I knew that I aced it, as I remembered everything that I wanted to say, and the judges looked impressed. I was right also, as I took first place.

Anyway, that is the story (and photos) behind my Bulletin Board. I hope that you enjoyed reading it.

–Scott

Flying

Planes are excellent opportunities to take great photos. It just seems like there is great lighting, interesting subjects, and plenty of time. When ever I fly southwest, I have to take a photo of my ginger ale (quite possibly the best drink on a plane) in front of the window. It always looks different, and it is a fun “tradition”. Another shot I like taking is the wing above the landscape. This changes with the land you are flying over, so it always is different. In this photo, it is over Salt Lake City – or at least the mountains surrounding the city.

While flying, I find it interesting to take a photo of the cabin. In the air, everybody is like a drone, just looks straight ahead, almost unmoving for the duration of the flight. I could probably have taken twenty more of these photos and most likely, nothing would have changed.

Cliff Dwellers

While in Arizona, we decided to travel north of Phoenix to go see these fancy cliff dwellings of the late Native American tribe of the area. This is where I got most of my photos of cacti. There really were some amazing plants there — at least to a North Idahoan. Cacti seems to make cool photos.

Once again, here is some cacti photos, you can see the wonderful Arizona blue sky, which is incredibly great to photograph. Everything comes out so blue.

After photographing some cacti, I traveled up the hill to get some shots of the caves, there was some cool stuff up there, as well as more cacti (above). There were some very cool things there.

As you may be able to tell, I am trying out a new watermark, I feel it looks cleaner and all around better. Tell me what you think… if you actually read this far.

These caves were great opportunities for taking photos, they have lots of great areas.

Sunset

One evening, we decided to go out to the desert and get some photos of cacti during sunset. It seems like it goes down so fast there, so there isn’t much time to photos, but I managed to get several good shots though.

Once again, the skies are so blue down there that even in the evening, the it looks so saturated.

The Grand Canyon

While in Arizona, we had to make the mandatory migration to the Grand Canyon. I decided that no photos can demonstrate the massiveness of the hole… but I’ll try.

Above, you can see a photo that I posted earlier of the Grand Canyon, I used it for a Spanish project of Salvador Dalí. I added melting clocks to the photo to imitate the “Persistence of Memory”. You can see the project below.

Once again, here are more great sunsets. The grand canyon is no exception for seeing great sunsets in Arizona.

Here’s a random fact… the far side of the Grand Canyon (the opposing side from which all of my photos were taken) is 1000 feet higher. However, due to the curve of the earth, the other side looks lower. The Grand Canyon and the Salt Flats in SLC are some of the few places where the curve of the earth is visible on ground.

Above you can see some more cool photos that I took. I found this random sploch of ink on the rock (hopefully it was ink…) and I photographed it, you can mildly see the canyon in the bokeh.

Other Photos

Although these do not directly relate to my project, I felt like including them because they are decent portraits that I took while shooting. They really don’t fit into any other categories. I also am posting a photo that I took in the airport of my boarding pass, in hopes of decoding the 2D datamatrix barcode to see what the airport has to say about me, as it is quite obvious that it is more than just a number (2d barcodes can hold a ton of info for the size compared to a regular UPC. Unfortunately I was unable to decode it successfully, as I am not a barcode scanner owned by Southwest Air.

I also hope to post some more of those photos in a later post, one of them including a kendama…

That pretty much concludes this blog post, most likely the longest of mine, with over 35 photos. But before we end this post, here are the contact sheets…

If you happened to read this whole thing, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the photos.

–Scott

Focus208 Slideshow

Focus208 – Coeur d’Alene from Scott Sturges on Vimeo.

In an ongoing attempt to photograph the state of Idaho, otherwise known as Focus208, I have taken some photos around downtown Coeur d’Alene, Id.

I chose to photograph the two blocks between Sherman and Front Avenue, and 4th and 6th street. I wanted to show some of the “urban-decay” (as in the alley ways and rundown walls) as well as the new urbanization (such as the new towers) of downtown.

The photos were processed from Camera RAW in Photoshop CS4, where light adjustments were made, and sharpening was applied. Unfortunately, I over-sharpened some of my images, but for the most part they all look pretty decent. They were then processed through my fancy Focus208 Photoshop action, which essentially resizes them, adds a border, adds my name, and saves it as a jpg.

After editing the photos, I made them into a slideshow (above) and added the music, Analog Plan by Thomas Schneider, found on Freeplaymusic.com. The slideshow was compiled in Picasa 3 for Mac from Google in 720p resolution (because 1080p takes too long to upload). I actually liked using the program a lot despite it being slightly glitchy software.

This project took me an insane amount of time for some reason, it seemed that I was overthinking some of the process, as it took me several days to edit the photos. Just prepping the video and making this post took over 4 hours.

There was some inspiration from Digital Photography School, Urban Landscape Photography Tips.

Below are the contact sheets of the photos taken on the assignment.

Center of map

map

map

map

balloonlelss markjer

Lastly, there was an extremely blurry shot of Josh Stevens that I took while shooting this project that Twitchell (linked due to request) liked, so I’ll post it for your viewing…

Last week, my photography class traveled to Boise to compete in a photography competition through SkillsUSA Idaho in Boise, Idaho. Our class competed in two different competitions, Photography, and Promotional Bulletin Board. Later, I’ll post the whole bulletin board project as I am finally done with it and I presented it successfully (1st place FTW).

Anyway, for the photography competition, we were bussed to Columbia High School in Nampa, Idaho to begin the competition. After we picked up some more students, we all went to Downtown Nampa for the shooting portion. We were assigned to shoot the Urban Decay of Nampa.

Below are the shots I chose and edited for the competition.

I ended up using the alley way shot a book cover project for the book Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Unfortunately, I do not have the originals for all of them, just the ones I edited, because the judges kind of stole our cards. So below I posted a contact sheet with the originals. Finally, the inspiration of this post was completely the judge, as he set the requirement for it to be urban decay, so I can’t really post an inspiration link this week.

– Scott

I also have been working on a few projects that I will hopefully get posted during Spring Break, or soon afterward.

Story

Last September, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. As a result, throughout the past 6 months, our family has gone through many changes. One of them being my mom losing her hair due to chemotherapy. However, she has not let it affect her, and has developed many different ways of covering her head. When her Chemo ended, we decided to get photos of all of the styles of hats and scarves she wore on a daily basis. I set up my studio, and shot some pictures of each scarf and hat she has worn. I also got a shot of her simply without hair.

Shooting

I wanted to add a more dramatic look to the photos, so I felt that black and white suited the photos the best. I setup a white sheet, with a strobe behind it, then set up two more strobes, diffused by umbrellas, at 45° angles from the subject. I then used my Canon 50mm f/1.8 to get some nice torso shots of her.

Editing

The editing process was fairly simple, but took some time. First, I selected the photos that would look good in the poster — I tried to not get duplicate styles (read: hats) — and put those in a separate file. After that, I opened them up in Adobe Camera RAW, and processed them. This part was rather easy, as they were all shot at the same exposure because of the controlled light setup in which they were shot.

After processing them in ACR, I did some minor cleanups on the skin, changed all to grayscale, and sharpened them. Finally, I arranged then in a large canvas in photoshop so that it would look good when printed as a poster.

In all, I spend around 12.5 hours on this project, with around 2 ¹/₂ hours shooting, and 10 hours editing and processing.

Recent changes/additions include finalizing the backdrop, working on the foreground, and getting ready to print. We are also starting to think about the speech and q/a.

Once we’re done, I will post the final copy, and possibly all of the steps involved.

–Scott