Stickam and its stickiness....

I just got a Stickam account. You can check it out by going to http://www.stickam.com/setfiretothedressonfire

Its a live video interaction type of thing so if you on it, become friends with me. My hope is to reach out to people interested in photography and talk about it with them. Hopefully I could answer some questions they might have about cameras, photoshop or anything like that. So if you get this....add me as a friend and maybe we can talk shop. Cheers!

Corporate desperation in a logo change

What in the heck is up with all the corporate logo changes?! I feel like I am going mad. Yesterday I was in the car with Dave Hill and his wife and we started to notice all the places with a different logo. I mean, do corporations think that in a time of recession, a $100,000 logo change is going to help promote business?! And here is another thing, most of the logo changes have looked HORRIBLE! They look like cheap frilly suggestions. Here are some of the company logos that I am talking about:


Jiffy lube now looks like a "d". Isn't that....wrong?

Even google changed their little icon then you are on their site which clashes with their other "G" logo on the instant google search bar. Are you kidding me?! Two logos at the same time?! Im not even a graphic designer and even I know that confusing the user by using multiple logos is "no-no" #1.

Starbucks changed to be represented by a fat ugly woman now. And they are brown. This was done right before the 600 store downsize.
hahahaha....I gotta give it to walmart for changing their logo for the better. Lighter and more "friendly" of a logo. That star from before was a little too violent. hahaha. But it does crack me up how they replaced the star with a combination of a daisy flower and the power symbol on computers.

El Pollo Loco's design is kind of sad. I feel like their old logo was a lot better. Maybe is how unstable the font is. It just looks retarded.

Baskin Robbins changed their logo about a year ago but still, I used to work at baskin robbins for 2 1/2 years growing up and this is a sin. Come on! It looks so silly!

Super 8 changed their logo to look more like a "road trip." In a way, I think it is kind of smart. In another way, anyone who knows the quality of a Super 8 knows that by doing a logo change is just like polishing a turd.
This one gets me the most. How in the crap is this a pepsi ad?! How! I have been driving around Los Angeles for the past 2 weeks trying to figure out what ad this was. You know what I came up with as my answer? They are ads for Korean Air. Taking a logo that I have hardly seen and then putting it everywhere on every building possible is the stupidest thing ever! Especially when that logo is very similiar to another company. And here is the worst part of all, Pepsi changed their logo and yet YOU CAN NOT FIND THE WORD PEPSI ON ANY OF THEIR STUPID ADS! I actually only found out that this was a Pepsi ad by Dave's wife saying, "I think the new Pepsi ads are really bad" as she pointed to the ad on the building. Come on Pepsi! Your bigger and better than this! Yes the economy is going down but do we really need to "reinvent" ourselves?! Especially when companies are spending $100,000+ on theses ideas and changes. They are so bad. Hey Pepsi, I will come up with a logo change for you for $20,000. What do you say?!

Free Ringtones for all!!!!!

For everyone who reads my blog, I will now give you a treat I discovered. Ok so here is how you make and send ringtones to your phone (any phone too!).

Open up itunes. You will need to go to prefrences, import settings, and change it from AAC to MP3 (*note, I recommend changing this once you finish because any cd you upload will be in MP3 format which is way less quality than AAC). From there, go to any song on your itunes and convert it into an mp3 by right clicking on the track and clicking the "Create MP3 Version". Once this is done, right click on the recently created mp3 and click "Get Info". From there, you will look in the summary tab and find out the specific location of the file. Remember this. Then go to http://www.myxer.com Put in your information to sign up (its free....don't worry). Then you can select what server and phone you have. From there, go to the "home" section. You can upload a file. From the mp3 location we refrenced earlier, select that file and upload the song. After the upload, a window will appear where you can select any 30 seconds from the song. Select what section you want, click the "Send To Phone" button (for iphone, click the "dowload for iphone" button. It will then give you a 3 step process. Click the link to download the file (I recommend downloading it onto somewhere you can easily access like your desktop. Just makes it easier). In step 2, it tells you where to email the file to. For example, if you have Verizon, email it to your number @vzwpix.com. So attach the file to your email and email it to your phone. then when you get the text, open it and click the options part of the text. You will have an option to "save as ringtone." Do just that and you are done. Enjoy :)
*Note: Took me 3 days to figure this out. Verizon is so retarded! hahahahaha

Say Whaaaaa....

So I am trying to get into LA Models and be a photographer so I can make some money that way. Couple of my friends who are models for them are trying to help me out since its been a while since I have photographed beautiful people. I am pretty stoked to be honest. It was also the first time I had lit something so differently than I normally do. It was nice using a 200mm lens for a change. So we will see if more is to come.....I hope so because I had a really good time shooting this. And a side note, this is proof that you do not need a studio. I shot this at 12:00pm on my roof! Who needs a studio?!

Go Grandma!

This is a new image that I did a little while back but finally finished up retouching it. Just another image to add to my old people series!

Zaireeka!

I just got the album "Zaireeka" by The Flaming Lips. If anyone has a cd player they want to join and be a part of....HIT ME UP! For those who don't know, Zaireeka was an album released in the 90's that is 4 discs. The Flaming Lips realized the speakers can only produce certain frequencies at a time. Your supposed to play all for discs at the same time and it creates this sound you can not get out of one cd player. The frequencies mix and create new sounds! They also have parts play that are not on all the cds (like one cd has group vocals and added drums...etc.) It even has a warning lable on the cd which states "This recording also contains frequencies not normally heard on commercial recordings and on rare occasion has caused the listener to become disoriented." How awesome is that!!!!!!

Back in the saddle....

Here are a few photos I took a while back. I came across them recently. I got to do this thing a few years ago for testing out Adobe Lightroom and so I got to shoot with Colin Finlay. It was a fun day to say the least.....