David James

I’m not much of a fan when it comes to walking machines, I think it is next to impossible and impractical. But, many people like the sci-fi “mechs” so much that its accepted in movies as something possible and an icon of future times. So what would one of these thing really look like? How would we use them? Here is my vision of what the army would use one for… a reconnaissance platform.

Rough concept art

Details added, perspective adjusted

Colour and tones adjustment

I hope you like it… Let me know your opinion of these machines.

Cheers, David.

For the past few years my wife Julie and I try to make a unique Christmas card to send to our family and friends. It started with family photos then developed into cartoon likenesses representing each of us. Last year’s card was about how tricky it is to make a family portrait with kids and the cold… my boys were throwing snowballs my daughter was posing up a storm Julie was manning the camera and I was interested in my coffee, up until the snowball appeared.

We liked the format so much that we made another. This year’s card played off of the Christmas Vacation theme set on one of our typical Christmas mornings. Everyone is in pajamas, the boys are interested in the gifts and my girls are causing some trouble with falling boxes and catching a squirrel. FYI: the moose mug has eggnog in it… no rum… yet.

The thumbnail

To build the concept I opened Photoshop and created a thumbnail sketch to see if my idea can be done in a visually balanced image showing the action and character of the scene. I roughed the figures and moved them around until I got what I wanted. Saving the thumbnail as a layer, I built more detail with some colour ideas on a separate layer with the final cropping ratio above it all.

The rough idea

Now that I have the blueprint it was time to build in Adobe Illustrator. I enjoy vector art, especially for print… You don’t have the scale and pixel issues as you do with raster illustrations. The plaid patterns were built on separate layers and then masked in the shapes needed to create the pajamas.

The vectors

I hope you enjoyed this little demo, and I hope you have a great, relaxing Christmas this year too.

David.

I just wanted to make a little public service announcement for friends and colleagues who work with cameras in cold weather. Pack Ziploc freezer bags with you that are big enough to put your camera into.

Now you’re thinking that I’ve totally lost it! Poor guy has been chained to his computer too long. Well, just check this out…

Once you have taken your photos outside for long periods of time, your camera will get cold, especially if you have a DSLR that you can’t put into your pocket. The cold shouldn’t have much effect on your camera (depending on the model and make) other than quicker battery degradation. The concern is when you go back inside a warm house or vehicle. Moisture in the air will collect on the cold surfaces of your camera just like it does on windows or on the outside of a glass with ice water in it on a hot day. It’s only December and I miss those hot days already. Now imagine what that moisture would do to your sensor or your circuit board or your optics… Yikes! Say goodbye to the performance of a camera worth several thousand dollars!

So what do you do? This is where the Ziploc bag comes in. Place the camera in the Ziploc before you get inside; try to squeeze out as much air as you can. Bring the camera into the warmth and let it warm up inside the bag. You may notice some moisture on the outside of the bag, that’s okay… thankfully; it is not touching your camera.

Once the camera is warm enough, remove it from the bag and you should be fine. I like using a pelican case for this same reason. After a wintery outdoor shoot, seal the camera back into its case and let it warm up before opening it.

If you are reading this from a warm part of the world, please stop laughing. I’ve taken photos at -46 degrees Celsius (-51 Fahrenheit) and my kit survived.

FYI: This is friendly advice and should not be taken as a 100% solution to water/condensation damage. Use this as a precautionary step to help the life of your camera. I will not be liable to replace any of your equipment if anything should go wrong. There are so many circumstances outside the example I’ve given, so please be careful. I just hope this saves you and your camera any expensive frustrations.

Happy shooting,

David.

Just wanted to show a few steps in making a digital painting in Photoshop. I’ve shown some completed work and thought it would be informative and interesting to show some “in-progress” images…

Luke rough

Most illustrations start off in gray-scale. You don’t need to do this, but it helps me develop the depth in the face.

More details

Now the depth and expression start to emerge from the face… I’ll spend another hour or two developing the hair and tunic, then on to the colour.

Luke in colour

This is the finalized Luke that will be used in another painting… oh, the beauty of Photoshop.

 
I hope you enjoyed this, David.

Here’s a wallpaper of the Senna illustration for those with a dual screen… Enjoy.

3360 x 1050 Wallpaper

So glad I have a “day off” so I can get work done… Strange but true  :^)

New ad for JDS Photography.

I love checking things off of my JDS Photography, to-do list.

Close-up of the Senna digital painting

After watching the movie on Senna’s life, I was inspired to make this. Ayrton Senna was one of the best F1 drivers in the history of the sport, who died in a racing accident in 1994.

Ayrton Senna, Digital art by David James

I love using Photoshop to create fine art!

Painting in Photoshop

Photoshop is an amazing bundle of software; so diverse that it’s next to impossible to master all of it. Photographers enhance and correct their photos with it, Designers build elements for websites and ads in it, and magazine covers would have average looking people on them if not for Photoshop.

The best part about using Photoshop to paint with is the brushes don’t need to be cleaned.

This is an image that I painted in Photoshop to use on my Twitter account.

Trying out some new ways to use old tech… the animated gif is back, but this time we now have the bandwidth and screen resolution to enjoy them. The “old-school” method of animating flags and spiny avatars is now adding a little flair to photography, and they call it a cinemagraph.

Today's cool animated gif... the cinemagraph.

This cinemagraph is on the front page of the JDS Photography’s website (at least it was during this post) and will continuously loop as long as you have it in your browser window.

I hope to have more in the near future.