Skydiving Spain

Snowy Seattle

Once or twice a year it snows in Seattle; I woke up to fresh snow this morning. Here are a few pics from the bus stop by my house.

Moon Reached, Now On To Mars

My best of 2007 music mix is entitled Moon Reached, Now On To Mars (album cover pictured below).

The album cover was created in Adobe Photoshop 6.0 and is essentially a composition of three separate photographs I took plus an image I found on flickr (here). I spent more time on the idea than on the implementation, thus the baby and polar bear definitely "stick out" more than I'd like. In other words, they don't fit seamlessly into the picture. This is mainly because of lighting and edge blur issues.

The background is a picture of the North Cascades that Danyel Fisher and I took while on a hike of Mount Dickerman in late September 2006.


The first thing I did to the original image was to transform it from a 4:3 aspect ratio to a 1:1 aspect ratio. I did this by rescaling the blue sky. Increasing the sky's size also had the result of changing the viewer's perspective slightly by moving the horizon line to roughly the middle of the photo. Thus, it appears (to me anyway) to give the image more visual depth.


The second thing I did to the background was add an additional translucency layer with a blue hue and a "Linear Burn" effect. This was to create a dusk-like effect in the image as I wanted it to appear later in the day.


The polar bear shot was taken at the Como Zoo in Minnesota in October 2006. We were there celebrating my niece's first birthday (see this link). I didn't want to spend much time on this project, so I quickly used a combination of the "Magic Wand Tool" set to a variety of tolerances and the Eraser to cut out the polar bear from its surroundings. I resized the bear, darkened it slightly, and applied a little motion blur after adding it as a layer on top of the background.

The pink baby riding the polar bear is actually my niece. This photo was taken the same day as the polar bear photo at the Como Zoo. Once again, I used the Magic Wand Tool and the Eraser to cut the desired object from the image. I rotated the baby, increased the blue and green hue, and applied a motion blur after adding it as a layer on top of the polar bear. Both the polar bear and the baby are on top of the blue "dusk" layer.


Finally, the moon was extracted from its original image, resized, and placed behind the blue "dusk" layer. Then text was added to complete the album cover.

And, finally, the finished product:

The back of the album was generated, in part, by iTunes. I simply overlaid the track names and my favorite albums releases on top.

Christmas 2007

This year it snowed on Christmas (just over an inch I believe), which made for the perfect holiday atmosphere. The Star and Tribune ran a little infographic about the probability of a white Christmas in Minnesota. Note that certain areas of Northern Minnesota are guaranteed a white Christmas.

Annual chance of a white Christmas in Minnesota, based on historic records from 1899 through 2005. Sources: University of Minnesota, Minnesota DNR, NOAA. Graphic by Billy Steve Clayton.

Sledding

The snowy weather inspired a group of us to go outside and sled in the backyard.

Bro-in-law and niece.

The outlier: knee-first sledding!

My sister tearing up the snow.

My father.

My aunt.

Don't fall off the sled as deep snow awaits.

Christmas Morning (Stockings and Presents)

My niece received a little gorilla in her stocking;
she's attempting to imitate it here.

My niece gave me a storybook of my life (2005-2007) made with Shutterfly.

I gave my niece a princess crown.

The next gift my niece opened was a princess dress.
She is actually airborne here jumping for joy.

The full princess costume.

Christmas Eve 2007 Photobooth

Photobooth makes for pure awesome fun.

My two cousins and I.

My two cousins and my bro-in-law.

Niece and sister looking crazy! Thanks Photobooth.

My cousin making sure to represent his braces.

The Mirror.

The Day Before Christmas 2007

In the morning, my family and I went to the Macy's annual holiday auditorium display, now in its 45th year. A team of 40 local theatrical artists created 16 vignettes depicting the story of the Nutcracker through mechanical puppets, sculptures, and hand crafted scenery. Although I have seen the ballet in the past (in the Kodak Theatre in LA no less), I had forgotten how whimsical and violent this story can be. For example, the Nutcracker must battle a legion of killer rats with only the help of some toy soldiers and children (see below).

Afterwards, we took our first professionally captured family picture with Santa (given that my parent's house has no scanner, I'm afraid this is a picture of a picture).

Uncle's House for the Eve

Per family tradition, we spent Christmas Eve at my uncle's house in Minneapolis. Here are some pictorial highlights.

Scrabble on Christmas

Christmas Eve ended like it usually does, with a game. We typically play party-games like Cranium, Trivial Pursuit, etc. This year, however, we played Team Scrabble. Fortunately, I was paired up with my wordsmith cousin and we had no trouble disposing of the competition.

Whiteout Conditions in Twin Cities

The Twin Cities received about six inches of snow today on top of
the two inches it snowed yesterday. Both Minneapolis and
St. Paul declared snow emergencies. (Photo credit: Jeremy Portje, AP)

My parent's backyard as viewed from their kitchen window.

Looking back at my parent's house from their backyard.

My dad and I on a short hike through the forest on my parent's property.

The northwest side of my parent's house.

The high winds brought about whiteout conditions. There is about fourteen inches of snow accumulation in the Twin Cities.