ARCHITECT | -OGRAPHER | CG ARTIST

IRAY for Animation

2012-01-20T07:25:00.000-08:00

No doubt, IRAY is a big-league player at the table of Computer Generated Graphics. As a full time architect, I have been using IRAY for 90% of my weekly rendering for the past 18months. And I must say, I'm very happy with the results. Iray does have its shortcomings, but what render client doesn't? There are times when I really want a material-ID in post production; but even then, IRAY and MentalRay play together so nicely, all I have to do is switch over to Mental Ray and do the ID pass. I have a lot of still rendering that can been seen on my personal website www.joshpabst.com

Now, we don't do a lot of architectural animation in house, but we do some. Below are some of the iray 3d animations that I have done 'not for work'. Unfortunately, some of the best work, I have of course done for actual projects, and cannon share, yet, due to project statuses.

Now, in both of these cases, the animation probably could have turned out quite a bit better had I let the animation do more passes. And, I should have. Time is always the enemy in this business. The renderings you are looking at are all less than 400passes, and especially for the night stuff, it's really just not enough. That said, when you are dealing with youtube, you can get away with it due to the fact that most people watch at 480p and not 1080p full screen.

IRAY ANIMATION | Architecture Building

2011-10-11T09:18:00.000-07:00

These series of animations were done using IRAY. The total time is over two days to render on a single GTX-460. Even though this Cuda enabled card is not the greatest, it still does an amazing job speeding these renders along. Don't even bother trying to use IRAY on CPU only; you will be disappointed.

Off Camera Flash for Wedding Reception | Gallery

2011-09-20T15:25:00.001-07:00

ALSO, HERE ARE SOME OF MINE

JEROME BELOW

MY FIANCE ON THE RIGHT

MICHAEL SCHEIDLER JUST GOT MARRIED AS WELL

LORRIE AND MICHAEL SCHEIDLER

LORRIE AND TOM

MY SISTER

COUSIN

DAVID GOODIER

CHRISTINA BLUST-GOODIER

IRAY and HDR | HDRI Lighting

2011-07-07T12:32:00.000-07:00

Using HDRI and EXR files, otherwise known as HDR images, is a great way to effortlessly light your scene. First it is important to know that not all HDR images are created equal. Some of them have much higher contrast or brightness ratios. For instance, even though the clouds look extremely bright, the sun is exponentially brighter. And if the photographer making the HDR does not apply these ratios correctly when making the image, then the settings WILL be a little screwy in 3ds Max. It doesn't mean you can't use the image. Just don't expect to be setting your exposure value up around 14 or 15. It could be as low as EV=0. Now, that said, inserting the HDR is very easy. If you are already using the 3ds max daylight system, then the mrSky is probably already inserted into your environment map slot. Good. Now, all you have to do is replace that with your HDR image. Make sure to set it to "ENVIRON' and "SPHERICAL". See the above image for help. I find it necessary to make a new slot in the material editor and then make it an instance. Below are three images, where all I did was swap out the bitmaps and click render for two minutes and let the HDR light the scene in that unique way. You'll notice in my example image at left, that the OFFSET under the U parameter is set to 0.9 | This is how you 'move the sun' in your HDR lighting system. Moving the mrSun will no longer do anything. Also remember that rotating your HDR is a value from 0-1. Not 1-360. A value of .5 would equate to 180 degrees. You can see loads more IRAY renderings at my website here.

IRAY Animation | TIPS | Architectural Walk-Through

2011-07-06T09:05:00.000-07:00

The animation below was done over the past weekend. It took about 48 hours to complete. It didn't need to take that long, but because of the long weekend, I wanted to let it run, so I upped the number of passes. The thing to remember when doing and animation in IRAY is to make sure you are not using the 'time' feature. You need to set the number of passes for your animation so that each frame is 'equal'. In other words, if you set up each from to take 2 minutes, a simple frame in the animation might achieve 45 passes, while a complicated frame with lots of reflections might only achieve 29 passes. This makes the frames look quite different and alters the grain pattern which can lead to a sort of flashing in the sequence.
Animation Tip
So, the thing to do is decide how long you want the rendering to take. Let's say you only have twelve hours to render 400 frames (overnight). That means you have 720 (12*60) minutes available. That means each frame can only take 1.8 minutes, or about 100 seconds. Go to the IRAY render settings and punch in a guess on the number of passes/iterations and see how long the scene takes. You might want to choose a complex frame to be on the safe side of the total render time.

IRAY Renderings | Architectural Examples | Thoughts

2011-06-30T16:46:00.000-07:00

I've been using IRAY as my go-to renderer for about two months now. I'm loving it for the most part. The ability to change the look so effortlessly using HDR's is probably my favorite part of the software. Again, I'll state that I'm only using one GTX460. This card is not expensive nor does it have a great deal of RAM. I do most of my renderings for daily use at 2400 x 2400 pixels. Any larger and I hit RAM ceilings pretty quickly. That said, many of the scenes I have rendered have upwards of 8 million poly's. I have had to make my HDR images smaller (often times they are enormous, around 40-80mb). I've had good luck getting them down to about 8mb. Of course the actual quality of the clouds and sky in the background does suffer, but you can always save as a PNG file and replace the background easily. The attached images are about 2 million faces all modeled in CAD and then rendered in 3ds max. These renderings are using about 1600mb of the ram. Just sitting idle though, uses about 600mb or ram, meaning the scene is eating about 1000. I modeled these two versions this week and rendered them. Each rendering took about 8 minutes. I could have obviously let it got longer, but it really wasn't necessary, as the majority of the grain was cleared.
PHOTOSHOP TIP
A quick trip into photoshop and using the FILTER, NOISE, DUST AND SCRATCHES, heals the rest. See for yourself. That is a regular part of my work-flow. As you can see; the first and the fourth image are really the same rendering. All I did was change the HDR image and the looks is quite different. You can see a lot more of my architectural visualizations at my website: JoshPabst.com | Again, all of these were rendered originally at 2400 x 2000 pixels in this case and resized for web. You can of course still see some grain in the shadowy areas of image 2 and 4 primarily. These four renderings, because they are schematic, were saved as jpegs; no change has been made to the HDR sky. In the large, originals, the sky is a bit pixelated because I made the HDR smaller. Comments/questions welcome.

joshpabst.com | Architectural Design

2011-06-17T09:04:00.000-07:00

My new architecture website is up and running. joshpabst.com I'm pretty pumped about it and really happy with the way it turned out. It was important to me to make the site easily editable and expandable. I have a long way to go in my career, so adding content to my site is a must. I'm still tweaking the design, but thus far am pleased. I'd like to get additional architectural photography that I've done up in the near future; but that can wait. My focus right now is on design and the rendering work I have done on a myriad of projects all over the world. I supposed at some point the site can really act as my architecture portfolio.

IRAY for Animation | First Thoughts

2011-06-07T07:55:00.000-07:00

These are two animations I did using IRAY. I built the models (about 400,000) faces in C4D. I then imported them into 3ds max and rendered using IRAY. They were rendered in HD at 100 iterations and what you are looking at is about 12 hours of render time. This is on a quad core with a gtx 470 from NVIDIA. The 470 is about 300 cores. I've made several posts now regarding IRAY (here) and its current limitations; RAM. These scenes didn't seem to have any problem. I should not that the glass is a thin geometry; which is cheating and doesn't offer as real results. It should also be noted that IRAY doesn't offer render passes and cannot do any kind of motion blur at the moment. Taking that into consideration, fast camera moves can look jerky. If you are going to do a fast move, you might need to add some motion blur in your non-linear editor. Or, more hopefully, IRAY updates will be coming soon that will update and give more ability to the point-and-shoot render system.

IRAY Renderings and Thoughts

2011-06-07T07:23:00.000-07:00

Here are some renderings I have done in the past couple weeks using IRAY. The scenes are quite simple to keep them under the RAM limitations of my GPU (GTX 470). The images were saved as PNG files and then I replaced the sky. I've never had great luck with the sky's out of MAX using IRAY or mental ray for that matter. As I mentioned in a previous post. It doesn't take much for a scene to hit a 1.5gb RAM ceiling. As soon as you start adding some serious texture maps and get the polygon face count up by adding some trees or people you are likely to run into problems if you aren't using a TESLA or Quadro with some hefty RAM numbers. Unfortunately, those cards are a little too expensive for me. I've noticed that ATI has a myriad of reasonably priced cards on market with 2-4 gb of RAM and I think NVIDIA will follow suit in the coming 6 months. That will make IRAY a real front-runner for CG artists seeking photo-realistic renderings. IRAY does have a lot of limitations at the moment however; the inability to achieve render-passes like AO or simple material ID channels for use in photoshop is very limiting and can make post-production a PITA. I'm pretty sure that the ability is coming from what I have read. The next iteration of IRAY will be a significant update. In terms of animation there is a different set of limitations and things to think about: HERE.

Render Pabst | Architectural Post Production 03 | IRAY

2011-06-03T08:53:00.000-07:00

This is among the first of renderings I have done with IRAY. I have found IRAY to be simple and intuitive from the get-go. However, the RAM limitations are tough if you are on a budget. You really need a minimum of 2gb of onboard GPU ram in order to effectively use IRAY in day-to-day production. Also, architectural renderings tend to be large format so that they can be projected or printed on large presentation boards. A large rendering size will quickly exceed the capability of the GPU. However, the Tesla and Quadro cards are out of reach for most consumers. Also, the IRAY platform is extremely slow if you are only using the CPU. I would not recommend this strategy. If you cannot afford the GPU (s) to do your work, I would certainly stick with Mental Ray, or V-Ray if the plugin is at your disposal.

Render Pabst | Architectural Post Production 02 | IRAY

2011-06-03T08:51:00.000-07:00

I haven't had proper time to test IRAY for night renderings. This was just a dusk kind of deal. Added 5 or 6 mr Omni and pulled the trigger; with reasonable results. I hope to get more into the ability of IRAY using the self illumination tools in the near future.

Render Pabst | Architectural Post Production 01 | Mental ray

2011-06-03T08:45:00.000-07:00

Post Production: Copyright Josh Pabst 2011.
DeStefano Partners.

A lot of the magic of taking a rendering from a software like 3ds max and making it into a final production image relies on software like photoshop. Most architectural firms work on tight schedules to meet deadlines and don't have time to tweek 3ds max endlessly to get a final renderings that can be used as-is. This is where post production tools like photoshop are absolutely necessary. As illustrated in this clip and the renderings, what comes out of the render engine doesn't have to be photorealisitc to achieve a final image for client presentation. One of the most important things when rendering is just image size. Rendering as large as possible under the time permitting gives you more latitude in Photoshop to accurately select what you want as well as more latitude in color without aliasing. Also, replacing the sky is a super quick way to change the look of the renderings. Our eyes are used to looking at the world, and the sky gives quick que's to the brain about what time of day it is as well as what color the ambiance or environment should be.

Visit to Korea | Food | Architecture PART 2

2011-01-21T04:54:00.000-08:00

I'm awake at 3am for the second morning in a row trying to recover from my severe jet-lag. I figure now is as good a time as any to write something about my recent trip. I've opted to use my new Android phone to take most of my pictures and jot notes for this travel log.

This trip to Seoul started almost before I left. The taxi that picked us up from the office was nothing more than a Korean man with a minivan. There was no light on top or meter running in the front seat. I'm not sure why we needed some back-alley driver to take us, but my Korean boss had arranged it, so I didn't fret to argue. The cost is pretty much the same as hiring a Chicago cab. Maybe we do this for reliability or maybe he's just supporting the local Koreans. In any event, I was riding to O'Hare with two Koreans; already a minority before we took off. I was traveling with a large black case full of Styrofoam models. And I do mean large; too big to fit in any trunk. I can only imagine what some people at the airport might have thought was inside.

Business Class ASIANA

As this is just my third trip to Asia, I realized as soon as I boarded the plane how spoiled I had become already. Suddenly this business class seat was just 'okay.' The huge seat that went almost completely horizontal. The obligatory 19" flat-screen in front of me. Yet, here I am, perturbed by my physical proximity to the bathroom. The scent of cleaner in the air. The thought it if being continually recycled through the fuselage as we sail through the air stings and dries out my nostrils. Wah! I know. Only one hour into the fifteen hour flight.

Champagne on Flight

Please excuse my english as I make shifts in tense. Some of this is reflected, and some of this is directly from notes. Think of it as flashbacks.

As I type these notes into my phone, the Social Network plays in front of me as part of the in-flight entertainment. Ironic because these notes will find their way onto Facebook and a blog in the coming days. So, to those soured over Zuckerbergs win over Assange in Time, stick a sock in it. And just for my own record of memory, Charlie St. Cloud is also playing and I refuse to watch it. I'd rather watch the ridiculously unbelievable Salt again than that. At least the lovely Ms. Jolie is in that.

We will be touching down in just one hour. I've done my best to sleep through much of the flight. We will be landing at 6am and it is sure to be a long couple of days.

When I wrote the sentence above, I didn't realize just how long it would be. Turns out, we would work all that day. Get to the hotel around 3am the following night and then have our meeting at 8am.

At the meeting I quickly became an easy game of Where's Waldo. Sitting at a long table of well dressed Koreans; the power players of Doosan Heavy Industry and ANU architecture firm. There are only two white people in this conference room. Maybe on the entire floor of this building. It is a strange feeling. I'm segregated even further as I am surely the only man of these 25 with any facial hair at all. I've inquired about this conundrum before. The answer I've gotten regarding facial hair such as a beard is that it is reserved for the elders. The wise. The old Korean men who have earned such a right through acquired wisdom. Maybe that's part of the reason I'm not shaving it off. I don't mind being followed by the stigma of wisdom.

Bulgogi

The meeting on the whole went well. The clients chose the massing scheme that we had hoped. There will be a lot of work in the coming days to rework the facade/elevation. After the meeting we went to lunch with the president of ANU (the local architect). Mr. Choi. We went for Bulgogi at a place near our hotel. Delicious. The idea is to take thinly sliced meat and cook it in front of you. There are many fixings to go with the fresh meat as is Korean custom. We also ordered some celebratory shots or bombs as we like to call them in the states. Soju mixed with beer. About 5 ounces worth. I wasn't sure as the 'cheer's came if I was supposed to throw back the entire shot. I did. Several others did as well. However, I quickly came to learn that drinking the whole thing in one-go means, translated loosely, 'get your drink on.' If you finish the whole shot, you are immediately poured another. Leaving lunch with a buzz and being done for the day meant. Well, I didn't know what it meant, but I was ready for another drink. I went to the casino. I had another beer and promptly lost fifty bucks. This is when it's a bummer to be 'alone' in an exotic place.

I've been working for about two days now in the hotel. I really kind of like this setup. There are almost no distractions and I am able to be super productive. I'm preparing some ideas I have regarding the exterior wall to present on Friday.

Meeting: I have been sitting in a meeting today (Friday) for almost thirty minutes now. It's been just over 18 minutes since a single word of English has been uttered. I am now taking notes about the trip into my phone to kill time. Through the frosted glass in this conference room I can see a myriad of people, assuredly Korean, going on with their business as usual. We are not allowed to go in that room. It is very high security. The reason for this is because my firm (DeStefano+Partners) might be working on the same competition but be partnered with a different local architect. Thusly, ANU does not want us to see their 'top secret' design. An interesting tid-bit is that it's not actually ANU. The company is A&U. The American "&" must not translate too well. D plus P is often referred to in Korea as DNP. So, there has been a big push here to just call it DP. No AND, no PLUS, no nothing. JUST DP.

I have made several appearances at the gym in the hotel. But, it's not just a gym as we think of it. Like with many things Korean; there is an order to things. To get to the gym you must enter through the locker room. But, it's not just a locker rom. It's like a men's club. To enter the wood floored, polished, locker lounge you must first take off your shoes. Next you will see plenty of naked Korean man ass (hairless I might add). Again, not fitting in quite seamlessly.

The hotel is super nice. I was given two discount passes to the breakfast buffet. I've used both of them already. Today I was not going to go because it is quite expensive and I was out of coupons. Then I decided that there was an irony that I should not ignore. The coupons of which I was out of were for 30% off breakfast. And so I went.

Last time I was there I commented about really disliking the octopus that was still moving on the table. Every time we sat for dinner my Korean boss would make jokes about my experience with the eight legged sea monster. All I could make out as he was telling everyone we met was, ... Joshy.... octo ... Joshy, and then they'd all have a big laugh. should really watch what I say or write about the food or culture; but I'm not going to.

Cocoons

Rice Wine

I still don't care for Kimchi; sue me.

And, honestly, I've lost all track of what day it is. After we left the office I was told we were going out for dinner. That's all I knew. Next thing I know we are in the basement of a rather ... dark ... restaurant. This is where much of Korean architecture business takes place. There are now 4-5 Korean men at our table. Reasonably heavy drinking ensues. Soon everyone is well on their way to drunk, and I am eating butterfly's. No, I'm eating caterpillars. No, no. I'm eating cocoons. By the spoonful. A very traditional dish. You might think they are a delicacy. Not the case. They are very cheap and very popular treat; especially among young children. I have to admit; they taste... I just can't say: I don't think they taste bad, but the mental block is tough. The fact that I'm fairly drunk is likely the only thing that allows me to get a second helping. That's enough. I'll continue drinking my rice wine. Which I really like; this batch has some carbonation and is quite delicious. Though, I must admit that I feel that given the distinct color and serving dish, I did kind of feel like a cat.

Street Food Vendor

Street Tent

The highlight of this trip though, came on Friday night when we took the Seoul public transportation and headed,With my boss, I.C., to the old heart of Seoul. This is where you really get a feel for the city. This is when you leave much of the westernization behind and go experience the authentic street food and markets. The atmosphere is palpable. You can hear the drunks stammering and shouting. The steam rolls off of grills throughout the streets that are littered with food tents that can sit just 5-6 people. Here we drink Soju and eat intestines. They are chewy but the flavors are fantastic. I catch a buzz quickly and we are bouncing from watering-hole to watering-hole. But it's not like here. They are not bars in this area of Seoul. In fact, there aren't 'bars'; like the kind you stand at. We are going to small dives where we order a small amount of food and then enjoy a drink.

Tea House

Then perhaps to an old tea house for some Ginger tea. Delicious. Then back out into the cold to find the next hole to see what it has to offer. We wander from places to place for the better part of 5 hours passing the DP Seoul Post Office tower situated on an impressive intersection.

3D Architectural Renderings | Anaglyph 3D Visualization

2010-11-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

With all the hype in the cinema for 3D, I thought it would be cool to go back and investigate a very old technology; and that is anaglyph 3D. For those of you who don't know what that is; it's the old red and blue or red and cyan glasses. This 3D technology has been around for decades and is slightly different than polarized technology you may have seen in films like Avatar or the new Jackass3. It's really a simple process if you are already using a visualization software like 3DS MAX or Maya. All you have to do is make two renderings with cameras 'close' to one another. You can find what you need to do with the two rendered images in another post on this website regarding anaglyph's. So, check out these images, if you are lucky enough to have some cool red/blue glasses laying round.

Sprint: Free and Clear is Pretty Crappy

2010-11-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

Yes, this whole debacle is a real travesty. To put it into simple terms; imagine this. I have been living at my apartment for 6 years watching my 37" television. I subscribe to DIRECTV for my services. This has been excellent. Everything I have needed for six years. Yet, now, I go to BestBuy and I purchase a 50" television and DIRECTV tells me I have to upgrade my services and spend a lot more every month. It makes no sense.

Now you can see how absurd that is. I can buy a phone on ebay, but SPRINT won't let me activate it. To make matters worse, I currently own the HTC Diamond, which by all counts is a smart phone. Yet I have no problem. I am running windows and I have no problem. I have the internet. I can download apps. Life is good. I can download as much as my heart desires. Now all of a sudden, Sprint has stuck the corn-cob up my ass and told me I'm not allowed to have a smart phone. Well that's ironic, because that's what I'm using now you bunch of degenerates. Have you lost your minds to throw your 7, 9, 12 year customers out the door? You should be rewarding such loyalty, but you are doing just the opposite. The lucidity of the argument is what is truly ludacris. The Sprint people will tell me that I don't have the 'right unlimited data package'. That makes me shake my face like Lewis Black. I don't want your 4G. I want the same ole thing I've had for years! That's all I am asking. I'm not asking for any new services. I don't care about your TV, NAV, radio and all that bull-shit. That's all free w/ bing and sorts. Don't tell me that my data package isn't good enough; it was the BEST data package when I got it. I'm not using different cell phone towers all of a sudden. I'm not going to download any more or less than I do now. I already have a smart phone!

The notion that sprint cannot upgrade us on our free and clear plan to a phone worth a damn is just silly. The fact is not that they can't. It's that they won't. It's about money, and maybe there would be a lot of people less angry if sprint just came out and admitted it. I'd rather be told, "yes, we are, screwing you in the ass, but we promise, it won't hurt as bad as Verizon or ATT. We promise to be gentle.

At least then, and only then, we would feel like, hey, ya know what, "Sprint is still cheaper, and they have to stay in business."

Here's my final line Sprint. If anyone has read this, thank you.

THERE IS NOT ANY PHONE YOU WILL LET ME GET THAT IS AS GOOD AS THE PHONE I ALREADY HAVE.

SAD.

Sony Vegas 10 | DSLR Canon | GREAT NEWS

2010-10-13T16:38:00.000-07:00

All right; I am so pleased, excited, you name it. I am that. Sony Vegas 10 kicks so much ass. Especially if you are a DSLR user! Granted I have a quad core with a lot of ram, but it eats the native full HD h.264 files for breakfast. In Vegas 8 and 9 I could not use the files natively with any kind of success. With Vegas 10, no need to convert those devils. Use them right out of camera flawlessly. I get full frame rate playback buttery smooth. No hiccups. No glitches. It's just plain revolutionary for those of us trying to edit in Sony Vegas using our DSLR footage. I am shooting 7D and T2i, and it is awesome. Awesome, awesome. Worth the upgrade no matter what version of Vegas you are running. It is here. Also, if you are a Magic Bullet user, the 32bit version of Vegas 10 works flawlessly. However, the 64 bit version--does not. I hope this helped someone. This blog doesn't get a ton of hits, but if I can help one... goal accomplished. Cheers to my Vegas users.

Vimeo Super Slow | Waiting in Line

2010-10-07T14:59:00.000-07:00

I can remember when Vimeo didn't suck. It used to be fast; even on my free account. They really need to work that out. Now that Youtube has great HD support and better recompression than ever, Vimeo needs to watch its back. Not to mention the fact that YouTube video's are up and ready almost immediately. They are transcoding while they are going up. It's really quite incredible. I understand that Vimeo does not have the resources that GOOGLE does, but that's no excuse. Today I uploaded a 7 minute clip. Vimeo tells me it will start in 90 minutes. It's already been over two hours. That means that from the time I upload my 7 minute video to the time I can watch it is going to be well over 5 hours. Sorry Vimeo, I used to love your site. I still like it a lot. But love, no so much anymore.

Sub Polygon Displacement | Cinema 4D | Tutorial

2010-10-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

How to use Sub Polygon Displacement in Cinema 4D

Known as Greyscale gorilla; here is a helpful tutorial on sub polygon displacement in Cinema 4D. It's a great way to get some wacky looking objects (left) quickly. It can increase render times a lot if you use it on too many objects, but the effect is really great. This tutorial will show you the basics, but you can fiddle around with controls to accomplish many things with this tool.

Depth of Field | Cinema 4D | Tutorial

2010-10-06T09:57:00.000-07:00

In this tutorial we will learn about how to use depth of field in Cinema 4D. This video will help you navigate through the render settings required to gain that shallow DOF that you desire.

Cinema 4D basics: Depth of Field from rob redman on Vimeo.

HD Video On Facebook

2010-10-04T12:40:00.000-07:00

Has Facebook become a formidable place to post and share your HD video's? Well, the answer is yes and no. Facebook is now undeniable as a means for marketing. With a half billion users, the online network must be recognized. Now, for videographers, the question is; how does the HD video stack up. First of all, it allows up to twenty minutes. Some people might see that number and think it's great knowing that Youtube held the 10minute max for so long. Others might look at that number, depending on the application, and think it's much too low. In either case, it's a respectable number for HD video. The only other *free and popular places that can take that kind of time and quality are Vimeo and Exposureroom. If you know of others, please share. From my experience, the quality on Facebook is quite excellent. The real problem is that, as of now, you cannot embed the video elsewhere (like on your Blog) in full HD. That is a huge drawback. Nonetheless, if you have a page on Facebook for your business, this is a great feature, and I plan to roll with it in the coming season of 2011. The nice thing about posting a wedding clip on Facebook is that they can then share the video quickly and easily with all of their friends; and in-turn, you may get many more 'strangers' to 'like' your page. This is great and may lead to future business. It's really like having your past clients advertise for you. No harm in that. I first tested this with the post below (Brian Fifield Wedding). It proved to be a great success and many of their friends got to see the highlight video and post and comment within FB. The only short-coming as I found it, was that I couldn't tag them even though they were fans of my "Business Page". I had to become friends with them first and that may not always be appropriate given various businesses. How are you using your Facebook Fan Page. Check out Obviouschild Productions on Facebook.

Brian Fifield and Nicole English Wedding

2010-09-29T07:50:00.000-07:00

I don't know that we've ever worked for a more generous and thoughtful couple. I would have needed to take notes to re-count to you all the ways they were selfless--on THEIR OWN WEDDING DAY! First there was the simple fact that they were always asking their entourage how they were doing. Not all brides, no, not many brides, seem capable of thinking of other's on their day. Then it was when they shared the spotlight during their cake cutting and asked other couples up with anniversary's. It was simply touching. Then they took the time to recognize a birthday. They provided tons of spare flip flops for the dance floor so that things would stay rocking well into the night. | Obviouschild Productions, LLC

Golanty Wedding Highlight ||| Chicago

2010-08-30T10:04:00.000-07:00

David and Beth were married on 8/14/2010 in a beautiful ceremony right here in Chicago. The wedding and reception were held at the Elysian Hotel. This was the first wedding that OCP shot at the Elysian; it is a beautiful hotel and the help and other vendors were a pleasure to work with. Lori of Lola Event Productions was great help and Jamie and I hope to work with her again in the future. Everything went very smooth and we captured a ton a beautiful footage. This DVD is packed with extra's. David and Beth were wonderful and we had a great time shooting around town: The weather was perfect. It is my intention to get the DVD's out the door sometime this week. All the footage turned out really gorgeous and we look forward to hearing back from David and Beth. Our best to them. Sincerely, Obviouschild Productions.

Lake Monroe Pontoon Rental: I'm on a Boat MF

2010-08-11T07:49:00.000-07:00

Not much to say that the title doesn't already say, but thanks to Cassie and Tom for organizing this awesome weekend in Indiana. They got a cabin the woods (where Jamie got bit by a spider) and rented this sweet double-decker boat at Lake Monroe.

Dear Connected Property Management: Review CHICAGO

2010-08-09T13:39:00.001-07:00

It's not that I'm upset, it's just that CPM has notoriously poor communication. I don't think it's due to any one person. In fact, I think it's the opposite. The turnover rate is higher than I have ever seen. We deal with a new rep every few months. I honestly think we've gone through at least 6-7 people in two years. As a result, we never know what's going on; albeit with CPM or the owners. Moreover, that kind of information (rent increase) should be clearly indicated. And from past renting experience it is usually accompanied with a reason; from the owner. My temptation at the moment is to get on Craigslist and begin looking for another place, not because I've been unhappy there, but because I'm so sick of dealing with CPM. The owners have been great about getting things fixed, but it's like pulling teeth going through your company. With regards to the rent increase email, it should have been illustrated not just to Jamie or myself, but to both of us upfront. It's just nonsense the way CPM is operated through handfuls of emails regularly from someone new; someone I've never heard from. The housing market is saturated with great deals for similar sized units; some even bigger across the street for the same price (at 701 w. jackson.) So it'd be nice to get something from the owner explaining why they'd like to increase rent. If it's so they can get an air conditioner that can make it though a summer, then so be it. If it's because their property taxes went up, then so be it. It'd just be a real thing of beauty not to have to go through your company. Truly a disaster.

Yelp Sucks: Removes Reviews

2010-08-09T11:08:00.000-07:00

I wanted to review YELP, but wasn't sure where to do it. It's like being against picketing, and not knowing how to show it. The online review site YELP, seems to suck. They for no reason, remove reviews using some fancy algorithm that detects, or tries to detect irrelevant reviews. Well; it just can't do the job as I recently found out when it removed some of the reviews my small business received.

Here is the excuse I got:

Hi there,
We appreciate your feedback.While we don't have the ability to manually reinstate reviews that have been suppressed, we'd like to reiterate that since users can become more or less established over time, their reviews can disappear and reappear over time, as well. There is no perfect solution. Building a scalable, automated method to identify spurious reviews and protect the integrity of website content that includes more than 10 million reviews is difficult. Does legitimate review content sometimes get lost as a result? Yes. Our filter takes a conservative approach and errs on the side of protecting the consumer, when necessary. Customer reviews directly solicited by a business can fall into this category at times, which is why we caution against the practice. Please know that we are constantly working on improving our algorithms so that we can present more trustworthy and useful content to our users. Regards, Louis.

My sneaking suspicion is because I have been called several times and asked if I'd like to advertise with YELP, and I continue to tell them no. I don't want to pay you a dime. And now, I'm sure glad I didn't. And, as long as we are talking about business that are horrible. Connected Property Management here in Chicago is absolutely terrible. Just an awful company to have to do business with. They have a high turnover rate, so you have to deal with a new idiot every month or so. I don't understand how places that treat their customers like shit stay in business. I mean honestly.