Rockett's Laboratory

Letchworth Park

ellen — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 14:54:20 +0000

Patrick and I went down to Letchworth Park on Friday afternoon. It was summer weather, warm and sunny with a lovely breeze. Unfortunately, after driving an hour and being out in the sun with Patrick, I was too busy enjoying the afternoon and the walk to bother checking the settings on my camera – or the display after each picture. Unfortunately that means that when I got home, I realized my ISO was on 400 and my exposure was set too high, so a lot of the pictures didn’t come out very well. Guess I’ll just have to go down there again in the summer and try again a little more carefully!

We saw a little garter snake sunning himself. He was pretty darn cute, and held very still for us, so I was able to whip out the manual focus, which I very rarely use. I miss my dad’s camera’s split-crystal focus thingamajig so you could tell quantitatively when it was focused. You can see him here peeking out between the blades of grass, but he’s pretty well-camoflaged.

We also saw a goose with an egg, perched on a very small ledge over the gorge. The guy next to us wondered where the chick would go when it had to learn to fly, since there wasn’t much room for it to wander.

We got to the falls right around the photographic golden hour, which was excellent timing. I was bummed to get home and find the photos with their failed settings hadn’t done justice to it at all.

Niagara Falls

ellen — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 13:40:00 +0000

Patrick is here for most of April, and since there’s not much for him to do while I’m at work other than hang around the house and go for walks, I took a half day on Friday and we drove up to Niagara Falls for the afternoon. The weather was sunny and cool and we were able to cross over to Canada to see the good side of the falls. We watched a little kid chase seagulls around and made up conversation for what they were screeching at us. I took a number of pictures with my wide angle lens and was pretty excited about the waterfall arcing across the water for most of the walk, even though it’s kind of “built in” any day they have sunshine there.

Mid-March Photos

ellen — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 20:35:15 +0000

Like most of the country, we had an abnormally warm stretch in March, and I got out for a walk around the Erie Canal in Pittsford one Sunday. Here are some of the pictures. There are a lot of beautiful buildings in the little town, and as the trees come into flower and leaf it will be even more pretty!

By comparison, I went to pick someone up on RIT’s campus a couple of weeks ago, and driving through the area around the campus, I understood suddenly why Dessau (in former East Germany) seemed like such a great place to live by comparison. That’s how bad the area around RIT looked to me! Collapsing buildings, shacks, strip-mall shopping along huge polluted roads, a very dirty river… Needless to say, I’m much happier living in Pittsford.

Empire State Games Logos

ellen — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 18:13:47 +0000

One of my first StormFrog projects back in January was to make a logo option for the Empire State Games that would be presented alongside designs from two other designers here for their pleasure. I did some research into the Olympic Games logos, as these games bear a certain resemblance to a state version of the Olympics. After looking through the images and doing some sketches (most of which really didn’t turn out) I developed them further into the “running torch” mark, paired it with Brandon Grotesque Black, and dropped it in the presentation. I used my beloved stroke width tool over a Wacom/Photoshop sketch to get the graceful lines.

My coworker Matt and another designer from our sister company downstairs did the other two designs, the “victory flame”/”competition sphere” and the “ESG torch” respectively. Matt focused on a darker campfire version of the primary color palette I used, and the third designer used a modified blue and gold choice based on the old logo.

View the full PDF with our references and designs.

Overdue Update

ellen — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 13:06:41 +0000

Holy crap, an update! Life here has been much the same from day to day, lots of various drama at work and mostly nothing too interesting to post. Most evenings I’ve been glad once I’m home to just make some dinner, watch some Netflix or play Torchlight, and read A Storm of Swords by Mr. Martin. I joined a choir at the First Unitarian Church here but from the sound of it, they may not be scheduled to sing again this school year, so I was only at one performance. I also signed up for a shift of chaperoning a youth CON at the end of the month, which will be interesting to see it from the other side. I hope it will be fun! Last weekend was also the Service Auction for the church so I went to that and met some nice new people – but I think they really need a practiced auctioneer. People probably would have been willing to bid a lot higher (or maybe even to come in the first place) if it had been more engaging and fast-paced. Otherwise I’ve been cooking and enjoying the time I have to relax.

On the 15th, Rochester has its ADDY Awards, which StormFrog is doing all the show design for. I’ve been doing a large part of the visual design for that and it’s been interesting since it’s something of a moving target as we test cutting-edge technologies only to have them fall through. It will be interesting to see how the award show comes out next week with all of that. The website linked there is the preshow gallery which a couple of my coworkers and I set up. I was impressed with how fast they whipped it out, more or less from scratch from the sound of it, complete with database stuff and everything! I hope you’ll take a look through the work, this is kind of our Oscars ceremony.

Also, my last project for Accuraty is live, the one I was really proud of! Schum Law Office now has an updated, leather-club-room style website, which I find kind of funny for a lawyer. I really enjoyed making it since we were aiming to outdo our competition and had some extra time for design.

Kitchen Table

ellen — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 23:09:22 +0000

I got a table and need no longer eat on the floor. :)

I also went for a walk Saturday morning and took some pictures of my neighborhood. As you can see it’s quiet and pleasant.

There’s what looks like a well but isn’t, out by the street. I don’t know if it’s supposed to have a bench under the roof and be a gazebo, or if it’s supposed to have a hole and be a giant well, but it has neither. Looks pretty though.

And the outside of my apartment.