Black Cat Studios Design

The Gruber Family

February 26th, 2010

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Recently, I took photos for my friend Jana. She wanted a new family photo and some individual shots of her children. We started with her almost 4 year old son, who was very shy and not very happy being in the spotlight. He was dressed in his Batman costume in hopes of getting a superhero shot for his new superhero themed bedroom. Luckily, I ended up with one good shot (before Batman began dismantling his outfit) and made a background scene for “batman” to be a part of. Jana tells me I need to make a “superhero” package to offer. I’ll get to work on that.

Her little girl was very happy to model for the camera and we took some photos of her playing the piano. Thanks for a fun day!

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The Unveiling of Panel Number 9

February 22nd, 2010

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I’ve done many invitations for the Tubman African American Museum. Most of them are for gallery openings and have artwork supplied by the artist for use on the invitation. I was happy to be challenged by the Tubman to come up with an invitation idea that couldn’t use the artwork featured in the gallery opening. They wanted to keep the new panel of the mural “From Africa to America” under wraps until the big night of the unveiling. The first thing that came to my mind was a piece of art covered by a sheet that gets pulled off for the unveiling. Luckily, I had a huge canvas left over from my college days that I’ve been meaning to paint over for awhile (a nice painting for my son’s room). I threw a white sheet over it and photographed it. Then, I used photos of the other panels of the mural as a background and designed the invitation. The finished product is what you see above. I hope they had an excellent turnout to their event.

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McKeever Fine Art Website

February 3rd, 2010

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When Elizabeth McKeever contacted me about designing her website, she wanted a clean and simple showcase for her artwork. I took elements from the logo I designed for her and tried to stay as true to her art and her vision as possible. I really wanted her art to be the focus of the site. She is very happy with the results and I’m looking forward to future projects with her.

Check out the whole site at http://www.mckeeverfineart.com.

Posted in Design, Website Design | No Comments »

Shelly’s Maternity Photos

January 31st, 2010

Yesterday, I had my first maternity photo session with Shelly, Brandon, and Roxy (the dog) starring the little one on the way. I enjoyed working with Shelly and we all had a good time laughing at Roxy (who really wanted to be my assistant). Thanks to Shelly and Brandon for being such good models! Looking forward to meeting little Taylor when she makes her grand debut.

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Language Tree

January 20th, 2010

The Language Tree is a free web directory for bilingual and international families to develop communities, and to keep their children connected to their cultural identities and languages. It’s the brainchild of Lottie Murakami, who found me by sending an email out to all members of Digital Eve Japan outlining her idea for a website. I contacted her and said I’d be happy to help with a logo and ended up working on the whole look of the site. I enjoyed working with Lottie and Norbert from NS Web Solutions on bringing the site to life. It’s a true testament to how close the internet has made us all, as Lottie is located in Japan, I am in Ohio, and Norbert is in Colorado. Norbert took care (and is still taking care) of the back end programming, while I worked on the graphics, which took me into the world of Joomla (a content management system for websites). The site is still under development (they are adding several languages), but go and have a look and see Lottie’s idea brought to life.

Posted in Design, Logo, Website Design | 1 Comment »

Brooke, Chelsea and Travis

December 9th, 2009

A couple of weekends ago, I took Brooke and her sister and brother to Carriage Hill Metropark to take photos for them to give to their parents for Christmas. Despite the chill in the air, we had a lot of fun taking these photos. Here are some of my favorites:

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Terra and Lariah

November 30th, 2009

I had a lot of fun on Saturday taking Christmas photos for Terra and her beautiful little girl Lariah. We listened to Jackson 5’s “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” over and over again (Lariah said “again!”) while Lariah danced for us, we played peek-a-boo, and shared lots of laughs.

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Posted in Photography | 3 Comments »

McKeever Fine Art

November 20th, 2009

Beth McKeever and I went to college together many years ago (I have my 15 year reunion next year!). We were both Studio Art Majors at Wesleyan College. She is an amazing artist and I’m thrilled to be working with her on her brand identity and website. The logo above is the first step. She wanted something simple, classy and elegant. And I wanted to make the logo speak about her art. She has a large body of landscape paintings as well as abstract paintings. The green on the bottom and the blue on top represent the landscape. The brushstrokes themselves take on more of the abstract qualities.

Soon to come is her new website. In the meantime, if you are interested in seeing some of Beth’s work, check out her Etsy page: http://www.etsy.com/shop/mckeeverfineart or if you want a cool coffee mug, here’s her CafePress site: http://www.cafepress.com/mckeeverfineart.

Posted in Design, Logo | 2 Comments »

Saint Hellion

November 7th, 2009

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Last week a friend of mine whose husband is in the local Dayton band Saint Hellion emailed me and asked if I could do a quick poster design for the band’s Halloween gig at W.O. Wright’s. I gladly accepted the job and had a lot of fun creating a spooky Halloween poster for the band. Happily, the band loved the poster and I got a big “That is awesome! Jen Rocks!”

Posted in Design, Poster | 3 Comments »

A Wedding in Washington, D.C.

November 2nd, 2009

Last weekend I had the pleasure to spend the weekend with Ingrid and Dan and their wedding guests in Washington, D.C. Ingrid and I met when we were stationed at Yokota Air Base in Japan. When she started looking for a photographer, she called me.

To make the weekend even better, I found out about a photography workshop the day I was flying in – Friday. So, I took an earlier flight and was able to learn about Lighting Techniques from one of the pros – Joe McNally.

The weekend was a whirlwind – from the airport to the workshop to the wedding rehearsal to the rehearsal dinner – a bit of sleep – then onto the big day. Saturday was a fun and tiring day as I stalked the bride and groom and their friends and family with my trusty camera. We all had a wonderful time! After the wedding, I was able to stay in town for a couple more days with a college friend of mine Yehudi. I spent a day hiking around DC (with my camera in tow…more of those photos later) and had fun catching up with Yehudi. All in all a fun and productive trip!

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