If you are in the Dayton area and were hoping to book a session with me, I’m no longer taking appointments before we move.  If you live in the Anchorage, Alaska area and are looking for a family photographer or a graphic designer, we’ll be arriving at the end of May and I’ll start taking jobs in June.

I hope to have a chance to work on updating my portfolio and my blog soon, but in the meantime, be sure to check the Facebook feed to see new work.  Thanks!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!”