I miss my designer in training.

On December 12, House Spirts Distillery, one of my favorite distillers released their new Whiskeys. So, I went out and took my camera with me. Here’s a nice shot of the lines of people waiting for whiskey samples. The man in the middle is Matt Mount, one of the distillers at House Spirits. You might see him at an RPM event.

They are releasing three whiskeys. The first two beauties have been aged in New American Oak for around 2 1/2 years. One is a limited apothecary run of cask strength malt whiskey weighing in at 60% alcohol (boo-yah). The other is a not-as-limited run of straight malt whiskey in larger 750 ml bottles. Along with these they’ll also be releasing a limited-run of the pre barrel-aged elixir known as “white dog,” “white lightning,” or “moonshine.”

via Portland Mercury

I was so excited to get my hands of a bottle of my own. This will keep me company during the winter months in Portland.

Of course, we can’t forget the lovely ladies working the register. I was glad I was able to get a free moment because they were super busy all day.

All types of House Spirits alcohol were free for sampling.

See more photos on my Flickr page. Drink up!

AEPDX User Group for December.

This month’s meeting was a blast. Stephen Fitzgerald, a.k.a. Monovich, shared his workflow and opened up his After Effects for both his Cut & Paste files. PDX was his first conquest, then he made his way over to show his files for the NYC competition.

Two of Portland’s finest motion directors. Stephen Fitzgerald & Paul Anders sharing a drink at Dec. AEPDX meeting.

Chris Tegethoff is the Portland After Effects User Group Manager. He’s getting ready to raffle off software. This month’s prizes were Particular 2.0, Digieffects freeform and any Adobe Creative Suite 4.

Thanks everyone for showing up and making this another great event.

On my trip down to LA, I went to the Auto show and took my Canon 5d Mark II equipped with my 580 EX and a 16-35mm f/2.8. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the results.

Jump on over to my Flickr page for more photos from this event.

Brobo teaching at Camp Tillamook

Brobo reviewing student's work.

Student's example work.

Today, I was invited by Roger Ross, an awesome local Oregon photographer, to guest speak at his class at Camp Tillamook. It’s a great facility with access to great DSLR equipment (Canon, of course) and each student has their own individual laptop.

I was able to share my work and process with the students. They are a great group of young men ,who were all very creative as you can see from the samples above. I covered selection tools, gradient tool, blending modes and layers in Photoshop Elements. It was great to see what the guys were interested in and I got to chat with a few of them during breaks.

After working professionally for several years for many clients, this was one of the most rewarding days I’ve ever had.

Halloween is always a fun time of the year. This year we had some great costumes. Clicking on any of the photos will take you to my flickr stream.

I was able to use the Canon 5d Mark II for both stills and video. I am very pleased with the result. No additional lighting was used. I had the Canon 28mm f/1.8 set around ISO 4000. The low light performance is great. I did take the photos into the Lightroom 3 beta for some post processing, but overall I’m very pleased. Hope you all had a fun Halloween.

Members Only recreates the famous Luke Skywalker celebratory jacket in that famous final scene.

I want Nixon now. Check out their awesome line of watches.

courtesy of fubiz.net

From a form perspective, the Dell Adamo, is a beauty. The photography on the site is a bit overdone, but at least they tried. If I ever used Windows again, I’d like to use it on that.