Fishy Valentine's Day Dinner

Happy Valentine's Day

I'm not a huge fan of sushi, but I am a huge fan of the sushi bar found at my local Harris Teeter grocery store. You can find all of your traditional sushi favorites freshly made daily. In addition to these yummy favorites, Eddie, manager of the sushi bar, creates his own custom sushi delights. He specifically specializes in creating sushi that is decorated with fresh fruit on top. Often times I order platters of sushi for special events and gathering. Eddie's sushi platters are always a BIG HIT!

Around this time last year, I ordered a platter of sushi which included sushi that was topped off with strawberries, mango, and bananas for my church's Middle School Super Bowl party. Eavesdropping on various conversations, I heard a number of compliments on how the fruit sushi was surprisingly really good. It made me feel great knowing that so many people enjoyed the same sushi I get to enjoy so often.

A few weeks later, stopping by the Harris Teeter sushi bar during my lunch break, I noticed a small platter of sushi arranged in a heart shaped box. It was a Valentine's Day sushi box! What will they think of next! Haha. I chatted with Eddie for a bit mentioning to him how I thought his idea for a Valentine's Day sushi box was pretty cool. Eddie is such a nice, polite, and very respectful man. He is most certainly a hard worker, he and prides himself on the quality of his work. Not only does he go out of his way to make delicious sushi, but he takes it an extra step by creating sushi that is very presentable and looks great. I didn't pick up one of the V-Day sushi boxes because the boxes were made for two, and I didn't have anyone to share with. Oh well. :/

Fast forward a year.  Since I moved to a location that is further away for this Harris Teeter, I haven't been able to eat sushi from Eddie's sushi bar as often.  However, this Valentine's Day I was able to pick up one the the delightful heart shaped sushi boxes. As you can see, this sushi box came with several tuna rolls, some mango rolls, and some strawberry rolls.  The heart in the middle is made of rice which is topped off with avocado.

A special guest dropped by, and I took some photos of the lovely sushi arrangement. My special friend and I had a very tasty dinner! lol

Super Heroes on a Small Planet

Its now after the holiday rush of 2012, and I realized I haven't taken the time to take pictures! Its now a new year, and I'm happy to throw up a new blog post. My first for post for 2013. Yay!

I'm always on the look out for strange and interesting photo projects.  As I was checking out different tutorials on how to take better group photos, I came across a bizarre looking group photo where the people were all lined up side by side around a small circle-looking planet.  From there I  Googled small planet photo effect.  It turns out that this effect is pretty simple to create.

If your curious, here's a list of each of the characters.

• Silver Surfer
• Hulk
•  Iron Man
• Dr. Doom
• Iron Man
• Thor
• Iron Fist
• Reptil
• Spider-Man
• Frost Gaint

Sigma 17-50mm f/2.8

Stop Motion Surprise

For a while now, I've been wanting to create a stop motion animation. Making a video for the fun of it with no purpose other than just to make a video is fine. However, many times an inspiration or motivation is needed to jump start creativity.

I've been blessed with two good friends who celebrated their two year wedding anniversary. As a demonstration of my gratitude toward them, I decided to put together a short stop motion animation for their enjoyment. A lot of my inspiration and learning came from a super cool pair of YouTubers called The Fu. You can checkout them out at their channel. --> The Fu <--

One of the biggest challenges I faced was picking the right song. Knowing both friends are heavily music minded people, I really took my time searching. After watching tons and tons of stop motion videos on YouTube, I decided to go with a folkish sounding song. By shear randomness, a Honda advertisement popped up during one of the videos I watched. Long story short, the ad was promoting a group called Monster Calling Home. Checkout the story behind the group here: Surprising Monsters Calling Home Their song, Fight to Keep, caught my attention. Once I heard this song and saw the music video and story behind it, I knew I had to use it. So after a couple of days searching for the right song, I purchased Fight to Keep. Get your own copy here. -->Fight to Keep <--

The more planning you put into a stop motion animation, the easier its going to be. Part of my planning phase included:

• breaking the song lyrics into different segments
• calculating how many frames are in each segment
• story boarding how each scene will look for each segment

After all the planning was done, I procrastinated a few weeks, but finally made myself get the 125+ still images I needed to complete the project. To take the pictures I used an affordable point and shoot camera because I wanted to show that a fancy DSLR camera isn't needed to make a nice looking video. Once I uploaded all the shots onto my computer, editing everything together onto the timeline in Final Cut was simple. I got most of it all done just before I had to go to my churches weekly prayer meeting.

All in all, it was definitely a fun project to do, and I really enjoyed showing the final result to my dear friends. I was actually very nervous while I was showing the video. Its been a long time since I've been nervous like that. Its always nerve wrecking not knowing how your art will be accepted. SDG



PowerShot ELPH 110 HS, Pink