Erika and Brandon are an awesome couple. They wanted to incorporate some basketball in their photo shoot since they love the Los Angeles Lakers. Yes! I love sports and I loved this idea. We did the photos in Copper River since it has a nice outdoor court. We were so blessed with some sunshine and clouds since it was overcast all day up until the photo shoot. Throw in some wind in there and Erika has some awesome hair blowing going on.

Part 1 of Ro and Joe’s engagement takes place in downtown Fresno at the heart of the Mural District. What brought us down here were the two’s love for the San Francisco Giants and Fresno Grizzlies baseball. The Mural District is Fresno’s little art community. And as you can guess from the name, there are different buildings with whole wall murals. There are even neat sculptures around that leaves one guessing.

Keep an eye out for part 2 of the engagement shoot in Storyland.

Nikki and Dan are so much fun to hangout with. I had suggested that they should do their photo session at a location that was special to them which is how we ended up on Sample Road. On the way to Sample Road was one of their very first dates. Too bad Dan’s motorcycle was getting fixed the day of the shoot, it would have been awesome to incorporate it.

The California weather was lovin’ us that day! Rarely do we see green grass… especially on the way to the foothills. It had rained the previous weekend so everything was green with lots of wild flowers everywhere. There was even a snake… eeks!

Cheng and Jordan are full of passion. I love it! Cheng had envisioned a “spring fever” shoot. Unfortunately, the day was overcast and later stormed so I suggested that we do two shoots. This is part one of spring fever. Can’t do spring without a little rain and overcast weather right?

The couple wanted to do the photo shoot in their neighborhood. What better way to get to know them. Cheng and Jordan have lots of pets… from dogs, to chickens, and bees! Let’s just say I got carried away when I found out they had chickens at the end of the shoot. I wanted to photograph the two of them with the chickens all day.

Let me tell you how excited I was to shoot this family photo session. I have always wanted to take photos at the Kaweah Oaks Preserve in Visalia, Ca. That place truly is magical and does not look like it is in the Central Valley at all. It reminds me of the movie Avatar. At first I was sad to find that the green leafy vines were all dead for winter, but it turned out great for the photos anyway. This just means I will have to find a reason to come back in the summer because I sure love taking picture of green foliage.

We ended up going on the shortest trail which was the Grapevine Trail. It sure was an adventure for Aly who is two-and-a-half years old. She was able to explore high and low since this place towers with trees all around. There were plenty of squirrels, creepy spiders, and gorgeous sunlight. I couldn’t stop telling Ro how gorgeous the sun was every five minutes. It was an pleasure to see a mother and daughter interact with each other and to see so many emotions in this 1.5 hour photo session.

If you haven’t heard of Stop Online Piracy Act, I’m sure you’ve heard of it now when you clicked that Google logo today. January 18, 2012 marks the date of internet blackout in order to make more people aware of SOPA. Websites like Google, Wikipedia, WordPress, Mozilla, and Reddit have all joined together to let everyone experience how the internet would be if the bill passed. Craigslist has also taken a different route to prevent the bill from passing.

What is SOPA?

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as H.R. 3261, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill expands the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Now before the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act.

The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who requests the court orders, the actions could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such…

Source: stop online piracy act on Freebase, licensed under CC-BY

The U.S. Senate will vote on January 24th even though vast majorities of Americans have opposed these bills. Help stop Internet censorship legislation. Protect your rights to free speech and privacy. Visit Google’s End Piracy, Not Liberty page to take action.

With much anticipation since the end of the FIFA World Cup in 2006, the 2010 World Cup in South Africa has been going on for two weeks with the first round of eliminations coming to an end this week. With everyone, including myself, being focused on rooting for their team to move forward, I had a little inspiration to do this article when I saw the ESPN 33 FIFA Murals for each individual team taking part in the games. I decided to look up the official design posters from the past World Cup. Here are all the poster designs for the World Cup since 1930, starting with the most recent, South Africa to the oldest, Uruguay.

Which one is your favorite?

2006 Germany

2002 Korea Republic & Japan

1998 France

1994 USA

1990 Italy

1986 Mexico

1982 Spain

1978 Argentina

1974 West Germany

1970 Mexico

1966 England

1962 Chile

1958 Sweden

1954 Switzerland

1950 Brazil

1938 France

1934 Italy

1930 Uruguay

And did you know that the first World Cup mascot was the 1966 World Cup in England?

Finding the right font for that one design can be tough. A great font does not necessarily have to be those that must be purchased. An example is the font Calluna which is above. Great typography can come from anywhere. Here is a list of 25 free fonts ranging from Sans Serif, Serif, Web 2.0 to other type of fonts for you to use in your designs. The fonts below were chosen, not only because they are great and free, but they are also license-free which means that you can use them both for your personal use, as well as for commercial purposes. However, licenses and disclaimers are always changing so please do check each font you download.

Now, which one is your favorite font on the list?

Airstrip Four

Alte Haas Grotesk

Amputa Bangiz

AUdimat

Carbon

Comfortaa

Com4t Fine Regular

Days

Delicious

Dream Orphans

Fetigo Pro

Fontin Sans

Goudy Bookletter 1911

Just Old Fashion

Justus

Mayberry Pro Semibold

Miso

Mod

Museo

Petit Latin

Serif6 Beta

Tallys

Tuffy

Ubuntu Title

Here are some free rock textures I have shot up in Burrough Valley, CA that’s been sitting in my camera for a month now. I have been planning on giving away free textures every week, but have been so busy to post them. These are all free for personal design use as well as for commercial design. You do not need to give me credit for it, although I would be curious to see what you have done with it. So please feel free to email me a sample of your design. There are 11 high resolution rock textures available for download via 31.1 MB zip format.

Go ahead and take a guess at the number we see in a day.

The average American sees 16,000 advertisements, logos, and labels in a day.^[1] Isn’t that amazing? That data was collected in 1999 and is used in the book, Logo Design Love. I am sure with the influence of social media and the new type of marketing called inbound marketing, that we see a lot more advertisements, logos, and labels today.

After being influenced from reading David Airey’s Logo Design Love, I decided to do my own experiment with how many logos I see before going to bed by just doing my daily routine.

Here is my list of logos in five minutes:

I saw a total of 11 logos. These are just the ones I noticed, and I know there are a lot more around me.

Give it a try. What logos are on your list in five minutes? How many do you see on your computer screen alone. . .on your tv screen?

_{1. Sharma Singh Khalsa, M.D. with Cameron Stauth. Brain Longevity: The Breakthrough Medical Program That Improves Your Mind and Memory. (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 1999)}