Well, he was never really “gone,” but there haven’t been photos of him posted on here in a while. So here we go. We brought him to a nearby dog park for a romp today, which he thoroughly enjoyed.
Dog parks are as interesting for the owners as the dogs. Today we were amused to see a woman and her husband there that we have encountered in the past. They are “co-founders” of the dog park and therefore think they control the place. With one breath the woman says the park is for everyone then throws a girl out for “not having vocal control” of her dog with the next. Her dog was a seven-month-old bull terrier that was really excited to play with a black lab owned by these people and the black lab repeatedly mounted and dominated it, causing the owners to tell the girl to leave. Meanwhile, they did not have verbal command of their dog, either.
It’s funny because they were the type of people who talk down to everyone they consider to be less knowledgeable about dogs. If you dog doesn’t have tags (which I do agree is important) or if it’s not perfectly trained, even at seven months, they get an attitude and kick you out of the park. I’ve seen this happen and the way they talk to people is offensive. At the same time, if they think you are a “good dog person,” they can’t wait to chat you up. Maybe I’m ranting for no reason, but it was just annoying to see a complete double standard from these people who didn’t have any real claim to power in the park in the first place.
Anyway, here are the photos. Click “there’s more to…” to see them all or visit my SmugMug. Also, I just updated to a new version of WordPress, so I will be testing the new caption feature.
Here is a shot from Spencer's Run dog park at Waveny Park in New Canaan, CT. I liked this one because he is running from the shadow of one tree into the shadow of another, adding an interesting vignette-like framing to him.
Continue reading ‘Data’s Back!’
Before I post two pages from tonight, I know that I’ve been slacking on the substantive posts lately, but rest assured that I have photos I plan to take and things I intend to discuss on here, including some changes to the blog itself I am thinking of making (hint: I might convert to the dark side and put a Twitter feed on here), so keep checking back or subscribe to our RSS feed to make things easier (I suggest Google Reader).
Faced with mediocre photos of a Ukrainian festival as my only art on the page, I decided to pull the exact color formula for the Ukrainian flag and the official emblem of the country to create a more interesting visual scheme.
Area newspapers that did not have Obama’s running mate story:
- New York Times
- The Hour
- The Day
- Connecticut Post
- Springfield Republican
Area newspapers that ran the story with a big question mark to cover their asses:
Area newspapers that had the news:
How about them apples!
Today I got to stop the presses for the first time to get the leak of Obama’s selection of Joe Biden as his running mate in the paper. It was really cool to feel as though I was breaking news, even in the age of the internet. In the interest of time, I updated the story we ran on page 2 with the full Obama story, but only added a bar to the top of the front page. Here, for comparison, are the two versions of the front page.
Before:
After:
Here’s today’s local front. I was very happy to have a photo that lent itself to a full six-column spread.
Note: A typo has managed to sneak its way onto the page – good thing it’s not going to press until tomorrow night. Can you spot it?
Here’s a peek at an overambitious idea gone awry and supplanted with boring mediocrity in the interest of time. The story is about a kid who suffered a detached retina from a close encounter with a tennis ball. The story then becomes a general sports and eye safety type of thing.
My first idea for the design was to photograph a tennis ball and run the story inside of it. I placed the ball at various angles and found two that I thought might work for text.
Unfortunately, cutting out and tweaking the images would have taken more time than I had available to me (I wasn’t able to start this page until after the daily pages were finished, which was around midnight), so I decided to try the next best thing – using the text to form the shape of the ball.
As you can see, the idea was a much better in concept than in execution. What you see here is clearly in a rough prototype form, but I decided there was really no reason to waste any more time on it – though it was fun to teach myself how to draw a yin and yang symbol and flow text through it.
Finally, I decided to just go with the ultra-straightforward design seen here. I didn’t like doing it, but I also don’t like being at work until 6 a.m.
With McCain and Obama hitting up some religious nonsense on the campaign trail, I wanted to give them both equal play. Luckily, they shared the stage long enough for a photo. I decided to put some stylized quotes at the top.
