Matthew A. Hawkins is available for creative design in all things media.

PHONE: 604.316.4404 EMAIL: matt@filmads.ca

November & December Challenge

Posted on October 26, 2010

Do you ever have a list of things you want to complete but you never do it? I hate that. It’s probably my biggest pet peeve of myself. I have a crazy list of things I want to do and the biggest deterrent from doing any of it is… surprise! ME!

You come up with excuses. You make yourself think you’re doing something else that’s more important. You pretend like you’re working… come on, seriously, how much time have you wasted in the last month saying you’re working but you’re really tweeting, facebooking or checking Google Reader for the billionth time?

Starting November you’ll be seeing something new on my blog everyday for 61 days. Yes that’s right 61 days, 61 posts.

November will be 30 days in pictures. I recently started working through some tutorials of Nick Campbells from GreyScale Gorilla and he mentioned about how challenging it was take a creative picture everyday and post it. I figured it would be good for me to try it out. I want to up the quality of my pictures and photoshop techniques and this will be a way to force me to do it.

December will be my Christmas blog-a-thon month with guest posts again. I did this last December and it was a blast putting it together. I may just be calling out to some of my ill-frequent readers here to post on the ol’blog. Just a heads up!

Starting November 1st get ready! Some of you on Twitter said you’d try it too, so post your blog links in a comment and let’s get ready for some great posts and busting out of the boring!

Cheers,

Matthew A. Hawkins

Posted in On My Desk, Promotional Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

My Group Shot

Posted on October 25, 2010

I posted some pictures the other day of my sons Pumpkin Patch trip.
Well, one picture I had some issues with. I needed to take a wide shot of the whole class and parents on the flat bed. With my cropped sensor and fixed lens it wasn’t going to happen. So I needed to take 2 pictures and hope they would line up. I did also get everyone to cozy up to one another for one shot, but I accidentally cut someone off… oops… good thing I was volunteering!

So here’s the two shots I took of the group:

I overlayed the two photos and didn’t worry about color correcting at first.
I then rotated, adjusted and did most of the work on the second picture. The first one I used the anchor, so to speak.

If you look at the top leftt on the picture above and then just under the hay on the left, you can see areas I either erased, painted or used the contentaware fill (which was mostly for the garage door and inside the barn in the background).

It all came together really nicely. I added some curves adjustments to the picture on the left and adjusted the levels till it all matched with the lighting. I think it looks fairly decent for a panorama picture shot with a fixed, non-wide lens.

Pumpkin Patch Trip Number Two is coming later this week, but I don’t think we’re going to get as nice of weather though.

Cheers,
Matthew A. Hawkins

Posted in Lessons Learned, On My Desk, Promotional Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Decades Coffee Poster

Posted on October 22, 2010

Well my good friend Mr. Laser (yes his last name is Laser and never stops being cool) who owns Decades Coffee asked me to put together a poster for an upcoming event.
Ron Laser and I have done a fair bit of work together and it’s always a pleasure helping him with new projects. I think we’ve done a fair bit of work together because with this poster, Ron just gave me the pertinent info and then asked if I could make it. No pictures, style ideas or thoughts, just trust in that I could deliver a good product. I love that! Thanks Ron!

Here’s what I came up with:

Posted in On My Desk, Promotional Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

Pumpkin Patch One

Posted on October 21, 2010

I had the chance yesterday to go with my sons preschool class to the pumpkin patch.
I’ll have some video footage of his trip and my other sons trip next week, but here’s a few sneak peeks first.

The last picture here, the group shot, I had a fun time putting together. Using my curves adjustment, a little bit of the contentaware fill in CS5 and a little opacity changes and blur brush, I put two pictures into one!

More to come soon.

Cheers,

Matthew A. Hawkins

Posted in On My Desk, Promotional Tagged with: , , , , , ,

My Adventures

Posted on October 19, 2010

Well if you didn’t know, Carin Bondar and myself, won a contest which grand prize consisted of flights to Toronto, hotel rooms at the Fairmont Royal York, attendance at and screening of our video at the closing gala of the Planet in Focus Film Festival and $2000 cash. A HUGE thank you needs to go out to Planet in Focus and Discovery World HD for picking our little film and letting us experience such an amazing trip.

We just got back from the weekend and wow was it awesome. We had so much fun. Aside from the crazy pictures I’m posting below, the highlights were: meeting & talking with Robert Bateman and his wife, talking with Brian Hill , the director of the closing galas feature “Climate in Change“, the board of directors of Planet in Focus, the people of Discovery World HD (who put the contest together) and not to mention a lot of other great, passionate people that love film.

All that said, we had an amazing weekend. To feel like I was closer to home and keep my kids in touch with what I was doing, I took pictures of a couple of their action figures in various spots on my trip.

I also got to take a picture with the most amazing trophy EVER! The Stanley Cup. I met the Cup 9 years ago and after meeting the Cup my wife asked me if I kissed it. My heart dropped. I had failed to do that. Not this time. I would right all that was wrong with the world. Upon seeing the cup and meeting the overseer of the trophy room, I figured I had to sneak a kiss as I wasn’t even supposed to touch it. So that’s why I look like a school boy sneaking a peck.

An amazing weekend and there’s a good chance that Carin and I will be looking to enter a short for next Planet in Focus Festival.

Posted in Promotional, those moments Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,

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