Ummmm.
Hi.
How have things been?
Did you make it through all the chaos?
You wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t.
Unless you're a ghost who likes to read random blog posts.
ANYWAYS!
I’m back.
It’s been two whole months since I’ve posted anything.
Since I’ve done…. anything…. to be honest.
Things have just been… interesting.
The world was ending and everyone was commenting on the situation.
I decided to step back and just chill.
I didn’t want to voice my opinions about anything.
I never really do.
I just stay out of situations and watch from afar.
So, that’s what I did.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t try to make anything these past two months.
I started a project before all this started.
It’s called… THE YELLOW PROJECT.
The goal was to capture the color yellow and only that color.
I even did yellow back in the day, but it was for a high school project.
I could do better.
So that’s what I was planning to do and well…..
SOMETHING HAPPENED.
IF YOU DIDN’T NOTICE!!
The Earth stood still for a month.
Everything stopped.
Silence…..
………...
…….
…
.
EXCEPT FOR ME!
Real estate and real estate services were considered essential.
SOOOOO, I kept working.
It didn’t stop.
IT EXPLODED!!
Lord have mercy on my soul, I almost died.
FROM EXHAUSTION!!
Three shoots a day, non-stop.
And because agents had to market more only, they ordered more products.
So those three shoots had photos, a video, a 360 camera tour, so on and so forth.
I had a video a day for the whole month almost!
SOMETIMES TWO VIDEOS!!
And I edit the videos as well.
So, I’d be gone shooting all day, get back at 6pm, and spend the rest of the day editing the videos.
It was crazy.
That is the reason why I haven’t posted anything in two months.
I didn’t have time to do anything else but work.
Well, I didn’t have time to do things that were away from the computer.
Basically, I’d edit a video, render that, and upload it for the boss to look at.
So while it’s rendering and uploading, I’d have some time to do other things.
Plus sometimes the boss doesn’t review things right away, so I had even more time.
During that time, I decided to work on this website that you are currently on.
I made this site in 2018 for my portfolio class.
A spot to advertise myself with what I can do.
After classes were done, I’ve always wanted to do something with this site.
I've needed a new Main Website for a while.
My old one, that I mostly coded myself, is out-of-date and is even blacklisted.
You try to open it and your web browser will yell at you.
There were a lot of things on there that I don't even use anymore.
Simply put, I needed a fresh start and this site was the perfect place.
I’ve slowly expanded upon things over the past two months.
I added the videos, new photos, re-organized the portfolio, changed the colors, etc etc.
Slowly turning this into the new main website.
The new destination for everything that I do across the interwebs.
I EVEN BOUGHT A DOMAIN NAME.
I eventually got things ironed out and was liking how it was coming together.
One of the last things I added was the Home Page.
On the old site, the home page was the one place to see all that I was doing.
This new home page works the same way… kind of.
The old one showed posts from ALL of my other sites.
Yes, I have more than one.
I’ve got nine that do various things.
I realized I didn’t need them all.
Most of them are pointless now.
So, this new home page shows the basics.
There’s a feed for Facebook and Twitter.
I kind of post the same things on both, so that is a bit redundant.
But maybe I’ll post different things in different places.
Lastly, there’s a third column for any new site relating things.
Like a new video or blog post is posted, you know.
Those are the three main pillars that I needed.
Something with the rest of the site.
There are three main things.
The photos, the videos, and the blog.
Well, there is the extra portfolio page too.
But besides that, the only things that were on this site were the videos and the photos.
The blog was on here, but it was just a link to the old blog.
I thought…. Since I’m basically getting rid of the old and starting new….
I could do that with the blog too and I wanted everything in one place.
So, I experimented with moving the blog over here.
One issue.
The blog uses a lot of extra JS and CSS codes.
I use Wix to host this site and they are a bit snippy about extra codes.
They don’t really allow true HTML editing like what I was dong on the old blog.
However, they allow you to add an HTML box where you can put a code, but it's confined to that box.
Which is really what I need.
I just wanted to move over some key features which were the two ways I have to compare a photo.
One where you hover your mouse over the photo or tap the photo to see the before and after edits.
The other is a slider that lets you slip a photo in half and compare the before and after edits.
The hover one transferred over flawlessly.
Its code is super simple, so I knew it would work.
The slider, however, not the case.
It’s too complex and Wix doesn’t like it.
I even went as far as finding a new slider that works in Wix.
But I got it working on the desktop site, but no the mobile version of the site.
That’s a big deal.
I never really embraced mobile until now because I never had a cell phone.
But now with this new site, I have a mobile editor and I’m optimized for mobile!
So having something not working wasn’t going to fly for me.
So, I abandoned the slider.
We are back to the simple basics of what the blog was originally when I started it in 2009.
You can look and see what else I didn't transfer over.
Pretty much… everything was left.
CLICK HERE to see the 11 years post on the old blog.
Then, CLICK HERE to see the 11 years post on the new blog.
I’m liking it.
It's back to its simplicity and I don't have to worry about all those extra codes breaking as they always do.
Alright, there’s there round down of this site.
I’m glad I found time to fix this place up.
TOO BAD I DIDN’T HAVE TIME FOR ANYTHING ELSE
I still don’t have time right now.
I shot the photo and video for this post on June 18… I think. I mention it in the video.
I had the video edited in three days and I uploaded it hidden to the channel on the 23rd.
All I had to do was just type up this post.
IT’S TAKEN ME A WEEK TO DO THAT.
I’ve just been so busy and in the times when I’m not busy, I’M SLEEPING!
The only reason have time today is because I had a BIG shoot and a BIG house that got moved to two weeks from now.
It’s been outrageous.
But, I shouldn’t complain.
At least I had a job.
Anyways, while all this was going down I put the Yellow Project on hold.
So I thought, I’ll just start something else!
THUS! The iPad Project was born.
I was going to shoot and edit a photo on the iPad.
All the videos were going to be recorded on the iPad.
I was even going to edit the video on the iPad, but that became too much of an issue.
The video got too big and the iPad couldn't take it.
Well, Adobe Rush couldn’t take it.
It kept crashing.
So, I’ll have to edit it on the computer.
You might be wondering, where is that project?
Well, I couldn’t think of a good idea.
I didn’t want to force an idea.
I pretty much was.
I was trying to quickly get a project done because there was a long gap forming between photos.
That usually doesn’t work.
So I just waited until something hit me.
Then one day, I thought, I'll just record an update video.
Saying where I’ve been and what’s going on.
But then while recording that update, I thought of a cool photo idea.
And that’s where we are.
However, I made things a bit too quickly.
I realize this photo would have been perfect for the iPad Project.
But I didn’t think about that at the time and made it using my normal cameras.
Oh well, I’ll think of something interesting for the iPad at some point.
ANYWAYS!!!
ONTO THE PHOTO!!
IT’S THE RETURN OF MIRRORING.
Back in the day, I did this project about this technique of mirroring a photo.
You take a photo, split in half, and flip one of the halves.
SIMPLE.
I haven’t done a photo like that in a while and really wanted to make one.
It wasn't going to be too complicated.
Me, on a wall, mirrored.
AND THAT’S WHAT I DID.
At first, I was posing for the photo…
See…
Trying to make it interesting.
But towards the end of the shoot, this photo slipped in.
Photo
That’s the one I went with.
My true feeling emerged.
Like with my birthday photo.
I tried posing for that to make seem like I was happy, but I wasn’t.
I was all salty because I’m getting old.
Same concept here.
I was mentally tired and you can see that.
I made it more gloomy by fading the colors.
You can compare those changes below!
Hover your mouse (the computer one :-P) over the original picture to see the after editing one.
If you're on a touchscreen device, just tap on the picture. You may have to tap more than once.
The final step was to cut the photo in half and flip one side.
And that was that.
I was settled with that photo.
But after a day of thinking… that felt too simple.
So I went back in and moved the split to be more on myself so it mirrored me in a weird way.
I’m happy with how it turned out!
ONTO…. THE VIDEO!
The video is pretty straight forward.
It has a few random videos at the beginning, but then it jumps into the update and goes over everything I’ve been doing.
You can CLICK HERE to see the video or watch it below.
ALRIGHT!
That’s all.
I mentioned my birthday photo earlier.
I brought that up in the video as well.
I was originally going to lean against that tree and mirror that.
But I felt like it would be too similar to my birthday photo.
But I've been thinking about that a lot and I really want to do that photo, even if it is similar.
BUT THIS TIME….
I’LL SHOOT IT ON THE IPAD.
The iPad Project will finally be complete!
I don’t know when the Yellow Project will get done.
I need to venture out into the world for that one.
Speaking of that again, my reactions to the world shutting down and what not is in that video.
I was recording the Yellow Project when it all went down so its in that video.
I think some of it did bleed over into the iPad Project because I was making both at one point.
So, look forwards to those in the future.
Especially the iPad Project since that’s coming up next.
I’LL SEE YOU THEN!
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