new photography site coming soon!

Oh.... this is exciting. Dara and I are relaunching our photography business in 2009, with a new logo, look and feel. Which means a lot of fun for me: new site, new blog, new business cards - EVERYTHING MUST GO!

But "Why?" you might ask....

Well, Curtishots has been great for us, but the name.... the name! What can I say, it sounded catchy and it was an available URL. But, it didn't really say "yo yo yo! We're a married couple that shoots weddings together!"

Here is our old logo:



It was fine at first, but after 2 years I was asking myself "does this branding do our work justice?" The answer was no. Our style has evolved, and so has our target market. We are shifting from a "hey everybody, hire us" to a "hey you, cool couple - WAZZZUP!" haha. well, maybe not quite. Here are a few of the logo variations we'll be using:




I'm not sure if this new logo/branding gets our style across, but that's our hope. What do you people say? (yeah, i'm talking to my 2 blog followers)

these variations are being used in different ways depending on the median. Why? we're done with consistency, thats why! haha. a new logo for every purpose. functionally designed logos. why put a square logo in a horizontal space? why do the opposite? see what I mean?

Here is some of our promo material so far:

A&D promo materials

but wait, there's more:

for every comment left on this post, I will give $1 to this homeless woman I just met today. if you leave more than one comment i may consider it as a worthy additional dollar on your behalf! So comment away, let's see how many people really follow this blog.

don't know what to talk about? how about the idea of multiple logos to fit the many forms they'll be applied to. critique my logos, or brainstorm another one! its up to you.

PEACE

Free Dotted Line Photoshop Brushes

Ho Ho Ho! Austin Clause has a present for all you Photoshoppers: Some dotted line brushes!



Above: I took a cool painting of Santa Clause and painted over it with some of these brushes to give an idea of what you can do with these dotted line brushes.

Here's a preview of each brush:


Bonus brushes included:


Download: Free Dotted Line Brush Set for Photshop

Now you'll have a full set of square, round, diamond, and dash dotted line brushes at your disposal. Merry Christmas!

Twitter in Real Life pt 2

Alright, so if you don't know what Twitter is, you need to check out this bomb-ass social site, and while you're there, follow me!

It's basically a micro-blogging type site where your entries are limited to140 words.

Recently, a site called Hubspot, aka: the geniuses behind Inbound Marketing came out with a "Twitter in Real Life" comic. I thought it was pretty funny:


It got my brain going, and so I made my own Twitter in Real Life (click to enlarge):

I was referring to the way that new Twitter users feel when they find out that they can't fit everything they want to say in one line, and how some annoying tweeps use like 5 tweets in a row to get a single thought out (which then has to be read backwards).

Drawing this got me thinking: Maybe I need to do more drawing! I love the idea of doing a comic book. I started a comic as a kid called "Mario vs. Sonic the Hedgehog" hehehe

Then in high school, a friend of mine and I did "Superman, the After Years". It was about an overweight and lazy Superman who could still fight crime, although usually it was by accidentally falling on the assailant and squishing him to death :)

Instructions Fail

My baby girl would only go to sleep if i had this music maker working. The batteries died at the worst possible time, so I was desperate to get some new ones in there. I obviously did not read the instructions when trying to open it, because if I had, I might have known about the 2 screws holding the cover on. It got to a point where I thought "there is no way I'm doing this wrong - it must be a defective cover." Anyway, I totally destroyed the thing.

Mammoth men

Yo yo. Alright, so - I've been following this sweet blog all week called Mammoth Men. Its 12 guys who go on a bus trip with cameras in hand, and the blog readers get to choose their adventure and win prizes etc.

Anyway, I sent them some fan art - they loved it, and I think it might have given them the idea to do a "Pee Your Pants" competition. Haha. Anyway, thought I'd share the stuff I sent them.

Here is a photo they posted about to jump into Lake Powell:


then I added myself as the 13th mammoth man, jumping off:

Here is their original logo:


but then during their trip, the bus boke, and they had to cram into a van, so I made them a new logo - haha:
For the contest, they said "make us pee our pants!" - I'm not sure I did that but hopefully I will have made them chuckle a bit. I did a few mash-ups with their photos.

First up, Mammoth chicks:


Mammothenator:



Gunman mashup. I put Justin Lyon into the photo on the target. Here is the original poster:

here is Justin shooting target:

Here is Justin on the target:


On all three designs, I know I could have spent a lot more time, but for once I wasn't worried about perfect detail, as long as it looked decent.

update: I won! Just kidding. There was some way funnier stuff posted - the winner definitely made somebody piss their pants!

My Halloween Costume

Can you guess who I was? Haha - My brother Garret

How to get more people to read your blog

Hello Friends:

This blog post will bring good luck, but only if you pass it on. Lots of people have already done this and subsequently had successful blogs! All you have to do is follow the instructions below.

First: make a blog post called "How to get more people to read your blog"
Second: Copy and paste these instructions as the content.
Third: Pass the link on to 25 people

And that's it. Oh, I forgot to mention: IF you don't pass it on, something very terribly might happen. One guy didn't pass it on and his blog got black listed from Google. Now make a wish!
.
.
.
Are you thinking of it?
.
.
.
It will come true if you pass this on to 80 friends instead of just 25!
.
.
and you will find true love and become rich!
.
.
HAHAHA

Remember chain letters? Then email chain letters?
Now it's chain blogs! Woohoo!

rise and shine!

up early to go shoot a wedding in Pasadena. did you know that Dara and I are wedding photographers?

I have the cutest daughter

Photoshopped Coffee

What up peeps. A co-worker sent me this Coffee jpg to me one morning, and I thought it would be funny to change it and send it back.

Original:

Mines:

Blue Shabana - Screen Shot

I was working on some Corporate Headshots here in Santa Barbara, and after hiding some layers accidentally I saw this and thought it was pretty cool.

new design

made this during my lunch break - had fun making it!

How I got a new phone for $10 without renewing my AT&T contract

Alright, here is the deal: My wife and I bought ATT phones with a 2 year agreement, 2 years ago. Sadly, my phone recently died. I didn't want to sign up for another 2 years, and of course I didn't want to buy a new phone at full price. So... What did I do?

I went into my local Radio Shack (none of those lines typical at AT&T stores) and told them that I'd like to buy a prepaid AT&T phone as a gift for a friend. This way they didn't ask me if I wanted to buy any phone cards for it. I paid $10 for a new phone - opened it up, put my old sim card into it and continued on my old plan as if nothing ever happened. That's not all:

As a bonus, they include a sim card. Now if you have ever had to buy a sim card to replace your old one, you know that they cost $25. So, what you do is you keep this one (even though it is currently set up to be a 'pay as you go' sim card) and if you ever lose your sim/phone they can activate that one with whatever plan you desire.

How did I learn this? A very very kind hearted employee gave me the run down a few days back.

booya!

Follow me on Twitter

Now that everybody's doing it. I finally can. HAHA.
http://twitter.com/austincurtis

Sorry I've been sucking at this blog. I have so many photos that I want to put up. Since I've stopped using Picasa, it is a bit more of a pain in the ass to upload on here. Okay... so it's not that hard.

alright alright - I'll post some photos. Actually, what I'll start doing is back logging photos, so it will seem that I've been keeping up with them all along. NICE

My BABY was born!

Aliyah Sky Curtis
born 7/2/08 at 4:26am

WOW. That's all I can really say. Wow wow wow.

Crazy Screenshot

I was working on a flash animation, and had to save this screenshot. If you want to see the project I was working on, or if you need a sure cure for stinky feet, check out StinkAway. Haha..

Congrats to Keegan + Life Discovery

my old room mate and good friend Keegan is getting married! Booya!

I took some photos while I was there, and had a friend take this one of Keegan and I. Look closely.



Looking at this photo, you know what I noticed for the first time in my life? I am a big guy. I mean, I always knew I was tall, but I had no idea how tall really. Keegan is a giant in my mind - and this picture really tripped me out. I consider my reaction to this photo a life discovery

fricking hilarious

Political Commentary through photos

I was on a walk with my wife talking about the current political situation, and I snapped these photos. Instead of talking about what I thought they could mean, I thought it would be cooler if anyone looking at this could give an interpretation. All opinions are welcomed.





look closely! haha..

sick design (haha)

its not that sick. haha. but it turned out pretty good considering all the info I had to pack in to a 3x4 inch ad. anyways, i got paid! caaaash money!

AHHH, everybody duck and cover!

American spy satellite 'the size of a bus' is out of control and hurtling towards Earth

In orbit: A satellite the size of a small bus is plummeting towards the earth!

Wedding Photography in Santa Barbara

Hey everybody,

If you know anyone that could use a wedding photographer in the Santa Barbara or Los Angeles area (or anywhere for that matter) check out these amazing wedding photographers in Santa Barbara!










If you haven't figured it out by now, this is a shameless plug for my wife and I's up-and-coming business! We do really have some talent, and we are definitely fun to hang around. If you haven't checked out our stuff yet - dooooo it.

puddleshots

man, it has been raining a lot in santa barbara! ran across this puddle and made the best of it.




notice the sig? copied garret.

went to the beach

After work last Saturday, Cheri and I went to check out the U.S.S. Reagan. Once again, I only had the fisheye, but I got some decent photos - the light was beautiful!





































this last one represents santa barbara to me big time.