Pendarvis
A map I made of a fictional continent for a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. I created each quadrant individually in Inkarnate, a third-party map-making program, and imported them into Photoshop, where I assembled them. The boundary lines, place names, and landforms were added in Photoshop. The landforms were created using brushes I downloaded off of DeviantArt. I imported the whole finished file into Illustrator to vectorize the text, making the smaller words easier to read when zoomed in.
The Ice Reaches
A map I made of a fictional polar ice cap for a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. I created each quadrant individually in Inkarnate, a third-party map-making program, and imported them into Photoshop, where I assembled them. The boundary lines, place names, and landforms were added in Photoshop. The landforms were created using brushes I downloaded off of DeviantArt. I imported the whole finished file into Illustrator to vectorize the text, making the smaller words easier to read when zoomed in.
The Elemental Plane of Fire
A map I made for a D&D campaign. After my first two attepts at creating a map with a third-party site and importing each quadrant individually into Photoshop, I decided to try making my own map entirely in Photoshop. I used an artboard and the mixerbrush, and a few custom brushes I downloaded off of DeviantArt. The grid lines were made by using the line tool and laying lines under the guides in Photoshop's grid overlay.
Fall Stationery
When preparing for my wedding, I discovered just how much it cost to buy stationery, and it spurred me to find another alternative. I ended up designing my own, using the gradient and paint bucket tools in Photoshop, along with several brushes I downloaded from DeviantArt. The result is two variations that I think will work well as save-the-dates and invitations.
Terror of the Abyss
In a Photoshop class I took, we recieved a creative brief to make a poster about a terrible TV show that revolved around a prairie dog. My love for D&D immediatly took me in that direction, and I came up with an idea about an abyssal prairie dog that was terrorizing rural villages. The D&D elements meant I would need adventurers, but I'm a bad artist, so I knew I could never draw them. Instead, I found a few stock photos of statues, masked them out, and filled them with black to create a silhouette effect, so that the fact that they were actually statues was less obvious. The weapons I made using the rectangle and pen tools to warp and shape them to my needs. The spell effects are simple paint brush strokes that are affected by various filters. Because of the silhouette effect of my adventurers, I needed a source of backlight, and wildfire seemed the easiest and most obvious choice. The decision to incorporate fire is what made me decide that the prairie dog should be an abyssal one. The lightning I added for fun, and for the final touches I colored the eye of the prairie dog red and used a d20 die as the "o" in "Terror."
Three Friends
A photo taken on a Nikon camera at midday in Yellowstone National Park in August 2018. The hazy atmosphere produced by the wildfires in the western United States occationally led to very hazy, flat lighting conditions, which allowed me to get this beautifully lit shot of three young bison. A pinch of basic photo retouching helps improve contrast and saturation.
Steamy Sunset
A photo taken on a Nikon camera in Yellowstone National Park in August of 2018. It was a photography experience that was somewhat challenging in some cases, due to the hazy atmosphere that resulted from the wildfires that raged through western portions of the United States. But it created sunrises and sunsets that were vibrantly colored, as illustred in this photograph taken at sunset on a geyser field. With some basic photo retouching techniques, that unique coloration really comes to the forefront.
Three Bones
A photo taken on a Nikon camera in Yellowstone National Park in August 2018. The acidic and sulfuric vapors wafting off geothermal features often leave the nearby trees a chalky white. I was lucky enough to find these three stumps in nearly a straight line very close to the boardwalk. Between the uniquely vivid lighting created by the hazy, smoky atmosphere and the steam from the surrounding geothermal features and their nearness to the boardwalk, I thought the lighting and composition was perfect for a quick shot or two. A little retouching to bring up the colors and the contrast quickly turned this into one of my favorites shots of the year.
Across the Open Range
A photo taken on a Nikon camera in Yellowstone National Park in August 2018. I always enjoy the challenge of getting good wildlife shots when I travel, and occationally everything lines up perfectly to get a shot like this one of a pronghorn antelope jogging through sagebrush. I love the dramatic scenery and the depth of field. If I could change anything, I would change the direction the antelope is traveling so that it is coming toward me instead of going away, but all in all, this is the best wildlife shot I think I've ever gotten of pronghorn in Yellowstone. A little work in Photoshop brought out the soft, warm lighting of magic hour.
Desert Sunrise
A photograph taken on a Nikon camera in southern Utah in August of 2017. In the distance is Arches National Park, and overhead is one of the beautiful sunrises so common in southern Utah. Some basic photo rethouching techniques really bring the colors out.
The Great American Eclipse
Photo taken on a Nikon camera in August of 2017 in Nebraska. Eclipse photography can be challening to those who have never done it before, but I managed to come away with a couple of nice pictures of totality. This is one of my favorites, a phenomenon known as Bailey's Beads, a brief moment when the sun is behind the moon, which I captured using a Nikon camera body and Vivitar lens capped with a solar filter. A bit of photo retouching reduced the blooming rays and brought up the rich coloration of the beads while deepening the blacks for a dramatic finish.
Pulaski Boys Swimming Team
A sports package I shot while working as a news photographer. I used a GoPro as part of the capturing of this video. This video does not contain on-air graphics.
Suspects Caught
A hard news feature I shot while working as a news photographer. The process involved coordinating with law enforcement and transferring raw footage back to the news station remotely. This video does not contain any on-air graphics.
Agricultural promotional video
A video I shot for an agricultural company to use at their trade shows. I captured footage with a Nikon DSLR camera, mixed the audio in Adobe Audition, and color corrected and cut the footage together in Adobe Premiere Pro. I got music of a open license Creative Commons site, and added the text to music cues. This video is still used by the company on a regular basis.
