In a few days a couple thousand people will descend on The Pittsburgh Convention Center to attend the Jubilee 2011 Conference. Now that we’re so close to the conference, I thought it would be fun to share a bit of my conception process for Jubilee 2011.

Capturing the story of jubilee in a simple but powerful concept is always a tough challenge that tends to keep me up for many late nights. It’s been my experience that rather than trying to narrow down the concept, conveying the grand nature of all creation often results in a more compelling visual and conceptual form. In other words, go big or go home.

My team and I knew we wanted to pull in the words “everything” and “change” into the tagline, and we eventually settled on “it could change everything.” Next I spent a good amount of time sketching out some ideas and brainstorming some visual ideas for this. I kept coming back to the idea of showing change on a huge and grand level, just like what the jubilee conference would do for people who attended.

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I’ve always loved arrows in public icons, so I came up with an idea to transform the “c” in change to something iconic. Here’s what resulted after some experimenting in Illustrator:

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I then began to bring some life to the visual ideas I had. Here are a few that didn’t make the cut:

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Since none of these seemed to illustrate the idea of radical change as much as we all wanted, so I went back to the drawing board and came up with a simple upside down world map to illustrate someone’s world being turned upside down:

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After more discussion and testing on a number of audiences, it seemed clear that this was what we were looking for. I made some color changes to give the map a better punch, and then did the work of applying the concept to a number of other branding pieces. Here was the final result:

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Thanks for stopping by & see you at Jubilee.

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Much of my December was spent designing a large project that was in the works for some time. The CCO has a group of staff called Experiential Designs (XD) who use experiences like backpacking, rock climbing, service trips, traveling abroad, etc. as a tool to teach leadership and develop college students. I can say from first hand that these trips are pretty phenomenal- I’ve been climbing in California, backpacking in Hawaii, mountaineering in Wyoming and more with the XD, and have seen people change for the better from their experiences in the wilderness.

I was given the task of capturing the wide variety of the XD’s trips in a simple 8.5″x11″ catalog. The project objectives were that the audience (CCO staff and other college students) would see the variety of incredible trips that were offered to them and have a simple and clear way to participate and/or hire XD staff to lead one of the trips. I incorporated breathtaking photography, an outdoor graphic scheme and a color-coded system to accomplish this. The printer (Bondi Printing) was great to work with, and after a whole lot of press checks, they did a great job on the finished product.

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For a while I’ve been following a Swedish photographer who refers to himself as Niopixlar. There is something very analog about a lot of his photos. They really have a soft film-like feel to them, and he uses a lot of earthy greens, browns, oranges and yellows to give a really vivid feeling of the texure and quality of the outdoors. I would love to see some of his post processing techniques to get such a convincing film-like feel. Good inspiration to get busy shooting in all this great fall weather we’ve been having in Pittsburgh.

The other evening I spent an hour in nearby Highland Park with my nieces for a casual photo shoot. These girls are some of my favorite subjects to shoot because they are just so cute and photogenic. Conditions turned out to be pretty nice as the sun, which had been behind the clouds all day, finally pushed through as it set and gave us some beautiful light. Shooting children is really a lot of fun as anything can turn into a good shot, whether it’s a flower they want to see or a dog they want to pet. I pretty much stuck to the old “nifty fifty” 50mm f/1.8 and it seemed to work out nicely. The more I use this lens the more I’m impressed with how much glass you get for the money. Here are some of the shots:

This T2i camera really keeps me busy. While it takes great shots, it also has really impressive fully manual 1080p video. So while taking shots on vacation, I was also madly taking lots and lots of video. While I love this feature on the T2i, the only thing I sometimes find troubling for my own shooting is that I feel so torn between capturing an image or capturing film. In the end I’d rather have either a stellar video or shots, and not mediocre versions of both. I’m learning that I’ll probably have to make a decision beforehand of whether I will shoot for video or shots, and put all my energy into that medium.

All that to say, here is a montage of some video shots I took while in the mountains of upstate New York.

Scenes of the Adirondacks on a Canon T2i from Phil Mollenkof on Vimeo.

If you’ve ever watched the film “Stranger Than Fiction” with Will Ferrell, you’ve seen some great motion graphic work done by the studio MK12. As soon as I saw this stuff I was totally in awe of their stuff and how it seamlessly worked in the film without feeling tacked on. The images really help us crawl into the mind of the main character and play an integral part in the story. I’m a big fan of technical diagrams and drawings, so seeing this stuff really made my imagination go crazy and influenced some of my work.

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Well MK12 is back at it again- I’m not sure if this is just a promo/demo they put together, or if it was made for an actual client. Nonetheless, it is incredibly amazing and I’m insanely jealous I can’t create something like it. (Thanks Mark Weaver for showing me this)

TELEPHONEME | MK12 from MK12 on Vimeo.

The mountains always seem to hit my reset button- I’m able to let go of so much of what consumes me during normal life. Come mid-summer, I’m always bouncing off the walls ready to travel and experience new places, scenes, food, hikes, people, etc. This summer marked the first extended trip with Ian, and he was quite the trooper, going in and out of the car, tent, rain, and more. The Adirondacks in New York have been a pretty magical place for me over the last few summers. While the weather can be hit or miss at times, when it’s good, there is that cool, crisp feel in the air- almost like fall, but in the middle of the summer. We hike, swim, walk around Lake Placid, and bathe in the river with Dr. Bronners soap.

I was really jacked to be using the T2i and a new Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 on an extended trip. Overall I was really happy with the results, although I quickly realized that it can be really tricky seeing photo opportunities with a baby in tow. Shooting morning and evenings was especially difficult since this is the time babies need the most attention. I decided I was just going to shoot and have fun and not worry too much about the results. I filled over 24 gigs of memory cards with photos and videos and some of it’s decent. I still need to spend some time with all the video I shot, but here are some photos:

Another designer I stumbled upon a while back is Kareem Rizk. Kareem’s work consists mostly of collages made both handmade and digitally, and really have a nice vintage feel to them. I would love to know where he gets his supplies as there is some great imagery in his pieces. Something about the subject of most of his pieces really fascinate me- they are usually cars, birds or people, birds, and set up a nice second meaning or purpose from the original way these images were portrayed due to the rough and organic context that they are now situated in. Themes of past consumerism and nature play a role in most of his work, and I think that is why I am drawn to it.

Last weekend I was at a get together with some friends which was held on this great rooftop of an apartment building in the middle of Oakland. The view from the top is pretty spectacular as you can see pretty much the entire east end of Pittsburgh. I really feel like I could sit there for hours on end watching all the cars, people and lights. During this particular night there were some incredible cloud formations all throughout the sky. It was one of those moments where the humidity, thunderstorms and sunset were all creating a perfect scene, and I just happened to grab my camera before I left that night. Here are some shots:

Stumbled upon this today and was really blown away by what this guy did with a T2i. From the description and comments, it looks like he shot at 60 frames per second on a lot of this which explains the smooth slow motions. The color on this is also fantastic. I’ve been to Hawaii, and there always seems to be such perfect light and colors for photo/video. The combination of the blue ocean, brown sand, green plants and yellow sun just make for some beautiful stuff. He also mentioned that he shot with the pricey Canon 20-200 f/2.8 lens which also helps.

I’m now insanely jealous and have something to shoot for with my t2i…

A favorite designer of mine for a while has been Nikki McClure. She creates beautiful and stark vignettes on posters, postcards, calendars, etc. They have the feel of a screen print, but she actually cuts each design out by hand with an x-acto knife, which is quite impressive. I’d love to see her actually do this sometime or hear her explain the process. Thematically, her work seems to deal with issues ranging from activism, motherhood, the environment, innocence and childhood. I really appreciate her use of such a strong contrasting black in almost all her pieces and the emotional connection the viewer gets from these scene, and enjoy the handcrafted, unique feel of all her work.

You can see more work and buy it at her site.

So I think I have officially fallen in love with time lapses. I ordered a remote timer for my T2i on ebay the other day and am awaiting in anxiously so I can put a few of these together myself. Here is one of my favorites of kayakers in Pittsburgh breaking a Guinness world record.

With my cousins in town, we all decided to head up to Mt Washington to see the sunset. It was a beautiful evening- crystal clear and great colors. I snapped some shots, and overall was pretty happy with the results. I only used my 50mm f/1.8 lens and the colors turned out nicely. So far, it seems like this lens is a bit soft when fully open at 1.8 and for close ups, but it did really well in a setting like this. Here are some highlights:

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After doing a significant amount of research, I finally landed on the Canon EOS 550d (or rebel t2i). I actually went from a Panasonic Lumix GF1 camera to this one. I absolutely loved the GF1. Small, lightweight and took seriously sharp and bright shots. The pancake lens on this thing was great. But after a bit of frustration using manual only lenses through an adapter, and the limitation of lenses made for the Micro four thirds cameras, I decided it was probably the best to upgrade to a full SLR. I ordered the 550d body, and then the canon “nifty fifty” 50mm f/1.8 lens. At around $100, this is by far the best lens you can get for the money, period.

So far, I’ve been really happy with the photo quality, and totally blown away with the video. It shoots full 1080p HD video, and just looks fantastic. I have a shoot for work out at Ocean City, NJ in a couple of weeks and am really looking forward to putting this little guy to work.

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Here are a few of my test photos so far with it:

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Here it is- first post of the blog. Looking forward to talking about a lot of great things here. Stay tuned…