Full Moon

Last night was absolutely gorgeous. The sky was clear and completely lit from the moon and stars; a phenomenon to those of us jaded by city life. It was a bit chilly (or 'crisp' as they like to say here) but I had to go out and take a few photos to share. Of course photos never quite do it justice.. unless of course you are an amazing photographer like my dear friends over at T-K Studios, but I thought I'd share anyway.

Update

It's official. It's my last week here in Ireland (this time around) and it's already 1/2 over! I haven't been very exciting the past couple of weeks - just work, work, work. We've been working 12-14 hours every day and 1/2 days on the weekends.. which explains my lack of posting, because frankly I've just been lazy. Lazy and tired.

We're rushing to put together a 200 page yearbook for the GAA, and by "we're" I mostly mean "I'm" because the other designer has been working on the magazines and a different GAA book. The yearbook is, if I may 'toot my own horn' a little, looking really solid - and about a million times better than last year's. I can't take all of the credit for that though, I've had a lot of constructive criticism from my co-worker and her idea's have really helped. It has been a bit of a grueling process though. I think we're almost done and then "they" (the people from the GAA) keep deciding to add stuff - which results in lots of time consuming rearranging of pages/re-numbering of pages.

It will be worth it once it's all finished, which should be Friday, considering that is my last work day.. ahhh! I won't have any pictures to share with you for awhile though because I'm not sure when they'll be getting it back from the printers and how long it'll take for it to be mailed to me back in MN.

I have had an amazing time here. I do wish I could've traveled a bit more, seen more of the country, but I didn't come here for a vacation. I came here to work. And work I did. I've helped put together 6 magazines, about 30 or so adverts, 4 restaurant menus, several random flyers, a brochure, a shop local voucher book, 2 t-shirt designs, 4 program booklets, a fixture booklet and a 200 page yearbook for the GAA... whew! I'm sure there is something else in there that I'm forgetting. Now I have the fun task of making all of the prints fit into my suitcase.. haha.

Well I suppose I better hop back to it. I'm not sure if I'll have a chance to update again before I leave, but I'll try.

Cheers,
K

Rockin' the Suburbs

Happy Thanksgiving!

This fall hasn't been the best for me as far as Holiday's go. I missed everything to do with Halloween - the pumpkins, the haunted houses, the Zombie Pub Crawl, the costumes, the parties, the costume parties... and today I missed Thanksgiving. The Irish don't celebrate this particular holiday, as I'm sure all of you know.
I just got home from working 13 hours.

Then I realized, this is the first Thanksgiving I have ever missed. Last year's was a little weird too because I didn't go home to the fam, and although we were eating with new friends, (who just so happen to be amazing chef's,) the food wasn't what I had hoped for. I'm a turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie kind-a-gal. And Olives. Lots and lots of olives. Instead we had an array of fancy Hors d'oeuvres, pickled carrots, sausages, lard-encrusted turkey and mini peacan pies. Don't get me wrong, it was delicious, just different...

So then I got to thinking, is that all Thanksgiving is about now? Eating turkey and mashed potatoes? I can do that anytime. No; it's a time to slow down and take one day out of our busy, chaotic lives to really appreciate everything we take for granted. For most, it's a time to come together as a family - thankfully in my family that's usually not a stressful situation as we usually don't have many relatives over anymore; it's just us.

It's not so bad to be alone on a holiday like today. It's not about the food (although, who wouldn't love a slice or three of pumpkin pie?) It's about self-reflection, which, maybe you can't do with a giant house full of relatives anyway... so perhaps I'm not missing out after all.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone.

Moneylands Brochure

This past week (Thursday night) I went to a local fashion show, and I wanted to share with you the photos I took, but I uploaded them onto the computer at work (as we might put a little ditty about it in the next issue of the Messenger) and I forgot to put them onto my hard-drive to put them on my own computer.

Instead, since I still wanted to update my blog with something now that I have a moment of free time and my internet started working again after taking a few days to go on strike, I have a brochure re-design that I made for Moneylands Farm; the place where I'm currently staying.

First, the original. It's actually not a bad brochure, it's just a bit dated and the photos aren't the best.











Below is the redesign. I think the most difficult part was trying to choose which photos to use, since I took about a million for this project. I plan on giving them a c.d. with all of the photos so they can use them for their website as well. They have some nice ones already of the interior of some of the rooms, but not many of some of the views around here, which are pretty amazing.











Well, I'm off. I'll try to update with those fashion show photos soon - so long as my internet continues to work.

-k

Photoshoot Fun

Today is pretty nice (dry) out after having been pouring rain for the past week, so I thought I'd do something fun. There's not a whole lot to do in this town if you don't want to go shopping or to the pub, so I've been entertaining myself in other ways, and today I decided to do a little photoshoot.

Even though it is dry out today, it is still very windy and cold, so this photoshoot didn't last as long as I had planed, because my hands were numb in the first 5 minutes (and I don't want to end up sick) Also it was kind of difficult setting up the camera. I don't have a tripod, so I brought out a chair and piled my sweaters up on top of it to make a mound for the camera to sit on.

I started by taking a few "test" shots:







I love this one -- the camera had started to fall off of the chair and I had to dive for it, haha




Then I took my sweats off for the "real" thing. I doubt I'll use these photos for anything, it was just for fun. I had planned on going barefoot but the ground was too muddy and I was cold enough as it was. Here are my favorites out of the bunch. Enjoy!

Jaun Barrio

This video was recently posted on Drawn! and I though it was so brilliant, I wanted to share. What an amazing idea! I want one of his dioramas.