Two Paths

If I were to have stayed in culinary school, I would have graduated this week. It wasn't an easy decision leaving the culinary field to pursue a career in graphic design. For years being a chef has been my only driving force, the thing I wanted to be when I grew up. But when I started to learn how harsh and demanding kitchens in the industry were, I had to do some serious evaluation of what my life would be like if I decided to devote my life to cooking. This is what I came up with:

What follows is a long, kinda depressing series of events. So here's a jump break to keep it from pushing all the pretty pictures off the page. Click to continue.

Shan in Photo Filter

I feel like it's kinda cheating to use photo filters on an illustration, but I also feel like the finished product is very worth it.

Prairie Snapshot Week! Day 7

I think it's fitting that we end Prairie Snapshot week with a sunset. This was a lot more fun than the last week-long event, mostly because I felt like I actually had something to say about the subject matter. On top of that, I've been making stuff over this past week to ensure that I'll be able to keep the daily updates rolling for a bit longer.

I hope you enjoyed Prairie Snapshot week, and I'll see you tomorrow!

Prairie Snapshot Week! Day 6

The sky is badly washed out in this one, but I feel like it adds to the balance of the shot. This is Kansas, where the skys are empty and everything of substance stretches infinitely along the ground. Trees, telephone lines, barbed wire fences, worn gravel roads, fields. All following the gentle ebb and flow of the unending plains.

Prairie Snapshot Week! Day 5

Garage and tool shed. It's sort of a plain picture, and I wish I had thought to move something into the shot to act as a more direct subject, because the contrast running from top to bottom is really cool.

Prairie Snapshot Week! Day 4

My grandfather was a cattle rancher. Part of his brand was a lazy heart, which in cattle branding terms means a heart lying sideways. Think <3.

The rusted heart in this overgrown pile of scrap was part of a sign on an old pasture gate. The other half of the brand is possibly still in that pile somewhere, but I've never been able to find it.

Prairie Snapshot Week! Day 3

The yard behind the shed. Items pictured, listed from top left to bottom right passing through upper middle and dead center with branching paths leading to the northwest, southwest, and southsouthwest, respectively in a counter clockwise direction: Mechanical lawn mowing tractor attachment, gasoline tank (on stilts) and propane tank (on ground), bale of chain link fence, rusted barrel, detached tire face, assorted wood and metal.

Prairie Snapshot Week! Day 2

Here we see a pack of wild hay bales. These noble beasts roam the endless fields of Kansas in search of fodder. This is a younger pack, their silver coat still untarnished by the yellowish mold that sets in after many months wandering amidst the elements. This photo is one of the closest ever taken of the haystack in the wild, so close that the thin lines of natural twine can be seen along the pack leader's side. Simply remarkable.

Prairie Snapshot Week! Day 1

It's that time again! I forgot to post for a couple days and now I'm panicking about the lack of recent content on the site! So we're going to try another week-long series and hope everything sorts itself out in the long-run.

This week, we'll be taking a look at an album of pictures I took while visiting my grandparents in Kansas. This was my first attempt at artistic photography and to date some of the best pictures I've ever taken.

First off, here's a small wind-blown peach tree on the border of an old cow pasture at high noon.

Kansas.

The Spy's Guide to Omegle

Omegle is crazy. It's a one-on-one conversation with a complete stranger that can lead to some of the funniest, deepest, most heartfelt, most disturbing, or just plain entertaining communications you can have with another person. It's seen some decline in recent years, and you have to work a bit harder to have a worthwhile conversation, but once you get it going, it can be a fantastic place to kill a few hours.

A while back, Omegle introduced Spy Mode, which allows a third person to ask a question at the start of the conversation and watch as two strangers discuss it. I had plenty of fun with that, and compiled some of my favorite responses into a handy guide.