Mom comes to visit!

Haystack Rock

This last week, my mom came to visit me in Portland! We had a great time together. We tried a couple breweries, went to Voodoo Doughnuts, and visited to the coast. She got in late Wednesday evening, so we ate dinner and crashed early. The second night she was here, we went to our first brewery called Bridgeport. This was my favorite brewery that we went to. They had this really great summer ale called Summer Squeeze. I'm hoping they sell this in North Carolina because it's probably one of my favorite beers now!

On Friday, we rented a car and drove out to Canon Beach. We were warned that this was a more "tourist-y" beach to go to, but seeing as how neither of us are from here, we didn't mind that too much. We got to see the famous "Haystack Rock" at low tide. At low tide, you can see hundreds of starfish clinging to the base of the giant rock, which was a pretty amazing sight. I've never seen so many starfish in my life! Other than that, we walked around the town a little bit. It was pretty foggy out, so we didn't get to go see some other sights we wanted to see. It didn't really bother us, we were pretty exhausted by the time we got home. As exhausted as we were, we still managed to get out that night to try a new brewery. We tried Deschutes Brewery in the Pearl District. We did like it, but we agreed that we liked Bridgeport's beer a little better. The brewery itself was pretty cool, though. They had all of these wooden carvings throughout the restaurant, which, in my opinion, were just really neat.

The next day, we went to Portland's farmer's market. We bought a lot of fruit, flowers, and sauces from local businesses.  We even bought this giant pretzel from one stand, which turned out to be our lunch (you can see the picture to the side, haha). It was really good! Later that day, we took the car and ran some errands around the town. After we ran a bunch of errands, we ended up grabbing a late dinner, coming home, and crashing for the night.  The next day was a pretty lazy day for us. We stayed home and crafted most of the day. Later in the evening, we went to try our third brewery called The Lucky Labrador. Although I liked the ambiance of the brewery, I still like Bridgeport the best. After we went to the brewery, we walked down to the waterfront to scout out a good places to shoot some night photography of the town. We walked 2.5 miles down the waterfront before we found the perfect spot. Once we walked home, it was about time to take the car to go shoot some photos. Since it doesn't get dark here until 9:30, we had to wait until it was pretty late to go out, but it was worth it! Got a great panorama of the city lit up at night (you can actually see it on my main photography blog, but I'll post another here :)

Once our weekend was over, it was back to work. Mom found plenty of things to keep her busy while I was at work, though. She went on a few hikes with her friend and got to see some of the scenery around Portland. On the last night mom was here, we went to Voodoo Doughnuts. Definitely something you have to go do while you're here. It was pretty fun, we had to wait in a line to get them, but it wasn't as long as it normally is.  Mom had the bacon maple doughnut, which is apparently THE doughnut to get while you're here. I didn't taste it myself, but everyone raves about this doughnut. So, if you're ever here, get that one!

Mom and I had a great week together. I was very sad to see her go, but I am glad that I will get to go home in just two weeks! I have really enjoyed my time here in Portland, but I do miss my friends and family and it will be nice to be home.

Well, that's all for tonight! I will try to write again before I leave. Good night everyone!

Is it July already?

Hey guys! Happy 4th of July to everybody!! I hope everyone's having an amazing day with family and friends. I'm hoping to go down to the waterfront tonight and get to see this view:

(this is not my image!)

Anyways, this week was pretty good at Splash. It was a different pace from editing the same Air Jordan shoes (which was all I did for literally two straight weeks), so that was really nice. We helped the New York office with some of their work since we weren't as busy, so I got to edit a bunch of fashion images. It was definitely nice to be able to edit images that weren't tennis shoes. I also ended up learning a lot about how to retouch hair, which is really awesome because it was definitely a weakness of mine. Other than that, I don't have too much to report. I just hope I'm keeping up with everything. My summer here is already half over and I still have so much to learn! More updates soon :)

Week 5

Okay, so I haven't been doing a very good job of keeping up with the blog, but I promise I'll try to do better! I was out of town last week on a trip with the family in the Canadian Rockies, so I haven't had much time to write. I'm happy to report that the trip was amazing, though! I will probably put some of the images from the trip on my regular blog, or you can check out my Facebook page if you want to see some of the images.

Worked on these all week...

Anyways, this week was a really productive week at Splash. It doesn't sound like much, but basically all I did this week was retouch shoes, which--believe it or not--is a ton of work. On shoes, you have to clean up every single edge. The molds used to make the shoes are usually imperfect, so we have to make all of the edges look flawless. This is also true for the fabric that they use to construct the shoe, and if the fabric has a crazy pattern on it, you have to make sure the pattern continues throughout your retouched areas. I also had to cut paths for each different colored item on the shoe, and these shoes were camouflage...yeah.  I have a feeling by the end of the summer, I'll be sick of seeing crazy-patterned tennis shoes. Regardless, though, I am really loving my job here! It's definitely something I could really see myself going into after graduation.

It's late, so this post isn't going to be long. Next post, I'll write a little bit more about the community here. I finally tried a food truck, and it was pretty good! I've also been able to walk around more downtown now that I moved closer to the river, so that's been really nice. My old place was really far out of the way, so I didn't do much walking besides the strip of shops on 23rd street. Don't get me wrong, they were really cute, but I feel more in the middle of everything now that I'm in the Pearl District.

Also, before I go I just wanted to share something really neat with you guys. When I came back to Portland from Canada, I walked by the Nike store in the airport and saw this advertisement in the front of the store:

This image was designed by my boss and another photo retoucher at Splash! They were working on it the first week I was here. So I just thought that was really neat to see the work displayed in a retail store!

Update: Week 1

Hey guys! Sorry I didn't get to update you after my first day like I promised. This first week has been rough with the three hour time change, so I have been completely exhausted after work and I've been going to bed pretty early. I'd also like to apologize in advance for my photos for today's blog post; they are pictures of computer monitors (which are hard to photograph anyways) taken on an iPhone, so they're not the best quality but oh well.

You can't really see the path very
well, but it's there!

I had a really awesome first week working at Splash! Most of the first two days were spent learning how to make perfect paths with the pen tool. This is definitely a lot harder than it sounds. You have to first do a silhouette of the person or object you are working on, and the path has to be exactly on the edge of the object -- it can't allow any part of the background bleed through onto any part of the object, and vice versa. Then after you've made this first path, you go back and trace every piece of that object or person. I worked on a lot of football players, so after I made the first silhouette, I had to go back and trace the socks, jersey, pants, skin, helmet, undershirt, etc. Needless to say, the first part of starting an image is a lot of grunt work, but after doing this, you're able to work a lot faster and more efficient as you edit the picture. I am so slow at making paths right now, it's almost embarrassing. Darren keeps assuring me that I will get faster the more I do it, so I'm hoping that's true!

I spent the second half of the week learning how to make masks for anything in an image. This, too, probably doesn't sound like much, but there is a lot more that goes into making masks than I thought. First, Darren taught me how to make a really strong hair mask -- one that includes all of the little stray hairs that stick out into the background. He taught me several ways to mask off these hairs so that most of the detail was still there. By Thursday, he was showing me how to do masks that have blur on it -- this one is a little tricky because there can be so many different types/amounts of blur throughout an image that you have to go around the entire edge and match it all perfectly. I'm still trying to get this one down, but hopefully I'll pick it up pretty fast.

So it doesn't sound like I did very much this last week, but you have to get the basics down with anything before you can learn more advanced techniques. I'm in no hurry, I'd rather get things right and go a little slower than to do them badly at a fast pace. 

Anyways, this has been my update today! I hope you guys have a great week! More updates to come soon.

Welcome to Portland!!!

View of Portland from the plane

Hey guys! I'm very excited to get this blog up and running. I'm going to try my best to keep this blog updated with all of my Portland experiences while I am here working at Splash Worldwide this summer, so I hope you enjoy my blog! To get back to my main blog, just click the link in the side bar under "pages" or click here!
_____________________________________________________

For those of you who don't know, I am working at Splash Worldwide this summer as a photo editing intern. Splash is a global brand activation company whose clients include Nike, Toyota, Levi's, Adidas, FedEx, Honda, and many more. If you want to see a little more about the company, check out www.splashworldwide.com.

Where I'll be working this summer!

I arrived on Friday, May 17th and was picked up from the airport by my mom's friend, Kris. She showed me around the city a little bit, and we actually stopped in to meet everyone at Splash. I got to see the photography studio. It was smaller than I thought it would be, but it was still really neat! I am definitely hoping that I'll get to spend some time in the photo studio this summer. Darren, the Exec VP Creative Director, told me that the studio had to be moved to the opposite side of the building a little while ago because when the train would go by, it would shake the building/camera so badly that when they were doing multiple exposures, the images wouldn't line up. I also saw the area where I will be probably be working most of the time. In this part of the building, they had to put up two layers of blinds in order to block out all of the sunlight in the room (it was creating glare on the screens), so it's pretty dark in the main work area. It's such a shame they have to do that because they have an incredible view of the city. Luckily though, they built a deck on the roof, so I will definitely be going out there to eat lunch a few days a week. It was really great meeting everyone and I can't wait to start working there tomorrow!

House from "Twilight"

Later on Friday, Kris took me on a few errands and on our way home, we stopped to see the house they used for the Cullen's house in the "Twilight" movies, which was kind of cool (even though Twilight is pretty terrible). It was actually an incredible house -- I definitely wouldn't mind living there -- and I also found out that it's not in the middle of the woods at all, it's just part of a regular neighborhood. It's kind of interesting to see it in real life and compare it to how Hollywood made it look in the movies. After that, I came home and unpacked all of my stuff (it's amazing how little it looks like I brought once it's all unpacked). Then I basically passed out for the night at 8:30 (11:30 NC time).
_______________________________________________________

Peonies from the farmers market

Yesterday, I woke up at 4 a.m. and forced myself to go back to sleep until 6 -- this jet lag is terrible, but at least I will be able to wake up pretty early for work. At noon, I went to the farmer's market on Portland University's campus. It was such a neat experience -- definitely different from any North Carolina farmer's market I've ever been to. There were hundreds of people there walking around, sitting around listening to live music, selling their produce, etc. There were so many interesting people there, I wish I had brought my camera. It was supposed to rain, so I didn't want to risk it, but there will be plenty of Saturdays for me to take pictures. There were so many herbs, vegetables, and meats that the market smelled absolutely amazing! And I have never seen so many beautiful flowers in my life, I just had to buy some peonies!

There were also a few food trucks there, one of which is apparently owned by a guy from NC who makes biscuits. I am hoping to try it sometime, but I heard that the biscuits aren't like actual southern biscuits, so I'm not sure if I'll like it. Food trucks are really big in this city. They actually have an app to locate the food trucks called "Cart Compass". When I looked up all of the food trucks in Portland, this is what came up:

This made me laugh...I wasn't expecting so many food trucks to pop up on the screen, but I'm excited to try some of these. John (chairman of the photography major at ASU) and David (one of my teachers) told me that I have to try the food trucks here because they are just THAT good. I'll let you know how my first experience is with one of these.

Between today and yesterday, I got to explore the waterfront, the downtown area, and the Pearl District. It's definitely a little bit overwhelming, but I think I'll be able to get this down in just a few weeks. More to come in the next few days! I'll update tomorrow after my first day!