Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.
This is going to be the most epic bout of movie watching I’ve done since the back to back showings of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back before the premiere of Return of the Jedi.
I already purchased my ticket. Who’s going to join me for this massive gorging?
I may be comatose by the time Avengers plays.
Deciding to go to this year’s CREATESouth was a bit of a last minute decision. Seemed like everything was going on this weekend. CREATESouth, Cupcake Camp Summerville, Pet Fest, LUG meeting (which ended up getting moved).
CREATESouth 2012 was smaller than previous ones I’ve been to, but I think this year was better, with presentations that were more interesting. Keynotes by Philippa Ballantine and Heather Solos were both very good.
Lunch was once again delicious BBQ provided by Andre Pope and Proud Purveyors of Pork.
There were a lot of sessions that I would have liked to see. I ended up going to the DIY Metallurgy/Metal Casting, Budget Barista and BBQ sessions. I found all of the sessions interesting and inspiring.
The DIY Metallurgy/Metal Casting session was perhaps the coolest one with a hands on part where we actually got to do some sand casting. Packed sand to make molds, and poured the metal to make these little CREATESouth logos. I think I may have found a new hobby.
Budget Barista was a good session looking at some of the variables that go into making a good cup of coffee. Did you know a hot air popcorn popper can be used to roast coffee beans? I’m not a huge coffee drinker, but have been known to consume a cup now and then. After seeing the Aeropress in action at the session, I think it’s my new want item.
The Art and Science of BBQ ended up being an outdoor session with Andre Pope talking about how to do BBQ and showing his BBQ rig. I learned that you don’t need a big huge smoker setup to do BBQ and that it’s easier than it looks. You can make BBQ in a slow cooker, which I’ve done before but never really considered it real BBQ. Now that I know better, I’m inspired to do more BBQ.
Had a really good time at CREATESouth this year, and I’m really glad I decided to go. Got inspired to do new things, at least two of which I’ll probably do. The metal casting sounds like it will be really cool to take up as a hobby, but it’s probably not something I should get into right now.
Check out my photos from the day over on Flickr.
You should go. It’s always a good time.
Helped out with another successful Help-Portrait event this year. And for the third year in a row, it was a chilly and rainy day. It was a great event though despite the chill. Seeing the expressions on the faces of everybody when they see their photo is heartwarming and exceedingly gratifying.
This year the tent was slightly smaller and the lights a lot bigger, but at least the roof of the tent was all white. No need to deal with odd lighting like we did last year with the yellow and white striped tent.
Like last year, we didn’t do any printing on site and considering the smaller space we had this year, probably just as well. I didn’t get an exact count, but from a brief look at the log sheets it looked like we had at least 160 families go through. Most of them were pretty large groups too. Most of the families that came through my station had 4-7 people. I’d say we took photos of at least 500 people today. With that much volume, trying to print photos on-site is pretty challenging. Since we were shooting tethered we were still able to give everybody a look at their photo.
We had three photo stations set up with some pretty big soft boxes at two of the stations. Made things cozy, but the photos were well lit.
Overall, things went pretty smoothly today. One of the photographers was having problems shooting tethered and eventually abandoned it. Not sure what the problem was, although it might have been cable related. Although the tethered shooting with my camera wasn’t working during testing, it worked just fine with Mike’s Nikon D40. I was worried for a little bit that it wasn’t going to work, but it turned out fine. As always, test everything before hand, and then test it again.
Having a bigger space would have been nice, but otherwise everything went pretty well. I was happy to work with a great group of people for yet another Help-Portrait event, and look forward to doing more in the future.
Coming up on December 10 the 2011 Help-Portrait event. This will be my third Help-Portrait I’m helping out with, and like last year the Charleston Help-Portrait event is piggy-backing on the Charleston Convoy of Hope outreach event. This year there are four Convoy of Hope sites, and I’ve heard there will be a Help-Portrait set up at each of them. I’m planning to be at the Johns Island location, at Haute Gap charter school. Hopefully the weather will be better than it was last year.
On December 9, Joe Nienstedt has once again organized a Help-Portrait event at MUSC Children’s Hospital which I’m hoping to be a part of again. That will depend on what time the presentations for BioE 850 are supposed to take place. Hopefully it won’t be the same time as Help-Portrait. Last year it was a lot of fun to do.
What is Help-Portrait? Watch the video. It explains the idea pretty well.