Hello 2010!

Two Thousand and Nine. Twenty-Ten. I like the sound of Twenty-Ten! I just hope it's a good year too!

This year was a year of many changes, and a real expensive one too! It would probably take me forever to list the purchases I made, intentionally and accidentally (like the time I went to buy a $100 lens and ended up buying a $500 lens instead!). Ummm...yeah.


I don't really have any major New Year resolutions but I am hoping in 2010:

• I'll be more smarter - money-wise.

• I plan to go back to eating healthier and working out regularly (I'm really serious about this one!).
  
• I also want to focus on "me" and what I like doing best.

Just recently, I started focusing on one of my favourite hobbies...photography! I started rummaging through my archives and uploading photos to my Flickr page. I wish I had done this a long time ago but I sort of kept putting it off because I was never really confident about the photos I took. I guess because I saw all the great photos on Flickr by amazing photographers (both amateur and professionals!) and didn't think mine were all that! But I'm glad I did take the step, because through Flickr I have come to know some really amazing folks who, by the way, have some really awesome photos! Thanks to all of you who do drop by my page to comment on my photos, it motivates and encourages me, so THANK YOU!!!

Hope you all have a very happy and prosperous New Year.

Best wishes,

Techy Girl

Project 52 - Coco Monkey

This is Coco Monkey, my sister's beloved stuffed animal. Last night "someone" in my house got sick and puked all over it. Okay probably not ALL over it. Just a little bit of it got on the monkey. That was last night.

This evening as I got out of the car coming home, I was thinking about my next photo for Project 52. As I opened the front door, I saw a wet and frazzled looking Coco Monkey sitting on a mop bucket in the laundry room. Apparently, my sister decided this monkey was worth keeping and so she washed it!

Poor monkey, he looked pretty stunned! Anyway, I had to take a photo. Here is the original photo of Coco Monkey, how I saw it when I walked in.
And this is the edited version of the photo. I created the background and placed Coco Monkey on it...did this in a hurry so it's not really the best.

Enjoy!

New Handbag!

Those who know me, know that I don't like small handbags mainly because I'm the type of person who likes carrying a lot of stuff! (iPhone, Bluetooth, wallet, USB key, security pass, cards, notebook, two pens, sunglasses, make-up etc.)

Anyway, I needed a new handbag so I finally got out and bought myself a new handbag. Wait, let me rephrase that: I needed to buy shoes last week so I went out to buy them, only I came back home with shoes AND a handbag. Okay, that sounds more like it. Anyway, I got myself a Nine West handbag from Style Sense (pictured above). I don't know why, but for some reason I have a tendency to gravitate toward Nine West handbags (this is my fourth one!). I never really plan on buying it, it just happens! Has that ever happened to you?

Anyway, I have to say it's a nice bag! Lots of room to carry my stuff! I can also fit my Nikon D90 in here as well but am afraid I will hurt it because there isn't any padding to protect it. Other than that, I think I will stick to this one for awhile before I purchase another one :)

Hello New Addiction!

So I finally tried the Starbucks' Caramel Brulee Latte. I know this is going to be my new addiction! Probably not for very long as I understand this is probably one of those hot beverages that are only available during a certain season (I might be wrong, in fact I hope I am wrong!).

Anyway, it is delicious! Not too strong and not too sweet. I also love the coffee cup! Naturally, I had to take a photo of the cup, my family thinks I'm crazy when I do stuff like this but I can't help it!

I had to take several shots of this cup before I was happy with it. The photo was taken with a Nikkor AF-S 50mm 1.4g lens which I mainly use for closeup shots like these. I processed this photo a bit in Adobe Lightroom.

I wanted to try my hand at adding texture to my images so I came up with another variation of this photo. I would love to hear your thoughts on the textured photos, available here.

Hope you all have a safe and happy holiday!!

Food Talk

Just recently, my family and I decided to have dinner at this Persian restaurant we heard so much about. It's called Safraan (in Toronto). I tried looking them up on the Internet but can't seem to find a website for some reason.

Anyway, they had a lot of choices, Persian dishes as well as pastas and pizzas. I ordered the Koobideh kabab dinner. Comes with a chicken and veal kabab, served with rice (that yellow stuff is called Saffron. It also came with a roasted tomato, which was really nice! It's probably a Persian thing! Anyway, it cost about $19 for the plate and was an okay meal. I didn't really like the veal kabab, the chicken one was really good though, much like Pakistani style kababs! The decor was nice but really noisy! I guess it was noisy because of this one group that was hosting there office holiday party there (they did a secret Santa thing and someone won a Wii...how cool is that!).

I'm back!

That's right. I am finally back after a long hiatus. I realized that trying to blog twice or thrice a week was becoming a bit of a challenge for me given my 'other' work was taking so much of my time. Of course I get paid to do that so I had to choose that over this.

Anyway, what made me start blogging again? A month ago I decided to replace my Nikon D40 with a Nikon D90. I thought why not start an online album or something to showcase my photos - even if they're not the best.

So, I finally revived my Flickr account and started uploading my photos. While doing that I came across many Flickr users who also have a blog. I especially like how Curiousillusion links her Flickr account to her blog and vice versa and am hoping to do something similar =)

I have to say photography is something that I am passionate about so I would hate to not do this. So, the two things I thought about doing today were 1) start blogging and 2) start taking photos daily to improve my photography. At first I thought about doing one of those Take one photo a day for a year project i.e. Project 365. But I feel like I will be setting myself up for failure if I start that.

So I'm thinking of doing Project 52 instead, where you take a photo every week for 52 weeks instead of every day =)

Wish me luck!

Fonts and Copyright Issues???

Okay, so I have heard that using a font or an illustration (that was not designed by yourself) in a logo design can lead to copyright issues.

Based on this knowledge, I have been going around in circles trying to find answers but have not had any luck. I have come across a few websites but they too, do not really explain that well - or may be it's just me. So I thought, why not blog and ask and see if someone can answer my question.

I will use the following scenario and try to keep it really simple. Say, I am a freelance designer and have been approached by a company who wants me to create a logo for them.

Using Adobe Illustrator, I create a logo using an illustration I designed (freehand) with a pen tablet. Then I use the default font - Times New Roman font and type the title. I create outlines of the font and export as JPEG and then sell that JPEG to the company.

Here are my questions (I apologize in advance if they are too confusing):

1. Can I legally (in Canada), sell this JPEG file to the company?

2. If not, why?

3. Do I have to "buy" the copyrights for using Times New Roman font??

4. If so, how do I do that? Also, if I am buying the "copyrights", would I bill the customer?

5. Could you provide all the steps that I should/need to take to ensure the logo I design is legal and is sold in a legal manner?

These are only some of the questions I have. I am hoping I can find some answers as this issue is really confusing!

Thank you all in advance!!!