And Our Holiday Winner Is.......

We had great submissions for our holiday photo contest and the voting was pretty intensely competitive, but we have our winner: Lindsay Boulter with her photo "Oh Christmas Tree"!

"One of the things I love most about the Christmas season is how it encourages kindness and is full of beauty.  I love to photograph things that I think are beautiful – even if it is something simple like a gold snowflake on my little Christmas tree.  (Although, I have to admit, it does help to be covered in glitter.)   Christmas is about the little things that remind you of what life is all about – the things that make your heart smile.  My mom just bought me these new ornaments for my tree, so when I see them, I think of her, and that makes me smile."

Congratulations to Lindsay, we will be sending out her prize very soon!

Our Holiday Contestants!

Well we had some great entries for this contest and even covered multiple holidays! Time now to pick your favorite. Just type your favorite in the form at the bottom. Voting closes on Sunday night, be sure to get in before then!

1. A Charlie Brown Christmas

2. A Visit With Santa

3. Beautiful Menorah

4. Oh Christmas Tree

5. First Christmas

Born to Be Super

We are pretty excited to be welcoming our first son in just a little while. We aren't sure how long it will be before arrives, but we are getting everything ready, and I have been working hard on some decorations for his room, which is superhero themed. I have made a lot of fun fan art etc...but this is my latest creation and I am very excited to add it to the room when we get it printed.

Photo Contest-Happy Holidays!

Okay, here is the new challenge: We want you to take a picture that best represents the holidays to you. This can be any of the holidays this season. If you celebrate Hanukkah, great! If you celebrate Kwanza, great! If you celebrate Christmas, great! If you would rather take a picture representing New Years, also great! Okay photographers, you have one week to get your photos in. Photos are due Sunday, December 16th by midnight. What are you waiting for? Grab your cameras and get going! Remember to tell your friends to enter too!

Send your pics in to blackhatphotographs@gmail.com!

The Christmas Village- Poster

Going hand in hand with this weeks photo challenge here is the official poster for the movie that we will be putting up on the blog in a few days, "The Christmas Village". For me Christmas Villages have been a big part of the season for several years, and I wanted to make a movie that used them. The movie will be released on youtube shortly before Christmas Day, I'm excited for everyone to see it.

Awesome Photography and Image Resources

The last post I put up about resources for creative people was focused mostly on Video and SFX. This time around I wanted to put shout out for all the websites that have been helpful to me with working on photos and images. Some of these sites have been invaluable to my video editing as well as for photo manipulation and content creation. So if you are involved in any facet of visual work some of these resources should be helpful for you. If you already know about all of them I’m sorry to rehash, but hopefully I can shed some light on resources that have made the difference to me:

DeviantArt- These guys get the first shout out because they are amazing! Whenever I need anything photoshop related this is my first stop. They have stock photos, brushes, actions, textures and so much more. Everything I have taken from the site has been free, although most of the artists ask that you at least credit them. You have to check carefully for the terms of use, but sometimes you don’t even have to give credit if you don’t want to! One of my favorite things about this site is the quality of everything. Many of the users are actual artists who are very good at what they do.

www.deviantart.com

Flickr- This

one was very surprising to me, and I actually have to thank Video Copilot for turning me on to this. Flickr is not only a place where people can upload their photos, but you can download tons of photos from them and all that is asked in return is attribution. Again you have to check the licensing information of the given photo, but many photos are uploaded under a creative commons license that gives permission for people to use, remix and adapt the photos to their hearts content. All that is required is that you credit the user. To find photos to use commercially there is an option you have to select.  By the search box there is a link for “advanced search” click this and then scroll down to the bottom. There you will see the creative commons logo, next to this are three options. 1. Only search within Creative Commons licensed content. 2. Find content to use commercially and 3. Find content to modify, adapt or build upon. Check ALL 3 boxes, then search for what you want. This has been an amazing asset to me.

www.flickr.com

Coffeshop Blog- This is the place to go if you are looking for awesome Photoshop actions. Again everything here is free. This is just a lady who has a lot of time, and loves Photoshop. She created actions for a lot of different looks, and they have been hugely beneficial to us as we have started up Black Hat Media. Not a lot more to say here other than CHECK THIS ONE OUT!

http://www.thecoffeeshopblog.com/

GIMP.org- There are a lot of people who don’t mess with photo editing because they can’t afford Photoshop. What many of these people don’t realize is that GIMP is an amazing program that has nearly all the functionality of Photoshop, but it’s totally free! It’s open source software with the mission to make photo manipulation possible no matter what your budget is. The other great thing about GIMP is that many people on DeviantART have made actions for GIMP just like Photoshop actions. If you don’t have Photoshop make sure to check this out. Also if you are afraid of the learning curve I’m sure you can find plenty of tutorials online that will show you how to get started.

www.gimp.org

Fairytale Bridal/Groomal

This is quite done yet, but I like it so much that I wanted to share it. We did Bridals/Groomals this last weekend up at the Castle in Provo. The location got my imagination all fired up so I posed the picture, and then took pictures of some of the towers in the area to composite them all together.

Helpful Resources for Creative Types

When I find something great I don’t like to keep it to myself. I want to make sure everyone who wants to make movies, special effects, or just great images knows about these awesome resources I have found.

Over the last couple of years I have learned a ton of new useful skills and been able to implement them thanks to a few amazing websites and I just want to share them with anyone who is looking for a way to up their game.

These first few will focus mostly on video and VFX sites, but in the next post I will have sites focused more image creation and enhancement.

Video Copilot.net- This site takes the cake in my opinion for being one of the most versatile and useful sites out there. It is intended to be mostly for After Effects, but I learned so much more from it. I learned a ton of visual principles, photoshop techniques, additional web resources, and more! There are over 100 different tutorials on a variety of subjects, and even programs. I finally learned how to use Adobe Encore from this site (which I had put off for years). They also offer some amazing products for very cheap. Element 3D isprobably the most useful product they offer, but everything they have is really high quality.

www.videocopilot.net

TubeTape.com- This site is not super classy, and they are overpriced on a lot of things, but they offer sweet deals if you join their mailing list, and occasionally they have some cool freebies (mixed in with some not so great ones). I recommend joining their mailing list, and checking out some of their products, they do have some really good stuff on there.

www.tubetape.com

Adobe TV- Naturally this is a useful site for Adobe products. There are a lot of tutorials on here that are awesome. I do think there are some that you have to be a registered Adobe user to see, but for the most part you can learn the basics, and even some advanced stuff for most Adobe products.  

http://tv.adobe.com/

Lynda.com- This site has a wide variety of tutorials on pretty much any Adobe program you want to name, and more. There are some tutorials that require a paid membership to view, but there are a lot of freebies too.

www.lynda.com