Endikos

11 Months Later, and All I Have to Talk About is A Camera?

Posted on May 1st, 2013

Yup.  Specifically, a free camera.  Well, a chance to win a free camera.  I’ve been getting back into photography a lot lately (I’ll share some photos soon), and recently scored a sweet Kodak Junior III, which is a pretty rockin’ 6×9 medium format folding camera.  I’ll have some work to do to bring it back to full functionality, but I can’t wait.  And how awesome would it be to win a brand new Canon 5d Mark III from the fine folks over at SnapKnot to complement a 1938 Film-shootin’ beauty? Very awesome.  So awesome we’ll have to come up with a new word for how awesome it is… I’m thinking “Apertastically Awesome”.

Big thanks to the SnapKnot wedding photography directory for offering this great camera giveaway!

The Story of My Wife

Posted on June 12th, 2012

Today is my lovely wife’s birthday!  I thought I’d take some time to write a bit about why I love her, to “rise up an call her blessed” (Proverbs 31:28), because after all:

“An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.” (Proverbs 31:10 ESV)

One of the things I enjoy the most about my wife is her generous and giving nature.  She has a very tender heart, and often quickly resolves to meet needs she encounters in the course of life, or finds a way to be a blessing to someone that could use it.  A few weeks ago she and I were on a lunch date at the local Chili’s.  After we were already seated and enjoying our appetizer, an older gentleman and his daughter were seated in the booth behind ours.  We overheard the daughter mention in a cell phone conversation that her mother – the older gentleman’s wife – had died that day, and it also happened to be his birthday.  Compassion filled my wife, and  with very little thought she leaned over the table towards me and tells me that we should buy their meal.  So we conspired with the waitress to cover their ticket when it was ready, and left anonymously when it was done, because my wonderful bride recognized that these folks needed some blessing that day. Of course this isn’t an isolated incident, and I’m genuinely privileged to be a part of it when it happens.

“She opens her hand to the poor and reaches out her hands to the needy.” (Proverbs 31:20 ESV)

My wife is a very talented baker and cook.  Not only do the boys and I get to enjoy her meals, but she often makes gifts of her baked goods, and enjoys surprising friends and neighbors with the occasional plate of snicker doodles or rolls made from old family recipes. There are many mornings where my wife is awake and bustling about before I am, sorting out the day and making sure the boys and I have nutritious lunches ready to take to work and school.

“She rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household…” (Proverbs 31:15 ESV)

Along with some baked goods and wonderful canned pickles made from cucumbers grown in our family garden, you’ll often find my wife selling hand-crafted sewn goods during the summer months at the local farmers market… she especially enjoys making baby stuff like bibs and taggie blankets and onesies.  It’s actually pretty remarkable to see how she puts in a full day’s effort trying to manage her household, making sure our boys and I are well taken care of, and then she spends many more hours working away in the kitchen our in her sewing room downstairs to get things ready to sell.

“She perceives that her merchandise is profitable. Her lamp does not go out at night. She puts her hands to the distaff, and her hands hold the spindle.” (Proverbs 31:18–19 ESV)

“She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.” (Proverbs 31:27 ESV)

You see, my wife strives to be an excellent wife and mother, but like all of us sometimes feels like she falls short.  She looks at these famous verses in Proverbs and desperately wants to become the woman she sees portrayed there…  but she doesn’t realize how close she already is!  Today I’m honored to celebrate her, to mark her birthday and remember all the ways she pours herself out in love and compassion.  Today I rise up and call her blessed. Today I happily proclaim what a blessing she is to me and our family.  She’s truly precious, and I gratefully thank our Creator for joining us together.  Happy birthday, beloved!

Photorealistic 3D Earth Blender Video Tutorials!

Posted on March 12th, 2012

This is the last in the “What I’ve been up to lately” series.  This first video tutorial shows you how to make the Photorealistic 3D Earth I created, whose textures and blend file are available in a previous post. Be sure to watch it full-screen, it’s in HD!

And as a bonus feature for the above video, I did a second video to show how to go from the whole-earth place we ended up at, to a render of North America’s west coast in the morning, also including the Lens Flare rig I built. Actually, I built the Lens Flare rig to work with exactly this type of shot! Enjoy!

Photorealistic Earth and Lens Flare 3D models for Blender

Posted on March 12th, 2012

I’m a big believer in open source philosophy and giving back to the community.  Some of my best work lately has been in my 3D photo-real Earth with its accompanying textures as well as my lens flare rig. I’ve already posted all of these files to Blendswap (a creative commons Blender file sharing site), but also wanted to make them available here, so here you go! These are released under a creative commons license (CC BY – the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License), so you are welcome to use these in whatever way you choose, so long as proper attribution is given. These files were created in Blender 2.62. Enjoy!

Earth + Textures Download (31.5 MB)

Lens Flare Rig Download (715.6 kB)

Now in Threeeeee Deeeeeee….

Posted on March 9th, 2012

In the second part of my “What I’ve Been Up to Lately” series, I wanted to show you some 3D work I’ve been doing as well. First up is a project that’s actually been years in the making. Okay, this particular revision only represents somewhere in the neighborhood of 24 hours or so of work, but the *concept* has been around for years. This is G-BOT. “G” in this case stands for “Gabriel”, the name of my oldest son. I eventually plan to make a whole family of 3D robots. Gabe and David, myself and my wife, and two little dog-bots.

For the curious, this was modeled in Blender, rendered using the Blender Internal engine, and some textures and final compositing was done in Photoshop.

Next Up, a couple of renders of the planet we call home. For what it’s worth, it is stunningly difficult to get the colors on these right :-)

Both of these images were rendered using Blender’s Cycles render engine.

Photographic Endeavors

Posted on March 8th, 2012

I promised you an update on what I’ve been up to, and decided to break it into a few sections, mostly because I have pics to show, and didn’t want to make a single five-mile-long post.  So I’ll give you three two-mile posts instead (yeah, the math is a bit weird on that one).  I haven’t been able to get out and shoot anywhere near as much as I’d like, but I’ve been able to make a few decent photographs as of late.  Here are a few of my faves:

First up, a tree I call the “Old Guard”.  This tree is completely dead,  most likely due to a late-season snow storm we had a few years ago.  It’s the single largest tree of any that are around it for a few hundred feet, and so reminds me of an Tolkien-esque Ent with a responsibility for the younger trees around it.  The morning this photo was made, it was very foggy out, and I knew that it was the right time to point the camera at this particular tree, as I’d had an eye on it for a while.  A few days after this photo was made, we had a really nasty windstorm that stripped this tree of most of what it had left, aside from the trunk.

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Next Up, our church’s annual “Fall RefresHer”.  I was kindly asked to walk around and make some photographs while the ladies in our church enjoyed an evening of fellowship, a good meal, some music, and some teaching from an excellent speaker.  Here are a few of my favorite shots:

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How Time Flies!

Posted on March 8th, 2012

I’ve not been idle!  But my poor blog certainly doesn’t reflect that. I’m sure that by now the little bits and bytes that together form my blog feel abandoned and have tiny pixelated sad faces.  Cheer up, my little binary friends – there are things to write about!  I’ve got a few photographs I want to share, as well as some 3D-related stuff that I’ve been working on lately, and some of it will probably be hitting later today.  Here we go again…

A Non-Serialized Non-Time-Specific Photo, Number 1

Posted on July 11th, 2010

So since the regular photo effort sorta fizzled, I just wanted to post something sort of random.  The boys and I went to the Museum of World Treasures yesterday while my wife and her cousin went to a musical downtown.  This Jade statue is on display there.  This place is an excellent way to enjoy a few hours!

jade pray-er

A Year of Photos – Week 7

Posted on March 31st, 2010

Week 7 – Yup, I’m afraid I’ve had to go from a once-a-day to a once-a-week.  Hopefully this will keep me from getting bogged down between a full time job, side projects, family time, and hobbies :-)  So It’s official… Spring has sprung and life is once again filling the Kansas plains and our nostrils with sneeze-inducing pollens.

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A Year of Photos – Day 44

Posted on March 23rd, 2010

Time to break out the strobes again.  The shots of David a few days ago were just too Flat. Today I’m trying to emulate a shot my friend Justin Cary took recently.  While this isn’t near as good as his, it’s got more depth and is a better shot than my last one… so we’re getting there.

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