Devin Bruce 2.0 - V.2

I lied.


I decided to try to keep the more "classic" look of my website instead of redesigning it to the orange-colored one I posted about below. I just decided to consolidate what I had previously and class it up a bit.


All I can say is that I love my Dreamweaver class - I just wish it moved at a faster pace. I've already done all of my homework that is due well into March!!!!!


Related Tags: Devin, Bruce, Photography, Gallery, Website, Design, Dreamweaver

The Beginning of an Illustrious New Career in Web Design

Class this semester for me consists of a magazine production class as well as a creative web design class - the latter of the two being the catalyst for what you see above. It is a project where you create your own homepage that later will be linked up with homework assignments you turn in.

It is as good as it is going to get for now - I've still need to learn how to use the slice tool in photoshop to create tables and content boxes but I think that it definately is a good start!


Related Tags: Devin, Bruce, Photoshop, Website, Design, Class, Sacramento, City, College, Slice

2 hours, 15 minutes

This is how much time it takes the Sacramento Police Department to respond to TWO calls about a noise disturbance from the assholes across the alley from us who keep their crying, howling dog locked inside during the day and, apparently, like to start full-scale drunken parties at 3:45 in the morning.

Once they police arrive they spend a total of 2 minutes dealing with the situation and then back in their car to wherever they go when they are busy NOT responding to calls.


It is now 6 A.M. Who needs to fuckin sleep, right?


Damn it, I'm fed up with Downtown.



Related Tags: I, hate, downtown, sacramento, horrible, police, response, tired, assholes

I'm a finalist!!!

I entered the "Best of College Photography 2007" contest this year on a lark - I saw the entry forms in my Photoshop class and grabbed one. I had actually forgot about it until three or four days before the deadline! I quickly had some prints made and asked my beautiful wife Rainey send them out for me.

A few months later I received the above letter in the mail letting me know that I was a finalist chosen out of the original 28,000 entries!! Grand Prize is a new camera and $1000 - man, that would come in handy about now (camera and cash both).

My chance of winning, based on odds alone, are still pretty slim. They culled the top 5% of the 28,000 for possible winning and that still means that I'm up against roughly 1400 other photographers. Who knows, maybe I'll be chosen. Allegedly I'll find out withing the next few days if I placed so think good thoughts for me!


Related Tags: devin, bruce, photography, contest, best, of, college, 2007, sacramento, serbin, photographer, forum, magazine

I've officially become the old man in the building...

So, I got some new neighbors last week (they rent the apartment to our right and share a wall that is the total length of the space) and they are NOISY. Nothing but banging and yelling. Thinking that it was natural "moving in" sounds I tried to ignore it - up until Thursday night.

It was non-stop. At one point my wife got up and banged on the wall and yelled for them to quiet down. They didn't even notice. I finally went over and, a bit angrily, told them that it was late and asked for them to quiet down.

Now, jump ahead to Saturday night/Sunday morning.

2:15 AM, dead asleep when I am awakened by a drunken group screeching the perennial favorite "Pour Some Sugar On Me" outside of my house. They then climb the stairs next door and proceeded to crank the stereo up to 11 and jump up and down while dancing and screaming at the top of their lungs.


Damn it.


I go over and yell at girls who don't look old enough to drink, let alone rent their own apartment, that they need to be quiet.

The best part is that while I'm talking to them, they look at me like I'm the asshole.


(In an old man voice) Young punks! In my day, kids had respect...


(Thinking about it, I actually think that I'm the second oldest person living in the building now. Jeez, I need to buy a house...)

This makes me happy

Shadows and Light

I love shooting subjects that are challenging - subjects like the tech rehearsals held today at the Magic Circle Theater in Roseville. The theater company is putting on Fiddler on the Roof and I stopped by for a few hours to see what I could shoot from it.

What I love about things like this is that, because of the changing light (and, most of the time, the lack of it), you have to come up with alternative ways of shooting. Silhouettes are cool but if you have a steady hand (or a tripod), long exposures are something to consider.


Related Tags: Magic, Circle, Theater, Roseville, Sacramento, Shadows, Light, Documentary, Devin, Bruce

More Tess

Picture of Tess taken in Downtown Sacramento in November 2006.

Related Tags: Tess, Fashion, Portrait, Downtown, Sacramento

Leatherface from Off The Hook TV

Everyone, meet Leatherface. Leatherface, meet everyone.

Here's a dude that I went to high school with - his name is Leatherface. Well, not really, but that's his stage name. You see, Leatherface is a wrestler - he was featured on an episode of Viva La Bam as a special guest star (The Arbor Day / Treetop Casino Episode).

I ended up running into him first on Myspace and then at the SushiMasters event I shot in September. Last month, I got together with him and his buddy, The Executioner, to shoot some stills for a DVD they are putting out. Very nice guy with a very sweet girlfriend.
He was pretty quiet in high school but, then again, I didn't know him too well. Never thought back then that he'd be doing what he's doing now, though!

Check out what he's up to at his website:
www.offthehooktv.com
(Probably NOT work safe)

Related Tags: leatherface, wrestler, viva, la, bam, sacramento, off the hook, dvd

New Tools Part 2...

Yeah - so, new monitors suck. After I meticulously worked on the brightness and contrast levels to FINALLY have a properly calibrated monitor, the computer went ape sh*t on me and decided that I should look at everything in contrasty black and white.

WHAT?!?!!?

So, I ended up breaking down (after working on the problem for the last week) and buying a Spyder2Express. The S2E (as I like to call it... well, not really) is a monitor calibrator. You plug it in, set the little eye dohickey on the screen of the monitor and let it do it's thing.

10 minutes later - perfectly calibrated monitor!

Good side - now prints are dead on all the time.
Bad side - $70 for the S2E that I'll use maybe twice.


Hey, anyone wanna buy a used monitor calibrator?


Related Tags: photoshop, monitor, icc, profile, color, calibration, spyder, new, tools

New News and Review News Feature This Week

Well, with this morning comes a link to some stuff I shot the weekend of December 17 - Sacramento's newest basketball franchise! Haven't heard? Yeah, almost no one has.

Sacramento recently became the new home of the Sacramento Heatwave (formerly the Fresno Heatwave) and are a part of the newly resurected ABA.

The Sacramento News and Review has a piece about the team this week in which I shot the art for. You can check the story out here.

Not many people were there - hopefully they will start packing people in. Unfortunately, I see similarities between these guys and other small market sports teams that had moved into the area...

Related Tags: aba, sacramento, heatwave, basketball, news, review, alternative, newspaper, river, rats, roller, hockey

New tools bring more work in the long run

Hey all - I've been hammering away at wrapping my head around Color Workspaces.

"What are Color Workspaces?", you ask? Well, basically they are Satan.

You see, I got a new monitor for Christmas - a sleek 19 inch, lcd wide screen bohemeth. (It actually allows me to work AND watch movies at the same time!!!) It rocks! Yet...

I have been noticing that since replacing my old, clunky monitor I have been having problems with color correction and have traced it to the calibration of my monitor in relation to photoshop. Here is an example of the problems I've been running into:

The "problem" picture - after saving it in photoshop it dulled out and lost a lot of it's appeal.

The fixed version - much more "poppy"

This is the result of the Color Workspace profiles - the first is Adobe 1998; the second is sRGB. Basically, Adobe RGB is preferred by pros because it keeps all of the color information in the file. Unfortunately, for output - it stinks. You get washed out colors on the web as well as on prints made at the photomat. sRGB is much better with the wow factor for displaying on webpages and print photography, but much of the color information is sacrificed.

So, what am I to do? I'm still trying to figure out if my editorial work is affected by the profiles - the images are converted into CMYK (which is another ball of wax altogether) and shouldn't make a difference... but with Photoshop you never can tell.

More as I figure it out...

Related Tags: photoshop, profiles, color, problems, web, portrait, photography, monitor, lcd