Tag: giving back

Snow Banks and Wet Noses

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I really have no excuse for my lack of posting since the beginning of October other than I’ve been busy and this blog took a back seat to everything else.  I’m relieved to see that several of my other favorite blogs have also been slowing down on their posting frequency and it makes me feel a little less guilty… well, sort of.

As per usual, I’m not ready to share what I’ve been working on but will (hopefully) in the near future.  It’s not entirely my fault that I’m not sharing my work at the moment – a lot of it has to do with timing with PR etc. and/or the projects aren’t ready to reveal so I’m afraid you’ll have to have a little more patience if you are dying to see what’s new.

As I’ve completely missed the holiday season, I’m going to jump ahead to one of my favorite things about winter.  Skiing.  If I were a dog, I would hope that I could have a job like this:

VITAL FILMS

If I’m ever in an avalanche or an incident that results in me buried in snow, I hope I’m rescued by one of these puppies.  Heaven forbid I’m ever in that kind of situation.  I’m just saying…

I love the use of slow motion in this little diddy.  What better way to glorify these little superheroes?  It works for humans so why not dogs, right?  Also, the camera motion with the action shots works really well here and for once I’m posting about professional skiers and their stunt reels.  I’m so glad someone has finally made a video about skiing other than a stunt reel!

I haven’t made it up to the mountains since the snow starting piling up but I’m excited to get a few trips up as long as the snow holds out this season.

I know I won’t be posting again in the next few days so I will say it now.  Happy New Year!  See you in 2016.

Man’s Best Friend

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Raise your hand if you’ve ever read Garth Stein’s, The Art of Racing in the Rain.  If you have, you’ll know that it’s a story told from the point of view of a dog, Enzo – devoted in every way to his humans and often frustrated with his lack of opposable thumbs and too large tongue preventing him from sharing his observations in a succinct and audible fashion.

If you liked that book, you’ll love this little short about a dog named Denali:

FELT SOUL MEDIA

We never had dogs growing up, despite my sister’s ardent pleads and strategies to convince our parents to change their minds.  We had too many allergies and we traveled too much to make it possible.  Somehow you just don’t have the same relationship with your goldfish as you do with a furry canine.

The best part about this video?  The story.  We can all identify with the strength that we get from other’s support and the grief that goes with losing them in one way or another. It’s too bad that dogs have a much shorter life-span than most of their owners because a lot of people would really say that they are their best friend.

Bringing Back the Light

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In the midst of a summer full of wildfires, residual smoke and horror stories of parched forests being consumed by hungry flames, it’s sometimes hard to believe that the fire season will eventually come to and end – or at least we are all hoping it will.  Beyond the terrors that these widespread flames bring to homeowners, the idea of losing our forests is what really scares me.

I’ve always taken old growth trees for granted, I mean living in an area where trees stand hundreds of feet tall and have witnessed more local history than we can even imagine, well if trees could talk… right?  What would happen though if the future generations didn’t have monster towers of wood shading them or recycling their carbon dioxide back into oxygen?

I don’ want to even speculate and hopefully logging and wildfires will slow enough and allow new growth to take root. Thanks to people like those in the video below, we may not have to face a treeless reality:

MARK WYATT

My favorite part of this film is the beautiful and sweeping views of the forests and the use of the autumn light.  Autumn is my favorite time of year to film outside – there is a soft and warm quality to it that you don’t get in summer (the sun is too high), winter (the sun is too low) and only sometimes get in Spring.  Usually in the PNW, it’s too cloudy in the Spring to know what kind of light is filtering through.

Although we still have several weeks of Summer left, I can only hope that the fires slow and that our old forests can continue to bare witness to future events – and bask in plenty more Autumn light.

Goodwill :: Feed the World

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If you live in the U.S. or are an American expatriate, or just happen to like celebrating  the American holiday Thanksgiving, you are probably recovering from your turkey coma and now gearing up for the December holidays.  Then there are those of you who have been up since all night to sit in line for all the Black Friday sales.  All I can say is that: You. Are. Brave.

Me?  Well I’m recovering from making dinner for 15 people and will probably catch a movie or some other activity with the family members who are still in town.  To put it lightly, I’m rather exhausted.  I am feeling grateful for all that has happened this year- the good and the bad and not just because this is the time of year when we are supposed to remember to

thanksgiving14But mostly because it really has been a good year, even with the lulls in my work schedule.  Now it seems like I’m going to end the year with plenty to do and I’m trying to psych myself up for it.  December, here I come!

One last thought on this month’s theme of “goodwill”: It’s so easy to forget about the less fortunate at this time of year.  We get caught up in the hubbub of buying gifts and magnificent feasts – all with the people we love, or don’t love in some cases.  But we don’t always remember the people in the rest of the world that are stuck in terrible circumstances and that have no way out of it unless we help them from wherever we are.

The New York Times – Video

So thank you to people like Bob and other celebrities who yield their fame for the greater good and not just to make themselves wealthier.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone – wherever you are, and may we always be grateful for what we have.

Goodwill :: Making Charity Beautiful

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If you went to the kind of schools that I went to, giving your time back to the community was always a big deal . We had to log a number of hours each semester just to graduate from my high school and in college, many of my PR class projects were for non-profits.  Usually this was in the form of creating promotional pieces in print or video form and the most we got out of it was a grade and the simple satisfaction that we helped someone else.

After years of volunteering at soup kitchens and fundraising for cancer research, the hard truth of charity can come through and make things look a little drab at times.  Because lets face it – charity makes you take a hard look at what is not quite right with the world and trying to change that is often messy. I know that it’s worth it in the end to help those less fortunate than yourself, but just for once it would be nice for it to look nice too.

And that’s what Michael does – he makes charity beautiful:

Cory J Pop

I realize that this is my admiration for designers coming out again, but this is something rare that as someone in the creative industry, it’s nice to see beauty and charity coming together.  I only wish that my work space looked as nice as Michael’s!  Something to aspire to, right?

And with that, I’m off to start prepping for Thanksgiving as I’ve been put in charge of cooking this year.  How did that happen?  Stories of dried out turkey and a messy kitchen most like due for next week.  Wish me luck!

Goodwill :: No Scraps Left Behind

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As the many food centered holidays creep nearer, I find myself thinking about food – again.   It seems to be on my mind a lot this year but then again we all obsess about food in some way.

I wouldn’t necessarily consider this video a work of art – what I mean is that I don’t find anything extraordinary about the film itself.  However, I love the concept that this company has come up with and it makes me wonder why more people haven’t started doing something as fantastic with our waste food as Rubies in the Rubble:

Rubies in the Rubble

Funny enough, I have never seen these products at markets or in gourmet grocery stores in England – I probably haven’t been looking hard enough and it’s been ages since I was last at Borough Market.  I will definitely look for them next time in the country later this year.  We throw away an incredible amount of food each year and it’s so nice to see that someone is doing something useful with this excess of food.

Goodwill :: Eco Print

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So many of us sit at computers day after day- for work and for play and here and there we print various documents.  We’re told constantly about the amount of paper that we waste by printing and by using our various devices we can reduce the amount of paper used and read off our our phones, our tablets etc.  But what no one mentions is the ink part of the printing process.

We take for granted (or at least I did) that ink is just a part of the printing process and other than being and expensive office expense, we don’t really think about the other impacts that it makes. But thanks to designers like Dan, a more eco-friendly font could change the impact that we make with our printed pages.

grey london

I love the color contrast between the black and white in this video and it includes typography- something that I have a great fondness for.  Sometimes I wonder if I should have gone into graphic design instead of video production.  I also love the intricacy of the font and the thought that has gone into the development of this font, just so that we can save 33% more ink per page.  And what does it mean for the rest of us (other than saving us money)? It means that we can contribute towards reducing the amount of waste that we create.  How cool is it that we can help the environment AND use a beautiful new font?  Pretty cool.

For the Foodie :: Feed Supper

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I realize that I’m a little late to talk about this campaign as it has already started, but I thought it was a good thing to at least mention it.

It seems that there a whole slew of cause awareness events going on at the moment.  We seem to be easing off of the ice bucket challenge and are moving on to other challenges – probably a good thing now that the weather is finally cooling off.  For instance, there’s the SNAP Challenge where you eat off a tiny budget of $3.40 a day to understand how millions of others live everyday.  There are the usual walks and runs and other physical exertions that we seen to do annually and then there’s the FEED Supper campaign:

Jenner Brown

I love the idea of this campaign because it brings people together to enjoy each other’s company and nourish their bodies.  I feel like I’m always on the run right now and rarely have the time to sit down with people that I love to do the most basic thing of feeding myself.  When I was still living at home, we ate as a family every night (as long as we were all in town) and it was a time for us to all catch up on the days events.  Food, at the moment, is something consumed on the move and I long for the ‘old days’ of sitting down with my family to eat together each night.

This campaign encourages bringing back that old family tradition while helping a good cause.  Food desert is a relatively new term, but it’s an old problem and it’s good that we are finally addressing it for what it is an trying to bring and end to this all too common issue.

Winter Olympics 2014 :: The Ice Rink

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crane.tv

When I was little I dreamed of being a figure skater- in fact it was the only event that I liked to watch at the winter Olympics.  I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that my best friend skated and dreamed of going to the Olympics and I liked the sparkly costumes.  My friend  changed her life goals and didn’t go the professional athlete route but she is very talented none-the-less.

This video takes me back to watching my friend compete in competitions and how I always marveled at how effortlessly she seemed to move on the ice.  I was lucky if I could make it around the rink once without falling over.  I have only improved slightly to the point that I can actually skate forwards at a decent speed without hesitation.  But that’s about it.  Not only does this video display the grace and stamina that it takes to be a Olympic caliber skater, but I love the editing.  It makes me feel as if I’m on the ice with her.

This wasn’t the end of my ice sport ambition- at some point I got over the sparkly costumes and wanted to play hockey:

Akseli Tuomivaara

My grandfather was an avid hockey fan and I guess it rubbed off.  Hockey was another sport that I never took up and I’m guessing both of my parents were very grateful for that.  It was the fact that I was going to have to take two years of skating lessons before I could even touch a stick and I was already 14 so that kind of killed that idea – probably for the best as I was able to take up rowing instead.  In the end it was a more logical sport for me.

Having given up on the idea of playing hockey, this video makes me very excited for the hockey games this Olympics.  The movement and on ice experience takes the audience with the team as they fly up the ice and puts you in the action.  Almost as good as playing yourself- you just don’t have to worry about losing your front teeth.

So what are you favorite ice sports?  Anyone going out to learn how to skate after watching these games?

Reincarnation :: Surfs Up!

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As I have just spent the last several weeks at the beach I can’t help but post this as my first video on the reincarnation of materials.

Shwood eyewear

 

I haven’t been on a surfboard in several years, and when I am on one it’s only because I’m floating on a board waiting for a wave.  I usually fall off if I actually catch a wave.  It’s a work in progress for me.  Maybe someday I’ll actually get to ride a wave all the way in before ending up upside down in the water.  You never know- it could happen…

Maybe if I ever get good enough I could buy a board like this.  I’ve been on a wood board once, and its a completely different feeling from the manmade material boards that I’ve been on.  Maybe its just because its made of renewable resources, but I like the idea of using driftwood.  What else can you do with all the wood that washes up on beaches?

As it’s freezing out I’ll stick to dry land for now, but maybe when the weather warms up and I’m at a beach with surfable waves, maybe I’ll try again.  Until then I’m sticking to hot tea and thinking about water sports.