Hangs with the Midnight Garage Crew

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BEFORE (raw unedited).

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AFTER.

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BEFORE.

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AFTER.

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Their logo design is way out of whack as you can see now that I’ve put a grid over it.

I hung out with the young guys from Midnight Garage yesterday. They’re good dudes who have always supported ZEN and EOMM. A little while back they started their own brand “Midnight Garage” and so far the guys have come up with a logo and have started to shoot at automotive events.

We had a good catch up, and ended up talking about all sorts of stuff (I might get these guys on the podcast at some point!), but I thought I’d take the time to show them how I frame in hopes it would rub off on them. Will gave me his memory card of shots from a meet the night before and I picked out both shots above to re-frame.

The top image is pretty straight forward, but just a note that it’s always better to shoot a few steps back at car meets rather than being so close you end up cropping parts of the car you’re shooting (which he had done in a fair few shots).

The second image was one of his worse images on the SD Card but hey my slight rotation and crop shows how you could sometimes even save a bad image with a little dynamic framing.

Now the logo file; I knew it wasn’t tight just looking at it, but I thought I’d explain why to the guys by putting it into photoshop then layering a grid over it. As you can see nothing lines up at all. The CREW is off centre, the left little octagon is too. The crew banner edges have different angles both the left and the right and the 3 lower case g’s look super repetitive and make this hand written style font obviously look like a font (a capital G would have been better for Garage). The way the triangle crops around the letters isn’t working either as it’s almost dynamic on the left side, but cut horizontally straight on the right side.

I made sure the guys realised that I was in no way at all having a go at their designer, he’s a junior/young and I’ve got way more experience, but it was awesome to be able to show the guys exactly why the logo didn’t look right to me. Once they saw all the things I saw they were taken aback (I mean these guys already have printed out stickers and T-Shirts of their logo too and they didn’t see all the faults that I saw).

Whilst I’m damn tempted to refine their existing logo (as it only needs a few tweaks here and there to make it a lot tighter) I’m thinking that I’ve got to stop being so generous in order to avoid those nasty resentment issues of mine!!! The guys are totally onto it in any case. I’m sure they’ll sort the logo out and I’m also sure their shots will be framed nicer going forwards too.

Like: https://www.facebook.com/midnight.garage.aus/

Posted in Cars, Design | Leave a comment

Kesii – Repost

Kesii from Quensland is staying with me until she finds a place to rent/stay. She’s also got a new job in town and has been having early morning starts and late nights so we haven’t found the time/energy to shoot yet but hey we’ve just dug up this post from when we first met to reminisce the good memories from the first day we met and shot. Love having a blog!

REPOST: 17 July 2014.

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Early last month Kesii and I talked about teeing up a shoot for whenever she was next in Sydney next (she’s from Queensland), she’s in town and had an hour to spare today and although I prefer all day shoots I was more than happy to get snappy.

Kesii’s gorgeous right?! She’s so photogenic. Couldn’t take a bad shot of her. She’s currently about to graduate from Engineering, but she’s also working on JD Alterations, an upcoming side project/family business.

As usual, more shots on my tumblr: http://justinfox.tumblr.com

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ZENPODCAST #010 – Alain Sihaphone

I hung out with Alain the other day, and man we had a HUGE day of talking shit, all of which we wished we recorded for a podcast. We spoke some more the day after too knowing that we had a podcast planned for today. A part of me was thinking holy shit… we’ve spoken about everything and maybe we’ll have nothing left to talk about on the podcast, but noooooo, we just hit it off and had many other things to discuss.

This time I was sober before we started recording and I think I did a MUCH better job of playing host in this podcast (IE: listening lol) as opposed to how I behaved on the last podcast with Jonno Sea.

We didn’t go so deep but we did go just as long. At exactly 2hrs in the doorbell rang and we decided to cut it there! We discuss family and growing up in Sydney with immigrant parents, making your parents your friends, working from home, red pill blue pill, taking risks, freedom, property, Meal Friends, the customer’s always right and contouring!

Also on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/zengarage/sets/zen-podcasts
And iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/zen-podcast-001/id1336686598?mt=2

Posted in Podcast | 2 Comments

RODE Microphones 10 Year Warranty

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Not a massive fan of the RODE brand (I’m a Shure guy!), but their 10 year warranty is pretty damn impressive!!!!!!

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Hangs with Alain

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Alain with an i!

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Jamon.

Solid hangs with Alain yesterday. Alain’s kicked off Meal Friends, a new passion project where he and his mates visit food joints around town. Sounds like it’s been done before, right? But Alain’s got a certain something and I’m in love with the intro/first 10 seconds of his first video. Be sure to check it out, it’s shot so well too! (shot by Daniel Karjadi who also vlogs).

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpXMxnRDhNc&t=17s

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Monday Morning Rant

Posted in Podcast | 2 Comments

Store DJ – ZEN podcast set-up

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Love the Store DJ bag all the gear came in.

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Gear came in 3 different packages over 2 days.

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These Procaster mics are solid and pretty much the same in design as the Podcaster minus the extra USB bits.

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The Rode PSM1 shock mounts feature black hardware, the blacker the better!

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A touch of ZEN and we’re good to go!

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The H6 is the heart of this setup. It’s a beast that will make all future group podcasts easy peasy.

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I’ve introduced a screen to the show too so I can display internet stuff during talks. It’s connected right into the laptop as a dual screen (I can choose to mirror too if I like).

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These Rode PSA1 arms aren’t cheap but they’re sturdy enough. One of them is already making noises though, could be because I live at the beach!

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Getting there!!! There’s been a little bit of trial and error (in retrospect I would have avoided the USB only Rode Podcaster and just gone straight for XLR mics. But we’ve gotten there in the end, and the Podcaster isn’t wasted as it’ll still be used for solo podcasts.

All the gear was bought in the one place at Store DJ. I’m not at all affiliated with them but I thought I’d share.

Visit: https://www.storedj.com.au

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ZENPODCAST #009 – Jonno Sea

As soon as Gab had left yesterday the doorbell rang. Thinking Gab had left something behind I ran downstairs and opened the door to find Jonno Sea! The interview gear isn’t here yet but I managed to get a makeshift 2 mic set-up going to record our catch up.

I’m a dick when I’m drunk, but hey it is what it is!

We discuss marriage, pole dancing, the rise and downfall of his coffee shop Black Betty, dirty secrets, haters, potential, relationships, gender debate, taking risks, living in the grey, society and so much more. Thanks to Jonno for having the balls to come on the show!

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ZenGarage
On SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/zengarage/jonno-sea?in=zengarage/sets/zen-podcasts
On iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/zen-podcast-001/id1336686598?mt=2

Posted in Podcast | 2 Comments

Good Morning Gabrielle

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Shot with Gab yesterday, one of Lucy Fang’s good friends. We were aiming for those lazy Sunday feels but I didn’t think we quite got there in the end, mainly because I thought her makeup was way too heavy and those contacts are wild! She’s fun to shoot with though! I just think I needed to act faster, and in the moment I could have closed the blinds and done something much darker to suit her hair, eyes and makeup.

There’s always next time?

Full Set: http://www.justinfoxphoto.com/girls#/gabrielle/
Follow: @senorita_gab

Posted in Pets, Photography | Leave a comment

ZEN PODCAST #008 – Design Talk

In this podcast I do the intro part of an hour long motivational/inspirational design talk I do at design schools all over Sydney.

Note: This is the first video I’ve made with Premiere, which is a LOT more complex than iMovie that’s for sure! The video looks to be the wrong format, and the file has ended up being massive in size (making for a VERY slow upload). I’ve not bothered with any transitions as I couldn’t figure it out intuitively and there’s no intro or outro. I’ve tried to synch the audio track to the footage and it’s come out better than the previous iMovie vids in that regard but it’s still out of whack.

I’ll get there!

PS: ZEN PODCASTS are also on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/zengarage/zenpodcast-008-design-talk?in=zengarage/sets/zen-podcasts
And on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/zen-podcast-001/id1336686598?mt=2

Posted in Design, Podcast | 2 Comments