The NFL was the first to try a 3D broadcast this last season and had fairly positive reviews. For those looking for a fun environment to checkout the BCS National Championship game in a local 3D Theatre near you.

Fox has been quoted saying the experience is, “better than being there” and while I don’t completely agree people get the same experience in a theatre as they would being stuffed into a stadium of 80,000 other fans, for those graphic enthusiasts it could certainly be a fun night! For more info click here.

• A new iPhone on the horizon? Speculation over at the MacLife Rumor Roundup says that there could be some very exciting news at the upcoming MacWorld Expo. Check out the full post here.

• I ran across a very cool little blog called Accidental Mysteries. It’s a great, all-around artsy site with a bunch of posts on design, art, photography, sculpture, etc. Check it out here.

• The fine folks over at .Net have a nice little article up on how to navigate the legal aspect of doing design and working with clients. See it here.

• A collection of the coolest ambigram logos. See them here.

• If you own an iPhone you’re going to want to go check out Terry White’s top ten list of the best iPhone applications of 2008. Check it out here.

Here’s a very cool video featuring Ira Glass. Ira is an award-winning radio host who does hour-long stories on a particular theme. Here he talks about how hard it is to find good material, the benefits of killing bad stories and fulfilling your creative potential. A great pep talk for a brand new creative year!

That’s it today, see you all on Monday!

Other things to look forward to in 2009?

- Old Hat’s official 5-year Anniversary is February 16th.  Mark your calendars.

– The Sooners play for the National Championship a week from today.  Go Sooners!

- Tomorrow is my 10-year wedding anniversary and we’re planning a big trip for May.

- NACDA is back in Orlando this year… no lame Dallas trip to prepare for.

I’m sure there are more great things in store for 2009.  But I can’t think of anything relevant.  Old Hat wishes you all the best for a wonderful new year.  Hope it’s the best year of your life so far.

I started really taking photos in college when I was studying graphic design. I felt like the two things went together like peanut butter and ladies so I decided I would get into both early on. I had a cheap Canon film camera that I thought was the greatest thing ever because you could change the lenses. (Never mind that I only had one lense anyway.) Now I’m shooting with a variety of Nikon, Sigma and Tamron digital equipment.

We shot all film in my college photography classes, (Early classes consisted of Ilford HP5 Plus for the most part), and we developed all our own film and printed our shots in the college’s lab. At the time I wasn’t too far into the digital side of photography and I didn’t mind the countless hours I was spending developing film and printing every evening and weekend. Now it’s a simple matter of downloading a few cards and sending files to my Epson R2400 to print. Could I go back to film after experiencing the convenience I have now? That’s a topic for a later post, so stay tuned for that…

That being said, I’m going to talk just a bit about a few photographs I’ve taken lately (and not so lately) and a bit of the behind the scenes on each one.

• I shot this photo a few weeks ago with a really simple setup in my very small apartment. Not much in the way of setup for this. It’s all done with a single light and one strong-armed helper holding the light stand out to the side (thanks Joe). I lit it with a beauty dish positioned slightly above and in front of the subject. The gradation of tones on the background is light from the beauty dish that happened to sneak by the subject. After trying a variety of different things in post I made the decisions you see above in regards to color and tone. Definitely one of the big advantages of digital is the ability to manipulate your colors after you click the shutter. Also one of the disadvantages, as I’ve spent countless hours trying to decide whether one thing looks better than another. (Hmm, do I like this one better or this one better. I really like this one but this one’s pretty cool too. Maybe if I tried this…)

• This is a photo of a good friend of mine that I took nearly a year ago in my old apartment. I had a bit more room back then, but the setup is nearly the same idea. I shot this with one light and a little DIY engineering. At the time the only external light I had was a Nikon SB-800. The SB-800 is just a small shoe-mount flash that doesn’t really accept a lot of light modifiers so I constructed a small beauty dish out of some simple household items from Home Depot and attached it with a bit of velco and happy thoughts. Worked like a charm and with a bit of post you get the above pic.

• All of the previous photos have been taken pretty recently and were produced with quite a bit of equipment. We’re talking various lenses, wireless triggers, stands, lights, light modifiers, assistants, photoshop post processing, etc. You have to have certain tools at your disposal if you want to do a superior job.

Let me put it this way. If you’re framing houses you don’t beat your nails in with a rock. It might get the job done, but unless you’re an idiot you go buy a hammer. Same thing with graphic design, same thing with photography. But having vision is more important than any of that stuff. You have to know why you’re doing something.

The last photo in this post is a good example of the why. I have several photos printed large and hanging in my apartment and invariably I get more comments on this one than anything else that’s up.

I shot this photo in college with a cheap Canon Rebel film camera. I was using the kit lens that came with the camera and it was sitting on a Wal-Mart tripod I got for $15. It was for my very first photo class, Intro to Photography, and we’d spent the first 3/4 of the semester shooting trees and still lifes and a bunch of other boring stuff that I had no interest in whatsoever.

Finally we got an opportunity to shoot a project that let us do whatever we wanted to. I wanted to shoot people and make cool photos but I didn’t have any of the gear I thought I needed. How can I make this work? First I got a couple of my buddies to dress up in suits. (Guys are easy to dress, put ‘em in a suit and they’re bound to look at least halfway cool). Then I went to the convenience store and bought two packs of cigarettes. Neither I nor any of my friends smoked, but cigarettes are a great prop for that late night, film noir look I was going for. (Sorry kids, but lets face it, cigarettes just look cool. Keith Richards has been smoking them forever and I don’t know anybody cooler than Keith Richards. End of discussion.)

Then I needed to be able to control the direction and quality of light. So I shot this photo at about midnight. Yep, you heard me right. By shooting in the middle of the night I was able to use streetlights and building lights as a directional light source that I could control through aperture and shutter speed. I placed my subjects under streetlamps, in doorways and around corners to modify the existing light. I shot the above photo with my old roommate positioned below a streetlight, with probably a 2 second exposure, and told him to hold still. I lost a lot of photos to blur but the ones that came out looked great and when I developed  the film I had the look I was going for. All done with a secondhand Canon Rebel and a few rolls of film.

So whether you shoot fashion models or family photos, I hope your own photography gives you all the joy and satisfaction that you can get out of 1/125 of a second. Cheers!

• One of the nifty little gifts that Santa brought to the ‘ol Schmidt house for X-mas was a Slingbox Solo. A Slingbox allows you to watch your TV anywhere you can get the internet. I don’t have a TV myself, but my parents do, and apparently my Dad was not very excited about the idea of not being able to watch anything when coming to visit so he got a Slingbox and we hooked it up while I was home.

After a bit of tweaking, both in Wichita and in Norman, I’m happy to say that the Slingbox is working like a charm. As crazy as it sounds I now have cable TV without actually owning a TV. The above graphic shows a quick screenshot of what the Slingplayer looks like on your desktop. You can hide or show the remote and it works just like your remote at home. You can access the guide, change channels, turn the power on and off, the whole deal. Pretty cool.

I still don’t plan on watching TV that much, but on the occasions when I might want to, this is a heck of a deal.

• Picked up a bunch of new photo gear over the holidays, as well as quite a few books, and I’ll be talking a bit about some of that tomorrow, so stay tuned. One book that I was very impressed with was Annie Leibovitz At Work, her newest book. A great look into one of the biggest photographers of our era and a pretty cool read. Here’s a quick page through via David Hobby of Strobist fame.

Come back tomorrow for more!

Robert - Played Wii a lot; watched Eagle Eye

Todd M. - Only got one OU article of clothing and was a bit surprised by that; watched Marley & Me (he cried  <– unverified, i kinda made that up)

Joseph - Did NOT go into the town of Shawnee; his Audi broke; saw Yes Man and said it wasn’t all that great.

Taylor - Went to Tulsa and Corn (a town in Okla.) and Shawnee; got some shoes, I think

Teacup - Went to Baton Rouge; Got a scrapbook of his life; his Mom has a lot of diseases

Me - Got a shirt; went to Kingfisher and Tulsa; my sons received a dog from wife’s parents (my wife, not theirs)  Disclaimer: the dog pictured is not the actual dog they received

That’s Dustin (aka Duffy around here). And if that image on his new shirt looks familiar, it’s because that’s what shows up on our website when stuff is loading. That looks a lot like Duffy with his hair grown out.

Todd got a book about OU football, which he might have also co-authored.

Zac’s gift was an Indiana Jones whip that made real whip-like sounds and played the theme music.

And this was Dane’s reaction to Zac using the whip. He was so moved it brought him to tears.

Teacup got a new pair of running pants. Since he’s from Florida he doesn’t wear pants. And since he now lives in Oklahoma, he needs to.

This is Joe. He’s a special fella. And fortunately for all of us the darts he received were not actual darts, but magnets.

This is me. I got some cool shampoo and conditioner. I get the impression that people think I spend a lot of time on my hair. But it’s no more than the normal 15-minute deep scalp massage, pre-rinse, shampoo and revitalization conditioner followed by an extra body daily rinse which gets me ready for my freeze and shine palmade with a heat seal. Seriously people… if you’re not doing it, you need to be.

This is Taylor. I think maybe she was over-exaggerating her excitement for the gift. A great gift nonetheless.

Dane got a cool OU long-sleeve tee.

He was moved once again. Now he’s just starting to look like a crybaby.

This is Geoff with his new basketball. I think they’re going to get along just fine.

Next on the agenda was game time. Taylor started us off by laughing really hard in hopes that we would follow her lead.

Joe was having fun too. The little guy has an invisible mouse he keeps in his hat that he let out to play some games. He’s got quite an imagination, although I think this was based loosely on Ratatouille.

You may not know, but Zac can be particular about things. During game time, he took time out to give us some pointers on how he’d like to see us eat at the next Old Hat Christmas dinner.

Some form of the heimlich, I think? I get the impression Todd was kind of a bully growing up.

Zac and Joe stole the show with their rendition of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. It was sweet.

That’s this year’s recap of the Old Hat Christmas. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as we did, but I doubt that’s possible since I just showed you a bunch of photos and you weren’t actually there. I wish you all a Happy Boxing Day (look it up if you don’t know what that is) and a wonderful New Year!

Okay… now that that’s over with, i’ll get into the meat of this blog.  I was trying to come up with some good content for this one and leave you all on a high point as you head into Christmas.  But I couldn’t think of a subject worthy of dedicating an entire blog to.  So this one will be complete randomness.

Today is the Old Hat interoffice Xmas Party.  We’ll be having fajitas for lunch (traditional Christmas food, if you ask me) and having a Secret Santa gift exchange, a white elephant gift exchange AND i think we’re gonna play Cranium.  Should be a good time.  Why don’t i just send everyone home?  Because we have to be there in case YOU call and need us to do some work.  But we’re closed on Christmas Eve so don’t call then.  Just kidding… call.  I’ll have the phones forwarded to my cell.  Call on Christmas Day too.

I just got through watching the movie Hancock.  It was much better than I was expecting.  I don’t remember it getting overly great reviews but I actually enjoyed it.  Charlize Theron is crazy pretty.  Like you look at her and you can’t believe how pretty she is.  It was funny seeing her in this movie with Jason Bateman considering that the last time I saw them on screen together was in the show Arrested Development when she played his mentally retarded girlfriend.  Hilarious.  That show is the most brilliant television show of all time.

Speaking of the greatest things of all-time, some of you might know that Led Zeppelin is my favorite band of all time.  For Christmas, my awesome staff got me this box set of Zeppelin albums that are remastered by Jimmy Page.  And when I say albums, i mean like vinyl records.  AWESOME!  I don’t actually have a record player but I do have a record collection and I plan to someday purchase a record players so I can break those bad boys out.

What did I get them for Christmas?  Well, among other things, I got them each an Old Hat hoodie.  People make fun of me for all the OH gear I get made and I think that I can go a whole week and only wear Old Hat clothing (never repeating any of it).  Between hats, t-shirts and now hoodies, we have a pretty decent clothing line going.  But make fun of me all you want cuz I love me some Old Hat apparel.  Here’s a photo of me in one of the wonderful new hoodies as I’m about to board the Christmas train with my beautiful family.

If you want one, let me know.  They’re really kinda pricey though.  Custom made hoodies don’t come cheap, apparently.  Worth every penny though.  It’s fun to walk into Old Navy wearing stuff that says Old Hat because at first everyone thinks you’re wearing Old Navy stuff.  But then they read that second word and they get confused.  Often times it causes seizures amond the Old Navy patrons.

And with all this talk about office Christmas parties and the OH staff, I thought I’d share with you THIS photo of all of us and our significant others at the OH Xmas Party, or, the Celebration of the Birth of the Lord Baby Jesus, as we called it.

If you look closely, you can see the excitement in everyones’ eyes over having just received the Old Hat hoodie!  You’ll also see that we all have red eyes which is not just an effect of the camera flash… it’s caused by the fact that all of us are really quite evil.

I know what all of you are NOW thinking… is that Kasie “The Dream” Tamayo in that photo?  Yes… it is.  She is the lovely girlfriend of our own Joseph Oleander Crall.  Now that she’s finished her stint on the OU Gymnastics squad where she was an All-American on the Parallel Beam Horse, she works in the OU Athletics department as an academic counselor.  She’s leaving for California today to go home for Christmas.  Joseph has been crying daily because of it so if you have a chance, send a nice note to joseph (at) oldhatcreative.com and offer some words of encouragement.  He’s excited about getting to babysit her dog though.  So there’s consolation there.

Remember how I talked about how I liked the movie Hancock?  Well two movies I’ve seen lately that really sucked were Step Brothers and Appaloosa.  Appaloosa might be one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.  Complete crap.  Don’t see it.  If your brain got stepped on as a child, you might find Step Brothers funny… so if you fall in that category, take the risk and see this movie.  Otherwise, stay away.

Well, I think I have probably wasted enough of your time now so I’ll sign off.  I’ll get all these pics to Duffy from the OH Xmas party so he can make a gallery for you all to view.  There’s some good stuff on there.

UPDATE:  DUFFY GOT THE PICS UP… CLICK HERE TO VIEW ‘EM!

Have a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

• I have to give a big Happy Birthday today to my sister Desiree! I’ll be home in a couple of days and I’ll be bringing your combination birthday/x-mas gift with me! (I’m kidding, I’m kidding.) People with birthdays close to Christmas hate it when you do that.

• This hasn’t made quite as big of news as the shoe-throwing incident, but,  wouldn’t you know it, everybody’s trying to get in on the action nowadays. Check out some animated gifs of other stuff being thrown at the President here.

• Great little video on the making of the Obama Logo. Nice insight into branding and the research and thought that went behind it. Part one of two.