Destination Winnipeg has just announced the winners of the 2007 Picture Winnipeg Contest. I have one picture “Sunset La Salle” been selected as one of the 12 Winners. And the other one “Fireworks at the Forks” is also a runner up in the photo contest. This is my day.

Winner – Sunset La Salle

Runner Up – Fireworks @ the Forks

10 Golden Rules for Designers in the Commercial World:

1. Never engage in an argument or oppose the person who holds your cheque; he/she is probably more concerned about the outcome of your design than yourself.

2. Things are not design oriented; your design will first and foremost be used to deliver a message to the market for your client, before it is an item of personal artistic expression.

3. Communicate patiently with your clients. Remember, they are not designers, so use their language to get your idea across.

4. I believe there is meaning and a story behind your designs and works, but if you don’t put effort into telling me, how will I fully understand?

5. Respect the deadline; meeting it improves your credibility and will impact your career development.

6. People prefer to talk to someone who is presentable, meaning clean and tidy. Stylish doesn’t have to mean unclean and untidy, do you catch my drift?

7. Punctuality is important, it is important to anyone who is professional, which includes designers.

8. Never get angry during the price negotiation process, it’s just business and nothing to do with insulting your work. There is no reason for them to do so anyway, if you really think about it.

9. Your reputation can be proved by business references or winning awards. Don’t forget to win more awards, because it is what customers believe in.

10. Never, ever, attempt to copy others’ designs for any reason at all. It is a death sentence to any designer.

Origin published on [NewWebPick] issue 12. I felt the first rule is so sad as a designer~

The moon today rises at 5:59pm and sets at 9:02pm with 99.6% full moon coverage in Winnipeg. The Moon’s orbit is an ellipse with one side 48,000 kilometers closer to Earth than the other. The full moon of tonight is located on the nearest side, making it appear as much as 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full moon ever this year.

I finally finished a roll of film with my old FED-2 camera. The FED-2 is a Russian made range finder camera, which in some respects a copy of a Leica II and IIIG. FED-2 launched in 1958, the standard lens is Industar-M26 50mm F2.8, compatible to Leica Screwmout. Minimum aperture is F22 and closed focus is 1 meter.The shutter is clothed focal plane make B,1/30 – 1/500 speeds with X synchro terminal.

I bought this camera about a year ago on eBay in cheap. What I like this camera is that I found the contrast on the pictures turned up pretty low, which allows them retained much more details. The following are some test shots form the Fuji Superia ISO-200 negative film.

I’ve been waiting for the foggy weather for long time, and I finally got one. It was foggy patched this morning, I went to Kings Park before sunrise to take some pictures. It was chilly, temperature just about above. Some morning runners running on the trail in the park, and a gozilian number of birds making the loud noise that breaking this peaceful morning.

The picture taking only went through about an hour because my fingers were freezing, but the it turned out some very nice shots. Here are some of them, and I gave the third one a title “Sunrise · Geese”, haha.

It was a 3-day-2-night trip to Gimli for New Year Eve this year. Never thought about going to Gimli in winter time, but surprisingly that hotel is quite cheap. I was waiting for getting film developed because I am kind of lazy to send it to photo lab. Just updated the Gallery for some selected photos that I took in Gimli. Enjoy!

Would you believe it if I tell you that I drew the wings in Adobe Photoshop with Wacom tablet?

Not many people willing leave a message on this blog, but actually I got tones of spam comments everyday. Although I’ve installed a plug-in called Akismet, which blocks almost spam comments on background. But sometimes it might misjudged people’s comments so I still have to spend a while to recheck all the comments manually before I delete them.

Now I just installed a new plug-in called ImgCode, which adds secure code to the comment form to avoid spam bots leaving trash messages on this site. For my friends who never been approved to leave message on this blog will be asking to type in the image code before you submit the comment. The ImgCode plug-in has installed two days already, and I got zero spam comment so far.