Coming Soon: The Donahue Media Group

A new company is in the making…

The Donahue Media Group will soon launch a new website, before taking Portland, Ore., by storm.

My Photographic Evolution

I think it’s funny to look back at the “Edits” folder of my computer. That’s where I keep any photo I shot that I took a few extra minutes to make sure it looked good enough to share. Since it’s organized by date, it’s very easy to notice the trends I’ve gone through in just the past year.

You can tell just by stepping back and looking at the bunch as a whole where I first learned about Vibrance/Saturation in Photoshop CS4, as well as when I took the saturations to extremes. Then there was the heavy editing thanks to automated actions you could download from all over the web, followed by the heavy vignettes. There’s lots of panoramics and night shots, as well. Eventually came the HDRs followed by the use of Topaz Adjust to bring out single images into HDR-like fashions; not to mention long exposures, fast exposures and time-lapses.

Now, I’m into letterbox-style black borders. Why? I have no idea, aside from the fact that I’ve seen a few photographers (see here, here and here). Maybe it’s how they turn into a square. Perhaps it’s the contrast. Like I said before, I have no idea – I just like it.

…at least for now. We’ll see what happens next month.

Anyway, I’ve been busy playing with some older photos and taking some new ones this week and last. Here’s what I’ve been up to:

This little dandy was hiding deep in one of my Coeur d’Alene folders. Shots like this make me miss my drive to work in Idaho, all along Coeur d’Alene Lake Drive.

This was at sunset tonight. Holy friggin’ moly it was insane! I didn’t think I’d get it to look nice at all, and especially since I didn’t have my tripod handy. But I guess I was wrong…

I have wanted to shoot this photo since first moving to Portland, especially after seeing some awesome images of this same vantage all over flickr. Tonight was my night! This is actually an HDR of three separate 15-second exposures (+1, 0, –1).

From the same spot as above, overlooking downtown Portland from the top of OHSU. I had never been up here before until tonight, and I can’t wait to go back again! (Looks WAY better large!)

New edit of an old shot: This was from back when John came to visit. A little too dark for my taste, but I think that’s probably why I kind of like it, it’s not my normal edit.

And lastly, one of my favorite shots ever with an updated edit. This is probably my best “journalistic” shot, as I was on a police ride-a-long for a page design I thought might look nice. I borrowed a Canon from school and rode with a cop (who I actually went to middle school with, oddly enough).

Hot Dog Haiku – in print!

 
Last summer I was enjoying three hotdogs from Gittel’s Grocery in Coeur d’Alene so much that I penned a haiku on the subject. Well, it seems I’m not the only fan of those famous franks: A writer for The Spokesman Review in Spokane, Wash., also shares the same love as I.

In fact, he recently wrote an article on the matter (see it here). Even better, he quoted my haiku:

Searching online for details about the subject, I came upon a blog post, written by former local resident Jake Donahue, in which he eloquently waxes poetic about the wonderful wieners at "the Biggest Little Store in Town." His haiku showcases the typical emotional and physiological response to this divine lunchtime tableau: "My mouth salivates/Three for a buck thirty-nine/Hot dogs are pure bliss."

How sweet it is!

Austin a.m.

Funny thing happened around 3:30 a.m. this morning: I woke up. I was ready to get up. I was ready to for the continental breakfast in the hotel’s lobby and stoked for this journalism conference in Austin.

But it was 3:30 a.m. So I went back to bed.

Even though yesterday was exhausting (I hate flying anymore), I woke up again at 5:30 a.m. after a combined nine hours of sleep the previous two days, and I was up for good. A shower and a short shave later (I’m keeping the beard until I go back to Oregon), I decided to take some photos of the capitol building down the street.

My buddy told me about a program better than Photoshop when it comes to HDR merging, so I decided to try that – but then my tripod broke. So I tried my best, and only came out with one decent shot. I haven’t downloaded Photomatrix yet, but I plan to later today and play with these photos some more.

Anyway, here’s the one shot:

The Evolution of Jakewood (Part 2/3)

After reading that very first post of mine (see Part 1 of this series: Just below this post, I reposted my first blog), it has become painstakingly clear that while I once obsessed over writing as best I could for newspaper readers I now tailor a web-friendly prose. Dumber audience? Maybe. But people who read the newspaper look for intelligent, thought-provoking articles (I personally believe); those who scour the web are looking for a quick fix.
And thus, writing for the web sucks.
Like I mentioned in my first blogger post, I’ve evolved backwards in terms of sentence structure, variety and even vocabulary. I desperately need to seek out why! My entire scholastic career, I have taken full advantage of being able to articulate my exact thoughts in a well-written way. Now? My work is short, comma-ridden and not the way I once dreamed it would look.
There is, however, one major reason that could have possibly affected all of this: design. Perhaps, instead of taking the time to perfect my product I’ve skipped right along to selling it, if you will. If I make it look good, than anyone will read, right?
This has become incredibly evident as my blog evolved over the past 10 months: More often than not I spent as much time finding a “perfect” photo or playing in Photoshop as I did writing a blog post.
Then I got incredibly lazy: simply posting photos.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing lazy about a photo blog. Some of the blogs I read everyday are dedicated simply to photographs. Yet I originally started this blog to get myself writing. While photos are indeed a nice break from long, wordy posts, maybe I should have started a separate photo blog.
Too late now, as Jakewood is just one massive hodgepodge of text, photos and videos. Now that I think of it, maybe it’s better that way.

I’m rarely right, but I’m never wrong

Ingrained in my persona for as long as I remember, there has laid a deep affinity toward the written word. Perhaps this is due to the sharp contrasts with the spoken word: You cannot mumble while writing (a predicament I have dealt with all my life through the spoken aspect), and unlike speaking to a crowded auditorium, you rarely see the expressions from those who read your work while you're in the process of creating it. Needless to say, I have never been one to avoid criticism or comments concerning that which I pen, as my level of modesty is rivaled only by the boisterous Muhammad Ali - cocky, to say the least. Yet in my sophomore year of high school, I discovered I could collect a greater response to my writing than a simple chuckle: Journalism.

Though I started as a simple sports fan covering high school venues, I subsequently morphed into a collegiate drunk who typographically stammered through columns about shooting birds from a truck. While in high school, my sports column made fun of fat girls and cowboys, in college it was handicapped parking. Reverse evolution is what they call it, I believe: Getting progressively dumber as time elapses.

You see, I love evoking responses from those who would otherwise look away. Why would someone read the feature I wrote about an injured basketball player when, if they simply turn the page, they can peruse my defamatory article condemning recycling? Would the reader in turn, if they were so inclined to actually read the feature I wrote next, think I'm some ailing idiot begging for attention, or, after reading the thought-provoking, most-likely comedic and provocative recycling article even read the feature at all? And if they read the feature, would I seem smarter for covering two completely polar-opposite categories of the journalism spectrum, or merely an idiot?

I have ultimately reached a writer’s paradox.

Why is it that I can create a mixture of words, sentences – nay, paragraphs! – that beckon the most strict of college journalism judges to acclaim the serious feature as award-worthy, yet in the same newspaper issue alienate myself from most of humanity with a dim-witted piece on the similarities between Bigfoot and the Bible? More than likely it is to settle a debate in my own spacious mind. For every serious, well-written and gloriously articulated article I construct, subconsciously I must seemingly produce the opposite as well, a counter balance of sorts (see knee-boob column).

Why? I do not know. I would love to write like Ernest Hemmingway, but at the same time I would also love to achieve the same literary success of Tucker Max.

I’m more confused than you are.

However, of all that I’ve done and dreamed of doing, this is the first blog I’ve blogged, and hopefully the first of many.