My Life | StephenEmlund.com Blog

Category Archives: My Life

Portraits of a Great Man

January 24, 2012

Written by:
Stephen Emlund

Filed under:
My Life, Photo of the Moment, Photography

After meeting Rebecca, my wife, I soon got to meet her great family. Her grandpa enjoys working on sewing machines and has a really cool shop where he does his work. Rebecca and I were in his shop learning about different sewing machines he has and I realized that this would the perfect time to take some portraits. I wanted to capture a few portraits that showed the man in his realm – his workshop. The third photo really captures the moments we spent in his shop. Enjoy!

You can click on the images to enlarge them.

Photos: Jazzfest (Conrad Herwig)

March 2, 2011

Written by:
Stephen Emlund

Filed under:
Jazz Music, My Life, Photo of the Moment, Photography

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2010 – Year in Review

January 17, 2011

Written by:
Stephen Emlund

Filed under:
Clients, Creative Improv, Inspiration, My Life

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Created and launched 18 websites
Created 3 logos
Created and coded 4 HTML emails
Created 5 motion graphic pieces (animated banners and otherwise)
Connected with 10 Creative Improv clients to complete design projects of all sorts
Grew Creative Improv by over 30%
Learned guitar well enough to play with a singer – see YouTube.com/rebakville
Learned a lot about photography and became a contributor to iStock, Shutterstock, and many other stock websites.
Most importantly, I met the woman I will spend the rest of my life with, and proposed to her – see StephenLovesRebecca.com

An expression of love and creativity

January 5, 2011

Written by:
Stephen Emlund

Filed under:
Design Concept/Ideas, Drawing, Illustration, My Life

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For a while now, I’ve wanted to experiment with watercolor and Photoshop work combined into one. So, I broke out the watercolors from my college illustration course and went crazy. This is a gift I gave to my fiancée, Rebecca for Christmas.

The process was to paint a nice background on 9×12 paper with watercolor, scan that into Photoshop. Then I went to work on cutting us out of an engagment photo and placing it over the watercolor – adding various overlay effects to it. The text was added last and is made of the date we met and lyrics to a song we both love and will probably dance to at our wedding.

A few zoomed in sections are below:

overlay effect added to our photo after I utilized the pen tool to cut us out of the original photograph

StephenEmlund.com through the years

November 7, 2010

Written by:
Stephen Emlund

Filed under:
Branding, Design Concept/Ideas, My Life, Redesign, The Design Process, Website Design

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It’s been almost 6 years since I originally launched StephenEmlund.com. This October, I redesigned my website for the first time ever. I have been surprised how well my website has held up to all the design trends in the last 6 years. Of course, it’s because I made the website very minimalistic. Although orange was so 2005.

This was 2005 ↓

In 2005, orange was sooo in! I featured printmaking on my site back in the day. Just for fun, I've uploaded the whole website as it was in 2005. Click the screenshot above to view it live!

This was 2008 ↓

in 2008, I tweaked the color from orange to teal and added a sweet autograph! I also implemented the new 'border-radius' that only worked in certain browsers. This website was used for my senior portfolio in Visual Communication.

This is today ↓

Launched October 2010. Kept the same teal, but added live feed from blog and a sweet jQuery slider.

Dynamic portfolio page - the left navigation dynamically loads all the projects that relate. Click the screenshot above to see the portfolio page.

Nelson-Atkins Museum

September 23, 2010

Written by:
Stephen Emlund

Filed under:
My Life, Photo of the Moment, Photography, Travel

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Samsung Acclaim – my new phone

July 10, 2010

Written by:
Stephen Emlund

Filed under:
My Life, Photography, Social Media, Usability

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It’s no iPhone, but it’s still pretty awesome. Of course, my last phone was a flip phone with absolutely no internet access.

This is the first phone US Cellular is selling that has Google’s new Android OS. Being from Google, it integrates really well with any of your google accounts – gmail, youtube, voice, talk, etc.

The sheer awesomeness of the various apps is keeping me pretty intrigued! A few of my favorite apps -

The obvious – facebook, twidroid (twitter), email, youtube
Voice Search – simply say a search term and it searches google for what you said.
Your Navigator Deluxe – get directions, maps, traffic updates. You can say the city you are traveling to and it gets directions
CityID – find out where that unknown caller is calling from.
Air Horn – plays various loud air horns – perfect for when your coworker comes in to your office and farts (as happens to me daily)
Google Goggles – take a picture of anything and it searches google for it.
Google Sky Map – aim phone at the sky to identify, search and find various planets, constellations and stars!
Pandora - stream music as you can on pandora.com
WordPress – post to your blog
gStrings – tune any musical instrument
Solo lite – find guitar chords, and play an interactive guitar from your phone
Barcode Scanner – aim at any barcode and google search that item – whether it is to learn more about it or to compare prices online
Of course the phone also takes photos and video with a 3.2 MP camera. I can even post pictures/videos straight to this blog or facebook/twitter/etc

And now for a few photos:

Left: one of three home screens. Right: full list of all apps, available from the bottom slider arrow (seen on the left photo)

Has a full QUERTY keyboard along with a 3.2 inch screen

Left: Solo lite app that allows you to find guitar chords and play them on the interactive guitar

After ‘The Thunderer’

December 29, 2009

Written by:
Stephen Emlund

Filed under:
My Life

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I’ve been listening to some old music that I performed in various bands in high school and college and came across this one.

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

It was performed in 2003 at the MO-IL Bi-State Band with Lt. Col. Lowell Graham directing the band. He was the former Air Force Band director. This song was dedicated to him and written by Ira Hearshen.

Performing that song under Graham’s direction has to be the greatest musical experience I’ve ever had. The final note of the song during our performance felt like it blew the roof off the place…it was that loud/balanced/glorious and this recording doesn’t do that justice at all.

Youtube Channel Design

August 9, 2009

Written by:
Stephen Emlund

Filed under:
Branding, My Full-Time Job, My Life, Photography, Website Design

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I’ve been crazy busy at ATSU designing new websites and doing daily web updates for everyone and their brother. I discovered that schools get special privileges as far as branding their channel. This got me excited to design this channel. It only took about three hours and it was so easy to implement.

There are a few new websites that will be going live soon and I can’t wait to share them with you. One is for Still Magazine, ATSU’s Alumni Magazine produced by Marketing and also for the Student Government Association (SGA). I even got to design a logo for SGA. I gave you a sneak peak at the SGA logo a few months ago.

In other news, I’m currently applying to istockphoto.com in order to start selling photography and illustrations – wish me luck!