Why not Utah?

I have to admit that it is a sacrifice for me to live in Cedar City. I could potentially make a lot more money if I moved into a larger city. Other artists have given me professional advice to move out of Utah and go somewhere where I can do better work. So why am I still here? The answer is simple... I love it here. Although I am passionate about design and I love my work, my philosophy is that I work to live not live to work.

With that in mind you can imagine that I was excited when I heard that Forbes named Utah the best place for business. It seems that Utah is beginning to make a dent in the business world. Recently Adobe announced that they are setting up a branch here in Utah. Adobe Vice President and General Manager Brad Rencher met with business owners in Utah to encourage them to keep innovation going. "Innovation has no zipcode" he said. (Here is a link to the full article: http://utahtechcouncil.org/UTC/ArticleList/Press-Releases/SingleArticle/-Innovation-Has-No-Zipcode---Adobe-Executive-Brad-.aspx)

There have been some epic business failures here in town but there have also been some innovative and successful companies that have made Cedar home base. So why not us? Why not Cedar City? I believe that Cedar has an incredible potential for business and growth.

For those who are still doubting, here is an incredible little video about business in Utah:

Artists are bad at business—Dispelling the myth!

I've had plenty of friends that have graduated in business school. Some of them have gone off and started their own businesses or work for financial companies, most of which I still don't really understand what they do! These friends get very excited about things like investments, financial projections, tracking cash flow and expenses, etc. It takes about .003 seconds before I feel like taking a nap to get away from these awful conversations. Because of experiences like this I've grown up thinking, "I'm not a business man! I'm just an artist and I'll never get into business!" Most of us right brian, creative oriented thinkers just do our thing and let the so called smart people run the world right? WRONG!

I still suck at crunching numbers and I still don't really know what it means to make an investment projection or whatever but I now own two businesses and both are growing and becoming more successful. Sure I don't make much of money from either one but there is potential. So the golden question is: What changed? Well... nothing.

I'm still just a creative right brained artist. My primary role as a graphic designer is to find visual solutions to problems. I have to figure out how to communicate a million things including something as intangible as the very essence of a business and put it all into a logo that needs to be read and understood in less than a second. In short, creative people are problem solvers. This quality is essential in creating a successful business.

A great example of this is a friend of mine named Jason that recently started going to college after years of doing odd jobs and maintenance work. He is a creative person who thinks quite a bit like I do. His brother somehow became interested in cooking pizza which led him to learning about hand build, wood fueled pizza ovens. They got together and built one and decided to take it to a local fair to sell pizza. The pizza was excellent and people loved it. His brother moved away and is still interested in pizza but Jason took the idea to another level. He continued to work on the idea of selling wood fired pizza to help pay for school. Jason considered all of the problems that they had when he sold pizza with his brother and spent the time and effort to develop inexpensive solutions to these problems. He has now created a very successful business in Cedar City selling affordable (and in my opinion the very best) pizza from the side of the road. It is called the Pizza Cart. It is simple and it fills a niche that nobody else thought of. People rave about it and they have a very loyal customer base. Jason simply used his creative thinking and his skill in working with his hands to create an incredible business. Many others with more business experience have come to town making pizza and failed.

There will still be many things that creative right brianers need help with like crunching numbers. Everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses but starting a business is more than just knowing about how the business world works. It is about having a vision. It's about taking a product and making it function the way it should. It's about good design.

Know before you hate

This semester I have a studio lighting photography class. We will be learning all about different types of lighting set ups and what works best for different contexts. Today we brought in samples of photos in which we liked the lighting. One person brought in an image of some flip flops with some flowery designs around them from some kind of advertisement. The teacher looked at it and said, "I don't think this is a real photograph. I'm pretty sure this is all CGI (Computer Generated Images)." One of the more outspoken class members exclaimed with some bitterness, "I hate graphic designers!"

Now it may be true that a few designers out there work with CGI software but the the popular belief is that someone who manipulates images using a computer is a graphic designer. That is far from the truth. Designers are communicators. Rather than communicating with our voices we use visuals to communicate. Digital imaging DOES NOT EQUAL graphic design! Some of the greatest designers right now hardly touch a computer. Most of the work they do is done by hand and then they pay someone to digitize it so that it can be mass produced. Some designers spend tons of time on the computer but that is not a requirement. You are free to hate us but before you hate please know who you are actually hating.

Guide to Hiring a Designer

The Business of Art Conference

I'm gearing up for the Business of Art conference in Kanab, UT this weekend. This year is the second annual conference here in Southern Utah. I went last year not knowing exactly what to expect and I was pleasantly surprised. Even though some of the content was not applicable to the mediums of graphic design and photography I fount quite a bit of it to be applicable. It was at least a good experience to get out and network with other creatives.

This year a fellow artist submitted my name as a possible candidate to speak on marketing and publicity. I was contacted and asked if I would be willing to do it. I, of course, was nervous and wondered why me but I agreed to do it. Although the work I do is very closely linked to marketing... it is not marking. I will not be speaking about doing market research or writing press releases because that would make me a fraud! I am, instead, going to focus on a few marketing related things that I know about. The two main things I will be speaking about are: 1. Determining your target audience & creating appropriate materials for that audience. 2. Branding yourself as an artist or your business to achieve maximum brand recognition (from the right people). I will touch on a few other ideas but those two topics are key.

The conference is free and they feed you breakfast and lunch! It is worth the drive to Kanab for that! If you are interested in more info here are a couple of links:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Saint-George-UT/The-Business-of-Art/175358451761

http://new.dixie.edu/ce/business_of_art.php

Preview

These images are a preview of a series I'm working on for class. I'm interested to see what response I get before I write what they are about. Let me know what you think...

Editing and Re-touching photographs: What and Why

Sometimes people will ask me to "edit" their photos in photoshop. The words "edit" and "re-touch" are words that have caused some confusion when I talk to clients. They are often interchanged and thus many people think they mean the same thing. I, therefore, would like to clarify a little bit about what these words mean, what they include and why I do or do not do certain things with my photography.

If you have ever looked at all the credits in a magazine you may have seen somebody who is the photo editor. Their job is to decide which photos actually make it into the final cut and which ones do not. The edit out everything that doesn't hold up to certain standards. After every photo session that I do with clients I edit the photos. Don't worry, I still like to give my clients the freedom to choose between different poses, etc. What I edit out is anything that is slightly out of focus, or not composed as well as I would like. Although it would be nice if I could make every single shot perfect it just doesn't happen. Even the best photographers edit out certain shots. I base all of my editing decisions on technical factors.

Once I am done editing out photos I begin to re-touch them. Sometimes when people get their photos back they think that I skipped this part. They think that every photo should have super high contrast or unrealistic colors. Sometimes changes like that are okay but most of the time they are inappropriate. Re-touching includes subtle corrections and changes to things like color, contrast, blur, and might even include some minor changes to skin tones and highlights, eye color, or skin enhancement. If someone has some minor acne or a scratch I will smoothen it out but I will not change the way someone looks. The point of a photograph is to capture a person's personality and appearance, not to make them look like someone else. Because these changes are so subtle some people don't actually notice them. This doesn't mean that I have short changed them. It just means that I have used discretion in re-touching. Some might even argue that the most difficult part of re-touching is knowing when to stop.

Sometimes it becomes necessary to exchange somebody's eyes from one photo onto their face from another photo and other such extreme changes. This should only be done in extreme situation (usually a group shot in which somebody refuses to cooperate). Food scientists have gotten processed tofu to taste similar to ground beef but there is always something different about it. It is impossible to duplicate exactly. The same is true for an extremely re-touched photograph. That head that was photoshopped onto the same person's body from a different picture will always look a little unnatural... because it is.

Why Design?

If only I could photograph the reaction of every person that asks me what I do for a living! When I tell them I am a graphic designer, surprisingly, only about 45% of people know what that is. Most people give me a fake smile and nod their heads. They try to hide it but their faces are overflowing with confusion. I can see them searching their brains to try to remember "what does a graphic designer do again?". What is even worse is that most of those people have a very skewed idea of what a designer actually does. I'll get a call from someone who says, "I want a website and I don't care what it looks like but I want it to work!" Or on the other hand some people micromanage the projects to death and tell me that I don't have to think about anything, and that my job is just to make it "look pretty".

To put it as simply as possible, my job as a designer is to communicate. I create the visual elements that represent my clients. What the guy that wants a website doesn't understand is that if it looks terrible then it really doesn't work at all! The information has to be easy to process and understand, it has to be user-friendly.

Because it is often difficult to describe what graphic design is all about and why it is so important I decided to compare it to something that everyone knows about. . . clothing. I have created this fun little animation to help people understand graphic design by comparing it to clothing.

Feedback Please:

The final for our large format class is to create a body of work (at least ten images) with the 4X5 film camera. I have taken on quite a large and difficult project by doing landscape photos in the night. You can read the working draft of my artist statement below and check out what I have done so far. Feedback is welcome. Please click on the images to look at them large. I have also included some of the stories that influenced this work below the images.

Perhaps one of the largest influences on the formation of superstitions, fears, myths, and legends is the landscape that surrounds us. Although man is always developing land and altering the landscape, in the end we may be the ones who are being sculpted by the landscape. My own experiences growing up in the desert have changed the way I think.

The Southwest can be a very beautiful and interesting place but once the sun goes down over the horizon everything seems to change. Things that seemed pleasant and harmless in the day transform into mysterious shapes. Imagination begins to fill in the blanks and then every movement in the night seems to be malicious. The fear of the unknown is deeply set within our own nature. The desert comes alive after dark with mysterious noises, shapes and movements. It is as if the very desert itself changes in nature and hosts a realm of supernatural beings that thrive in the absence of light.
Having researching a variety of myths, legends, and ghost stories about the Southwest region I have set out to create a series of night-time landscape photographs that express the anxiety of the unknown that has fueled our own fears and superstitions.






STORIES:
Sqaw's Cave:

There is a narrow canyon with a large boulder wedged in the top which creates a cave-like structure. A small stream flows down into the cave. Many years ago there was a squaw picking berries at the top of the cave. She slipped on the wet, muddy rock and fell into the cave where she died. Many stories are told of satanic rituals, crimes, and other terrible things that happen inside of the cave. To this day there is a large crow that nests in the ledges of the canyon. Some believe that it is the ghost of the squaw trying to drive away the evil in the canyon. I personally have heard strange things coming from within the cave while hiking nearby.

Lost gold mine of Enterprise:

In the mountains near Enterprise Reservoir. A man everyone just called Bishop Terry had a large hunk of gold. He said it was given to him by his father and his father before him who found it in a mine in the mountains near the reservoir. The man was about to buy the rights to the land where the mine was on, but on the way he was visited by an old man and told not to do it. People look for it to this day.

Zuckerman’s Barn

There is an old barn on the highway in the west desert where a white owl lives. Old timers in the area have said that it is the ghost of a man who saw his wife killed by Indians.

Hairy Man of Hebron:

For about a hundred years stories have been told of a tall hairy man that has been seen near the ghost town of Hebron. Some people say he terrorizes them and others have claimed that he has helped them. Hebron was abandoned because of an earthquake, drought, Indian troubles, and a later flood.

Mountain Meadows Massacre:

There was a tragic massacre of emigrants at Mountain Meadows in 1857. Around 120 men, women, and children were killed. People say that coyotes still come to the site because the smell of blood is still present.

Giants of Pyramid Lake:

There is a Paiute legend of large red-haired people that lived near the Pyramid Lake area. The giants terrorized the Natives by carrying off their women and children. Finally the tribes of the area came together and attacked the giants. Those who were not killed in the attack fled to a nearby cave to hide. The Indians started a fire and blew the smoke into the cave. Those that fled were killed by arrows and those that stayed in the cave were suffocated. Scientists have recently found unusually large skeletal remains in a cave in the area. Arrowheads and spears were also found with the skeletons.

Dog Valley:

There have been reports of strange appearances and unexplained tragedies/deaths in Dog Valley. People claim that it is infested with skin walkers (Evil Native American witches) and was the last stronghold of the Gadianton Robbers (an evil band of ancient robbers and murderers told in the Book of Mormon).

Three Lakes near Kanab:

In 1914, a man named Freddy Crystal produced evidence which some interpreted that the treasure of Montezuma may be buried somewhere near Kanab, UT. After many years of searching an Aztec symbol was found carved into the sandstone at the lower pond of Three Lakes. The story is told that divers were send in and found a 100 foot long tunnel but every diver that entered the tunnel experienced a choking sensation and returned to the surface in a panic. The property was closed off to protect an endangered species and is now private property.

Bryce Canyon Hoodoos:

A Paiute legend claims that the large hoodoos (colorful, redrock spires) of Bryce Canyon are ancient people that were turned to stone as a punishment for bad deeds.

"The Plan"

This is some experimental work I've done recently to submit in the Rogue Gallery that is starting in Cedar City. It's sort of an alternative gallery in town so I thought that I would do some alternative work for it. It is titled "The Plan"






There are very few words in the book but everything in the book has a meaning. The gallery will have it's grand opening on Saturday, April 10th from 6 to 9 p.m. at 690 W. Industrial Road (Cedar Storage) unit # 21.

Technicolor

We just finished a project in our large format class where we take 3 different black & white exposures with color filters (red, green, blue) over the lens. After you develop the black and white film and scan it in you put a transparent layer of color (cyan, magenta, yellow) into the image and merge them all together. What you get a a single color image. The colors do not look normal and of course if something moves then you see the raw color. You can really do some fun things with the colors and show movement and layering. Here is what the final image looked like:



The assignment for the subject of our image is this: If you could make only one photograph in your life what would it be. I began to overwhelm myself thinking of what one photograph I would make. I realized that it's not a big deal and I began to think backwards. Who would I want to communicate to? I decided that I would want to communicate to my future posterity long after I am gone. I decided that I wanted to let them know that every decision is important. Even small decisions can end in large consequences. That is why I chose dominos to set off an animal trap and smash something.




I set the dominos up at least a 100 times trying different compositions, etc. I got pretty good at it by the end. :)

Faculty Art Show

I am currently in a show at the Braithwaite Fine Arts Gallery Faculty Exhibit. The show was "roughly" based on a Parowan Gap theme. Since I teach graphic design I wanted to enter a piece that was graphic design related. Being the type nerd that I am, I've been interested in forming type of out other physical objects and images. In the end I found an interesting Paiute legend about the coyote and how the Native American people came to the Americas. I did some research and learned that in Paiute the "coyote" is spelled "etza'a". I gathered as many paiute related imagery as I could and created the piece below with the type set legend.

I was persuaded to include this flute that I made a few years ago. This was not made specifically for the show but it relates quite well. I credit a brilliant carpenter and artist named Kay Harris for helping make the flute. I play it quite often and it has become very important to me. It's a great way to deal with stress and meditate. I do not have any specific songs memorized, I just play what I feel impromptu. The flute is made of walnut and the totem is made from cherry.

Student Work

I thought I would show a few student pieces from my class last semester. Not all of the students sent me their work but here are a few of those that did.

Poster by Anne Thomas

Poster by Derek Lawrence

Poster by Jade Gelskey

Cookbook (cover and spread sample) by Spencer Hill

Poster by Jose Esquivel

Large Format

This semester I am in a large format class. We are using 4"X5" negatives and developing them ourselves. This is a selection of the first few batches I've done. I am still experimenting but I am happy with the results. I would like to eventually purchase a large format camera.

Sacred Pain

"Sacred Pain" A series don for the digital photo class.

At Home

Last semester the Department of Art & Design at SUU collaborated with the Outdoor Initiative to create art based on Parowan Gap. If you've never been to the Gap it's worth a visit. http://www.utah.com/playgrounds/parowan_gap.htm
As a class we visited the Gap and had a tour by a local. Our assignment was to create a conceptual piece about our experience or feelings there. I was born and raised in Southern Utah and I am very comfortable with the desert. I also have some Native American ancestors so I feel a deep connection with the land and the desert. Many students felt uneasy about the harshness of the land (and the lack of phone service) but I feel quite at home. This piece was in the Braithwaite student Parowan Gap show and will soon be featured in a gallery in the Iron Mission State Park Museum.

Welcome

Welcome to Terral Fox's professional blog site. I created this site so that I can share more information about my work and what goes on behind the scenes. I am a Professional Photographer and Graphic Designer. I live in Cedar City with my wonderful wife.

Although I don't really like the buzz-word "blog" (I think it's an ugly sounding word) I think they are great tools of communication and information. Please enjoy and leave a comment if you want. Thanks