CRDESIGNLAB

Yesterday at around 10:30 pm, this blog passed the 1,000 hit mark. Founded just 17 days ago, the CRDESIGNLAB blog has rapidly grown to a massive project that has dominated my digital life. So far, we have had 1,111 hits, 125 comments, written 16 posts, and built 8 pages. That is truly amazing.

I have been planning to write a special post for this blog’s 1,000 hit milestone, but I did not expect that milestone to come so fast. Yesterday evening as the ticker lept past 1,000, I was deep in a light painting discussion with Philip Behnam and a comment war with Fadi George. These conversations led to a massive 251 page views and 59 new comments in a two hour period. And so instead of pausing my marathon commenting to author a new post, I have waited until today, where I could to this post justice.

In order to properly describe the evolution that CRDESIGNLAB will undergo in the coming weeks and months, I feel that it is necessary to look into the past, and enlighten you all as to how this blog came to be:

17 days ago, on Saturday, January 9, Kyle and I were at my house, sitting around my iMac and MacBook Pro, unloading pictures from my Canon Rebel T1i. We had just taken some pictures around my house in Monarch Ridge. It was then that we started the discussion about founding a blog. I think we only decided to go ahead with it because other people were starting blogs and we wanted to stay up to date. Kyle wasn’t even sure he wanted the blog to be a part of our Mac Lab work.

Over the next few days, as I built all the pages and the two of us wrote our first posts, it became clear that this was not going to be easy. But are the best things in life ever easy? A few talks with Mr. Skocko solidified my idea that CRDESIGNLAB was not going to be just average. I decided that I was not going to merely do average work. I knew at that point that I was going to give this blog my all and make it the best I could, and then make it better. Over the past 17 days, I have been working tirelessly to expand and define CRDESIGNLAB. For every hour I work in class, I spend at least three working on this blog outside of class.

And then we get to today.

And now to venture forth into the unknown with only a computer and a plan.

And so here is the plan. I have spent so much time being a photographer, editing images, building the galleries, and writing the posts, that I have neglected a very important element of the Mac Lab philosophy: the act of helping others. There is a page entitled “This is How We Do It,” and currently all that is says is that we will build it after Finals. And that is what I intend to do. That page will, hopefully, become the greatest of them all, and will be where Kyle and I communicate to the Mac Lab and the world as a whole how we have filled our galleries. The “How We Do It” page will finally tell you how we do it.

Also, the blog itself will change. By the end of the year, I hope to have learned enough of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to completely, or at least partially, redesign the look of CRDESIGNLAB.

Of course, the galleries will also grow, and multiply. Kyle and I will continue to take and edit pictures. Furthermore, I will create dedicated galleries for light painting and 3D Design and Animation, as well as the subcategories of our Digital Art: self portraits, logos, and posters.

Ultimately, I would like to transform CRDESIGNLAB into a resource for aspiring photographers, both in the Mac Lab and beyond. In the spirit of teamwork, I would like to ask for suggestions or opinions as to where this blog should venture and what we should do in the future.

This post was written during the 7th period Mac Lab Final, so I do not have access to my photo library and therefore have no image to represent what I have said here. Truthfully though, nothing represents this post better than the blog itself, so I leave you with that: CRDESIGNLAB.