The card: behind the scenes

Our annual Christmas cards are the stuff of legend, and believe me when I say we get a lot of comments about them. People usually ask one of three questions:

  • How do you come up with these ideas?
  • How do you make the photos?
  • How do you convince Pepper to go along with this insanity?

My answers are usually along these lines:

  • I enter a pepperoni-pizza-induced trance and meditate until an idea forms in my head.
  • A little bit of real-world photography, and a whole lot of post-processing.
  • She’s happy to go along with whatever I suggest, as long as it means she doesn’t have to come up with the idea or make the card.

This year’s card actually came together pretty quickly, which is either a sign that my creative skills are improving, or that I just didn’t want to spend too much time on it. As a result, our cards went out in late November– far earlier than usual! I’ve had the opportunity to hear from many people asking the questions above, and I decided I’d give my fans a little glimpse behind the scenes.

I should start with the inspiration for the card. Pepper really enjoyed Top Gun: Maverick and was excited to do something with that theme. After some quick research, it was clear we weren’t going to be able to fly in an F-18 like Tom Cruise did for the movie, so I turned to the movie poster. Here’s the official product:

I definitely needed to include Pepper in the card, so I kept looking around the internet. I found a fan-made poster that would work:

I’m pretty sure the shot of Jennifer Connelly is from a still frame late in the movie, but whatever… it’ll do. The next step was getting some photos of myself and Pepper that looked passingly similar. We put on some coats and stepped outside.

A close observer may notice that she’s wearing Harry Potter earrings (the Deathly Hallows) and a Hunger Games necklace (Mockingjay). Call it an Easter egg, if you will. As for me, I don’t have a flight suit, but Maverick did wear a leather jacket in both movies. And I have a ski helmet. Voila!

Wikipedia provided a nice shot of an F/A-18 Hornet on a carrier flight deck:

It took some work to remove the deckhand and make a few other slight modifications to the plane. I also needed a more interesting background, not only to match the movie poster, but also because the blank sky is boring. Cue a simple photo of some clouds:

I found some appropriate fonts to match the movie logo and poster. Bringing it all together, the card came to life:

Often the devil’s in the details, though. The sunset shot required a bit more of an orange tint to everything. The cockpit had to show the clouds through the glass, while still looking like it’s glass and not simply missing. Pepper’s jacket needed to be edited to remove the pink sides. Shadows had to be adjusted. Edges were fuzzed so they don’t look like everything was cut out of a magazine and pasted together. I probably spent four hours working through all of this, but I’ve honed these little skills over the years, and I’m pretty pleased with the result.

In the grand scheme, stuff like this is probably child’s play for a serious graphic designer, but for a hack like me it’s not half-bad.

Of course designing the card is only the first step in the process. There’s the printing, envelopes and address labels, buying a ton of stamps, and eventually showing up at the post office with a box containing 330 cards (our new record). In a way I’m bummed that it’s practically an industrial process at this point; thirty years ago I was hand-writing about 30 cards. Now there’s not really any personalization in them. Still, they seem pretty popular with friends and family, so I continue the tradition…

Feliz Navi Doug

This is my friend Doug.

And this is my friend Doug on a pillow.

In preparation for our annual White Elephant Christmas party, I wanted to come up with a goofy gift that topped last year’s sexy fireman puzzle of my friend Kim. (That’s a bit of a story.) With help from Doug’s wife Chelsey, and a bit of graphic editing, I came up with this. I’m pretty pleased, and I’m looking forward to the moment when some unwitting soul opens the gift and Doug sees it…

Thankful

When you have married kids, they have to perform the annual “holiday juggle”, splitting time between families. This year happens to be an in-laws Christmas, meaning Alex and Kaitlyn will be with her family. Since we can lay claim to Thanksgiving, we invited all the kids to come up to Montana for the week. Julian came out as well, and we had a full house.

There were, naturally, a lot of board games. Zack’s wearing a scarf because he had a head cold and felt like his mouth kept getting dry. Apparently wearing a scarf kept his lips and mouth moist?

There were some intense games of Mario Kart. We talked about having a family tournament, but let’s be honest: Zack and Kyra are the undisputed champions, and leave the rest of us in the dust.

Ollie loved having all the space in our house. It’s a nice change from the somewhat cramped quarters he’s used to in the college apartment. He also decided he liked his noodle bowl better as a hat than a bowl.

On Thanksgiving Day, it was all hands on deck as we prepared the meal. Everyone chose a favorite dish and was responsible for making it. But now that I think about it, I don’t remember Alex actually choosing or making anything. Instead, he kind of hung around the kitchen and sampled everything else…

Although they were here for almost a week, the time flew past and before we knew it, everyone was heading back to Utah and Washington. We snapped one last photo before the group split up.

As always, I’m eternally grateful for these good folks in my life. It’s nice to be reminded to be thankful.

Wispy

It’s cold today. After a week of 30-degree-ish weather (and a lot of snow), the mercury dropped into the teens. Today I was driving along Flathead Lake and saw water condensing on the water. As I write that, it sounds weird, but maybe this picture will help:

A few miles to the south is a great outlook over the lake, and I was able to capture a shot showing all the wisps of cloud sliding across the lake:

My cell phone camera doesn’t really do justice to it, but it was cool to watch this evanescent fog moving with the wind.

So much for those fall colors

Today we woke up to a bit of a surprise. I mean, sure, the forecast called for the possibility of rain mixed with snow, but we had six inches of the white stuff on the ground, and more piling up!

I went out to shovel some of it, because it’s the super wet heavy sort of snow. Better to push my way through six inches of it now, then do another six later.

Solar production is a bit down today as well…

Later today we’ll make our first test of the paved driveway with a ton of snow on it…

Fall colors

When we returned from our road trip, we were surprised to see very few trees had turned color. Of course, the majority of this area is blanketed in fir and pine, so it’s green year-round. But the larch are typically a spectacular yellow, and we didn’t see much sign of that.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, and the trees are in full fiery color. Here’s one at my friend Doug’s house:

On the highway along the lakeshore, there’s a stretch that’s simply astonishing. I took these photos from a speeding car on a mostly cloudy day, so they don’t really do justice to the incredible yellows.

Back home, we have splashes of color all around us. Here’s a bush alongside our driveway:

And the national forest behind the house:

I’ve been hoping for a sunny day so I can go out and take some amazing photos, but it’s not in the cards. The forecast has been basically clouds, rain, and cold for a few weeks. Still, it’s been fun driving along the highway admiring these colors.

Zack’s Halloween

Zack put together a pretty sweet costume this year! I’m not sure about the conversation that led to this– heck, I’m not even sure who the lovely lady is– but I’m impressed.

For a kid who typically put the absolute minimum effort into his costumes, he outdid himself. Naturally I couldn’t resist a little photo editing: