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Sunday, December 6, 2009

Websites of the Year

Two of my websites have been nominated for Website of the Year on CSS Creme. I'd love to have your votes! Here's the two websites that are nominated - take your pick, and vote for one if you have the time!

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posted by Christopher Nelson at 2:39 PM 0 Comments

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Logo Design Special - Extension!

Due to the popularity of this special, I'm extending it further.

My logo design service will remain at the low cost of $300 including unlimited revisions (changes) for the foreseeable future.

Why? Because this special allows smaller budget companies and start-ups to get the logo they want the first time around. For a one-time fee, they can get exactly the logo they want due to the perk of unlimited revisions.

If you know someone that is thinking about starting their own business or is in need of a logo redesign, send them my way. The logo design special allows me to get the design right with one price, and no extra charge for changes.

Looking forward to your business! Email me at cbnnexus@gmail.com or call at 979-739-6919

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posted by Christopher Nelson at 4:55 PM 0 Comments

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Beautiful 2.0 - Success!

Beautiful 2.0 has become a much bigger hit than I had anticipated. In just two weeks, it has been awarded & featured by 23 prestigious websites. When it was launched, the Alexa rank was over 10 million - that's 10 millionth most popular website. Today, it stands at just over 800,000. At this rate, the site will reach its initial goal of 500k in a few days. The goal beyond that is to be below the 100k mark, and sustain it.

Some of the interest with Beautiful 2.0 is the fact that it is not only a css gallery, it is also a flash gallery, web 2.0 gallery and overall artistic resource. The site does not feature every excellently rendered css or flash website; it caters only to those websites that show exceptional artistic quality. It has become extremely selective, only admitting about one tenth of the submissions it receives on a daily basis.

This gives artists and designers a chance to forget about having to have a huge amount of content, being popular, mainstream or even likable to most css galleries. It gives them a chance to be noticed for the pure artistry they have achieved in their design - even if their website just so happens to be only one page.

Beautiful 2.0 doesn't look at W3C compliance, clean code or cookie cutter css. It looks at the visual communication and artistic quality of the website itself. It's a breath of fresh air to most web artists out there. On the contrary, it isn't going to be very popular with most web designers out there that follow trends or think as long as everything is correct, functional, and clean, they will be admitted to any high quality gallery. Not this gallery, sorry.

If you're interested in seeing the daily submissions, check out beautiful 2.0 or subscribe to the feed. You can also follow Beautiful 2.0 on twitter.

Thanks for all the support!

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posted by Christopher Nelson at 2:00 AM 0 Comments

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Site Launch: Beautiful 2.0

Beautiful 2.0

I am pleased to anounce that a project I've been working on for nearly six months (off and on) is finally complete. The name of the site is Beautiful 2.0 - it is a web design and CSS gallery that is dedicated to beautiful web 2.0 websites. It is much more "pure gallery" than many other CSS gallery websites out there. It is much more geared towards artistic sites that are extremely well designed. Most websites that are considered and placed within the gallery could be works of art you might (might) hang up on your wall.
The site features 10 website submissions per page, with access to an archive that opens up on a per-month basis. One of the things I am most proud of (sadly, nothing to be proud of for you uber developers out there) is the fact that you can search for website submissions according to color preference. So, not only do you see the latest submissions, but you can also search by date and color.
There is no rating system, as I did not want to have to explain myself or those I trust to submit websites to me. The goal of "pure gallery" was something very important to keep in mind whilst building this website. I did concede, however, to allowing comments on each submission. This should allow people to compliment, rip apart, or otherwise start a dialogue based on each submission.
Please take a look at the site - add it to your favorites, follow it on twitter (you'll see the twitter link in several places) or tell someone about it that you think might be interested or might even wish to submit a website of their own.

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posted by Christopher Nelson at 7:23 PM 2 Comments

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Wedding Photography

Wedding PhotographyRecently I was lucky enough to be presented with the opportunity to edit some wedding pictures. While the wedding photographer did a great job, I have some skills of my own that I can bring to the table. As far as computer-aided design, photo manipulation is one of my first loves, and so I was excited to take on this project for them.

The bride and groom were somewhat disappointed with some of their pictures. Before the edit, this sunset picture did not have any clouds in the sky and the bride and groom were a bit too underexposed. So, I corrected the lighting and color, and painted in a beautiful sunset behind them. This is an example of some of the more "subtle" effects I can add to photographs.

Epic Wedding Photography
This picture is an example that took a bit more complex editing skills. It consists of 3 photographs. One of the bride and groom, one of the outside seating area where the couple got married, and another of the bride's extended train. I composited the photos together, took out unneeded chairs, color corrected and added lighting and clouds to the sky. Also, the further away from the happy couple, the less color there is in this photograph. This image is a bit more symbolic, surreal and styelized, and is more indicative of my speciality.

Fantasy Art Wedding Photography
The third and last example is a surreal and fantasy art representation of the bride and her flower girl. I attempted to make this look as much like a surrealist painting as possible. While not every client wants something this close to fantasy art, many are interested in seeing something extra special and custom that came from their wedding, made to order just for them. It was incredibly fun (as well as time consuming) to produce something like this, but it was well worth it. The client absolutely loves the images, and may even print a large version of this image on canvas.

I'm looking forward to more projects like this, as it is definitely more along the lines of what I am interested in doing with photography. I'm hoping for more commissions and requests for this type of work, and may eventually set up a separate art gallery site to support it.

Thanks for reading my blog! If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to leave one!

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posted by Christopher Nelson at 12:50 PM 0 Comments