2025 Utah Taekwondo Championship

I had the privilege of creating a tournament poster for the Utah Taekwondo Association and their state championship tournament coming this spring. Since I was able to photograph a bunch at last year’s tournament, I used a handful of those photos for this year’s poster.

I even managed to use a photo of my youngest son. He’s the red belt on the right breaking a board with a tornado kick.

The fun challenge with these was color-correcting all of the reflected light on everyone’s white uniforms. It’s something most people don’t notice, but our white taekwondo uniforms reflect everything, and the mats at this tournament were bright blue along with very yellow fluorescent overhead lighting. Even when I look at the poster now, I see a few spots I wish I could go back and correct a little more.

Photographing these tournaments is a photography challenge all in itself with needing high speed in pretty low light.

Because I was on a roll when working on this, I went ahead and made versions that were social media-friendly for FB events, Instagram story, and more.

I’m really happy with how these turned out and I’m looking forward to being at this year’s tournament to take photos again. I am still deciding if I will compete again myself.

Spirit For Us Canadian Whisky

Through a friend of a friend, I got an email one day from Kevin. He was starting a business in bottling Canadian Whisky and wanted to hire me to help him build the brand from scratch. He sent me the vision he had along with some general ideas about colors, mood, and where he was thinking this business would lead. We played around with a few logo concepts and some ideas on what kind of bottle label we could do.

The first round of logo concepts was pretty broad, playing with different fonts and a play on a slogan he already had: The Rising Tide of Canadian Whisky. We toyed around with some ocean-themed graphics but didn’t want it to look too pirate-y.

Here is the final logo. I really love how it turned out.

And after many, many iterations, here’s what the label will look like on his first bottling.

We will make adjustments to all of the little details like batch, cask, distillery, and age with each variation that gets bottled. Also notice the little label above the main label saying “Whisky for Us.” That will change if they ever decide to bottle a different spirit.

I made these bottle mockups so they could use them on their website.

Kevin was kind enough to send me a bottle along with some labels so I am going to see what kind of photos I can get with my camera and my very-non-professional lights. Hilariously, I live in Utah, where it’s illegal to ship alcohol. So I asked Kevin to ship the bottle to my sister in California and she drove it to me when she and her family visited over Thanksgiving. :::eyeroll:::

Thanks, Kevin!

Irvington High School Custom Hats

I had the pleasure of creating a watercolor painting for the sole purpose of putting it on a trucker hat for Irvington High School’s track & field and cross country teams in Fremont, California. The most recognizable peak in Fremont is Mission Peak. It’s barely a foothill by my Utah standards at a mere 2,516 feet in elevation, but it’s by far the most well-known by residents in the area. Since I grew up in neighboring Newark, California, I know this peak well.

I don’t live in the area anymore, so I had to use images from Google as reference and we went with a viewpoint as close to the high school’s as possible. The color of the hills themselves varies on the time of year. In spring, the hills are a vibrant green, depending on how much rain they got in the winter. By late summer, the hills turn to a harvest gold color, and become a huge fire hazard! I have always thought they are pretty in either colors, but I know some hate the gold, calling it brown instead.

This was such a joy to paint and I LOVE how the hats turned out. I designed the IHS logo that we added. Irvington’s track and XC coach had the hats printed with Boco Gear in Colorado. He actually had two hats made; one with the painting and another that was solely a running hat in white with just the viking logo that I designed earlier this year. They both turned out awesome.

I know they are planning to use the hats for a little bit of fundraising, so I am excited to see what kind of money they bring to their track & field program this coming spring.

You can watch a timelapse video of my process with this painting here. This view of Mission Peak is close to what can be seen from Irvington High School.

I really had a hard time getting my iPhone camera to capture the correct lighting when doing this painting. It looks pretty washed out in the video. One one snippet, I turned off my overhead light and just used the natural light in my office, but I couldn’t keep that up as I worked on this well into the night. Maybe there’s a light setting on my phone that I can mess with?

Patrick, the track and XC coach at Irvington HS had a second hat made with the logo I created. This one is a running hat and he went with a simple topographic map design that Boco Gear already had. It’s such a comfortable and lightweight hat. And it looks rad with the Irvington logo.

This was such a fun project! I cannot wait to see what other paintings I can make to be turned into hats!

Our Holiday Card - 2024

I love to create holiday cards; especially for my own family. You can see my past holiday cards here.

I’m actually frustrated that my family hasn’t managed any professional photos since the end of 2020. But, I am hoping to remedy that in 2025. If anyone can recommend a photographer in Salt Lake City that is good at posing families, please let me know.

For us, 2024 revolved heavily around the sports my kids play; soccer, taekwondo, track & field, and cross country. My husband is an assistant coach on one kid’s soccer team. I have a black belt in taekwondo and often help train kids for tournaments or belt testing. I’m sometimes a hurdles coach for our track team and I do all of the social media for our track and cross country teams. I also take photos at soccer games, track and XC meets, taekwondo tournaments, and belt tests. Because of sports commitments, we didn’t even manage to squeeze in a family vacation this year. The trip to Missoula, Montana we took for a track meet didn’t count!

So yeah, my husband and I feel like all we did was work and drive kids to and from school and sports this year. I’m not resentful, we both feel that it’s important to stick with a team if you’ve committed to it. But, DAMN we’re tired.

It was only appropriate that our holiday card to reflect that sentiment. I had no shortage of photos of my kids in their respective sports, but alas, no photos of the four of us except for a selfie or two (at a sporting event no less!).

On the back, a brief rundown of what my kids were up to with their respective sports and photos of my husband and me doing what we felt like we did all year…. taxi driver, photographer, asst coach, and day job to pay for ALL the sports.

I’m really happy with how our cards turned out.

I had them printed at my local Office Depot on card stock. I ordered some really cheap kraft paper envelopes from Amazon (that I won’t order again because the adhesive didn’t work). I printed addresses using my old HP laster printer to make things easier.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Yule, Saturnalia, Solstice, Festivus… whatever you celebrate to make winter feel less dreary.

Laura's Holiday Card - 2023

2023 marked 10 years that I’ve been working with Laura on all of her creative and fun holiday cards. Here you can see every fun holiday card Laura and I have worked on together.

2023 was no exception when it came to something fun. Laura joked about doing a traditional card with just a family photo. I told her their family would wonder if something was wrong or if there was a hidden meaning.

This year was simpler than previous years; minimal Photoshop this time. She just sent me the photos of her family and I went to work with the Polaroid concept and the simple wood background.

What a fun holiday card!! Thanks, Laura!