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Check out my new little corner of the internet. I'll be posting there from here on out.

Why the internet was invented

The Ballad of G.I. Joe from Olivia Wilde

Seriously, this has bigger name actors than the real movie... and a clarinet solo.

Twitter feeds: Panthers

I'm amazed at twitter. It's incredible how quickly news travels when it's crowd sourced, and it's even faster and more reliable when it comes from first hand sources. Case in point, today my good buddy Shannon and I went to the morning practice at the Carolina Panthers training camp. As we were walking down the hill, we saw a player being carted off the field, but couldn't see his number from our vantage point. As Shannon was asking around to other fans (who also didnt know what was going on), I pulled out my iphone and checked twitter. I immediately found out who the player was, and within a few minutes had a general idea of his condition. Pretty impressive

In honor of that, I wanted to share the list of folks I follow who feed me this info. I'm sure there are others out there, so if there's someone I missed that you follow, but sure to let me know in the comments section. Oh yeah, and if you want to follow me, you can find me at @markameeks.

So here goes:

@CarolinaHuddle - VERY knowledgeable, fan-run website with one of the most active feeds.

@CharlesChandlerr - Panthers' bet writer: The Charlotte Observer

@CJWilson27: - Panthers CB (3rd Year)

@CorveyIrvin - Panthers DE (Rookie)

@cpanthers - Official News Feed of the Panthers

@DanMorgan55 - Panthers Pro-Bowl MLB (ret.)

@daringantt Panthers' beat writer: Rock Hill Herald - one of the most active feeds. scooped the official Panthers' feed re: Kemo's injury.

@EveretteBrown - Panthers DE (Rookie)

@jonathanstewar1 - Panthers RB (2nd yr)

@jonbeason - "The Beast": Panthers Pro-Bowl and All-Pro MLB (3rd year)

@MattEMoore - Panthers QB (3rd Year)

@MikeSolarte - Sports Director for News 14 Carolina, and most importantly an all around great guy. A guy I consider myself very lucky to call a friend.

@rhysjlloyd - Panthers Kicker. Gets extra credit for calling Jake Delhomme a Muppet in his most recent tweet.

@scott_fowler - Sports Columnist: The Charlotte Observer

That's it, kids. Hope you enjoy.

Layers and Textures and Brushes, Oh My!

I'm usually not one for a lot of messing with my photos. Other than some contrast or saturation bumping, I usually don't do much "toying" with images. These are things I use in my design stuff all the time, but usually don't incorporate into my photo work. That being said, I've been playing around today with brushes and textures a little.

Armed with some inspiration from Barton Damer at the Gurus Conference as well as a stack of free brushes from Brusheezy, I settled in to playing around.

Here's what I started with; a picture of Courtney I showed you guys a few days ago.



And here's what I ended up with. (full resolution version here)



This is a little "much" for my usual tastes, but I'm trying to expand my boundries. This ended up being about 28 layers, and I'm pretty pleased overall. I'm not crazy about the black gradient on the right hand side, but I've decided to use this image as my desktop for the time being so I've got to have that to give some contrast to the (theoretically) few icons I have on my desktop.

Hope Court likes it, because if not, I'm sure I'll get another of the looks she's giving me in the pic.

EDIT: I got a little carried away and made another, similar image for my second desktop. Here's the end result:

I'd vote for her

If anyone out there knows this woman, please encourage her to run for office. These are the kinds of people we need making our decisions for us. I'd move to California just so I could vote for her. Genius!

R2 Cafe Music - 7-26

I got a lot of questions on today's countdown music today, so I figured I'd get back in the old habit of blogging the playlist. Here goes:

The Lost Get Found - Britt Nicole

Roll With Me f. Colt Ford - Montgomery Gentry

Forgiven and Loved - Jimmy Needham

Steal My Sunshine - Len

Washed By the Water - needtobreathe

Out of my Head - Fastball

The Atmosphere - And Then There Were None

Closer to Love - Mat Kearney

Countdown Music
Robot Rock - Daft Punk

"The Verge" Trailer

The Verge - Trailer from Mark Meeks on Vimeo.

here's the trailer I made for the new R2 sermon series, The Verge. Quotes are by FDR, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy V and MLK, music by Lee McDerment. Hope you enjoy.

Micah 2:13 - Why I love iMovie

Here's a short motion graphic I did for an upcoming service. I did this in about 20 minutes using iMovie. It still amazes me how simple this thing is to use and how great the results can be... especially considering it's an application that comes free on your friendly neighborhood Mac.

Motion Graphic of Micah 2:13 from Mark Meeks on Vimeo.

For those of you interested in the music it's God Moving Over the Face of the Waters by Moby. I first heard it on the movie Heat (which I highly recommend). However, we will probably not play the music in the service. This will be used between worship songs, so the band will likely accompany this piece. I just inserted the music as a place-holder.

Sneak Preview: The Verge

The new sermon series at R2 starts in a couple weeks. Here's a preview of the print materials that we've produced. I'm really excited about this one.

Main logo (screens):


Text slide (for scripture on the screens):


Postcard Front:

and back:


Business Card (for inviting friends)


Look for another post in the next couple days where I'll talk about how this design evolved. Hope you enjoy.

Mackenzie Comer - Sweet 16 Shoot

I had the honor yesterday of shooting Mackenzie Comer to document her turning 16. These were taken at an old barn near her house. Kenz has pretty funky tastes (and I mean that as a good thing) so I tried a little "extreme" post processing on these. Mom was pleased (and after all, that's really all that matters), as am I, so I think this was a pretty successful shoot. Hope you enjoy. Full set can be seen here.







For those of you who don't know, Kenz is Courtney's little sister, making pleasing mom all the more important. I got a couple pictures of the girls together as well. Court makes a great photog's assistant, but can be a reluctant model. The last shot is a perfect example of Court's "I'm humoring you, but I'm NOT liking this" face. I get that one a lot.