Since early birds catch tasty things, let me post this.  It's my May Christmas Challenge.  Does it look a bit like strips of raw meat??  It's actually candy; one of those big lollipops - a white and red one (aka...the milk part). And there's 8 of them in the picture.

What has Kiki come up with this month?

As I have mentioned in prior posts, as part of our 2010 christmas challenge, kiki and I took it upon ourselves to do video and print ads for each of our 4 gifts for each other.  I posted a test video back in March and I've yet to post the actual video I made*. Some people think we are a little crazy to put each other to so much work, but I love these challenges we create for each other; it keeps us creative and they are never boring.

For the print ad, we were to be the other person's photographer and had to direct each other on the style of the photo. Silly me, on the day of the photoshoot, I forgot to bring the golden balls kiki gave me. Kiki took the photo below that became the basis for the ad, but the picture of the ball is one I previously used for my video. It is a bit of cheating I know, but it's all in good fun anyway. It was the fastest photoshoot we've ever had together. It was somewhere in the neighbourhood of 15 minutes altogether for the actual photo-taking time. After the very short photoshoot in kiki's condo, we went for noodles.

Here is my first quick and dirty print ad.  It is a little garish and tacky, yes?  These balls do fly...at least, they do in my video.

*It is good for a laugh perhaps

I'm early!  This is my Christmas challenge photo of the month for '9 Ladies Dancing'.  There really are 9 Hello Kitties lined up, not that you can really tell by looking at the photo.  I took this at the Indigo store while kiki was taking photos behind me.  I wonder what she was taking photos of.

The motto of this month's theme: - be unique - Miss Hello Square Kitty says.

Since it's still early, kiki hasn't posted hers yet. Can't wait to see what she comes up with!

(The makers of Hello Kitty really should make square-headed ones!)

A day late. A big opps. I had this ready to go for a while and for some reason I didn't post the picture.

I always knew I wanted to try something a little different for each of the 12 pictures I'll be posting, but I didn't quite know what to do about this picture I took. So as an experiment, I figuratively flipped the switch and inversed the colours. I think. I can't quite remember. I hope you think it's a bit interesting at least.

Go take a look at Lesley's retro-inspired photograph here.

My first video debut. I've never ever ever attempted something like this before, but since Kiki and I plan on doing a tv ad with our christmas gifts, I thought I better get a practice run in first. So, without any real notion of what I wanted to shoot, I just began doing some random things quickly, just to see what sort of outcome I would get. The more difficult part was learning how to use imovie and getting it to do what I wanted. What I've learnt to do with it is fairly basic, but hopefully I'll improve the more I try making videos. I think of this more like a prelude to the real ad coming up at the end of the month. 

So what do you guys think of my first attempt at some video making? It's horribly executed and shot and it ends a little abruptly, but I do think I quite like it after all.  It's in horrible quality below.  To better view it in HD, go to my vimeo page here: 

This is photo deux of the "12 days of Christmas" christmas challenge that Lesley and I are doing, where each month we are to post a photograph inspired the song.  All the photographs were taken back in December 2010 (see Lesley's interpretation here). 

This photograph was taken in a Hallmark card store.  I saw these boxes with pictures of Santa blowing on a horn and I thought they were perfect.  I cleared everything off from the shelf (the people at the store were kind enough to let me rearrange their shelves (hah)...not that I actually asked (shhh)) and stacked 11 of the boxes, just as you see them in the picture.  I did quite a bit of photoshopping as you can probably see and I wouldn't blame you if you didn't think this was a photograph at all!   I wanted to make the photograph very pop art-like.  Not sure I achieved the effect I wanted, but it is colourful, if nothing else!

12 Drummers Drumming

Every year (almost), kiki and I celebrate Christmas by running around a mall for our "Christmas Hunt".  This involves crazy shopping at Eaton's Centre during the busiest time of the year and with a set of rules for what we should be purchasing, all in 1.5 hours. We call this fun (hah!).  For the last several years, we've also incorporated a photography component to the Hunt.  The last Hunt we did, was a Christmas postcard theme, which I've posted in my tumblr.

This year, it was kiki's turn to think up the game and she warned me that she wanted to kick our creativity up a notch.  We had to take 12 photos that fit the theme of the "12 days of Christmas" - a photo for each of the 12 days.  We had to take the photos in 30 minutes (!).  Thankfully, the photos did not have to be literal, but could be loosely inspired by each of the themes for the 12 days.  By the end of each month, one image must be posted.

Here is my photo inspired by '12 Drummers Drumming'. 

[Why, yes, I like to work last minute - just managed to get this posted before the end of the month deadline]

This first photo for '12 Drummers Drumming' is quite literal.  It was one of the last photos I took that night; my imagination went off shopping by itself at that point.

After the photo challenge, we spent the next hour shopping alone for 4 items with the total the purchases not exceeding $30 (!!).  We also had to consider the fact that we will eventually have to create both a print and TV ad for each of the items received.  Never done a video before, so I foresee disaster in the works.