More Big Huge Labs Stuff

I've been back over at Big Huge Labs looking for some ideas, this time for an art project. I wanted to frame some of my own photos in interesting ways, and decided to try out their Framer generator.

The Framer offers these options to frame any image file you upload:

USA Stamp ~ USA Stamp, no postmark ~ Canadian Stamp ~ Canadian stamp, no postmark ~ Stamp border ~ Stamp border, no postmark ~ Canvas Panels ~ Canvas Panels (portrait) ~ To-do List ~ Autumn Leaves ~ Film ~ Holga 35mm ~ Holga 35mm (portrait) ~ Frosted glass ~ Frosted Glass (portrait) ~ Wood Frame ~ Reflection ~ Polaroid ~ Brushed edge ~ Brushed edge (portrait)Bulletin Board ~ ColorCraft Bonus Photo

It's very simple to use this generator; you just upload your photo, choose a frame style, select the position of your image within the frame, set the background color, choose a date (for the postmark frames) and add a photo credit if desired. Once you click on create, the generator does the rest. Here are some of the framed images I did in a few seconds:

Postage Stamp with Postmark Frame:



Frosted Glass Edge Frame:



Traditional Wood Frame:



Brushed Edge Frame:



They also offer one option that produces a nice organizational helper:

To-Do List:



For those of you who are making your own covers or promo items, this might be a useful online tool to bookmark.

Visual Fun

Big Huge Labs, home of many fun and useful Flickr toys, has one generator I often use for title and story ideas: the photo fortune generator.

The generator, which provides a random pithy quotation and three random images based on a single keyword taken from the quotation, often produces some interesting combinations. Here are a few screenshots of my results (click on any image to see larger version):



Classic fairytale and fable retelling is a favorite device among fiction writers, and this one seems to hint that there might be more to the story of the goose who laid the golden eggs. Such as, what has that pretty girl been feeding her flock? Whatever is shining in that jar? Might be fun to explore. Title ideas: The Golden Goose Girl, A Light Lunch, Hold What Glitters.



I cringed a little as soon as I saw the first image -- quite painful looking, and reminded me of this guy who came into the ER who had . . . no, I better not tell that story. Anyway, the following two pics added some irony and a wry chuckle to the tableau, especially followed by Plato's silly pronouncement. Title ideas: Good for Evil, Make It Happen, The Spoiler, Forked (and there's a Twilight parady begging to be written.)



The Woody Allen quotation adds a bit more comedy here, but the images tell a different story -- a very engimatic one. The beautiful feline, the bright flower and the hall filled with paintings would make interesting and (if handled correctly) powerful story elements. I'm thinking a thriller or mystery. Title Ideas: What the Cat Saw, Silent Bloom, Torn to Masterpieces.



This was my favorite of all the ones I generated; I love the grinning pup. The sunset (or sunrise) and the fetching young lady all add suggestions of romance, as does the Howe quotation. Title ideas: Loving Enemies, Better Friends, Sunset Smile.

If you don't care for the randomness of this generator but are still in finding inspirational images tailored to your needs, you can head over to Flickr and perform a search using keywords that directly relate to your story. I did one search with the keywords strong, stubborn and warrior and found this amazing but totally unexpected artwork that gave me some new ideas on how to flesh out one of my secondary characters.

Flickring

I gave up on using my old AOL photo album sharing thing, which half the people I know could never access no matter how I sent the links. Now I'm giving Flickr a whirl, and it seems to be working pretty well.

I'm not a great photographer; I'm not even a fair one. I have the digital camera they sell to people who can push a button but not much else. I forget to center and sometimes my hand shakes and the pic blurs. I do my fair share of pictorial decapitations, too. Luckily, I don't take a lot of photos. Mine are 95% personal: the kids, the family, the pup, my guy when he's not looking, vacation stuff, a few sunrises and sunsets, the lake, whatever slithers into the backyard, and quilts.

My first photoset, County Quilt Show, is from a show in the area that I try to attend every year. It's not a huge gathering, with miles upon miles of quilts on display, but I prefer small shows. You get a chance to really talk to people and see the local talent. My daughter went with me this year and after buying a ton of fabric for our stashes from the quilt shop booths, we went out into this marvelous little atrium area to sit by a wall-length stone fountain and share a box lunch (remember those?)

Flickr has some good features (I know, aside from the Amish I'm probably the last person in the country to try it.) You can upload plenty of photos, and make them public, private, or accessible only to family or friends. You can add little descriptions, sort them (haven't figured out all the organizer stuff yet) and make sets and slide shows. If I can do it without the kids helping me, you know it's easy. Best of all, it's free.

If you've got photos on Flickr or another service that you'd like to share with us, post a link and details in comments (and please note if they're not work-safe.)