Mars Cheese Castle Aerial!

The Mars Cheese Castle is filled with Wisconsin goodness, including lots of Wisconsin cheese.  The giant cheese sign can be seen off I-94 just north of Kenosha.  In the past couple of years, Mars built an entirely new facility, or Castle, and moved the giant sign just a bit farther west.  Anyone who travels out of Wisconsin on I-94 has seen the sign, and I wanted to capture it from an aerial perspective.



This was the first time since I've been flying kites that I had the wind change directions 180 degrees  in a matter of 5 minutes.  I had the kite flying to towards the southeast when I started, and it shifted towards the Northwest within a few minutes of having the kite up.  Really strange, but this direction works well for capturing the sign.  There is a lot of construction around the site, as they bulldozed the old cheese castle.



Wind was light be steady, so I only flew with one camera, a GoPro HD Hero 3 on a static rig.  The cheese castle is a tourist trap for Illinois residents heading out of state.  Though the selection of cheese and root beer is excellent, locals know that you can go down to Woodman's a few miles away and pay half for your cheese curd fix.

To view more pictures from the Mars Cheese Castle Aerial session, click here.

DIY Gallery Pouches - Reflective Bubble Wrap

I purchased a few Bubble Wrap Gallery Pouches from Frame Destination to help protect my larger framed prints during transport to my Art Fairs this summer.  I found out quickly that it's very easy to scratch, scruff, or damage a frame during setup, take down, and transport.  I told myself that I'd invest in some better packaging the frames and prints for the 2013 art fair season.  The pouches that I bought from Frame Destination turned out to be very good quality and fit my frames with a little extra room.  After shipping and handling, each of these pouches ended up being $19.99.  Since I have a number of other large metal art and framed images, I thought I would try to find a cheaper solution that I could do myself for the rest of my frames and prints.

Here is the commercial version from Frame Destination.

The seams on the edges and corners are heat pressed together.

I purchased the pouches without velcro and used some velcro that I already had at home and added that to the gallery pouches.  

DIY Gallery Pouch

I purchased a roll of Reflective Bubble Wrap foil insulation at Menards.  I already had duct tape and sticky back velcro.  Using a scissors I cut enough foil to wrap the frame leaving a little extra on each side.  In this example, I'm creating a pouch for a square metal print.

Using Duct tape, I sealed the edges.

Here is the metal print inside the newly created pouch.

This is an example of a DIY gallery pouch for a larger frame.  

One of the flaps folds into the pouch around the frame, and the other one has velcro on it to seal the top.

I was able to create 7 gallery pouches with the roll I purchased from Menards.  6 of the frame pouches and one for a square metal art piece.  The price for each of these DIY pouches ended up being just under $4.00 each.  The only downside is that you cannot through the reflective foil to know that print is in the pouch.  A similar 24x20 gallery pouch without the velcro is $14.51 each, including shipping and handling from the Frame Destination.  They do have volume pricing if you purchase more than 2.  I plan on using the DIY method for some of my panoramic frames and metal prints since I can save over 70% by making my own.  The commercial version are very nice for customers, but I plan on using these primarily for transport.

World Wide Kite Aerial Photography Week 2013

Nothing like waiting until the last minute to participate in WWKW 2013.  I was busy at work, and the weather didn't cooperate until the very last day.  I was able to go local and grab images from my local high school.  To view the flickr group for WWKW, click here.

Image was captured using a GoPro HD Hero 3 and a FlowForm 32 kite in 10-15knot easterly winds.