Seth J. Merriam - Valigia Digitale

Hello & Welcome

Seth — Fri, 13 Dec 1901 20:45:52 +0000

This site is a dynamic, selective, and – much to my chagrin – perpetually incomplete, catalog of my work.

The tag line is “personal.professional.words.thoughts.art.design.development.creation.production” because my intention it to be sure I include some bits of each of those items.

Please feel free to have a look around, read my artists statement (on the gratuitous “about me” page), comment on work if you’d like, and use the contact form to get in touch with me!

Oh, FYI:

The title “valigia digitale” loosely translates (from Italian [which I don't speak]) to digital suitcase; I decided it was a less cliché way of saying my portfolio.
Generally speaking anything marked with a “Jan. 1″ date means I was only sure of the year

Thanks,

Seth.

Texture

Seth — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 20:17:01 +0000

At any level, with any medium, texture is one of the best parts about life, no?

Macro Water Beads

Seth — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 20:14:23 +0000

Beads of water inside an old water bottle. Everything looks more interesting magnified.

Blur as [the] Focus

Seth — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 20:07:25 +0000

While taking some macro shots, I decided to snap some that were “out of focus” on purpose. The result, I think, is great. It’s automatically a riddle to solve… “Just what *IS* that object in this photograph, anyway?”

Macro Water Drops

Seth — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 20:38:30 +0000

More Water Drops, up close and personal – so to speak. I did these with the intent of adding some post processing for a richer depth and mood.

Slow Shutter Macro Water Drops

Seth — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 20:34:07 +0000

I took some time, finally, to play around with some images I’ve been wanting to try and make for a while now. Having seen great freeze-frame water drops I wanted to try it, but I also wanted to use some slow-shutter action to catch some streaks and light effects… here’s some of the results.

WordPress

Seth — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:33:45 +0000

Now-a-days I’m spending a fair amount of time developing web sites and materials with WordPress. I’ve written plugin “helpers”, authored themes, modified plenty more themes (such as this one) and taught a large number of people about the benefits of using a system like WordPress to create and manage their web presence.

Some people cringe when they here it, thinking “but that’s just a blogging tool,” and I can understand that because I used to think the same thing… but it’s soooo much more than that these days. And I will say that while it is not perfect, it’s pretty darn close, and it’s open-source. Currently that’s the best of both worlds for a fair number of sites, at least as far as I’m concerened.

Miscellaneous Macro Shots

Seth — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:04:02 +0000

Macro Flower

Seth — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:23:24 +0000

Creating Online Portfolios for Boston Public Schools

Seth — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:41:31 +0000

In 2009 I worked with other members of the EdTech Center, and Northeastern’s Department of Art+Design to teach a week long course, to BPS faculty, that focused on using free web 2.0 tools to create a digital portfolio.

The idea was they could then transfer the knowledge on to their students as they find a need to create a portfolio as part of their college application process.

I developed the technical curriculum, and focused on using the Adobe Creative Suite (which they all had access to) as well as free wiki tools, such as wikispaces, and free blogging/cms tools, such as WordPress.