Summer Camp 2012: Can You Dig It?
Last year about the beginning of May, I was hard at work getting prepared for another year of going to church camp and getting things in order, graphics made, t-shirts designed, promotional videos made, all of that good stuff, and I was almost at my whits end trying to get it all taken care of before camp got started. Little did I know that this date came up SO FAST, so this year I took a step back and said, hmmm. Why don’t I start early and get it all knocked out sooner?! So that is exactly what I have done. Here we have the 2012 Camp Journey theme. “Can You Dig It?” Many teens face opposition in their lives from somebody wanting them to take that leap in their relationship, or take that first drink of alcohol. This series is geared to those teens who have been struggling and have struggled in the past and just need recovery. God wants us to be broken for him so that he can use us. This series will help guide us into what Christ says to us who are faint hearted. Come with us as we dig into what Christ says in His word, and I promise you will not go away empty.
Starting Some New Stuff
Along with the help of my friend Valeria (she did all of the work, but I taught her everything) I ave decided to start on some new stuff. In conjunction with that, hopefully there will be a lot more to come from that!
Enjoy
Camp No Doubt 2011
This past summer, I had the privilege of helping out Aurora Baptist Church at a camp in Clayton, OK. It was a lot of fun and I got to meet lots of new people. Here are some fun videos from that week. (in no particular order)
Photo Shoot: Jerry and Gwen
My grandparents are having their 50th anniversary coming up in about a week, and we needed some pictures done for the event, and my grandma asked me if I would do their pictures for them. We did a few casual, and a few formal. They turned out awesome on paper and on screen!
Summer Camp 2011: No Doubt
This year, instead of going to a church camp like I typically would with my own church, I am going to help out with another church in the community. This same camp that we went to last year, we had the ability to create lots of fun videos and things for the kids and everybody there during the week. This year, we are going to be able to do the same thing, but with better equipment, more people, and it is going to be a BLAST! This is a basic design of the camp theme for the week. Along with this is matching T-Shirts and matching banners for inside the worship center. I am super pumped, and can’t wait to be there having a blast!
Photo Shoot: Jesse and Jeni
I had the chance to work with two good friends of mine, who are getting married soon. They were in the market to get some pictures done, and I had just recently been doing quite a few shoots, so this was a great opportunity for me to be able to do a shoot for them for their special day. Hope you enjoy as much as I did, and as Jesse and Jeni did!
Photo Shoot: Meyer Family
I had the privilege of doing a photo shoot for a wonderful family that I met through Brittany and Rusty. They had two wonderful to work with girls, and it was just a blast! The little one, Bella, did not want to take her “binkie” out of her mouth for anything, but you could definitely tell she was smiling underneath. I hope to be able to work with many families like this one in the future! Thanks to you guys for being such great clients!
Photo Shoot: Rusty and Brittany
I recently had the privilege of doing some engagement pictures for my cousin’s best friend, and they were such awesome people to work with. They were very easy to work with and their photos turned out very nicely! Hope you enjoy. If you want to schedule to have some pictures done, please feel free to go here dhcreative.bookmonline.com/schedules or email me here. Thanks!
Photo Shoot: Waylon Rickman
The second opportunity to do a complete photo shoot, and I did a shoot of my cousin-in-laws brother, Waylon, he is a senior this year, and we shot these at the Fort Worth Stockyards. They turned out excellent.
Photo Shoot: Colton Houston
Great test subject to test out the new camera, my brother Colton! He likes having his picture taken anyways, so it’s even that much better!
Hustler Turf: TrimStar Promo
This is part of a promo series on the Hustler brand manufacturing company. They make several different models, and this is one of them.
Video shot and edited by me.
New Camera!
Just picked up a new camera, and it does a pretty amazing job!
New Stuff
I got this crazy idea a few months back to just sit down one evening and think of whatever came to mind, and this phrase I want kept coming into my mind. We are always wanting something, as it is our human nature. But for us to want Jesus Christ, then we can have peace because we won’t need anything else than Him.
Recently I did this for my church’s youth. They are having a super bowl party and at first we were going to do a video, but decided not to, so I came up with this.
Awesomeness…….
Well, I have officially decided that just design tips all the time would be lame, so I will start doing more than just that. I ran across this video this past week and thought it was really awesome!
#1: The video is really well done (most importantly 
)
#2: It is for a great cause
#3: It’s AWESOME!
When I come across something that is really amazing or well done, I think I have dwelling issues, because I like to watch over and over and over again to see how good it is every time I watch it. Well I hope you have enjoyed this time together, and I think out of the 1,200 views of this video, I am responsible for about 10 of them! 
Happy Designing!
Family Christmas
These are pictures of my family in Christmas of 2010. I started using a new flash that I came across, and it worked out very well…
Design Tips / Tricks
Design Tip #2 
When making something from scratch, remember to just keep things simple. When I first started design work about 2 years ago, I thought everything that I made had to be this?massively?complex contraption that would just all go together and just work, but I soon found out that was not the case. I soon had to realize that just making things simple would, well make life and design more simple! ?It was once said, ?”Design is not just what it looks like, and feels like. Design is how it works!” and this is so very true in many ways. Design has to have a flow and a rhythm. I can’t just sit down expect it to come out of nowhere, although there are people who can, and expect it to be the best thing ever made on the first try. Design also has to have an end purpose. What is the purpose for making a certain thing, or what is the intended purpose for it? Who is the intended audience, and what is the age demographic that will be viewing that piece of work or holding that brochure or handout? All of this has to start from somewhere! So, just something to take into consideration when “In the zone” HA!!
Well, happy designing!
http://darrenhouston.com/designtips (Here is for more tips.)
UPDATE
Hey everyone! I know we haven’t posted anything in a while so I just wanted to update everyone on the new.
This is Colton, Darren’s younger brother, and we are both going to share his blog!
Pretty much our time is spent at work/ school and church. Darren is continuing his way on the sound board and media side while I am soon to take over our churches youth worship band! (I also do the word media for the songs in the Sunday services)
I think I can speak for the both of us and say that we have changed in all aspects of ?life tremendously over the past year and we can not wait to let you know of the many new things God is doing and preparing us for in the far and near future!
Sound Production
Sound production is one of the funnest things to do. I was listening to a song the other day, and I thought, WOW! There has got to be so much stuff that goes into producing this song.. Which in all actuality, there is. There is all the time it takes to sit down with the artist, and find out what all they would like, although sometime the producer has a lot of the ideas to present to the artist. There is the time it takes to record all of the instruments, sound effects, reverb, if it’s a live recording all of the echo effects, and then on top of that, then go back for main vocals and background vocals, if there are any, and then bring all of that together, to make a beautiful sounding piece of art. Then I thought, man I love to just sit and listen to track over and over and over just so I can get the full effect of what I didn’t hear the time before. In this field, there are so many different choices for equipment and options within brands and brands in brands, sometimes it just gets confusing… At the present time, i use an Allen and Heath GL3300 for live sound production at CBC in Fort Worth, Texas. My live feed from there is sent and mixed down into Adobe Audition, and then brought together in Garage Band. I have found that mixing it down from the live performance and making it sound almost as if it is in a studio, is a good way to produce tracks that maybe I don’t want Live Mics in the mix, just in case there is ever the chance to produce a live venue, that way I can always make it sound fresh. For secondary audio, I use a?Mackie Onyx 16 with Firewire direct recording. I have come to absolutely love this machine. With a direct feed into Garage Band via a Firewire 800 cable, I can record and reproduce things “on the fly” without having to waist time and go back and do it all over again. Cool feature with this unit too is that it has the capability to reproduce effects from Garage Band, directly back into the board and out to your mains or a monitor feed. This is great for adding reverbs and such if there was ever a need for it. The plan for this upcoming year is to produce an album for the church called “A Cornerstone Christmas”, which would consist of voices from our worship team and band, as well as our Lifesong worship group. As this gets closer, more information will be released and news of dates for purchase will be established as well. You can visit the church site simply by going to www.cbcfamily.org.
Another Rangers Game
Just sitting at another Rangers Game. Just finished with the Mercy Me concert and he just sang the national Anthem and he did and AWESOME job!! They are awesome anyways. Sorry for not posting more than I do. I wish there was a way to make my blog and my Twitter or Facebook update at the same time. Oh well. Enjoy.
Fun fun fun!!
Here at the Rangers game with some friends from church… Not the funnest thing to do, but great being with friends!!
