I'm still vibrating from my After Dark experience. My head is filled with new ideas, skills and motivation.

Some of my new friends from After Dark!

On the final day, a few of us took off on a spur-of-the-moment texture safari that had us sliding around on our bellies, stopping hotel guests to take pictures of their clothing and generally laughing and running around like crazy people.

Some of the patterns are shown below.

I'm offering these for free to anyone who might find them of use or value in their work. There are 18 images in total.

Download the After Dark 2014 Texture Safari Pack

My friend Stephen and I are on an epic drive to St Louis to attend the 2014 After Dark conference.

It was inspiring to see the number of windmills along the highway and to learn that Denmark has surpassed total grid demand with its wind generation capabilities. Germany also announced that it has achieved 35% of it's demand through wind generation.

But the most interesting part of our journey was arriving in Detroit. Much to Stephen's chagrin, I immediately diverted us from his GPS roadplan and drove into downtown Detroit. I ended up in the Eastern Market area. A pair of derelict tenement buildings had caught my eye.

What was far more exciting was locating a bicycle event at Shed 2 of the revitalized Market area. The place was jumping with food trucks, couriers, hippies, a bicycle powered beer brewery and more. We hung out for an hour and ate some tofu burritors that were out of this world while we settled in to watch the races. It turns out they didn't have a permit and had just blocked off the street. I think I fell in love with this city on this cold but sunny day.

A couple caught my eyes sitting on the rocks watching a storm move off into the distance as the sun set.

This was a really fun project where we wanted to “document” what Ellie got up to while left at home to her own devices.

It became a wonderful calendar and remains one of my favourite dog photography sessions.