Starting in 1997 I began spending a substantial portion of my life in the Gorge photographing, hiking, getting Poison Ivy, throwing rocks and getting lost. My introduction to the Gorge didn’t come from the countless times I had driven through it as a teenager, but as a recommendation of my friend Terry Toedtemeier. Terry was a gifted photographer, geologist and an amazing person – one whom I owe an amazing debt of gratitude. He setup a trip to the Gorge for our class one day, and due to weather, and other conflicts I ended up going out alone, and spending the entire day in the rain taking pictures at Catherine Creek with an old Bronica S-2 that was a good 20 years my elder. I shot more than 10 rolls of film that day, and this image remains one of my favorites from that trip.

Over the course of the next few years, I exposed thousands of frames of film, guzzled hundreds of gallons of gas in my primer-black 74′ Chevy pickup, and walked countless trails, cliff edges, log flumes and river banks searching for something. The few times Terry joined me were… interesting to say the least. We always found something interesting, and we always got into some sort of mischief.

Terry passed last year while giving a lecture in Hood River on Wild Beauty. I have thought about him often over the last year, and how he influenced my education, career, and photographic course. The majority of images in this grouping would not have been taken had I not met him, or the hundreds of others that are either unprinted, or just not shown. Even though we hadn’t talked much in the last 7 years after I moved back East, his work, teachings, and ideas influenced the way I went about things, and there isn’t much a time that goes by that I don’t think about my friend.

Thanks Terry.

Kidrobot and We Are Plus are executing the 5 day promotion using Facebook, twitter and scanning apps such as BeeTagg reader for the iPhone. Once you have registered with the Dunny Hunt website, your scans are tracked so you can see how you stack up against everyone else in the leaderboard. So far there are 26 pages of registrants on the board, with the leader having 18 of the possible 22 scanned, me being dead last at 146 with none scanned.

This great news for anyone interested in using QR Codes, but has been put off a bit by the lack of ubiquity. It’s a great idea, and can generate a lot of interest in Kidrobot and Dunny. For those who don’t don’t know what a Dunny is, check out the Kidrobot website – they’re pretty cool vinyl designer series toys, like the Nightmare in Jeremyville Dunny.

For more information, read the Dunny Hunt press release from We Are Plus.

It’s good to see companies and agencies in the US finally coming around to a technology that has been in Japan for years. I have been writing about QR codes for over a year now off and on, having seen some cool applications in Canada as well as Australia. I even have a couple Commando Nerd patches that link back to my site – one of which is attached to my laptop bag. The largest campaign in the states that I know of is what Ralph Lauren did last year with mailings, in-store posters and graphics, and magazine ads tying it all back to their mobile site.

In the release, the idea of expanding the promotion to multiple cities is broached – which could be really cool in some of the more densely packed areas. You could start to get participants from one area participating in multiple cities, and really create something cool, and interactive in a big way.

The most interesting part about tools like these is auto-generating things that can be classified as art, or used in the creation of art. Creating artwork by manipulating code; something which many people consider to be a form of art all unto itself; is an idea that I find completely intoxicating. Here are a few examples:

Jared Tarbell created Invader Fractal back in 2003 using ActionScript, and wisely made prints available (something which seems to have vanished). The patterns created here are very interesting and would make a nice edition to just about any cube wall….

Eric Natzke is another amazing artists who utilizes code to facilitate his creative process. Check out his latest work on flickr for an upcoming show in Toronto. Unfortunately I will be in the city about 3 weeks too early to see the opening.

Joshua Davis is another one too. His development, coding, and artistic ability is a trifecta of awesome. I have seen and followed his work since I first heard of him back in the day at a FlashForward conference.

Fractals artwork isn’t hard to find, nor is it hard to figure out why people find it fascinating. A simple Google search reveals a wealth of imagery and some spectacular examples. One of my favorites landing spots is Fractal World Gallery and naturally there’s good stuff on Deviant Art. Here’s a flash app to build and layer fractals as well, it totally aced Firefox a minute ago – so be warned, but it’s pretty cool.

Oops. I sort of went off on a tangent there. For more information on the Ruby Fractal Library, head over to CrunchLife and check Ryan’s post.