Specializing in B2B, Duane is writing, creating video, podcasts and photoshop visuals for brands seeking turn-key content for their content marketing programs.
Home Digital Content Visual Arts
This is my professional brochure website. Following roles as photojournalist, education director, landscaper and residential construction project manager/superintendent, Duane segued to writing and the visual arts. For the past 15 years he has covered the construction, food, finance and tech industries.
Using XD and Photoshop to Create a Website Design
This Behance project showcases a series of website designs I did for a beverage promotions company. It also includes ideas for icons, composite photos for the website, company banner for social media and a video intro for the company.
Construction Cost Overruns: 5 Ways to Control Them
Construction cost overruns don’t just happen; they stalk projects right from the start. They hide in project design, project schedules, and nearly any other project aspect, waiting to surprise and confound when least expected. Follow these strategies to reveal cost overruns and contain them early.
Photographic Film vs Digital Sensors
I've used cameras for 35 years. Film dominated in my photojournalism days and I spent many hours in dark rooms wrestling the best images I could from trays of chemicals and photo paper. Then, along came digital and it was love at first sight. It was almost as freeing as when a computer's copy and paste came along to supplant typewriters and "white-out." Now, there's a tepid resurgence in film. So, I took an old film camera and put it up against two modern digital sensors. Here's what happened.
Building Change in Construction One Woman at a Time
When Barbara Jackson talks about women in construction, she frames the conversation in human terms. She recognizes the unique aspects each gender brings to the table and calls the phenomenon gender intelligence. According to Jackson, it exists where companies leverage the talents, skills and natural tendencies of either gender to the advantage of the whole.
Jackson, founder & CEO of Women Building Change (formerly Women Who Build), describes WBC as an ‘on-demand resource network’ on a mission...
Future Construction Trends
I wrote the text for this eBook about future trends in Construction, published in late 2019.
Want a lesson in hope? Spend time with a writer
The Writers’ Long Game — hoping beyond hope to have hordes of fans hopelessly hooked.
I’ve made a living by writing twenty years of my adult life. When I look back on those years, it was never about having enough ideas, having enough time or having enough skill. It was always about having enough hope.
Hope must accompany the idea behind what you plan to write, otherwise, why even bother? At first, you must hope you can arrange the words in just the right fashion to both attract readers, and g...
Five Things That Would Have Made Me a Better Superintendent
I’m not a superintendent on residential projects anymore. I’ve had time to reflect on how my projects might have been better if I had been better. Here are the five behaviors I came up with.
More Questioning
I was probably more trusting than I should have been. I assumed the due diligence of owners and architects was adequate for my purposes. Unfortunately, it turned out that was often not the case. I expected all specialty contractors to study the plans as much as I did and believed people o...
Is it time to feed your beliefs? But at what cost?
Saying no to news bias and conspiracy theories is easier than you think.
It’s been clear for some time that polarization in America is directly caused by the information people feed on. And I use “feed on” metaphorically here because I’m just tired of “consume.” The information we allow into our brains drifts around in there until it sticks to something familiar, like our distrust of government or our dislike of people different from us.
Once stuck, it needs constant reinforcement. That’s whe...
Photoshop Camera Raw Filter For Fixing Exposure Problems
This tutorial shows you how to use Photoshop's Camera Raw Filter to fix serious exposure problems in photos. It includes examples of exposure problems, how to use the Photoshop Camera Raw Filter to fix them, how to adjust the exposure and color in large parts of the photograph, and how to save your results.
June 2019 PS Daily Creative Challenge
June 2019 Photoshop Daily Creative Challenge. This is a collection of my photoshop projects.
The Inside Track on Procore’s Field Productivity
When Brandon Lopez, field operations manager for ABLe Communications, found himself tracking employee and task times by taking notes on box lids, or whatever was at hand, he knew it was time to look into better ways to beat the clock.
“We needed to get a little more up-to-date, so we started looking into our options,” Lopez says. “We needed a way to be able to track time and give employees a little barometer to show how they’re doing and performing against the budget.”
ABLe Communications is ...
4 Ways to Make Your Company Standout from the Competition
Contractor differentiation is becoming increasingly important for long-term survival in construction markets that are flush with competition. The difference in getting the work, or being invited to bid, often hinges on a contractor’s ability to stand out from the crowd. The reason setting yourself apart can work for you is because your market is dominated by sameness.
The difference between one contractor and the next is well hidden among overused marketing phrases and the rush to simplify. O...
Programmatic Audio Set to Make Sweet Sounds for Advertisers
Something very telling has happened for the programmatic audio advertising marketplace and it signals a coming-of-age for the medium’s future. In the latest version of the API Specification used for selling and buying ads, OpenRTB 2.4, digital audio is now a separate object within the protocol. That means sellers can now specifically offer audio impressions for sale and avoid the confusion of offering audio through the video object.