About the Site

Contact Sheet is a weblog that began in 2003 for the purpose of keeping a sketchpad of ideas and comments. Here I write about some of my professional and personal interests: graphic & web design, software, urban planning, architecture, media, film. Maintaining a personal weblog is a very self-important endeavor, but since any writing looks so much more refined when “published” on a nice clean web page, it's what must be done in order to keep me jotting things down on a regular basis.

Why Contact Sheet?

Playing off the photo reference, this type of daily writing and image logging is unfiltered and in a very unrefined state. Blogs are just that—the raw materials that others can examine, organize, reshape and ponder.

What is a Contact Sheet?

A contact sheet is a photographic term for a set of prints exposed on a single sheet of paper. A photographer creates a contact sheet by laying strips of negatives on a sheet of emulsified photo paper and exposing it to light in a darkroom. This produces positive images the same physical size as the negatives. Approximately 30-36 images of 35mm film can fit on a single 8" × 10" contact sheet. Since looking at processed negatives can be a chore, the contact sheet can be stored with the negatives and used to reference specific photos quickly.

et cetera

• Contact Sheet is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

About Scott Steffens

Scott Steffens is a graphic designer and web developer living in Seattle. He has worked for design agencies, e-commerce web sites and software companies. His current endavor is Base Station which he encourages you to check out.

Scott Steffens cries when the cold wind blows on him. This is not because the cold wind makes him sad (which it does) but a physiological reaction that's occurred in cold winds all his life. Likewise, the sun gives him a headache. In these ways he complains a lot, but in all other ways he tries to practice great tolerance.

Scott takes pleasure in shopping for cheese at the Ballard Market as much as he dislikes kissing folks wearing flavored chapstick. Lately, he enjoys drinking a lot of water, riding his bicycle and eating ice cream panini sandwiches.

Scott Steffens spent his first 25 years in Nebraska which explains his matter-of-fact attitude. But being a minority, ideologically speaking, in that conservative state, he can be passionate and self-righteous.

Scott's wife is from Portugal, so they go there a lot. They both enjoy it, for immensely different reasons.