This is one of the coolest decorating things I’ve seen in a while. I would love to have one of these in a studio. You could put one in a reception area and also have one in the camera room. Options as a background are huge!
-
Pages
Back in D.C. this week
August 28, 2008 – 11:06 pm
I’m back in Washington this week doing work for HUD. With the current environment of the housing market HUD is expecting their business volume to explode. The problems with Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac is driving business to HUD. This, combined with recent legislation to assist homeowners with troubled mortgages, has raised concerns within the agency that their current business processes will not be able to effectively service the increased volume. The consulting company that I work for, along with our partner, have been hired to re-engineer some of their critical internal processes. I am supporting a lady who is facilitating these business changes and a giant in the industry of Lean Business Process. Lean follows the principals laid down by Toyota and Henry Ford. It’s purpose is to eliminate waste in the form of unnecessary and/or non-value added process steps and focuses on only the essential steps. As an example, one of the processes that was being re-engineered required 23 review/approval signatures. After the team analyzed and re-engineered the process only 3 signatures were required!
For 15 years I have been a consultant implementing finance software systems. One of the most frustrating things about going into a new client’s business to implement a system has been seeing all of the broken BUSINESS processes and not being able to make the smart changes. We would point out that, “Well, if you changed x or y in the way you do business not only would it benefit the implementation of this $2 million software that you just purchased but guess what, you probably wouldn’t need the software.” Of course we couldn’t say that exactly but when we did elude to it we were met with, “Oh, we can’t change that, you are here to implement the software, not change the way we do things.” The Lean process is different. With Lean we facilitate meetings that help the business process owners see their broken business processes and re-engineer to processes that eliminate wasted, non-value added activities in day to day operations.
This experience has also helped me with my photography business. Lean focuses on the customer. By making my own business streamlined and not wasting energy on inefficient tasks I have been able to free time to devote to taking care of my customers.
It was a little grey in D.C. today but after leaving the office I walked by the White House to snap a few pictures. Here’s one from the front lawn.
Elisa+Anthony - the pictures
August 26, 2008 – 11:06 pm
Being in D.C. last week didn’t give me a chance to get Elisa and Anthony’s engagement pictures posted. Thanks for being so patient. I think you will be happy with the results. I’m really looking forward to your wedding in October. Check out the slideshow here.
Kickball on the Mall
August 20, 2008 – 11:51 pm
It was a beautiful day in the Capital city today. A cool front came through Tuesday night and the humidity and temp were down so instead of going directly to subway from the office I decided to walk over to the Mall and get a picture of the Capital. The Mall always has something going on and throughout history has always been a gathering place. Today wasn’t any different. It seems as though there are coed adult kickball leagues that play there regularly. it was fun watching these guys and girls play a game that I haven’t played since grade school and from the looks of it, I’m missing out!
In D.C. this week
August 18, 2008 – 11:07 pm
This week I’m in Washington working for one of my consulting clients. I left my wife, and daughter at home in Tampa to ride out hurricane Fay. Nice guy, huh? Unfortunately, I couldn’t do anything about it except make sure the house and yard were secure before I left. Fortunately, it looks like Fay is going to pass to the east of Tampa which will put them on the side that gets the least wind and rain. For the most part it’s just going to be a rainy couple of days.
I’m staying at a hotel in Rosslyn that is a block away from the Iwo Jima memorial and only a couple of blocks from the Arlington Cemetery. These are certainly two of our country’s most precious treasures. Joe Rosenthal took the original picture of Easy Company raising the flag on Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1943. Easy Company had been fighting for 4 days and had a casualty rate of almost 40% to date. The picture that Rosenthal captured was actually the second raising of the American flag. Joe Campbell captured a lesser known picture of the original flag coming down and it being replaced with the flag that Joe Rosenthal’s famous and moving image captured.
“In that moment, Rosenthal’s camera recorded the soul of a nation.”
. . .Editors of US Camera Magazine.
“It was like shooting a football game. You never knew what you got on film.”
. . . Joe Rosenthal, Photographer
The picture inspired sculptor Felix Deweldon, who created a life sized model of the photograph. It was later cast in bronze and brought to Washington in September 1954 as part of the Marine Corps Memorial designed by Horace Peaslee.
Here is a picture that I took of the memorial this evening. I processed the image to give it an aged feel with exaggerated film grain.
Elisa+Anthony’s engagement session
August 17, 2008 – 12:55 pm
Later today I will be meeting with Elisa and Anthony to take some fun pictures of them before their wedding which will be Oct. 18. I haven’t had a chance to meet Anthony and it’s been a while since I last met with Elisa so we are going to meet at a coffee shop first and chat for a while. Check back in a day or so to see the their pictures.
Maya, Erica+T
August 16, 2008 – 9:40 pm
Today I had family session with T and his family. They drove over to Tampa from the Florida east coast and I’m honored that they would come that far to have family pictures made by me. Maya is a real cutie. She is one smart little girl, knows the alphabet, colors, numbers and her address by heart. On top of that she has wonderful manners; Erica and T are excellent parents! The session was a lot of fun, we took our time and let Maya get used to the studio. Between taking the pictures and then going through almost 350 images to make their selections, we spent about 4 hours together. Here are a couple from the selections they made.
A post a day-two weeks later
August 15, 2008 – 12:39 pm
I have to admit, I haven’t been 100% perfect, I missed a couple of days but I tried to make up for them by making multiple entries on a few days. Is that cheating? I’m kinda getting into the groove of this and finding it’s a lot of fun. Time and everything else going on is the challenge. Like shooting a wedding all day and not getting home until 12:30 a.m. makes it a little hard to get an entry in that day. Travel and consulting work also makes it difficult.
Thanks to technology, my iPhone, and a really sick App for it, I can now create blogs when away from my home office right on my phone! Next week I will be D.C. for the entire week and will be trying it out. I can’t guarantee that the typing will be perfect but I’ll be able to make entries and even upload pictures from my phone! Should be interesting. Stay tuned.
Improv Everywhere - We Cause Scenes
August 14, 2008 – 2:36 pm
Improv Everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Improv Everywhere has executed over 70 missions involving thousands of undercover agents. The group is based in New York City. My friend Kristeen from Memories and Keepsakes sent me this YouTube video that I thought was really cool. Having spent 5 years in Manhattan and wandering Grand Central on more than a few occasions I can just imagine the spectacle this must have caused. Check out Improv Everywhere’s site there are alot more videos there.
Make-up tips when being photographed
August 13, 2008 – 5:22 pm
I get asked a lot by the girls if their make-up is ok when they come in for their senior pictures. Most of the time they look great, other times, well, let’s just say I should have posted this earlier.
courtesy of senior portrait artists (spa)
Internet Radio
August 12, 2008 – 10:09 pm
I was surfing through the iPhone Applications on the Apple.com site and came across this really cool FREE music player Pandora Radio. It is based on the Music Genome Project which is an ongoing project that analyzes songs and artists using up to 400 distinct musical characteristics. These attributes are captured, cataloged, and entered into a database. You just type in the name of your favorite artist or songs and the Genome Project does the rest. It searches through its database and plays those songs and artists that share the characteristics of the song you entered. It’s really cool, if it plays a song you don’t particularly like you can click a thumbs-down icon and the player knows not to play that song or songs that match its characteristics.
I’m really enjoying having it on my desktop in my home office. The sound quality is incredible and pumping it through my harmon/kardon speakers ROCKS! An account is FREE and I’m looking forward to traveling next week and being able to take the “stations” that I have created with me on iPhone. Oh, yeah, there is the iPhone app that I mentioned above. Check it out.
Ashley+Marc
August 10, 2008 – 11:28 pm
Ashley and Marc were married at the SandPearl Resort on Clearwater Beach, Florida. Many of their friends and family came down from Virginia to share in their celebration. Marc and his groomsmen were all graduates from Virginia Tech as were many of the guests based on the reaction to the VT fight song that the DJ played! I didn’t get a chance to ask Ashley were she went to school but when the DJ played the Florida Gator’s fight song she was doing a big gator chomp with her arms. Ashley and her bridesmaids are featured in a previous post with Laura Lee Designs Bridal Bags. I photographed this wedding on behalf of Bella Pictures along with Cristiana Garcia and I am looking forward to working with her again, she is a fantastic photographer and a lot of fun to work with.
Ashley and Marc, thank you for inviting me to photograph your special day and I wish the two of you many happy and healthy years together. Here are a few of my favorite images.
Cassie+Chris - 08/08/08
August 9, 2008 – 6:01 pm
I’ve known Cassie for a long time and was VERY excited when she asked me to photograph their wedding. Chris has been working in Iraq for the past couple of years and is finally home. I want to thank Theresa Marie from Theresa Marie Photography for helping me. Holy cow, Theresa, your images are awesome! Cassie and Chris, I look forward to seeing you all again soon. Here are a few of their images.
A post a day - one week into it
August 7, 2008 – 11:54 pm
I knew this was going to be a challenge for me and the first week proved to be difficult. I guess technically I failed since I didn’t post on Tuesday or Wednesday but I’m am intent on making it up and posting regularly. Therefore, I posted 3 entries today to get caught up! :-). As you saw below, I was in Philadelphia the first part of the week for a meeting. Tuesday night I was up until 3 a.m. preparing for a very important meeting on Wednesday. Wednesday I had to hit the airport directly from the meeting and after 3 hours sleep the night before, I was in no shape to blog when I got home. Especially after being delayed from leaving Philly for 2 hours.
Over the past 15 years I’ve spent A LOT of time on planes and in airports and it’s something that I’ve come to NOT enjoy much. It’s becoming even less enjoyable to fly these days with fuel prices so high and the airlines doing everything they can to stop the bleeding. It’s come to the point now on US Air that you have to pay $2 just to get a soda on the flight and I’m sure they are not the only airline that is doing this.
An airline that I do enjoy is JetBlue. I was working regularly in Manhattan for 5 years and flew them every week from Tampa to JFK. It was all one class of seats but they were reasonably priced, provided friendly service, had all leather seats with TONS of leg room in EVERY row, and had a TV and XM radio in every seat. Not a bad way to fly really. Let me give you an example of their customer service. I used to take the last flight of the day out of JFK to home and during the winter months it wasn’t unusual for them to delay the last flight so that connectors coming from buffalo or some other place that was having bad weather could make the connection to sunny Florida. Well, this one particular night JetBlue delayed us for well over an hour so that the connecting folks would make the flight. That in itself was good customer service, if you ask me. I’d sure be happy knowing a plane waited. Anyway, we were delayed over an hour and the captain went into the terminal and came back with a stack of huge boxes of Dunkin Doughnuts and walked down the aisle himself handing out napkins and doughnuts to all of us sitting there waiting for the other plane to come in. How many airlines have you heard of that happening on?