Internet Radio

Posted on August 12, 2008 by Jeff Mason | Tampa Wedding & Portrait Photographer in Cool Stuff

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

Posted on August 10, 2008 by Jeff Mason | Tampa Wedding & Portrait Photographer in Wedding Photography

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

Posted on August 9, 2008 by Jeff Mason | Tampa Wedding & Portrait Photographer in Wedding Photography

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

Posted on August 7, 2008 by Jeff Mason | Tampa Wedding & Portrait Photographer in Just Stuff, Travel

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?

Stephanie+Matthew

Posted on August 7, 2008 by Jeff Mason | Tampa Wedding & Portrait Photographer in Wedding Photography

On June 28 we photographed Stephanie & Matthew’s wedding for my good friends at Sky Photo Group. The wedding was in Daytona so my wife, Nancy, went along to be my 2nd photographer. We live in Tampa and haven’t been to the east coast in a while so we were especially looking forward to being somewhere different for a change.

We started by taking some photos of the Stephanie and the girls getting ready. Stephanie was a stunning bride! After the ceremony and the formal pictures with the family and bridal party we went over to the beach to get some pictures of just Stephanie and Matthew. The beach can be a challenging place for photos, especially in mid-afternoon when the sun is so bright but we found a place outside the hotel where they were staying that provided the shade we needed. The ceremony was at the Palmetto Club and this is when things got REALLY fun. Stephanie, Matthew, and friends definitely celebrated their wedding!

Stephanie and Matthew, Nancy and I were honored to be able to photograph your wedding and the start of your lives together. We wish you many years of happiness!

Oh, yeah, enjoy snowboarding in Chile…we’re so jealous.