Laura Lee Designs handbags

Posted on August 2, 2008 by Jeff Mason | Tampa Wedding & Portrait Photographer in Cool Stuff, Wedding Photography

Last weekend Cristiana Garcia and I photographed Ashley and Marc’s wedding at the Sandpearl Resort on Clearwater beach. It was a beautiful wedding and I will post more about Ashley and Marc in a follow-up. This is about the Laura Lee Designs handbags that Ashley and the bridesmaid carried. Marc’s sister Alison “AT” works for Laura Lee and had these very cool Bridal Bags for the girls. According to AT each of the Bags had over 3,000 beads sewn onto it! It seems that these are the smaller bags and that some of her creations have 25,000-30,000 beads!! Folks these are really works of art. Check out the link above to Laura Lee’s site and be sure to read her About section, it’s a really interesting story of how her designer business came to be.

Alison, I’m glad I was able to get a few of these special shots for you.

A blog a day for the entire month of August!

Posted on August 1, 2008 by Jeff Mason | Tampa Wedding & Portrait Photographer in Just Stuff

I’m going to make every effort possible to post an entry every day this month. I’ve seen other people do this to get themselves in the habit. Well, I’m terrible at regularly posting so maybe this will help. Part of my problem is that I try to hard to come up with something cool or clever to write about. Those that know me know that I am neither of these so I’m just going to “let it flow”. This is going to be a busy month. We have landed a sizable contract with a government agency for some extensive business process work so I’m going to be traveling quite a bit. I have a wedding, a family portrait, and an engagement shoot scheduled and I need to get caught up with processing of past shoots.

If I can make an entry every day THIS month, keeping up with it in the future is going to be a breeze!

My daughter was leaving the house and she phoned back telling me to get my camera that there was a hawk sitting on the fence next to the garage.

Sure enough…

Logically speaking…

Posted on July 25, 2008 by Jeff Mason | Tampa Wedding & Portrait Photographer in Fun Stuff

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid term.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let’s look at the different religions that exist in the world today.

Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, ‘It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,’ and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct…… leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting ‘Oh, my God.’

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED AN A+.

Who needs a watchdog…

Posted on July 18, 2008 by Jeff Mason | Tampa Wedding & Portrait Photographer in Fun Stuff

Florida has all kinds of critters that the rest of the country doesn’t get to enjoy, Palmetto bugs (big, flying cockroaches), little lizards, and sometimes much bigger lizards. This morning my wife called me just after she left the house to say that there was an alligator coming out of the storm drain in front of our house. Sure enough, there he was, about 4 1/2 footer hanging out in the drain at the corner. He must have come through the culvert that empties into the canal across the street. It’s not like he was an 8 footer or anything but a lot of folks walk their dogs and kids are all over the place so I called Fish and Wildlife to have them come get him.

We live in a pretty quiet area and crime isn’t a problem. Having this guy around would sure guarantee things stay that way!