I recently completed a photo shoot for a client that was on a tight schedule. They had purchased some discounted ad space with a fast approaching "deadline for materials" date and wanted a photo that was fresh. After the main subject is selected, I try to get the best product sample that is available. In this case, my subject was a piece of metal industrial hardware. Being that their warehouse was on site, I select the best piece available with regards to cosmetics. The reality of some industrial hardware is that it is not always "blemish free", so I aim to select a sample without scratches or cosmetic defects. When shooting any object, especially a small one, the biggest enemies can be dust and dirt. Proper preparation and cleaning go a long way in saving retouch time.

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Just this past week, I posted up a fun political Tshirt at Zazzle, one of the POD (print on demand) services on line. It got a Today's Best Award. Two days later, I had to remove it. Why? I spelled a word wrong!!! Apparently my error had gotten past the editors to ;-) Three words in the Tshirt had Capital Letters in a different color than the main text. The word "Intellegence" had a large capital "I", but then I slipped and put the whole rest of the word in, so it became "Iintelligence". Boy, what a careless error, and how embarrassing for me.

So, I lost the award because I felt it best to take the product down, but I really would not want a customer to wind up with a mispelled Tshirt. Yes, I'll redo the shirt design, but I'll definitely read my text more carefully next ...

To use a website or blog to promote your personal interests or photo business is a personal choice. Back in the Internet Days of Yore, I began building websites to play around with the new and wonderful technology. And the questions from friends came. Oh, can you do one for me? And I was off and running. Soon a few business people contacted me, and before I knew it, I had more than enough to do, and even less time to do it in. I was burning the midnight oil constantly; such an addiction! Well push came to shove, and something had to give. I had to pay more attention to my photographic work (was still shooting Nikon film at the time) and I had discovered computer illustration, Photoshop composites, and photo manipulation. By about 2001, web technology was passing me by - ...