lights, action and business

I love our local eventing association (Wasatch Evening Association") so was quite happy to donate photography services (portrait session or sales shots or action shots, however they want to use the hour with two prints included) for their silent auction. No idea how it sold but it just feels danged good to 'give back' to such. Course, I won a down jacket as Rookie rider of the year and fleece quarter sheet as BN horse of the year two years ago, so I definitely feel I'm due to give back :) I've I'd been in town I'd have taken some of the nicer but harder to sell on ebay items and donated them too, but alas i was in San Diego so missed this year's end of year banquet.

I'm also seeing if any horse rescues need some GOOD photos to help them adopt out horses, etc etc. Heck, I can even make mini web pages for them depending on what resources they do and do not have. I'm not sure who's in the area, but I know Nina knows a few and I can work from there. Giving back is good and this is something I CAN do and do fairly well.

This weekend is the USDF teachers lunging clinic at Promontory: still not certain if it's Fri-Sun or Sat-Sun but I'll figure it out soon enough. Sun is work, alas, but I'll take photos and perfect the exposure in the camera. Plus, hey! creative challenges abound. A horse that goes in a circle x 500 times.

I've started reading Strobist a lot recently and got into the LumniQuest line of items -- as well as their amazing secondary 50%+ discounted items on their website. GREAT customer service and I'll be getting a few there (fold flat, yay!). Gary Fong is the other 'big' name out there but they are hard plastic and a PITA to transport around. The ultra soft box should be WONDERFUL for horse portraits. Cannot wait to practice and play a bit with this.

Otherwise, the first few reviews have been upgraded into dgrin's book review section (yay! I feel important! :) ) and as I work on work those will be added as well. Nicely, they are amending them with other folks' reviews rather than replacing. This makes me much more comfortable, as we will obviously all have different words to say about the same books.

ALSO talked with Baldy (CEO of Smugmug) and his programmer who is working on the Packages product for release in the next few months. I'd reached out to them since I'd be in town in late May, but apparently that was just a tad too late. So an hour long conversation (which I believe went extremely well, given the 3-way nature of it), much was learned, must was shared, and I got to talk a bit about the business geek side of things, including ways that could be used to implement the interface to help those users who are less business inclined. Regardless, it was amazing to talk to two folks who have such a passion on par with my own and that alone made it quite worth it. I cannot wait to pick Andy's brain a bit more during Catalina.