I was very disappointed that Pocket Wizard tried to make one device  do everything and had a cost that was just too much to bear.  The Flex system was a poor concept designed for people who know they should get their flashes off their cameras but weren’t educated enough about how that worked to actually figure out the exposure and flash output for themselves.  Also they fried one of my Canon 580 EX II flash units with their Flex radio system and what is now know through out my studio as the black cloth death shroud.  That didn’t make a very good impression on me so I got rid of the Flex system and went back to regular pocket wizards until I found something that I thought would work better.   Perhaps if you are a person who completely uses Canon strobes and can somehow keep your flash from cooking itself to death, this system might work very well for you.  Denis Reggie has a completely lifeless review of it on the Pocket Wizard website where he sings its praises but I don’t know how relevant to the photography world Denis Reggie is anymore.  Wonder if they got him new flashes when the Flex’s burned out his flashes.  His pictures haven’t been very exciting for some time but I suppose making a million dollars a year providing an overpriced service to the rich, famous and vapidly uninteresting might have that effect on you.  He was a really interesting person to meet a few years back, but I get the impression that he’s just burned out. $50k a wedding just isn’t exciting anymore, Denis?

I bought the Radio Poppers JrX a couple weeks back and have been very impressed with their simplicity and effectiveness.  I’ve taken them out on a grand tour of tough situations and they have worked quite effectively.    They work well with my Canon strobes as well as Alien Bees and were bumped and bashed in and out of a car all day last week.  The Radio Popper JrX case design is nice and small and making adjustments is accurate though I wish they had chosen to go with a larger set of dials for adjusting the lights.  I’m searching the world right now to see if I can find another set of pot knobs that are big enough for me to use without wondering if I am even touching anything at all.  This system only syncs to 1/200 of a second and does not utilize TTL flash options which is ok with me since I haven’t used TTL in years due to its inconstancy.  The Radio Popper JrX are reasonably priced and I was more than happy to drop the cash to allow me to be more creative on the spot rather than manually pulling down the light to change the light output while dialing in my exposure and having clients wait.  Batteries are a little unusual in that you are not going to find them at Costco, but I gather that they were trying to keep it small and required 3v dc as most other transmitters do.  I typically root for the little guy and Radio Popper being the little guy has certainly stepped up with a product that impresses.

Scaffold Mart 5x5 scaffolding use on our house remodel in 2011

After much deliberation I chose to buy more scaffolding for a project I was working on.   Why would a photographer need scaffolding?  Well I don’t need it for photography at this point and am instead residing my house because I am rather a jack of all trades.  Surprising to many I am very good at many things but choose to shoot photographs because I enjoy it the most out of all the things I have abilities in.  There is future image plans for the scaffolding though.  We are slowly venturing into video production and are planning on having the scaffolding on hand to hold lights high above or to get a higher perspective for a camera angle.

I searched the local area in Austin for scaffolding and came up rather empty except for one place and it was rather expensive.  I trolled Craigslist for months trying to find something at an affordable price but scaffolding is far and few between there and the people who do have it think it’s value is more than I was willing to pay.

So online I went and visited many website obsessing about scaffolding, pricing and shipping and one place kept coming to the top of the heap;  Scaffolding Mart .  Never have I been to a website for tools and construction machinery that was so ridiculously excited about what they sell.  Someone spent a good deal of their life going on about the wonders and magic of scaffolding.  Literally there are 50-pages of text about their scaffolding and how magical it is and they went into great detail about the quality and the manufacturing.  They posted videos of the construction of some of their scaffolds, braces and walk boards which were elaborate and detailed.  These people appear to eat, sleep and breath scaffolding but it almost sounded too good to be true.

So I took the plunge and bought the scaffolding that I needed.  With a purchase over $600 they shipped the entire order for free.  I was very skeptical because it had to be hundreds of pounds of steel that was being shipped to me.  They shipped using Yellow-Roadway, a logistics and trucking company and estimated that the order would be to me by the middle of the following week.

Yellow-Roadway was kind of a pain to deal with.  They gave conflicting stories about where the freight was and when it would be delivered.  Their phone support was the most polite and helpful sounding group of people I’d ever spoken to but what they said on the phone what actually happened were two different things.  For two days I waited for the promised truck to come and drop off my scaffolding but nothing showed.  I called at the end of each day and they promised it the next day.  At the end of day two I asked if I could just pick it up at their local hub.  I spoke with the local hub over the phone and arranged to pick it up at around 6 p.m. the next day, but he said to call about an hour beforehand so they could get it off the truck.

The next day at about 5:30 I called and said I wanted to come and pick up the freight in about an hour.  The tired sounding fellow told me I couldn’t because there wasn’t anyone left at the hub to unload it.  This was the same fellow I had talked to the day before and arranged the pick-up with so I was somewhat annoyed and gave him a small piece of my mind about how non-logistical this logistics company was.  His manager wasn’t there so I told him that I wanted to see the scaffolding at my home the next day and not a day later.  I told him this in such terms to motivate him to actually make something happen.

The next day it showed up.  750 pounds of steel and wood found its way off the truck and into my front yard.  I thanked the driver and sent him on his way without incident.

Scaffolding from Scaffold Mart comes shipped by Yellow-Roadway, a logistics and trucking company

I looked over the Scaffold Mart scaffolding and found it was very nice, simple to put together and seemed to be made to take a lot of punishment.  I don’t know how they sell it as cheap as they do.  It really is very nice.  I’m sure my tiny order was probably not even worth sneezing at but I called them on a couple of occasions during the shipping debacle and while they didn’t always answer the phone they always called me back including a call after hours.  I was very impressed that they cared enough to call.  It was refreshing after dealing with large corporations for so many years who say one thing and do another.  I would definitely give a five out of five rating to Scaffold Mart for quality of their product and support that was top notch.

Scaffolding Mart 5x5 scaffolding

Scaffolding mart 7 foot cross braces and walk boards

Yellow-Roadway, on the other hand, is in desperate need of a more accurate tracking system and logistics that are actually logical.  I was very  surprised at how little people seemed to know about what was really going on.  But seeing as the shipping was free, what can I say?  At least I didn’t have to pay for the poor quality service.  As a side note,  has it ever bothered anyone else driving on the freeway that the Yellow-Roadway logo is orange?

A bride a while back was adamant about shooting as many of the pictures on her shot list well before the ceremony with the bride and groom separate. I had advised otherwise.   It was a hot July and the groom was not to terribly excited to go out in the sun at 4:30 for pictures.  He was supposed to arrive at the venue at 4 p.m. and be ready at 4:30, but had only just arrived with a missing groomsman.  They were only ready at 5 p.m.  Once outside, not a scrap of shade was anywhere in sight and the shots began with those people who were available for the shoot sweat pouring down their faces.  The flower girl had not arrived yet and the bridesmaids were not ready so most of the shots before the wedding were scrapped until after the ceremony.

Another bride planned to shoot an extensive list of shots well before the wedding in April.  Even though we started late with shooting because the bride and bridesmaids were not ready we started shooting, it was so bright out that day that everyone was squinting horribly in the picture.  It was a golf course wedding that offered no trees for shade near the clubhouse so the pictures were shot in bright sunlight which is not nearly as flattering as the pictures shot after the ceremony when the sun had dipped a bit.  The bride had beautiful eyes which didn’t show up in the shots before the ceremony but showed very well after.

What does a seasoned photographer say about the best time to shoot your posed family wedding pictures?  Shoot them after the ceremony. You aren’t going to save much time shooting beforehand as it is normally  a futile exercise in trying to get everyone out before they are ready.  Every one will have arrived at the wedding for certain by the end of the ceremony and there should be no delays hopelessly waiting for someone to show up so the pictures can be completed beforehand.  I suppose in the perfect world of magazine weddings people aren’t late, don’t get lost,  have their wedding clothes on already and are completely prepared when they spill a soda on their dress while applying make-up in the car.  It’s not fun to hear, but the wedding party in 50% of the weddings we shoot will not be complete until just a little bit before the ceremony takes place.

It’s a photographer job to make sure that excellent pictures are shot at a wedding and leaves with a considerable amount of good images  to represent that wedding well.  A coordinators job is to make sure the wedding runs smoothly but their responsibility ends when the wedding ends.  They don’t care if the pictures turned out poorly because of bad scheduling.  The pictures are the only thing most people have to remember their wedding by so take the word of your photographer if you’d like fantastic images.

An additional reason I typically try to shoot after a ceremony is to take advantage of softer, warmer looking light  from the sun.  Once the sun has dipped the light from the sun has to travel through more of the atmosphere which softens the light and changes the color.  It is certainly more flattering to do this and also it tends to cool down a little bit once the sun isn’t directly overhead.  Thinking of the  comfort of your wedding party helps to get happier pictures. It will be cooler with more shade  available to keep people from getting too hot later in the day.  In Texas this is something to think about a good part of the year.

If you do choose to shoot all of your pictures beforehand and have the bride and groom see each other before the ceremony be sure to remind people to be timely more than once. Certain people will not show up unless they are reminded many times.  Sometimes people won’t show up on time no matter what you tell them.  Bride’s in the past who were concerned about specific people not showing up on time have purposefully told them an hour earlier than the schedule said.  Some were still late.

Any which way you choose to shoot your posed pictures at your wedding, flexibility is definitely a good choice as you are preparing for your fun and exciting day!

Reading further into the story I discovered that one of the things that damaged in the fire were 40,000 to 50,000 film, tapes, and other original media from shoots by NBC or Universal though nothing was destroyed permanently because the media giant had a duplicate site elsewhere.

There has been a war waging recently among the media users and media creators. The war is for fair use of media by the user. You as a user do not have many rights when you purchase a DVD or CD. The rules are defines by lawyers at this time. Lawyers who define the law by suing kids and anyone else they feel will be high profile enough to get attention and scare the public in. Of course this is done in civil court because the laws of course are only interpreted by those lawyers to include what they are suing for. Sure stealing is wrong. But how about ripping music to MP3 from your own CDs? According to the digital millennium copyright act of 1998, if you change or remove encryption to ‘rip’ a DVD to your computer you are breaking the law.

I think the fire at Universal studios was not an accident and was actually a message to the entertainment world to back off and let people use their media how they want. This isn’t the world of yesterday when we all had records and could only play them on record players. There was no way to make them work in a CD player.

Today we see our rights being taken. Daily, someone in the government decides, for the safety of the public, what we are no longer allowed to do. Sadly, so few in our country care about rights so long as they are being placated by something, entertained, inebriated, or generally confused to the point where they can no longer act. I saw on a bumper sticker a few days ago that said ‘freedom isn’t free’. But I think that it’s more appropriate to say that freedom is gone. The Constitution is no longer of the people, it is defined and redefined by lawyers who wish to change just one thing or another to fit their personal, political or employers whims. We barely have the freedom that was sought after by the pilgrims escaping England for tax and religious relief. We are taxed heavily and our religious freedoms are being turned into hate crimes. Our world concerns itself with itself, worshiping celebrities, false gods, money, power and forgets that which is truly important: God, family, freedom. Don’t forget what’s important as you sit in front of your X-Box or iPod and are distracted from the world around you. Eventually they could be knocking on your door asking for that iPod. You would care then.

During the writers strike, my uncle found himself bored out of his mind because there wasn’t anything to do. Apparently, no one had to go during that time either. I talked to him a few days before the writers strike ended and asked him what he thought about the writers demands. He said they were greedy and they should stop complaining. He said that he would love to be paid for the rest of his life for the job he does today. He said that the production stops just as quick if there isn’t a toilet somewhere nearby. He was obviously unhappy with the writers and told me that he had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars during the three month strike.

Looming in the distance there looks to be a actor strike coming up fast. The actors have many of the same gripes that the writers had with the exception of one that I thought interesting: Product placement. That’s right, they want a piece of the action every time the studio gets paid something by Coke, Disney, Apple, or whoever to have their soda, Donald Duck, or a computer used or held or spoken about by the actors in a film or television show. Wow. These people want to get paid extra if they hold a Coke instead of generic brand X. Talk about greed.

If it was up to me I’d fire them all. For every writer and actor there is in the guilds in Hollywood there are ten others waiting behind them. Waiting to be discovered. Most of them have talent, have the look, have what it takes to make it in the business but can’t do it because the business is all tied up by the guilds. The theory is that if the studios fire all of the guild writers and hire non-guild writers that every other guild or union from the actors to the directors to the laziest teamster grips would all strike and nothing would get done at all. Most of these people are all replaceable as far I’m concerned. Just because you are a teamster and your only duty is to move the camera from point A to point B and not from point B to point A doesn’t mean you should make $100k a year and it doesn’t mean you are guaranteed work forever. Let’s fire every single one of them and replace them with a fresh batch of people excited to be in the business. Maybe there would be entertainment that was actually entertaining rather than one crummy show after another sinking to the lowest common denominator. Fire them all and let’s see what happens. Maybe you’ll be sitting in a stall next to Cameron Diaz or Tom Cruise in one of my uncle’s extremely high end toilet trailers on a break from shooting something new that is better.

Have a different opinion? I’d love to hear it.

I live in a suburb of Austin, Texas called Round Rock.  They’re not really sure what the population is because about 50,000 people have moved here in the last ten years but it’s around 80-90k.  The town is growing so fast that they haven’t even finished roads and have people ready to move in.  I live in a subdivision called Sam Bass Trails named after a bank robber, but no one knows that because a big truck knocked over the sign at the entrance to the subdivision and it was hauled off long ago.  I’ve only heard tales told and have never seen it.  Last year a small strip mall was built and the only business in it’s 15,000 sq/ft was Dominoes Pizza.  Dominoes only used a small portion of the space which parts of remain empty still.  From the moment I bought my house, the little voice inside of my head has been prompting me to try the pizza thing.  I don’t really need the money but have time to kill because I am way too efficient with being a photographer and have boring spells where I write stupid blogs about thing just like this.

October this year rolled around and I decided to do it.  My brother had actually been a delivery driver for them for several months.  I think he was looking for something that required very little mental effort as his last job running tech support for an internet provider wiped him out.  I filled out the application form which I haven’t done in many years and returned it.  They hired me the next day.  I think I might have been a little overqualified for the job but they seemed not to care.

My training and beginning day was October 5th.  I was feeling kind of weird.  I’m not used to having people tell me when and where to be.  I’m not used to having someone else dictate anything to my life unless it is a client, and with that I can always say no or at least have it on my terms.  I was on time, but I wasn’t sure if I would make it.  After all it was about 100 yards away from my house.

The first thing they did when I arrived was have me put on the Dominoes uniform: a blue teeshirt and hat both with the logo on them.  I put it on and looked in a mirror.  “Oh,” was all I murmured and rolled my eyes thinking of how ridiculous I looked.  Wearing this outfit made me look so stupid.  I was starting to regret my decision to try this job at that instant.  It got worse when the ‘manager’, a long haired guy five years younger than myself told me and another trainee to tuck in my shirt to abide by Dominoes policy or as I decided it should better be called: The Unholy Law.  I am not a chubby fellow nor am I a skinny fellow.  I am average build.  Tucking in a teeshirt does nothing for hiding some of the chub that I would rather people imagine.  I NEVER tuck in a shirt.  I specifically buy dress shirts to shoot weddings that are not meant to be tucked in.  The only thing I will tuck in is a dress shirt for a suit and that’s covered by a suit coat NOT TUCKED IN!

I tucked in my shirt and walked into the training room, a small 4×6 office where I was subjected to the training video which mostly was about how the computer tracking system worked.  I failed the tests at the end which I assume is a bad sign, but eventually figured it out.

Delivering pizza was the next step.  A pizza ride along was next.  They give you over to an experienced pizza delivery person and you see how it’s done.  This was the clincher.  My brother was who I was riding along with.  That was good for me.  It was a kind of tandem pizza delivery thing where I would follow him up to the door and deliver the pizza with him and observe.  I thought it just made us look like idiots.  How many delivery people does it take to deliver one stupid pizza.  I started observing the customers at each delivery and noticed that most of them were not the happy people who I had expected waiting patiently for their pizza.  They were hungry and wanted their damn pizza.  I found out quickly that the longer it took, the less of a tip there was.  In my head I started devising an if statement to represent this:

Definitions: Customer time (a), Travis tip (b), 30 minutes (ah), 60 minutes (ai), 90 minutes (au)

if a if a>ah and a if a>ai and a if a>au then better to eat the pizza myself
end if

I was really freaked out.  The people who ordered pizza really weren’t angry, but had so many different personalities.  Not everyone laughs at the same jokes to the same degree.  Not everyone finds my bumbling Woody Allen-esque mumbling amusing and some down right hate it.  I was worried. We got back after the deliveries and now it was my turn to deliver and be watched by my ride along brother.

We put the Dominoes sign on top of my car and set off with three orders at once.  Two on different sides of town and one at an old lady’s house around the corner who they called Wheelchair Lady.  I was informed that Wheelchair Lady was a Dominoes regular who was remembered not just because she was in a wheelchair but because she required the delivery boy to enter her house, get her a Coke from the fridge and a glass from her cupboards.  She smoked heavily and her entire house was mired in the stench.  I think this first delivery of mine made up my mind that delivering pizza was not for me.  We were gone for an hour delivering three pizzas and when I returned I told the manager I was done.  He just smiled as if he knew I wouldn’t make it from the beginning.  I hung up my hat and shirt and walked out as soon as they doled out my tips.  THANK YOU GOD FOR MAKING ME SELF EMPLOYED!

Dominoes was started by a devout Catholic who sold the pizza chain for $1 billion in the 90s.  He is currently starting a city where his devout Catholicism can be the ruling law of the land.

The Dell factor.  Why is Round Rock growing so damn fast?  This is the corporate headquarters of Dell  Corp.  They employ 10,000 in Round Rock and another 10,000 inAustin 5 miles south.  In 2005 Dell sold $50 billion in computers and electronics.  They have a 60 year deal with the city of Round Rock to split sales tax revenue which has caused property taxes to be cut by more then half since 1993.  The city receives sales tax revenue on $5 billion dollars of Texas computer sales.  People ask why I moved here.  Now you know.