Last week I attended the Atlanta Photography Meetup’s photo shootout, and my camera hasn’t cooled down yet!  Thanks to Simplephoto.com and Professional Photo Resources (PPR) for sponsoring the event, it was incredible.  This event was a smorgasborg of photography, models and studio lighting.  They had about 20 models and about 24 photographers.  The good people at PPR had three stations setup with different lighting.  Basically, the photographers and models  would rotate through the stations so that you had equal time with each model at each station.  When you weren’t shooting, in the studio you could go outside and shoot.  Also, Eric from simplephoto provided food, snacks and BEER.  Yes, BEER.  I love beer.  At any rate, check out the pics above and if you want to see the rest of them, visit my flickr page, here. 

Also, I’d like to thank all the models that participated, you were excellent, especially under those hot tungsten lights, I know it was hard.  So big ups to all the models!  You guys were fantastic.  Also thanks to all the folks at Simplephoto.com and PPR, you guys really know how to put on an event.  All you aspiring pro photographers out there should definitely check out PPR and Simplephoto.com.  PPR has awesome studio space for rent with reasonable prices, they also rent equipment from bodies to lenses, flashes and accesories. (by the way PPR is having a free lighting seminar on March, 8th; rsvp here before its too late!)  Simplephoto is a cool resource as well and allows you to easily sell photos and create photo packages online.  So defiantly check ‘em out.  Kudos to all the photographers who came out as well, I thought my pictures were great until I saw some of you guys images, great work!  And please keep me in the loop about upcoming events!

 If you wanna join the Atlanta Photo Meetup, you can do so by signing up here.  I’ll see you guys at the lighting seminar in March, Have fun and keep shooting!

In honor of Valentines Day, I made a book of poetry for my wife. I hope she likes it. Happy Valentines Day!

A Match Made i…

By Tyese and Craig Ba…

photo by www.thesnapclap.com.

The lobby of the Marriott Marquis in downtown Atlanta looks like something
straight out of a science fiction movie! The outside of the hotel looks
rather mundane, as do the interior of the rooms (I was thoroughly
underwhelmed). But the lobby?!? I was awestruck, no doubt. The lobby is
incredible.

Who would have thunk it! The Giants of New York upset the Pattys in Superbowl XLII. It was ugly first half but the fourth quarter more than made up for the rather mundane 7 - 3 score at the half; with the Giants pulling out the upset at the very end of the fourth. Too bad I’m not in new York anymore. I’m sure the parade is gonna be crazy! Its all good, I’m just glad enough that we got to stop the Pats! As Terry Bradshaw said, this win is the things that legends are made of. Lets hope, ’cause I’m just about tired of Tom Brady and the Patriots.

photo by: Foto Bocch

My wife and I went to Bones a few weeks ago. Bones is like Atlanta’s Premier steak house. They had a bone in Filet Mignon that was just ridiculous. At any rate, Bones has free Valet Parking.  So we valeted and went inside.  We had our steaks and potatoes and what not, and it was time to go home.  We went outside and presented the valet our ticket, he hurriedly retrieved our key, ran over to the car and pulled it around right in front of our feet. He opened the door for my wife and handed me the keys. I hit him with a five spot, hopped in and drove away.

Almost immediately we began to smell something.  It was absolutely rank.  I knew it didn’t come from me, and I figured it wasn’t coming from my wife either; she’s too beautiful for something so foul smelling to emanate from her.  So we looked at each other kinda puzzled.  That’s when I surmised that it had to be the valet. Damn valet, he took the liberty of passing gas in our car.  And to think, I tipped him a five spot and what I get in return? Fresh ass gas from the valet. Thanks valet guy.

So we rolled down the widows and opened the sunroof and tried to air the car out. But the smell would not dissipate. Did the valet guy have an accident in the car as well? Where is this smell coming from? That’s when my wife reveled that she spilled some of her lunch, which included yogurt, into her lunch bag. She thought that she cleaned it out. But alas, some of it had gotten it a small compartment of the bar and had began to rot.

Upon this realization we went from being mad at the gassy valet to being embarrassed by a stinky car. We wondered what the valet was thinking? Maybe there’s some blog out there by this valet, talking about our stinky car or something?  The moral of the story is, don’t tip free valet guys. Nah, I’m just kidding, the moral of the story is if you’re gonna valet, don’t pack your lunch that day.

This is weird I’m sure.  Especially since this car did not do well here in the states and this is a little out of left field but, the UK website for the Volkswagon Phaeton is one of the most engrossing websites I’ve ever been to in my life.  It might not be the most technologically advanced or best designed or whatever; but in terms of interactivity and imersion I think this site is top notch.  The music is off the hook, the detail that went into the site seems to be indicative of the detail that VW put into the Phaeton.  I know the US car buyers market is not deep enough to support an $80,000 VW but man, you gotta admit this car is awesome and so is the website. 

Your dream still lives!