Call Me Ed

I consider myself to be fairly intelligent. On the other hand, I can also be totally oblivious to the most obvious things. Case in point ...

In my Firefox bookmarks bar, I have a folder called "Favorite Photographers". In it reside my favorite shooters from every type of photography: weddings, portraits, fashion, commercial, and–of course–food.

One of my favorite food photographers is Heidi Swanson, a San Francisco photographer with a great natural syle.

Meanwhile, over at my Google Reader are all my favorite blogs. Tech blogs. Photography blogs. Bible blogs. Business blogs. Cooking blogs. I love to cook, and one of my favorite cooking blogs is 101 cookbooks. One of our customers actually turned me on to it. It has a very basic premise: take a recipe out of a cookbook, make it, and post the results with a really sharp photo.

Yesterday, I finally decided to read the 101 Cookbooks About page. The author? Heidi Swanson.

Like I said ... oblivious, at times.

Gary Fong had a great post about one of our customers yesterday. Jen and Jody have 105 weddings booked for this year. That's not a typo.

I started a new book this weekend. Made to Stick was just published this month and is written by two brothers who have studied why some ideas survive and others die.

Unfortunately, I never finished my previous book–I left it in the Tulsa Airport somewhere.

Made to Stick has solid reviews on Amazon and I'm encouraged because it appears the book will apply to many areas, not just business.

One of the authors is also the founder of Thinkwell, an elearning company I remember following in my days at Teaching Gear.

There are a few web tools (I wouldn't call them sites) I've come to rely on. I almost think that I take their existence for granted. Yes, I could live without them–I just wouldn't want to.

Google Reader

I read a lot of blogs. Photography blogs. Business blogs. Bible blogs. Tech blogs. Cooking blogs. I don't have time to hit every site.

If you're not reading blogs, you should. If you're not reading them with an RSS reader, you're wasting time. Learn about RSS and use Google Reader.

Basecamp

If it wasn't for Basecamp, I'm not sure if I would get anything done. Everyone at BIG Folio uses it. If someone verbally asks me to do something, my reply is generally "put it in Basecamp please".

TinyURL

So simple, so utilitarian, yet so handy. Need to send some one an Ebay listing or BIG Show link? TinyURL it baby.

One of my favorite photographers in the UK - Jeff Ascough - now has a really cool blog. Not only does it have some great images, but it also features some great tips for photographers.

Every time I have posted images for critique in DWF, Jeff has always been there to provide thorough, thoughtful comments. I'm the type of photographer who appreciates–nay, demands–honest critique. I want to know what I did wrong. I don't want to be patronized.

In my opinion, too many photographers are jumping on the workshop bandwagon. It's also very easy to call yourself a photojournalist. It's refreshing to know there are real photojournalists who are simply willing to help people.

Oh, Jeff just switched to Mac too, another plus.

Sounds like the name of a nice country song, eh? All American Airlines flights are canceled today, so we'll hopefully get home tomorrow.

Trying to move Kent and I to another hotel with faster Internet. As much as I love the Emily Morgan, I can't get any work done here.

The 2nd day of the ImagingUSA expo just ended. I'll have to admit, the conference is much better than I anticipated (never been to a PPA conference before).

It was great to see some of our photographer friends. Bambi Cantrell spoke at the Microsoft Theater right behind our booth. Also caught a glimpse of Joe Buissink speaking at the Canon booth. I'm still confused because I thought Joe was a Nikon shooter–he's now listed on Canon's Explorers of Light page.

Got to meet a bunch of our great customers too–including Jennifer Wilson, Ryan Brown and Carla Swinney.

More tomorrow.

I'm in San Antonio right now for the ImagingUSA conference. The expo starts tomorrow–Kent and I got the booth setup today. I can't believe the racket GES has had going in the convention industry for years. Honestly, I don't think people would stand for it were it a business-to-consumer industry.

Here's an example. If you order Internet in your booth, they drop a single ethernet cable–regardless of how many IPs you buy. You then need a hub (no routers allowed) to connect multiple computers. Hubs are fairly dumb devices. Price of 4-port hub at BestBuy: $19 (which I considered high). Price to rent 4-port hub from GES: $135.

Example 2. Price to rent a 10x10 sqaure of carpet for your booth: $150. But guess what? They install the carpet, but they don't vacuum it. Vacuuming is an extra $160.

We didn't want to use the ugly, multi-colored curtains behind the booth. Cost to rent a black curtain: $260. Didn't have to pay that one though–I found an extra black curtain panel in one of the lounges.

I also found a wheeled cart to bring our computers in on. Saved another $60.

I'm in the small town of Grove, Oklahoma tonight. It's been awhile since I've been here. They now have a coffee shop with free wifi, which is nice.

It was weird flying into Denver today for my connection–the whole city was covered in snow.

Taylor loves to video chat me when I'm out of town.

2006 is over in 8 hours. Wow, that went fast. So, as best as I can recall, here is my year in review:

• Sold my educational software business
• Got out of debt
• Bought a white Jeep Cherokee
• Bought a Canon 5D
• Became a father for the 3rd (hopefully last) time
• Shot two dozen or so weddings behind Kenneth Morgan. Thanks again Kenny
• Shot 3 weddings as the main photographer–and assisted by my wife.
• Bought a MacBook Pro
• Got inside someone else's white Jeep Cherokee outside of Starbucks
• Got to speak at DWF in Las Vegas.
• Turned 31
• Experienced the effects of terrorism first-hand when the August terror plot required us to cancel Jessica's 2nd Summer visit
• Got inside someone else's white Jeep Cherokee outside of my bank
• Learned Ruby and the Rails Framework and built a couple Rails apps.
• Celebrated my 2nd (hopefully not last) wedding anniversary
• Broke my streak of consecutive years with a vacation to Hawaii

Well, that's about all I can remember. Hope your year was just as exciting.