I’ve been a bit busy the last 10 days. Had an assignment for Newsweek, it has not run yet and I will post more about it when it runs, and a gig for Red Bull. The job for Red Bull was an interesting one. They sponsor many athletes in many different sports and from time to time they do a cross promotion where one athlete shows another all about his sport. Great PR and it helps to re-enforce the ‘team’ mentality that Red Bull promotes among it’s athletes. They are all friends and hang out and have a blast meeting each other and learning about new professional sports. I ended up working with 3 athletes, two who were the cross promoting ones and one who just came by to hang out. The two athletes are Scott Speed, a race car driver who spent time in the Formula 1 series in Europe and is now working his way into NASCAR in the Arca and Truck series, he just won an ARCA race on April 25th in Kansas and Carmilo Villegas,a PGA golfer who is super talented and has many fans. He is considered by some to be the best dresser on the tour.
The other athlete was Matt Johnson, a Rally America championship driver

So this job went crazy right from the beginning. The plan was simple, meet at Lowe’s Motor Speedway at 730am, Scott will show Carmilo around a stock car, then they would drive a few laps using the cars from the Richard Petty Driving Experience. After that we would head over to a golf course where Carmilo would show Scott how to hit a golf ball a long straight way. Sounds awesome, easy to photograph, many great photo opps, what could go wrong? Well, everything. Alarm goes off at 6am and the first sound I hear is rain on the metal roof. Awesome. As I am getting ready, I get the call at 640am from the PR person at Red Bull Racing. Obviously we are not going to the track, but stand by as we are coming up with a new plan. Sounds great. New plan is to meet at the Red Bull Racing Team shop where Scott, Carmilo and Matt will get a guided tour. Sounds good. Show up at 945am, video guys pull in at the same time, talent is about 30 minutes behind us. No problem. Tour goes well, lotsa great info, the guys are genuinely interested and we head off to lunch. After lunch we had a plan of going to an indoor go-kart track and using that as a fun stand in for Lowes. Looks like golf got scrapped all together. But, Scott notices that it not only has stopped raining but the roads are dry. dry roads = dry race track! Crackberries are pulled out and PR folks are making calls left and right and we are back on the road heading to Lowes. We get there and everyone is having a blast getting ready, the guys get into fire suits and into the cars, Scott pushes the button, the cars roar to life and then the sky opens up , again. Another rain out. So, back to the go-kart track where everyone had a blast racing the carts, even me. The head PR guy invited me to run a race or two. Nice to be be thought of. I was running laps of like 27 seconds and Scott and Matt were running like 20 seconds! As they should be. So at the end of the day, at 730pm, it is decided that we will head back to the track at 8am the next day for racing shots, then head over to Quail Hollow Country Club where Carmilo has a practice round for the Wachovia Championship.
Next day, wake up it is sunny and clear. Ahhhhhhhh. Everthing goes well yesterday and the shots are fun. I did have an interesting camera problem. My batteries only lasted for 10-20 shots each, and when I pulled it out and put it back in it read a full charge and then quit again after 20 shots. All of the batteries did this, so I’m guessing I have a camera issue or all my batteries went bad at once, could be, they are all old and about the same age.

So here are some of the pix.

The guys getting the tour

Scott showing Carmilo the inside of a stock car

Carmillo at the track

Carmilo and Scott racing carts

Red Bull cars taking off for some laps at Lowes

Matt and Scott watch Carmilo hit to the green

The guys walking up a fairway

So, yesterday was my niece Abi’s 8th birthday. Hard to believe she is getting so old. So, another party was to be thrown in my BIL’s garage, or as he calls it his ‘man-cave’. He gladly gives it up a few times a year so the kids can have parties. It is a great space for it, no spills to worry about and plenty of room. My sister Amy, is not one to just have a ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ game and a bowl of chips. Oh no. Planning starts months ahead, there is testing of party supplies and configuring of gift bags. This years theme was a ’spa day’. She made special lotions and soaps, all labeled with a Abi’s birthday label. mirrors were set up, high hair styling chairs were searched out and acquired. a complete nail station was set up. Boa’s and hair extensions of all sorts of colors were supplied. Flat and curling irons were stocked up and power strips were filled to capacity. For a while there it was all smoking hair and elbow room only in front of the mirror. nails were done and glitter flew! Everyone got a hand lettered gift bag full of candy and spa stuff and a good time was had by all. Check out the photos!

the birthday girl, Abi

the girls getting all dolled up

Even the big girls couldn’t resist having their hair done

before and after

goodies and gift bags

cake time!

Jake learns a lesson - Don’t trust girls!!

So I sent out my first email promotion at 3pm today. I chose to use email promotion instead of the traditional postcard or printed piece for a couple of reasons. First, it is much “greener”. When you send out 1500 postcards, you got to figure that 1300 of them are going to be thrown away, give or take. That is a lot of waste, even though most big office buildings have recycling in place, it is still a lot of waste. Secondly, it is cheaper over all. For me, right now, it was a better idea to buy a list subscription and use email promos. The cost is 4-8 cents a piece for an email (not including the list subscription from Agency Access) vs. 50 cents to 1 dollar per printed piece plus the list subscription plus the postage. It is also easier to get to my website, just a click, vs. having to type in the address. a little thing, but anything to make it easier to get to my work.
So I sent out my promo to a list of 1377 creative professionals in magazines, ad agencies, corporate art buyers, music companies, etc. I sent to all national magazines and to agencies in the Southeast region.
My stats so far are of the 1377 sent, about 75 out of office replies, 268 opens, 23 click thru’s, and 2 unsubscribes. some of the opens have multiple opens. does this mean they went back to it? or that they were sharing the promo with co-workers? I don’t know. I’m waiting for my web stats to update so I can see how much traffic increased. I don’t know if the stats will change much tomorrow or next week, this is my first one. But I will be watching them. One thing I will try on the next one in 4 weeks will be a different day and a little earlier in the day.

Here is the promo I sent. the whole image was a link to my website.

I happen to think that the Dogwood flower is the only perfect flower in the whole world. I love all flowers and think highly of many others, but the dogwood…….. maybe it is that it blooms as spring does, after most of the rains and as the weather is turning warm. maybe it is starkness of the white blooms against a still brown and dark woods. One of my favorite things is when hiking and you come across a random branch blooming in the middle of a forest, illuminated and brightened by a shaft of sunlight, just enough to let a few blooms open up.
Many years ago, 1995 I think is the earliest, I started photographing the dogwoods. At first it was just dogwoods that I stumbled across, then I started seeking them out in hard to reach places, think long hikes and stuck trucks. I have put more effort into it in some years than others. Once I used a hotel room, once I pulled over on the PA turnpike in a rain storm to run into the woods after a flash of white caught my eye, once I trimmed about 4 branches full of blooms and set up a studio in my apartment, breaking a long period of not shooting (over a year).
This year was fairly easy. Being my first springtime here in NC, I happened to find 8-10 dogwood trees right on my parents property, never knew it. The weather was overcast yesterday and the blooms just screamed to me. I think it was the subdued light. I am pretty happy with what I got, but will still keep my eyes open, maybe even shooting some on film. ( I’ve been meaning to run some experiments with film and a lab that offers scanning at a very reasonable price, ie- cheap )

Bella hung out with me while I was contemplating the flowers.

After my fishing trip I had a 12 hour turn around to catch a plane to Ft. Walton Beach to look over a collection of historic photos that a client is considering purchasing. It is a HUGE collection and has a price somewhere north of 2 million dollars. It is quite a responsibility. This was my second trip and it was to get a more thorough count on image numbers and quality. the collection ranges from about 10-15% in a good organized state, to boxes of images, to boxes and binders that have never been edited at all, EVER! It was 2 days of solid counting and sorting. kinda mind numbing. Here are a few photos of what I was looking at.

rolled film in coffe and film cans

glass plates

boxes of images

box of negs