Carl Hutzler’s Blog

Today I spent about an hour figuring out how to link my photography business home page to a site where customers could order prints without having to involve me directly in the transaction. I had some choices, primarily between Shutterfly.com and Smugmug.com. Both offer professional packages where you can sell your prints to customers with a mark-up which you get to keep (well mostly) as profit. I have been looking to do this for some time now and was close to working with Shutterfly. But I never did it because Shutterfly just was not quite what I was looking for….they were missing some things that I wanted. They also seem to bury their “professional” offer down in the bottom of the page. It just looked half-hearted to me.

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The extension that Top Coder put together for us is updated. I also included some information on why TB seems to work differently when it is talking to AOL servers vs any other IMAP/POP server. There is a reason!

Check the original post to get the info.

Well, to be honest, I can’t say for sure that I know the parade will be canceled, but I am fairly sure the trees will not bloom a second time this year … as they are blooming right now!

Picture taken on January 15th, 2007 in Fairfax, Virginia (about 20 miles from the tidal basin). Maybe Al Gore is right?

Or maybe its not that unusual after all.

The holy trinity of goods and services. Well, maybe there are others, but these are just great in my book…

1. Ebay.com
Everyone knows about ebay. Most of the stuff is overpriced (but great for sellers as stuff sells for more than it should :-) But the wonderful part about ebay is the ability to find things you could NEVER find elsewhere. Today I bought just the clickwheel for my 2nd generation iPod mini which died. Apple would never sell me a part like that….they would charge me at least $100 to fix it. But for $25 some guy in Hong Kong is going to send me a new click wheel. Cool.

2. Craigslist.org
This is the ebay for locals. This is where I buy and sell things that might be cost prohibitive to sell on Ebay…like dumbbells/weights (shipping costs) for example. I also use Craigslist to advertise my photography to local readers. Much better targeting than ebay which is read by billions of people around the globe. And it is totally free.

3. Freecycle.org
Many people may not know about freecycle. I found out about it from my old neighbor, Alvaro Castillo. Its a Yahoo! group which you sign up to be a part of. Its VERY local…Reston is different than Fairfax is different than Sterling. The idea is the members of the Reston freecycle group clean out their garage or basement and give away things for free. Other members see stuff they would like/want and ask for it. The “seller” selects the person they want to give it to and they arrange for the “buyer” to pick the item up (remember, its very local, just around the corner). Today I picked up a perfectly good digital camera, a Canon G1 (3.3MP) from someone. Its missing the battery which I found (on ebay) for $15. Now my 9 year old son has a digital camera and I won’t care too much if it gets handled a bit.

Isn’t that “American Online” thing pretty cool :-)

I saw this post on Sree Kotay’s blog and laughed out loud. Even my 9 year old son got most of it and thought it was hilarious.  Look for the Dilbert link to “Restroom Automation”.

Thanks, Sree!

I shot John Edwards’ visit to Portsmouth, NH last Friday. It was his second stop on his “announcement tour” after the initial announcement of his candidacy in New Orleans the day before. The event took place in an elementary school gymnasium. The staff did a good job setting up the patriotic backdrops for the TV cameras, but as usual, gym lighting leaves a little to be desired. I white balanced off the white posts of the small chain separating the podium from the crowd. I was able to shoot around 1/30 or 1/60th by bumping my speed to 400/800. I tried using flash but it was hard to get good color and exposure. Most of the other photographers went with existing light too.
I found a few places where the lighting made for some dramatic angles and generally think the shoot came out well. It was a fun experience and I look forward to doing more of this type of photojournalism work.

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