Carl Hutzler's Blog

… Desnil Wodry??!?!

Well, not really true. This is my friend Kenny who stopped down for the holiday with his lovely wife Michelle. Still a fun picture :-)

Rylan made arrangements for a trip to Longwood Gardens last weekend. They are having their annual Christmas Lights Festival which was quite impressive. We took in the ice skating show which was well done if not a little “eery” on our somewhat foggy evening. And then we ate at the Yuletide Buffet before touring the grounds and returning to Wilmington and our hotel. All in all, I would recommend the visit to anyone in the local area….Longwood is just 30 minutes west of Wilmington, DE.

My buddy, Josh Sarubin, up in New York sent me a collection of photographs of his family from the past year entitled “The Year in Sarubin”. It was a great collection of shots from the year. Tough to believe his kids are so cute! (I love you, Josh)

Anyway, I happened to be putting together a set of images from the last year as well, mostly to print out and put into several frames in our family room. But Josh’s idea made me think about posting them online. So, without further adoo, The Year in Hutzler…

Don’t know about the rest of you, but my blog seemed to load very slowly of late. I tried a bunch of things but could not figure it out and started to suspect my hosting company (1and1.com). Being Christmas Eve and all, I decided today would be a good time to find out.

I went with Dreamhost and signed up for their yearly plan ($10 a month…same as 1and1 business hosting). I heard they were a good provider and I was hoping that the speed issue was indeed 1and1.com and not my blog set-up itself.

My blog was hosted as a directory off of my main site (carlhutzler.com/blog). I wanted to be able to move the main site (my photo business) and the blog as close to seemlessly as possible. I was a little nervous as I had not moved a Wordpress blog before. My website was simple…just a bunch of html files, but the blog had a MySQL database with all kinds of data in it along with my configuration settings and even a little .htaccess rewrite rules for the pretty URL stuff.

I read up a little on the subject and decided to go with the steps after the break… Read more

For the past couple of years I have photographed a number of performances for the Conservatory Ballet of Reston, Virginia. This year I shot two performances of their classic Nutcracker which they have done for over 30 years running. The dancers are incredible, especially considering that everyone is high school age and younger. Several of the dancers last year graduated and are performing in NYC, Germany and one even attended the world famous Vaganova School in Russia (she was the only American ever admitted to the school).

Not only are the dancers wonderful, but the costumes are completely hand made by the staff at the Conservatory. Julia Redick, the Artistic Director, would simply not have it any other way.

Combine the costumes, well rehearsed dancers, and great lighting, and the stage is set for some easy clicking. I will post some more images in the next few days, but I thought this one of Lexie Overholt with partner Stas Bolotsko stood above the rest on my initial scan of the images.

Back at the beginning of November I had the pleasure of shooting a couple so they could give some pictures as gifts to their family around the holidays. We enjoyed a splendid, warm day right at the end of the fall colors in Great Falls National Park. I just finished doing the final edits on the images and thought they really came out nicely.