Carl Hutzler’s Blog

I took a bunch shots at the Spring Demo’s a few weeks ago. The performance took place in a community center near the school and it is not the best “stage” for the dancers or the photographer as you will see. But I think I was able to get the background “out of the shots” as much as possible.

The main event is next week where they will perform at the Madeira School in Great Falls. Tickets are available online, but you better hurry!

Click for 3D Slide Show
All Images are © Carl Hutzler Photography.
Unauthorized reproduction is not permitted.

My Conservatory Ballet client wanted to sell tickets online to some upcoming performances of the Nutcracker Ballet. I guess doing it all by hand as they have done in the past (phone calls, running a credit card, recording who paid, etc) is a pain in the you know. So with just 4 days notice :-) they asked if I could whip something up.

I took a quick look around and was overwhelmed by the number of shopping cart programs available. Everything from a service to software to freeware. I tried to ensure the package I was going to use had inventory management and could take paypal payments. You need inventory control to sell tickets of course. And Paypal is just easy to set-up on such short notice.

I went with Zen Cart and have been reasonably pleased. The software seems robust and the shopping experience is very professional and amazingly full featured. And the price was $0!

My only complaint about the program is that the admin interface is very poorly organized. Trying to find a setting for this or that is a 10-15 minute exploration. There are just zillions of options and its not clear what category the option you need is located under. I usually had more success Googling it and seeing someone elses frustration trying to do the same thing along with a reply from someone who happened to know how.

Not sure I would want to run a store with 1000’s of items for sale using Zen Cart, but for something small like we are doing, it worked out just fine. Take a peek if you like…and if you are in the Washington DC area, you should consider buying a ticket. The show is held at the amazing Madeira School overlooking the Potomac in Great Falls, Virginia. The view is worth the price alone….but the show (the 35th production) will be amazing too!

http://conservatoryballet.com/tickets/

Added @11:30am 11/30: Found out that we also need to allow for a 10% discount for purchases of >10 tickets. Zen Cart can discount a single product but did not have the ability to discount an entire shopping cart. Since we wanted the discount to apply for any mix of adult/child and show time tickets, I thought we were stuck. But then I found a free module called Quantity Discounts. After installing the code and activating it under modules, I applied a 10% discount to the cart for >10 items and viola!

This week I shot three days of portraits at the ballet studio in Fairfax, Virginia in the Washington DC area. It was a lot of work but very rewarding. The lighting set-up was simple and flattering to the students: two big silver umbrellas at 45° each in front and two bare flashes behind the students also at 45° which added some separation from the black backdrop and some hair highlights as well. The lighting is not “dramatic” but it does the job and provides a lot of space for the students to do all types of positions and jumps. With other set-ups, the photographer has to move lights around a lot and we simply did not have time in the 30 minute slots to do that. Perhaps we will do some more creative work early next year with longer sessions for the older kids. They may want that for their portfolios as well. Lighting diagram

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I am starting to work with the Conservatory Ballet in Reston, a town in Fairfax, Virginia in the Washington DC area, in a new capacity, as a professional photographer. Having done some computer networking and technical assistance work for them over the last year or so, I proposed helping them shoot their performances/events and portrait sessions. This past weekend I shot my first performance in an “official” capacity and I think the images came out well. We’ll see if anyone agrees and decides to buy them :-)

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My daughter, Anna, wanted to take Ballet this year so I signed her up at the Conservatory Ballet in Reston, a town in Fairfax, Virginia in the Washington DC area. I got a chance to take her to class today and watch. What fun :-)

The teacher even let me snap a few pictures of the class. Below is one of the girls in the class (not Anna).