Cooper

My son Cooper is age 2 3/4. He turns 3 on 5/2/2005. Yesteray, we went to a local photo store to pick-up some Bongo Ties. He was looking in a case at a Canon 20D and pointed at it and said: "Pictures! mine?"

On Friday afternoon, I was shooting high school freshman girls basketball for a friend. Her daughter was on the team and we traded services; I shot the game and she took care of Cooper. He managed to slip away a couple of times and ran out on the court towards where I was shooting under the basket. Lucky it was during a time out and I was able to corral him without trouble. During halftime, he came over and wanted to stand between my legs and "chimp" (look at the pictures on the back screen of the camera).

He loves to sit in my lap and look at the results on the computer; this morning was "hockey!". I have set up a stool next to my workstation so he can sit and watch as I edit; he is getting a bit too big to hold and type at the same time. Soon he will be trying to run the computer

They grow up fast, but I hope he finds enjoyment in something that lets him express his creativity. If that is photography, it will give us something to do together.

Moorhead Hockey

I shot Moorhead High School in the Section 8AA semi-finals tonight vs. Alexandria. Moorhead is the #1 team in the state. Moorhead has also dominated the section over the last couple of years. Moorhead has been able to re-tool and replace graduating seniors without missing a beat. But this year, Moorhead has what is argueably the most talented senior class Minnesota (the state of Hockey) has ever seen. It will be hard to re-tool after this year.

What I saw tonight is of concern. With about 10 minutes left, Alexandria started playing like a 3-1 deficit was insurmountable. Instead, I saw alot of chippy play and some bad penalities. There was extremely high emotions and frustrations out there. Moorhead needs to watch out next year, because the minute they are no longer invinceable, there seems to be a line forming to take a shot at them. It could be a long year.

Dell Jukebox

Just downloaded the CD's I got for Christmas into my Dell Jukebox. I am now over 5GB. Never thought I would get even that much music, but I am quickly on the way to maxing out the 15GB by 2009!!!

Anyone have some recommendations for some good Blues to add to it?

Extensis Portfolio

I have been using Extensis Portfolio for about 3 months and I am still trying to get everything organized. I see tremendous potential in the product, but I also wonder if my workflow is optimal.
Extensis just posted some articles on this.

So I am sitting here loading projects shot in the last 2 to 3 weeks and reading the Extensis case studies to see if I can come up with an idea that works better.

One of the things that GTD talks about is deciding which subjects to do by "energy available." It is 4:50 on a Saturday, I am shooting high school playoff hockey tonight, and perhaps this is not the best time to be reading the website and doing Google searches to come up with a new workflow. . . :)

Hipter PDA and Bongo Ties

I have used note cards on and off since high school for carrying around sorting notes, and organizing thoughts. Last week, I found this article while I was starting to investigate GTD. Great Idea!

In honor of Merlin, I offer a few hacks:

1) Put reference info on the colored cards that you use as dividers. Right now, I have a shrunk down photocopy of David Allen's workflow diagram from the GTD book to help me as I develop my system.

2) Use Bongo ties to hold a large stack of extra blank cards for your briefcase. I have found that with my day job in Information Technology, my night job starting a photography company, my volunteer work, and family, even a short trip away from my desk can cause me to run out of cards.

3) Check out your local Target stores RIGHT NOW!!!! I got 2000 cards for about $8.

Book warning

I am reading a book that is very interesting. It is called GETTING THINGS DONE by David Allen. It starts with an interesting premise:

We are in a age of "Knowledge workers" (see Peter Drucker). Projects are fundimentally different now. The theory that "planners" such as Day Timers or Franklin Covey can organize you is false. Much of our stress, frustation, and bad feelings in our lives and work is tied up in not understanding the above and using inferior tools.

I am half-way through the book and will be writing more as I finish the book and begin implementing this. But I am more excited about what I have read in the first part than any business or self-improvement book I have ever read.

Here is a quick way for you to start checking it out: go to Google and enter "GTD" as your search term (for Getting Things Done). I just got 527,000 hits!

So for the few in the US left that have not heard of this, I hope you find this interesting also. For the vast majority that have already heard of this, why didn't you tell me???? :)

More Cool Tools

I was a boy scout growing up. One of the cool things I leaned to make was a commando belt. This was a belt with a toggle at one end, and a loop at the other. It was long enough to wrap around your waist two or three times. Multiple belts could be hooked together to make longer ropes, and the combination of loop and toggle made it usefull for hundreds of things while in the wild.

Today, I bought some "Bongo Ties". they are commando belts in miniture and no gaffer bag should be without them. The rope has been replaced with a heavy rubber band. I first went though my gear bag and conquered the unruly cords. Then I thought about their use to fasten things to light stands, hook things together and hundrds of other uses. Check them out at www.bongoties.com.

Deja Vu?

I picked up the Superbowl editions of Sports Illustrated and the Sporting News this week and looked forward to a lunch hour of looking at pictures. I first flip to the “Leading Off” section of SI and see John Iacono's picture of Mike Vrabel hauling in a touchdown pass. I then flip to SN's article and the lead picture is of the same TD! Albert Dickson snapped his a fraction of a second before Iacono. Sat down with a few friends and we put both double-tucks open on the table and studied them; finding things we liked in each one, and comparing the subtle differences in angle of shot. If you have a chance, check both out. It is a great exercise to explore what works and what does not work in a picture by looking at two very good pictures and contrasting the differences.

Build a better notepad and I will . . .

I found something cool today: Rhoda Pads. The #8 pad is 2.9” x 8.3” with a heavy backing. It looks to be an interesting reporter's notebook. The paper is of high quality and it is held together with a staple rather than spiral binding (which always catches, bends, or get's generally destroyed in my back pocket. Cost is around $2.90 each for 80 pages.

I also have heard rumors that Moleskine is coming out with a reporter version of their classic journals. This is very cool. I have no idea what the page size is, but I have heard they will be around $10. That makes them too pricy everyday use, but a great resource for working long term on a story.

"Studio" Shooting

A couple of nights ago, I did a team photo. My subjects were members of a High School Freshmen girls basketball team. What a joy to work with. It was obvious that all of them love baseketball and enjoy being with each other. There was not an attitude in the place. No egos, no “image control”, nothing. Just a lot of fun. One of the mom's knew the owner of a local custom motorcycle “chopper” shop, so we shot there with a very impressive prop.

Too Much?

I am a recovering sports junkie. One to two hours of Sports Center, one to three newspapers, and ½ to 6 hours of sports talk radio per day (depends how much time I spend in car). And of course, that does not include time spent watching or photographing games, matches, etc.

I am old enough to remember growing up in the pre-ESPN days. I remember watching ABC Weekend News to get “National Sports” from someone like Dick Schapp. He always had something thought provoking to say, and I could spend a week thinking about it.

Now, it seems that no matter how loud the point is made, we are onto something else before the first point has had a chance to sink in and work on me. We are in an age of abundance of media outlets. Images, video, and words are available in great quantity from all directions. While I partake deeply of this smorgesboard, I wonder what affect is has on us as a society.

Last Saturday, I had breakfast with the men's group from my church. We talked about what “courage” meant. I brought up the point that Sports Center is driven by hype and having to end with the top 10 plays of the day. “Courage”, “Bravery”, “excellent”, etc. are used daily to hype a midseason game well beyond its true importance. But the system breaks down when you are faced with someone like Pat Tillman. If coming back and playing in the second half with a sprained wrist is “couragious”, how can you begin to describe giving up an NFL career to give your life serving your country in a war?

As a sports photographer, what does this mean for me? Here are a few quick thoughts:

1) I need to realize the flood exists. Sidelines are crowded. The technology is better and cheaper, allowing more to get into shooting. If I don't move away from the flood, I will drown.

2) What can I do to make my pictures not look like everybody elses? Innovate and deliver something that will catch the eye rather than be lost in the overload.

3) Emphasize lighting, remotes, and other methods as tools to differentiate my work.

4) Quality, Quality, Quality. As I look at much that is published now, it seems that quality is not rewarded. This thinking is a trap. I need to seek quality because that is the only way to stand out from the crowd. That means drive and effort, as quality is not really a goal but a process.

5) Market with this in mind: message is not “I'm here”; message is “I'm different and that is what you want!

That is the beginning of my list. I certainly am looking for input. What do you think?

More Superbowl Pictures

Check out the "currently cool" selection at sportsshooter.com.

It is Rhona Wise's Superbowl pictures.

There are some great shots here.

Organization and Prioritization

Not shooting Hockey tonight.

I had an opportunity to shoot hockey tonight. But I passed. Instead I am taking my wife out for supper for her birthday. In the past, I have let my job(s) interfere too much with my family life. For example, I spend my 10^th wedding anniversary at the office because it was 12/31/1999 and I wanted to be on-hand in case anything happened to our systems. It is now five years later and I still hear about regularly. I have commitments to work and things that need to get done. But I have also canceled too many vacations, nights out, and other plans for work. My “New Years' Resolution” for the last three years has been to live smarter. I am focusing on planning better, scheduling better, and doing everything possible to resolve issues and changes in a way that don't impact on my family. My wife and son deserve it.

Oh, one more thing. Emergencies do happen. So when all attempts at planning fail, I have found that frustration on my part only makes it work. Communicate with your family and friends, get the problem fixed, and then figure out what to do special to make up for it.

Superbowl Pictures

I could hardly wait to see the papers today and review their art from the Superbowl. The Fargo Forum ran a full page of pictures on the back page of the sports section. It was well laid out and told the story from ex-Presidents Bush and Clinton interacting with fans before game, to the game, to halftime, to the post game celebrations.

Then I picked up a copy of USA Today to read during lunch. Robert Deutsch has a front page picture of Donvan McNabb looking out of the side of his helmet as Tedy Bruschi tries to bring him down on the first quarter sack that ended up in instant replay . The picture fills the area above the fold. Maybe it is just me, but I love pictures that show the facial reactions of contact. Tedy Bruschi grimices in determination; Donovan's face shows the desire to slip the tackle along with the pain of having his head ripped off. In the original play on the field, the officials rules that Donovan slipped Bruschi's tackle, but then was immediately stripped of the ball with the Pats recovering. Philly coach Andy Reid threw the challenge flag and the review clearly showed that McNabb's knee was down and Bruschi was awarded the sack, but Philly retained the ball. This was probably the most important play in the first half and Robert had a strong shot.

Now I am waiting for the Sports Illustrated and Sporting News to arrive so I can see more shots.

But lets think about this another way: was Robert Deutsch's shot the best football shot of the year? Nope. No way. There are shots that Deutsch has made this year that are better. There are shots that hundreds of other photographers have made this year that are better. But I am impressed by Robert's shot because he made a very good shot of a key point of a big game under crowded conditions. It told an important part of the story and was visually attention grabbing.

I like baseball. But one of my pet peeves that you hear around this time of year was Team XXXX had the best record in baseball in September (even though they finished 20 games out of first place). You also hear similar statistics about pitchers and hitters. But I would really like to see how they play when the games are important before I am going to project future success off past action.

When there are three total photographers covering a game in September, it is easier to get lucky and get a good shot. The difference between the top pros and the posers is that the top pros consistently get good shots and perform under pressure.

One thing I noticed in the game was Donovan McNabb had a horrible first half throwing the ball. His throws were over the head or at their feet. Analysts including Troy Akiman talked about getting on the field of a Superbowl and things moving much faster. McNabb's throws indicated how “tight” he was.

The same pressure affects coaches, cheerleaders, officials, and photographers. The best professionals, in spite of the crowding, the 20 extra TV Cameras, and the pressure make very good solid pictures. Just like Robert's that made my lunch enjoyable. Thanks Robert and all the photogs that worked the game!

Watching Hockey from the Second Deck

My wife and I have season tickets for UND hockey. After our move last year, it is now about 80 miles one way to attend a game. This year I have been shooting alot of hockey. We also had tickets to the World Junior Championships, so I have seen alot of hockey this year. Our World Jr's tickets were on the first deck, about 7 rows off the ice. Photographing hockey also frequently puts me close to the ice. But our season tickets are on the second deck. Last night was the first time in about 45 days that I had sat in our regular seats for a UND game. I was bored silly and easily distracted. You could barely hear the sounds of the game and I never felt into it.

I have been to Fenway park once. I had great seats; five rows behind the home/first base dugouts. Fenway field has a very high crown. I enjoyed watching baseball from those seats because the ball flew "up". I have years of experience playing, umpiring, and photographing baseball. The game has a completely different feel from field level than it does from stands looking down at play.

I just watched the Superbowl on TV. Baseball and Hockey do not translate as well to TV or stands. On the other hand, Football is a sport I like to watch from above (stands or TV). I see the plays develop better and am not blocked by big lineman or dodging linebackers like you have to do on the sidelines when you photograph it. Unlike hockey, I don't seem to loose the hits and action because of distance.

Being a sports photographer has spoiled me for how I like to watch my sports.

How about you? How do you like to watch sports?

Vonage Phone

I have had a Vonage phone hooked up for about 3 months now and I love it.

My only complaint has been the default Vonage set-up for homes. Now, I admit I am a geek, but I also suspect that the voice over IP market (VoIP) has more than its fair share of geeks for customers. In my case, Vonage came with a Cisso/Linksys RT31P2 router. This router has a WAN port, two phone ports, and four LAN ports. I have 4+ computers, 2 network printers, a wireless access point, and network attached storage (see previous posts). I also prefer a full firewall on the perimater. So here are the changes:

1) Get a two or three port RJ11 phone adapter for the back of the router. The two phone ports are for line 1 and line 2. We only need to pay for one line, but I have an adapter so I can plug in both my deskphone with speaker, and a wireless phone. Get a cordless phone that does NOT use the 2.4Ghz band (don't want that next to your 2.4Ghz 802.11g access point). Also get a cordless phone that lets you add handsets. We have two handsets with one in the living room.

2) Set-up your firewall to conntect to the internet. Set the interior LAN to use DHCP and to use a network other than the defualts (192.168.0.xxx or 192.168.1.xxx). For example, you could use 192.168.50.xxx for your main LAN. (note: not using the default networks is critical to do now, in case you ever want to use VPN or other technologies while travelling to connect back to your office. Too many hotels and other WLAN access places use the defualt networks and it will cause all kinds of trouble).

3) Set-up the Vonage router to get its "exterior" address via DHCP. Set the interior LAN to a different address than the interior LAN on your firewall and activate DHCP. To continue our example, we can set this LAN to 192.168.510xxx.

4) Connect a patch cord from an interior LAN port on your firewall/switch to the exterior or WAN port on your Vonage router and turn the Vonage router on. Check for dial tone on the phone.

5) You may need to adjust the ports open on your firewall to allow the Vonage traffic to flow.

Connect the rest of your devices. You may need to also adjust the security settings on the Vonage router (or even turn them off) if you have problems with devices connected to the vonage router accessing network storage, printers, etc. on the other network. The security settings are not really needed because both sides of the Vonage router are on the inside of your firewall.

Why do this?

1) The firewall is much more secure AND flexible than the security settings on the vonage router.

2) I have 8 switchports on the interior LAN plus for switch ports off the vonage router on a sub-LAN. I also have a wireless accesspoint set-up the same as the vonage router with 4 switch ports on a sub-lan. I use two of the eight on the interior LAN for the Vonage router and wireless AP, leaving 14 open ports for the rest of my equipment. Much better than the 4 that the vonage alone would have given me.

3) Better performance. The Firewall/Router has more memory, a faster processor, and less to do than the vonage router. Rather than spending much of its limited resources on VoIP functions, the exterior router switches traffic at level 2 and routes a level three much faster. As my network grows, I add switches, and move large data to network storage or printers, the current setup is faster and more robust.

Technology not so fun lately

I have two recent technology experiences that I would like to write about:

I have been using a Ximeta netdisk for about a year. It is a 150gb external hard drive that can be connected via either USB 2.0 or shared among multiple computers via ethernet. The only problem is that it does not use TCP/IP. Ximeta uses a proprietary system that requires its drivers and programs be running on each machine. When I first got it, I was upset that the outside of the box listed OS supported as far back as Win98, but once you get into the fine print, you find that is only for USB attachment. For Network attachment, the drive has to be NTFS and the clients Win2K or later. So I had one old machine that could not touch it. . . But despite this, I got it up and working and it worked well for 10 months. I had an entire year of pictures on the system (140gb). I was making some networking adjustments about a month ago and when I completed all the changes and turned everything back on, I had a surprise: none of my machines could see the netdisk.

Ximeta's Troubleshooter says:
"Try unplugging your NetDisk's power cord, wait about 10 seconds, and plug it back in. If this doesn't work, try restarting your computer as well. Please try disabling your firewall/antivirus software and if that works then you may need to configure the software to allow our NetDisk to run. If that does not work, try plugging the NetDisk via USB to see if it is being recognized. If it is, recover the data and then reformat the drive. While in USB, delete the partition and then bring the NetDisk back to the Ethernet and format the NetDisk."

Of course, I did the steps and when I tried plugging it into USB, I was releived that it was recognized. But the relief was short lived. I could bring up a list of folders in the drive, but when I clicked on a folder, Windows came up with a message telling me the disk could not be read and asking if I wanted to format the drive.

So, after a 8-10 hours of trying various tools to recover the data (over a three week period), I finally ended up reformatting the drive and starting the process of reloading all the data from the 40-50 DVDs that I used for photo backup.

I am now rethinking my network storage strategy. I am weighing either switching to the Buffalo LinkStation or putting together a Samba box with some ATA drives. Given the space and power limits of our office, the LinkStation might be the answer. It is bigger than the NetDisk, but will still easily fit on the shelf with the firewall and routers.

My second brush with technology deals with how to handle pictures when I travel. I did not lose any data with the NetDisk problems, but I am becoming more paranoid as I go forward. So I am testing a SmartDisk FireFly drive. It is basically a 40gb USB drive that needs no external power. I use it to backup the pics on my laptop, and also transfer the files to storage when I return to the office. My average shoot is now running around 2 GB, and burning 3-7 CD's on the laptop takes forever. I now have a 40gb harddrive for backup and then transfer it to network storage and burn to DVD's in the office.

In 15 years, I have never lost files or data. But another layer of protection that improves my workflow sounds like a great plan. The FireFly drive can be found for about $110 street price for 40GB. I will keep you posted on how it works, durability, etc.

So, bag is mixed. NetDisk did not work long term, but the FireFly holds promise.