Funcrunch Photo Blog

On the first day of September I joined dozens of fellow photographers at my old stomping grounds, the UC Berkeley campus, on a photo walk led by local photographer Thomas Hawk and Google developer advocate Chris Chabot.

On Friday, Facebook announced an increase in their image display size to 960 pixels on the long side, a 33% increase. As I include Facebook-optimized images for all of my hired jobs, I am now increasing the size of those images for my clients at no extra charge. For Facebook-sized images licensed a-la-carte through my web site, I have upped the price by only a dollar. Prices for hi-res images and prints remain unchanged.

Today I learned that a bride-to-be was discriminated against in a New Jersey bridal shop on the basis of her sexual orientation. As a result, the shop's Yelp profile is taking quite a beating, with hundreds of angry one-star reviews, countered by some five-star reviews and Bible quotes. It is clear that the majority of those commenting are not actual customers of the shop, so Yelp is filtering many of these reviews out. And herein lies the dilemma.

Yesterday I found out that photographer Chris Marquardt was in town holding a photo workshop, and was having an open meetup beforehand at a San Francisco restaurant. I attended, had great conversations with fellow photographers, and took some informal photos.

Yesterday I took a two-hour bus ride to Petaluma to attend the grand opening of the new This Week In Tech studio. I'd been watching Leo Laporte since he was the host of The Screen Savers, and was excited to be there to support him and his hardworking crew. I took some informal photos (along with many others in attendance); here are some highlights.

Recently, Google released Search By Image, an enhanced image search capability that allows uploading a JPEG file and finding matching and similar images on the web. TinEye and similar tools already offered this functionality, but Google has made it even easier, especially with the optional Firefox and Chrome extensions.

I am taking a leave of absence from June 15-24 for a personal retreat. I will not be checking e-mail, web sites, or voicemail at all during that time. Having been online nearly continuously since 1989 (remember BITNET, anyone?), this unplugging will be a challenge, but a welcome retreat from our always-on, wired world. My top priorities will be playing music (piano, electric bass, and voice), and running.

Thanks to my wonderful clients for making last month the best to date for my photography business. I am truly fortunate to have a career where I get paid to perform a service I both enjoy and do very skillfully.

As my business grows, I am making adjustments to streamline my service and product offerings. As of today, I've made the following changes to my print and product listing:

Last week I headed to Bimbo's 365 in San Francisco's North Beach to shoot the Blue Bear School of Music's youth music education benefit for the third year in a row. This annual event features great headline acts, youth band performances, a silent auction, and fundraising awards. This year, the headline act was the funky METERS.

Last week I spent another four nights at Café du Nord shooting the Blue Bear School of Music showcases. Lots of talented acts, including a night featuring Bonnie Hayes' Songwriting Social, with a number of singer-songwriters performing original material on both stages.