So here I am last Thursday shooting a swimwear catalog. Its a beautiful day in South Florida and we’re pulling up to the same location that we have shot this book twice before - no need to scout it, we’re good to go, everyone is unpacking product, props, food, equipment - when the Art Director comes to me: ‘We have a bit of an emergency!’

There is no water in the pool. (And we’re shooting swimwear!) This is not the way a shoot is supposed to begin, on top of that, on this shoot I am hired as the photographer only - not the producer - still it’s my head ache, since you can’t shoot swim wear, with out anything to swim in.

I make a quick call (at 7am) to the owners of the location that had been booked for the 2nd day. This is a location I had suggested to the client and fortunately I have a great relationship with the owners. 

30 min later (and driving across the county with the crew after every one packed up again) we’re pulling into a location with a pool filled with water.

 It’s the little things in life that make you happy; and the personal relationships that make them work. Thanks Joe and Mary - you saved our butts!

I love the web. It enables me to be a very productive company. I have talked to you about SalesForce and the CRM that it enables me to do for under $9.- a month! I can track my leads (automatically - when you fill out my contact form on my website, the captured data is imported into my leads and SalesForce sends me an automatic email to my iPhone. I can convert my leads to accounts, track all the relevant contact information assign multiple opportunities to each account and track my customer contacts through SalesForce. Now thats a really nice, but I have to be in front of a computer to do all this - and I like automation.

SalesForce has a build in calendar - it has all events (that link to my customers) and all task, i.E. my to do list. My Mac has all that offline on iCal as well - but the two of them don’t talk - and I don’t want to be importing and exporting data between the two constantly I want this to happen as close to real time as I can. So here is how this works, bear with me it goes through a few steps:

1)  SalesForce maintains it’s calendar. I can sync it (automatically with Google’s calendar in Google apps) via Appirio’s calendar sync. So now SalesForce and Google calendars are synced. (Information entered in either calendar will update on the other). 

2) My offline calendar on my Mac’s iCal can also sync with the Google calendar via Spanning Sync. So those two talk to each other as well. 

3) The real beauty of this is that the Google calendar acts like a clearing house between SalesForce and iCal, updating information entered in either one to the other.

4) Last but not least, iCal updates the calendar on my iPhone via Mac’s mobile me cloud letting me not only see my SalesForce calendar on my iPhone, but editing and adding data to SalesForce on this path:

iPhone <-> mobile Me cloud <-> iCal <-[via Spanning Sync]-> Google Calendar (another cloud) <-[via Appirio]->  SalesForce (my third cloud).

A long way to get to automation, but once it’s set up, it will run and run and run Yeah for automation! (not to mention redundancy) and I can enter and edit data on my phone, my laptop and anywhere on the web. Oh yeah my iCal also publishes my calendar so that others (whom I select) can know what’s on my work schedule.

I shot these room shots for the prestigious Palms Hotel on South Beach, this past Monday. Thanks to Tanja for getting everything organized and prepped by the awesome staff at the hotel - it was a pleasure to work with all of you - and your Tropical Salad is amazing!

I love jobs like this, because they challenge your ability to light, especially if you use the natural window light. Any time I shoot rooms I strive to keep them from looking like they’re lit.

I shot this lawyer for his law firm and an ad in a local legal magazine. Thanks to Jane for doing another awesome job! We’re just finishing up the final layout of the ad.

I wrote about my diving into Customer Relationship Management via SalesForce.com yesterday. Today I have been working on customizing this program to fit my needs. One of the tasks I have accomplished is to tie in my website with CRM. If a potential client writes me an email via my contact form, his comments and information are send to my CRM, entered into the database and I am notified via email that I have a new request from my website.

In the past I have been just getting emails with the form data, which I then had to transcribe into my address book, calendar, … (I did see the requests via email). Today it is integrated into my CRM.

Pretty cool.

It’s hard enough to find clients that are looking for a photographer. Once you’ve identified a potential customer you want to be persistent and reliable in your follow-up communication, but not obnoxious or forgetful.

That’s not so hard when you have a few jobs that you are working on at once, but what happens if it’s a dozen? Or more? I do believe this is a great problem to have, but you don’t want to harass your clients.

Being a small company that’s were CRM comes in, i.E. Customer Relationship Management. We all do it, but between your email program, your phone calls, letters, promo pieces and meetings, how do you keep track of who did what when?

I just signed up with SalesForce.com. This is a web based CRM system, in which you can track your leads, accounts, contacts, opportunities, jobs, … online. I have begun importing my current clients and leads and can see where this will streamline my customer service.

Startup nation is a well known website for small businesses that are just starting up their operations. These are companies that are in the very beginning stages of understanding what photography can do for their business. Often you have to educate them about the process of shoot what can and can not be done  - especially on the budget side. On the other hand many of these clients have been interested in discussing creative solutions to their issues and let me have a lot more freedom with my photography, than old established bigger companies that need to match their ‘look’ - don’t get me wrong I do this as well, I worked for a national american brand for over 7 years as their full time photographer - but I enjoy the variety a small business brings to my work.

Aneta shot this morning at my house.

I shot Aneta this morning - early! We began shooting this morning before sunrise on the beach and finished shooting at my house. Awesome make up by Jane Pittman (look at her site by clicking here).

The sun is just coming up on a beautiful morning on Miami Beach. Aneta did great on her first photo shoot! Way to go girl.

Shot this job in Orlando for an old friend. I was doing behind the scenes photography for the video production company to use for print work. They were creating a show called ‘Give a living rose’, which takes people, that want to say thank you to someone who has influenced their lives. In this case it was Scott Hamilton (Gold Medal winner of the Winter Olympics in 1984 in Figure Skating), who wanted to thank his coach Don Laws for all that he had done for Scott.

Scott had flown into Orlando to honor Don with a dinner - unbeknown to his former coach - that was going to be the event that the show focuses around. Here is my favorite shot of the whole night, when Scott toasts to Mr. Laws, thanking him for being such a big part of his life.

Also present at the table is Patrick Chan, Don Laws current trainee and his mom. 

Scott Hamilton thanks his coach Don Laws.