I just shot for Polywood, a company that makes Patio Furniture out of recycled plastics. We produced this job inside of a week, receiving merchandise and assembling it off site, loading it and driving the Outdoor furniture to the shoot location. With an early call time (sunrise) and an awesome team in place, shooting nice product on a beautiful location on a gorgeous South Florida day (70º and not a cloud in the sky) – this is the way location photography is supposed to be. Every shot was pre- planned, with computer renderings of all items that made up a grouping (Thanks so much for all that preliminary work B.) 

Polywoods conversation group, that we shot for on one of Polywood's clients website.

Since everything was pre- assembled (Thanks to Victor and E. – great job guys) it was a breeze to place the groupings on location. Simon and Kornell, my assistants, did a tremendous job in keeping track and executing the  technical aspects of my photography. Also thanks to my stylist Melanie, who effortlessly propped all the shots to exactly what the client had imagined. 

All in all a great shoot. Everything was post produced yesterday, with images uploaded for client review and low resolution.

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.