I'm sending out the following information to companies and organizations in the Houston area, inviting them to participate in the AutismHouston.com 100 T-Shirts sponsorship. Here are the details. You can also forward the attached PDF to your boss or a family member who may be interested.

Don't let the Comment Haters slow you down.

Most people appreciate and maybe even crave feedback, especially positive. When it comes to photography, there are those who are very comfortable providing constructive, well crafted critiques. These paragraphs of personal opinions are often (at least hopefully, always) provided with the best intentions in mind, to help the photographer understand what works, and what doesn't, in a particular photograph.

Backups are crazy important. No matter how "good" hardware gets, nothing is 100% reliable. So everyone should have two backup strategies -- a backup medium and an off-line backup (even if its just a USB drive you keep in your desk at work!).

Workflows and Backups

Everyone's workflow is a little different. For me, everything ends up on the Drobo (everything). I even render and work with live files directly from my Drobo. Frequent backups are made to a USB-attached hard drive, and then there are nightly on-line backups for safety.

Since the day I started the group in June of 2009, HoustonPhotowalks.com has been a real blast. There are hundreds of amazing photographers in Houston, and I've had the pleasure of meeting many, many, many of them over the past 4 years.

Ok, I'll admit it ...

Taking folks to places they would otherwise never visit, or even know about, is a huge kick for me. Its one of the biggest parts of running HoustonPhotowalks that I enjoy the most.

Doing some refresher research on color theory today ... sometimes I really regret selling back my college books. A base color selection can be completely subjective, but the accompanying and contrasting colors are not random. Humans react to color combinations based on cultural cues (red+green=Christmas, etc), and *mathematical calculations*.

This is one of the hardest concepts to teach new designers who want to randomly pick colors because they "look good".

The iBooks App

Many folks know that their iPhone and iPad can read books using the iBook App from the App Store. Its free and very simple to install. What many folks don't know is, it can be used to store things other than just ebooks.

My iPad is full of PDFs I've pulled from the web, mostly application development ebooks and camera gear manuals. A simple google search can find you a manual for just about any device or software on the market.

24Moves is now offering your portraits and favorite image at MEDIA.24Moves.com on custom iPhone and iPad cases!!

To kick off this new product line, iPhone and iPad cases are 50% off with this coupon code: IPHONECASE-50-OFF

Keep your favorite people with you at all times with this very unique item. Or purchase them as a wonderful gift for parents or grandparents.

Offer expires in one week, so get to clicking! :)

I recently wrote a blog post about shooting/photography in the rain and how you can achieve some really interesting and unique results. People have told me they love my rain shoots. The images are extremely unique because I keep shooting rather than canceling the sitting.

This weekend (July 14/15), there is a 70% chance of rain. So I am discounting my sitting fee by 70%! AND if we KEEP SHOOTING while it rains, I will waive the sitting fee completely!

That adds up to 140% of pure rain fun and photographic magic, right? :)

Contact me via this blog or on the 24Moves Facebook page for details if you are interested in this unique portrait opportunity!

Sometimes I get it wrong. And I can be a little too direct. This is one of those times I'll admit it.

Background: My Photography Release is a little Different

We all need photography releases. And a few weeks ago, I posted my release for all to see. And part of it was a bit of a rant.

The original wording was: