Blog

It’s July 2011, and Bearpaw is looking for a high-volume product photography studio that dares to take on their entire Fall 2012 product line. The deadline is closing in.

My team steps up to the plate, and we deliver at full-force.  Like many of my clients, Bearpaw needs their order turned around faster than the speed of light.  My crew and I get excited about these kinds of orders because high-volume product photography is our passion.   Making incredibly consistent product photos (very quickly and efficiently) is an art in itself.  Without a hitch, Bearpaw’s order gets processed in record-time.  They’re utterly thrilled with the precision consistency, attention to detail and speed. And, so are their retailers who depend on the images for their eCommerce website!  Thank you Bearpaw, for doing everything possible to make our job fun and enjoyable (and thanks for the warm pair of complimentary shoes)!

If life is largely made up of work, and we want to live a happy life, why not try new ways make work awesome? For me, my goal is to make work as meaningful and creative as I can, and I’m always looking for new ways to make the people around me share the same vibe. Then I found this article that talks about this fancy acronym called “ROWE”. It stands for “Results Only Work Environment”. Pretty self-explanatory, but the really cool part is that ROWE allows employees to work from home. As long as they get their work done, the boss doesn’t care where they are. This concept has been around for a while, but it’s still not a big trend (…yet?).

Two professors (Erin Kelly and Phyllis Moen) from the University of Minnesota did a study to measure the pros and cons of a big company (Best Buy) that tried out the ROWE system on 659 of its employees. They published the results in an article in The Journal of Health and Social Behavior. Here’s the interesting stuff I read:

1) Employees from Best Buy that tried ROWE claimed that they felt a greater sense of freedom and responsibility for getting real work done.

2) They took care of themselves better (52 more minutes of sleep each night)

3) Moen explained, “participants reported going to their child’s school play, taking their ailing mother to a doctor, or seeing a doctor themselves—without guilt. Participants described both a sense of freedom and greater responsibility for actually accomplishing results.”

If you wanna (yep, I did just say “wanna”) read more, here ya go:
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1678950/bosses-stop-caring-if-your-employees-are-at-their-desks

Mend-it is a nifty glue designed for fixing broken fishing bait. The owner, Will, reached out to me not long ago to get some nice product photos for his bottles, so I took him up on the project! If you’re a fan of fishing with soft bait, consider giving this stuff a try. Also, Will has a pretty cool demo video on his website that shows how well it works: menditglue.com.

Among the many fun things I encounter on the job, one of my favorites is shooting wine. As every wine bottle photographer knows, each bottle has it’s little details that need careful attention. Also, getting the studio lighting JUST right is always a fun and rewarding adventure. This week I received some tasty wines from Curtis Winery to photograph for their web-based advertising campaign. Now that I have all of the tough stuff done, I can enjoy the satisfying duty of drinking each bottle over the coming weeks. Many thanks to Curtis Winery for a smooth photo-shoot!!

Yep, that’s no typo–we’ve got a newsletter thingy! Facebook and Twitter are fun, but email is, well, cooler? At the very least, I like getting relevant newsletters, but I can’t stand getting those infamous monthly newsletters that don’t have anything new to say. So, I’m declaring a war against irrelevant newsletters. In doing so, I vow to only send the good stuff to you, when it happens. I’ll dish out the best of the best as it comes down the pipe, so sign up and be ready!! Go to the Contact page on our site to sign up, or you can also click here.

Last week we wrapped up a great photo shoot for Birki’s. We created some really amazing 360 views of their awesome shoes. We’ll let everyone know when they have the new 3D product photos on their website!! Until then, hang tight and we’ll post an update in the near future. Thanks, Birki’s for choosing to have your 360 product photos done with with 360 imaging solutions!

Without a doubt, the Apple Farm Inn/Restaurant has a unique, Victorian feel to it that can only be described by paying a visit in person… but now, that can be done online–with the stunning 360 degree virtual tours they are adding to their web site!   Marketing a hotel can be a fun, but difficult task.  A hotel like the Apple Farm, for example, has a huge advantage because of the fact that every single room they offer is unique.  It’s special.  And, customers can fully experience that with a rich, interactive 360 degree panorama.

View 360 Degree Virtual Tour of the Apple Farm Inn

Have you ever seen that Indian Statue on the corner of Higuear St. and Parado Rd. in San Luis Obispo, California?

This morning I was driving into town to run some errands, and along the way I saw something that looked out of the ordinary.  You guessed it, the Indian statue was holding a yellow bicycle (rather, the yellow bicycle was zip-tied to the statue’s bronze hands by some dedicated bicycle aficionados).  I suppose that goes to show how passionate our beloved bicycle community is when it comes to expressing how much they love bicycles.  From the looks of it, the Indian statue was not harmed, although I can’t say for sure how well that bicycle fared after the City of San Luis Obispo got their hands on it.

It’s about time I started doing 360 degree virtual tours because  A) The technology for this is stuff really cool, and  B) Everyone and I know of keeps asking me if I can do that sorta thing.  For me, my main focus was on mastering the art of 360 degree product photography and commercial product photography, but it can’t hurt to add another new service!

Over the past few weeks I’ve been steadily building up a nice 360 degree virtual tour portfolio of local businesses in San Luis Obispo.  Most of them I’ve known since I was just a kid, like Roxxanne’s Birkenstock and Mountain Air Sports.  It gives me a good feeling to know that these well-established business are still going strong, and it also makes for a nice excuse to leave my photography studio and get a breath of fresh air.