blackbird editing

yea adobe!

2012-02-02T06:01:00.001-08:00

Mad Props to Adobe, I'm impressed beyond words. Last night (February 1) I got an email notification to let me know that my new Photoshop CS5 for Mac has been shipped. Estimated arrival date is January 31. That's right, adobe values their customers so much, they're going to go BACKWARDS IN TIME to get me my package.

Living Social

2011-08-12T07:10:00.000-07:00

I just heard from the folks at Living Social about my boudoir photography (http://www.blackbirdportraits.com). I'm going to be featured on their website this fall!

new studio update

2011-07-17T13:38:00.001-07:00

Productive week at the new studio. Ceiling fans wired and installed, new chandelier wired and installed, mudding, taping, sanding walls done, walls primed, floors swept and vacuumed, bolts protruding from concrete floor and walls ground off, trash taken out, new colors chosen.

For david's benefit

2011-06-22T15:02:00.000-07:00

To my photography peeps; David Grupa is a talented photographer here in MN. David was recently diagnosed with cancer, and despite the fact that he has insurance, each treatment costs him several thousand dollars out of pocket. Please check out this online auction which was arranged by my friend and studiomate Kirsten. There are great deals, and you get the benefit of helping someone in need.

www.fordavidsbenefit.com

A wedding job from chicago, via Jamaica.

2011-04-26T19:33:00.000-07:00

I got a call from Amy in Chicago. She recently got married in Jamaica, but realized months later that there were no photos of just her, with her mother. So we had to swap the groom out of one picture, and insert her mother.

Wedding photos

2011-04-15T05:56:00.000-07:00

Every spring, I start getting calls from brides who are finally getting around to working on wedding albums from last summer and fall's weddings. There are LOTS of bad wedding photographers out there right now, and sometimes the jobs are really complicated, but sometimes it's just basic color and exposure correction.

The great computer meltdown of 2011

2011-03-26T05:26:00.001-07:00

I've been pretty bad about blogging for a while. It's been crazy here since January 1, due to a family illness and death, and all the relatives coming to Minnesota from Chicago and Madison as a result, as well as my wife falling on the ice and needing ACL reconstruction.

On top of all this we had BOTH computers meltdown on the same weekend. My desktop computer, which has been a workhorse for as long as I've had it, was so full of junk that the only way to clean it off was to reinstall windows. This of course requires you to reinstall all of the software (Microsoft office, photoshop, lightroom, etc.) after the fact. Normally, this is one or two nights worth of work, but just about everything that could go wrong during the reinstallation, did. Therefore, this process took more like 5-6 nights. In addition, many of the files that I had backed up so they weren't removed during the installation process, were somehow removed anyway, so I lost some financial records, pictures, etc., but nothing too serious.

The SAME weekend, I finally gave up on my laptop, which had been a constant source of frustration for 2-3 years. We bought a new HP probook laptop, but again, installing all the new software took several nights of work.

In addition to all this, I decided to finally get a handle on my finances by buying and learning Quickbooks. Installing, learning, and importing all the year's transactions has been very time consuming, but it will all be worth it.

Lots of new stuff.

2011-02-13T07:46:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone. There's a lot of new stuff going on around here. Effective January, 2011, I finally formed a limited liability corporation (LLC) called "The Number Nine Companies, LLC". The LLC has two divisions; blackbird editing and blackbird portraits. Now that it was all made official, I needed to start concentrating on profitability. One of the first things I did was hire an SEO expert to help improve google ranking for my photo editing website blackbird editing (http://www.blackbirdediting.com). Until then, the two divisions shared a blog and a facebok page, but the first recommendation was that both websites needed their own blog and FB page, so here we are.

In the future, this blog will feature some educational video clips on various photoshop and lightroom tips. I'm currently looking into purchasing the software that will enable me to produce that type of media clip. So please check in from time to time. In the mean time, please be sure to check out my websites: blackbird editing, blackbird portraits and please be sure to "like" me on the blackbird editing facebook page or the blackbird portraits facebook page.