cups & cakes

Now how tasty does that look?
Pretty darn tasty if you ask me. Check out this and other marvels of having your cake and photographing it too by babygoldfish on Flickr.

Last night I went to bed with a song in my head; Cups and Cakes by Spinal Tap.
And it all started with a chat I had yesterday with my friend Jama.

Jama loves to make treats; cake, fudge, cookies, you name it. And she's really great at it. In fact, she'd like to make it more than a hobby and I think she'd be a hit.
We've started talking about how effective writing and maintaining a cool blog might be a good way for her to share her cake passion with the world.

She discovered an outrageous blog, Cupcakes Take The Cake (I like it so much I've just put their link over there in my Tasty Links section). Alizinha, Nichelle, and Rachel have put together daily postings of eye candy for the cupcake-loving blogosphere.

Yum.

From the blog there's also a link to their Flickr photostream of the same name. Amazing people sharing their very cool cupcake creations with excellent photos. I love it.

Just goes to show some of my favorite character traits of the entrepreneurial spirit:
acting on your passion, expertise in your craft, and the kindness/willingness to share with others.

I'm planning to post images of my cupcakes there one day soon. Sounds like I need to learn how to make them. I'm really looking forward to viewing Jama's creations there...she's gonna be a big hit and I'll point the way to her blog once it's up and running. Oh...Jama, remember peanut butter is my favorite flavor, in case you're looking to make more samples.

Boar's Head Inn

The staff at the Boar's Head Inn in Charlottesville, VA is simply Second to None.

Attitude and Service that's genuine. If I could box these people up and cart them around the country, I'd make a mint installing them in virtually any organization where mediocrity is the norm.

This crew understands the beauty of kindness and attention to detail. So instead of my shots of the wonderful grounds or even the staff's smiling faces, I thought I'd offer a detail from their property: a macro of the immaculately clean doorstop from my room.

Next time you're in Charlottesville, stop by and stay a while.

Charlottesville

Virginia, that is.
Had the pleasure of visiting this week for the VFRI (Virginia Fund Raising Institute) conference. My workshop presentation, Technology: Not Just For Geeks Anymore, seemed to be a pretty good hit.
Non-profits (and small businesses) can utilize tons of online content for free or very little cost to help market themselves and their missions.
It's amazing how much more there is to learn and even more astounding to me how many people are just figuring it out.
Feels great to make a difference.

It's so easy to say 'make a difference'.
Are we really making a difference? The following image at World Press Photo is my daily reminder of how GREAT things are for me and why we have an obligation to be change agents.

I look at that and ask 'what have I done today'?

a treat from StumbleUpon

There's enough good stuff on every hit of the Stumble button to fill an entire Sunday afternoon.

Here's a treat from my visit today to StumbleUpon...


haha.nu - a lifestyle blogzine is Awesome. One of the posts details the Colr Pickr, a cool way to browse photos on Flickr based on color. It's one of many unique tools by KrazyDad Jim Bumgardner.

Atlanta

Good old Atlanta, GA.
I traveled there this week with one of my work colleagues and hoped to get some cool shots.
We were there for the Alliance for Nonprofit Management conference.
The venue was awesome and we both took the majority of our photos within the walls of our hotel, the Westin Peachtree Plaza.

I presented in a workshop during the conference and realized some pretty cool connections between the fundamentals of fundraising and the web-two-oh interestingness of Flickr.
My angle in speaking to non-profit people is to make and/or keep them aware of two things:

1. Utilize technology to further your mission.

2. Technology is not a cure. It's a tool.

On the first point, most everyone agrees it makes sense for virtually any organization to have a website. Of course, it goes beyond the "having" part...you have to build and maintain your website with content that ignites a viewer's passion for your mission.
Problem is, many websites, in both the for-profit and non-profit arenas are created with a Field of Dreams mentality...Shoeless Joe may show up in a raized Iowa cornfield in the movies, but simply building a website doesn't guarantee customers or major donors.
Organizations still need to market themselves to drive traffic to their websites and e-commerce pages.
Technology's only as good as the people behind it, whether you're writing code, blogging about your latest fundraiser, or updating your website.

The kicker of all this? No need for boat-loads of cash to make it happen.
I point many of them to examples from Seth Godin. Here's a guy that's ultra-popular in my world, but is an unknown to most of the people I'm trying to help. Seth's awesome for ideas and suggestions for every type of organization. And all they cost you is your time and a passion to implement them.
For example, Seth often offers some of his books, which sell in every major bookstore, for free. You download them as e-books. His Flipping the Funnel e-book even has versions for both non-profits and for-profits. Outstanding.

Oh, and I got to show off my photostream once during the conference as well. Just goes to show you an amateur photographer/blogger/advocate-for-helping-non-profits can utilize web-two-oh and help make a difference. And connect.

Life's cool.

a Shout Out for one of my Flickr Contacts

Flickr gives us all a chance to share with and be inspired by some Excellent photographs taken by some very cool people.

I'd like to take a moment and talk about one of those people...

-Fearless-!- takes awesome shots. Period. And I'm really proud to call her one of my Flickr contacts.

It's interesting how random it seems to happen...checking out new photos in existing groups or simply scoping out photos added by Flickrites in the present, last moment.
I don't remember how I came across her photostream, but I'm glad I did.

Her self portrait is one of the best I've seen. She says she "...took about forty million pictures that day." That's what I'm looking for: that one shot out of a day of endless shots. The one that says "hell yes, you're getting better."




For someone who's a relative "beginner", she posseses, in my humble opinion, the eye for a beautiful shot, the understanding of how to capture it, and the patience to upload only the best to share.

I asked -Fearless-!- why her upload volume wasn't as drastic as some of my other contacts.

I've just recently started photography, and the way I get most of my shots is to take wayyy more pictures than I need, then edit them, and pick just the verrrryyyy verrrry best ones, the ones I just HAVE to share with people. So yeah, I basically just pick the most bad-ass ones, lol.

Bad Ass, indeed.

Check out -Fearless-!-'s photostream sometime. I know I'm looking forward to her next update!

Milestones

This is cool.

The sonicham photo blog has reached a couple of milestones.

We have our first comment! And I think it's awesome. Blogger griz says:

"Dig your passion for going beyond what the traditonal/conditioned eye only sees...."

Thanks griz.

Next is an interesting number, and although it's not specifically a blog milestone, it's

one for my Flickr photostream.

I checked it out yesterday and noticed the number of views had reached an interesting number.

I figured with Friday the 13th right around the corner, it had some beasty undertones. (666 views)

I'm looking forward to more comments and suggestions and curious when the view count will hit 777.

Have a nice day.

I want it all. Starting with a Better Users Manual!

Either I'm not searching the internet as well as I should, or I simply need to dig out the software for our camera.

I Want A Better Tutorial For Using My Canon Powershot S3 IS!

Yes, I'm a newly minted Amateur Photographer and I haven't been to Photography school. I'd also like to never use the Auto Feature again. The manuals with my camera are fairly thorough, but not User Friendly.
I know I'm not alone. Mr. Schmidt posted the same request in August of 2006 on the bdigitalcameras.com site.
No one's answered his question yet.

I found another link on Squidoo and this one looked very promising. Even the title,
Canon Powershot S3 IS sounded like it would at least point me in the right direction.
Whitepines has a very nice Lens, but it didn't go beyond the "fat little birds" in her yard.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Oh, and while I was at Squidoo, I went ahead and created my own Lens:

http://www.squidoo.com/sonichamphotography/

Check it out and create your own if you've not done it yet. Squidoo Rocks.

Here's Julia in another 7-7-07 moment...

Photos from 7-7-07

We had a great time ending 7-7-07 with our neighbors.

I took 105 pictures and put a few on Flickr after messing with them on Picasa.

I really enjoyed the colors and lines in this one:

Amateur Photographer

OK, here's the story:

We've all taken pictures.
Holidays, events, when the urge hits, etc. I've started taking more pictures than I've ever taken before.
I think I've become an Amateur Photographer.

About one month ago (June '07), my wife and I took a week's vacation and agreed to stay home instead of taking a trip.
It worked out our kids spent the week with their grandparents at a beach house in Florida, so we had a week and then some by ourselves.

Long story short, it was one of the best weeks we've ever had together.
We rearranged multiple rooms of furniture, we ate cool food, we did some stuff in our hometown of Indianapolis that we'd not done before.
And in the middle of it all I took a lot of pictures.

That's the basic background. Maybe we'll make an edit RIGHT HERE one day with a link to a more comprehensive description.

Four factors were in play when our vacation week occurred (and now I'm consumed with photography):

• the Canon Powershot S3 IS
• Flickr
• web 2.0
• Picasa

Again, long story short, I'm a fan of web 2.0, I had been very interested in the concept and functionality of both Flickr and Picasa, and we own the Canon Powershot S3 IS.

Kelly (my wonderful spouse) purchased the Canon for herself for Mother's Day '07. She used it mostly for close up shots of items for her store. Neither of us used it beyond the Auto feature.

There are tons of photo-sharing/storage sites, but Flickr is most familiar to me since I've used a Yahoo! email account for quite a while and also use some of their small business services. I didn't have to seek Flickr out...it was kinda always there, waiting for me to find it.

Picasa was the tasty discovery. One day in the past I changed my browser homepage to Google from Yahoo! On another day in the past I changed my email from Yahoo! to Google. So Picasa, like Flickr, was just waiting there for me to find it; a really cool application created and used by a lot of really cool people.

Web 2.0. I won't preach about this now, but I'm a huge fan of a community/shared web experience.

So I've been taking pictures. And I'm looking at everything a little differently than I had before. I take a camera almost everywhere I go (out in the yard, to work, out to lunch, driving to the store). During my week with Kelly I took photos at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Wolfgang Puck's restaurant, and the Formula One U.S. Grand Prix. It's been a blast and I'm eager to learn more.

I'm still trying to figure out some basics of proper elementary/textbook photography. I've got a lot of gripes concerning the manuals and lack of tutorial-basic material with our S3 IS. I'd like to learn more about Picasa and move into GIMP or even Photoshop Elements (I'm big on passion without $). I'm excited about sharing my work while looking at so much inspirational work shared by all of you.

It's about time I had a blog.

You can find my photostream on Flickr at: www.flickr.com/pictures/sonicham