MichaelDLilly.com

Well, I’ve taken my photo geekery to a new level.  With much prodding from a friend of mine, I’m in a joint venture photography company.  We are shooting a wedding this weekend and shot two senior portrait rounds last week.

Its fun, we’ll see where it goes.  I doubt I’ll ever be paying bills with it, but I really love shooting and interacting with fun people.  So here goes nothing right?

If you’d like to check our site out, head on over to www.blacktiesphoto.com!

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Di and I bought a Malibu today. I had sworn off ever buying new cars, but cash for clunkers and 0% financing is hard to argue with. Nice ride, very comfy, has some pretty cool features (what computer geek doesn’t totally LOVE a power jack in their car).

Pretty cool, now I just have to pay for the thing. On paper I should save about a thousand dollars a year in gas

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Have you ever tweaked your chair to try and improve posture? Raise it up, tilt the seat forward, blah blah blah…  Yeah I do this all the time, and when I do I’m like YES my back feels sooo much better.  Then 10 minutes later I find myself inventing new ways to slouch in my chair which is set to make it impossible to slouch comfortably.

Life of an office rat.

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Les and Shanon got hitched this weekened.  Super good time, they are a beautiful couple and threw an excellent party.  I just tied into something that made me super queezy on Saturday night and all day Sunday….kinda ruins trying to have a good time with friends on the beach.  Instead I laid there like a dead fish and got burned, which in and of itself isn’t all bad.  But I ended up so wooped from whatever I had yesterday that I figured it only wise to take Monday off to try and rest up / recover.  No sense in rushing back to work and making the rest of my department sick.

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My main machine is at the 3.5 yr old mark and showing its age pretty badly recently   Sadly more and more of OSX’s little quirks are popping up.  One of the must frustraiting that was supposed to have been taken care of, is when the the machine is on screen saver, you wake it up and it should throw the password box to sign back in… Nope…  Black arrow, no box, no options.  Most of the time the machine can be left alone and will go back in to screen saver mode and you can trrrrryyyyy again.  Well right now I’m copying photos to an external drive to TRY and make room for some video work and this magical screen trick happened, so I have no clue where I am in my file copy   sadness.

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First and foremost, Jerred rocked it out.  I’m super proud of him, happy for him, and all that fun jazz.

….but….

The Promoter (Rich DeLeon Promotions) was way out matched on this one.

1. The logistics where way way way off.  Ticket sales must have been great because it was way over sold.  People where stuck standing on the sides for most of the event.
2. There was no designated place to park.  Selling tons of tickets then telling people that they can’t park in the most readily available parking lot or else they will be towed?  Fail.
3. When the fight went to the floor of the cage you couldn’t see anything at all (thus people stood up), which lead to yelling and screaming, even Rich saying over the PA “down in front.”  Seriously?  Raise the cage 3 or 4 more feet man and you won’t have people standing up to try and see.  Or just put some plasma’s up high on the posts so EVERYONE can see the show we paid to see.
4. Security.  The security guys where harassing us about saving seats of people who where in the line to use the restrooms.  Lets talk business here for a second, if your security guards start giving away the seats of all the people standing up, your main sponsor isn’t going to sell any beer or food next time…  If your sponsor is selling less beer and you are selling less tickets for the same reason of people losing their seats, that is declining revenue man.  Take out Jerred and the 203 tix he sold, and that show isn’t sold out…  You can probably count out the drunk dude who wrecked his Trailblazer trying to move it out of Celebration’s parking lot too, I doubt he had a very good time thereafter.  I understand you don’t want people reserving chucks of space and seats, but if I can’t sit next to my party do you think we are going to frequent these events?  Not a chance.
5. The microphone wasn’t the promoter’s fault, but dude Mr DJ, send someone back to the studio and get a freakin spare mic man, running the whole event with a bum mic was a super bad idea.

Jerred win, Rich DeLeon Promotions…not so much, better luck next time.

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4 years and 4 days ago I married the perfect woman for me.  4 years ago today one of my best friends was killed in a car accident.

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For years I have been strictly a photo guy.  August 1′st I get to try my hand at video.  I have checked out 2 Sony Handycam FX-1′s, and have commenced playing with them hoping to know enough to provide a decent product.  I don’t think my friends are expecting professional quality, but it sure would be nice to be able to deliver professional quality.  The only thing I have yet to iron out is getting good consistent sound to match up with the video, but I think we can make that happen.

Fingers crossed.

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Last night was my first night of training on the sound system @ Riv.  I don’t think I could have a better teacher.  E.ric Craft is pretty real about the fact that it doesn’t take a degree to run the thing: plug this into this, link it up in the computer, and LOOK AT ALL THESE BUTTONS!!!  And as a geek, well, I like buttons.  The only danger, is that each button can do about 3 different things, then multiply that by 2 because you are controlling the audio in the band’s monitors as well as the house.

Sum it u to say I think this is going to be a lot of fun.  I am just flat out excited to have found a way that I can put my shoulder against the harness and get to work at Riverview.

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