Get the Job Done: The Garden of Eden

Eden's portraits taken in a sunflower field on an empty plot of land near my subdivision were a great success! And not a moment too soon either! Just one week after I shot these images of "Little E," the entire field was mowed over, wrecking plans that I had to take senior portraits in the same location.

Apparently what I saw as an ideal spot for some fun portraits was just blight to the neighborhood. Oh well. Next year, I will try to plan some shoots based on the sunflower blooming season (and of course as long as that piece of property remains vacant which could be a while given our slow economy!)

Here are some of the favorites from the set.

An Aside: Which new watermark should I use?

Sometimes I admit, I'm a little slow when it comes to graphic design. After wringing my hands for more than a year trying to scrape up enough money to pay a Photoshop Guru to help me create an official business logo, I realized something. I already LOVE the one my buddy and fellow photographer Paul Martin and AM/PM Photography designed for me!

After asking dozens of clients what they thought about the design as it appears on my splash page of the world map with my pictures inside of it's continents, I was convinced that I should keep it. Everyone remarked how much they loved it. Didn't get a single negative comment! Other than my signature "Teri's Rose" image continuing to draw in new clients, the logo as it appears has become it's own brand for my company. Yes, it's true. It can be argued that it's not a traditional logo in a sense because it wouldn't work small. But I think I may have solved that problem if you can help me choose which watermark I should start using to really nail my branding.

Which one do you like more?

Option A with the watermark appearing as a white world map on a transparent background in a corner, side, bottom or top of the image.




Option B with a transparent world map outlined in black right in the center of the photo, most likely lowered in opacity so it blends in while still being able to be seen.




Option C with a white world map, placed in the center, and it's opacity lessened to help it be a little see-through?



I will hold my initial gut instinct until I hear what others think. Appreciate your help!

Get the Job Done: Who are these masked women?

Who are these masked women? Last night's "alter ego" photo session with BFF Monique and Jessica was crazy, sexy, cool! But this school teacher and business woman must keep their identities hidden.

Check back later for the great reveal!

Here kitty, kitty!


Crouching tiger...

An Aside: Info on old hard drive can't be recovered!

Well, it's official. All of the information I had on my old XPS 710 hard drive can't be recovered unless I'm willing to pay an arm, leg, several toes and maybe an ear to get it fixed by a RAID 0 recovery specialist.

Of course before this whole catastrophe struck, I had no idea that my hard drive system was a RAID 0, nor did I know what a RAID 0 meant. I'm not very computer savvy, but I'll tell you what...becoming a photographer has definitely forced me to become more technologically sound than I ever thought I could be. I just wish all my new learning didn't come at the cost of so much loss and heartache.

To try to understand exactly what happened with my old computer, I turned to my trusty photo colleague Sean Donnelly who has always been an walking encyclopedia for all things photography/computer/technology related. Sean is definitely a "teacher in the making" because if he can get my feeble brain to understand his techno-babble he can teach anyone!

So my initial system on the XPS 710 was a: RAID 0 which sounds like a good idea on paper. You use 1 or more smaller disks to make 1 bigger one and get a performance gain because it can read from 3 different disks. But there's a big downside. There are now also 3 points of failure for the volume instead of 1, and even though RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, RAID 0 had 0 redundancy. So if a RAID 0 fails, it can not be rebuilt or recovered. Sure, it's a great to have with gaming machines because of the performance increase, but it's a really poor choice for archiving and storing things I care about as a photographer, including contracts, invoices and of course PHOTOS! EEEEK! Two drives acting as one means the chance of losing everything increases with no redundancy in place.

And that's exactly what happened! When my motherboard died in the old XPS rendering me unable to even turn on my computer, the data on my hard drives because virtually unrecoverable. The Geek Squad said I might be able to send to a data recovery service, but it would likely cost me more to recover the data than I spent on it.

Thank God I had just taken the time to backup all of my photos on two new external hard drives. And the most recent shoots I had were still on their original CD cards, so they were easy to recover. Unfortunately, I lost all of my contracts and invoices dating back from 2008 and about 3,000 songs. Most of those contracts were printed, so I can scan them in and resave them.

"I would never put anything I couldn't easily re-install on a RAID 0. Programs that I can re-install or re-download fine. Music, photos, things I can't replace? Never," says Sean.

Of course I went to the manifest for the new Alienware Aurora Dell replaced my old XPS 710 with and discovered I'm cruising for yet another bruising unless I make a change. Yep, it's a 1TB Raid 0 2x 500GB SATA-II, 7,200 RPM, 16MB Cache HDDS. Basically I'm in the same boat even with a new computer!



Sean suggests a couple of options to protect my data.

1) Add an additional 1 TB drive to an empty bay (I have four more empty slots in my Alienware!) and use a Carbon Copy Cloner type of backup to make identical and bootable backups of my RAID 0. That way if it fails, I have an exact clone I can replace it with. This can also be achieved with an external drive.

2) A second option is you could buy 2 more 500GB drives and set up a RAID 1+0 array with the 4 drives. This is basically two RAID 0 arrays mirrored as a RAID 1. In this set up one RAID 0 mirrors the other, so you have redundancy if a drive fails.

3) A third option would be to make a clone type backup to an external drive, convert the two hard drives to a RAID 1 and restore the clone back to the RAID 1.

4) A RAID 1 setup. While it halves the capacity of the disks (ie, if you use 2 1 TB drives you only end up with about 1TB of storage), there is redundancy, so if one of the two drives fails, you simply replace it with a new one and the RAID is rebuilt.

"In any case you definitely want to have some sort of constant clone type of backup for a RAID 0, because while slightly faster, they are a problem waiting to happen," says Sean. "Honestly I would rather have 1 single 1TB drive than a RAID 0. RAID 0 has double the chance to fail with only about a 10% performance gain. Unless hard core gaming is all you use the machine for, it isn't worth the trade-off."

So here's what I'm gonna do: I will get an extra hard drive and then use the Carbon Copy backup since it's the cheapest and easiest one I can work with right now until I can afford something else better. Carbon Copy works for Macs, so I will try Arconis instead for the PC. Arconis does disk imaging (carbon copy clone) and constant backup! Works for me, especially at only $50! Check out this great website to get more tips on how to prevent a hard disk failure. I totally agree that "Prevention is better than a cure!"

I'm loving this system from LaCie. I might consider getting this later on.

This weekend: Hosting a photo booth at the K9 Cancer Walk!

Tomorrow morning, Jason Peckovitch and I will be hosting a photo booth at the 2nd Annual K9 Cancer Walk at Estes Park hosted by the Morris Animal Foundation! If you are in the area, please drop by out booth, No. 19. We will be shooting portraits of humans and their furry family members on location, editing them and printing them on-site! We sell 5x7s for $5 and 8x10s for $10!





Dogs are very important to both mine and Jason's households, as we have three dogs apiece each! You've read me blog about Isis and Raina before, but earlier this month I adopted Maximus the Malamute from Ark Valley Humane Society in Buena Vista, forever transforming "The Wheeler Girls" into "The Wheeler Gang." Jason, his girlfriend Tera and I wanted to participate in this event because our vendor fees will be used to raise money for canine cancer research. The walk hopes to raise $30,000. More than $16,000 has been raised so far! Participate in the walk, or go on a "virtual walk" where you sit this one out but still donate.



Canine cancer is the number one cause of death for dogs over the age of two. Half of all dogs will battle cancer in their lifetime; and 1 in 4 will die. Also earlier this year, I served as a hospice care for Plato, a 7-year-old Malamute who was diagnosed with canine melanoma. Vets were able to remove the original tumor found in his mouth, but the cancer grew back. Plato was an amazing dog for the short time that I had him, and it's almost uncanny how much Max resembles him.

Maximus "Max" Wheeler


Raina Wheeler


Isis Wheeler

To prepare for some of the fun portraits we hope to take of walk participants with their pets, Jason and I attended a VIP Photography Workshop called "Models and their Pets!" Here are some of my favorites that I took from that fun session out at Commons Park in Lodo:

Get the Job Done: Bath Tub Boudoir Session

Tonight I will be shooting a boudoir client who is taking me up on my idea to use the massive soaking tub in my basement bathroom as her background/scene. I'm talking warm water, bubbles and candles! Throw in some lingerie and some heels and my client is going to knock her husband's socks off when she treats him with this sensual anniversary gift! There is something lush and intimate about a woman getting ready for a bath. I hope to be able to capture that appeal inherent in this natural, everyday sort of activity.

As has been the case, my client was reeled in by the ever popular image of Teri's Rose seen above. She would like to try to recreate that look during her session. But she was also pretty taken with this shot of Kristen:



My sistah from another mother Heather M. Smith-Matthews of Fortuitous Photography will be double-teaming this assignment with me. Heather has really excelled in her boudoir photography, and I can't wait to experiment with he and my client in my spa-like basement bath decked out in neutral shades of black and white. Here's one of Heather's fabulous shots:

Get the Goods: Attending a Nude Maternity Workshop

Tonight I will be attending a pregnancy shoot hosted by the Artistic Photography of Denver Meetup at the North Denver Photography Studio in Northglenn. Cellista the model is about 8 months pregnant and has posed nude for both art and photography classes. Here is a great shot of Cellista taken by IFD Photography in Boulder.



I'm really excited to be able to working with someone who is comfortable with nude photography. I think adding several tasteful shots to my portfolio will be an inspiration for mothers to be who might have been skeptical about this kind of portraiture before. I've been wanting to practice more with the use of light and shadows in nude photography. Here is a similar shot I took with Mandy earlier this year. Mandy has since delivered her beautiful baby.



For just $25, I get two hours with this model during the Meetup which has been limited to only 7 photographers so each of us have the time to craft our ideas. Plus, the smaller group setting ensures that photographers won't need to be fighting for access to the sweet spots when we find them. It's also going to be another great opportunity to keep practicing with strobes and remote triggering with Pocket Wizards. I hope to be able to capture images like this from Ottawa photographer Paul Couvrette:



If you haven't already, consider joining the dozens of Meetup groups being hosted by experienced photographers, models and makeup artists. They are great opportunities to network, meet new friends and get some experience and shots to make you a better photographer.