Funcrunch Photo Blog

Last week, as I do nearly every year, I attended Macworld Expo in San Francisco. Though the show had much less emphasis on desktop computing than in the past (reflected in its rebranding as "Macworld | iWorld"), my primary interest in attending was to attend some great musical performances. At last year's Expo I was introduced to the awesome Zoë Keating and Jonathan Mann, so I had high hopes for this year as well.

It's been a busy year of shooting here at Funcrunch Photo, with over 25,000 images in my Lightroom catalog. Here are a dozen of my favorite photos from 2011.

I live in an apartment building where we have the typical row of narrow metal mailboxes. Large catalogs and packages don't fit in them, and we don't have a doorman or a proper lobby. The postal carriers used to toss these items in the tray below the boxes, but lately they've been sliding them, still rubber-banded together, in the gap under the door. As I'm often home during the day, I usually get the honors of unwrapping this package of catalogs and fliers and finding out perhaps more about my neighbors than they wanted me to know.

I love shooting musicians because I'm a musician myself; I sing and play piano and electric bass. I recently started a new band with my friends Reid (drums) and Ron (guitar), and we had a rehearsal scheduled for today. I asked the guys if they minded if I got a few shots of us for Flickr 11|11|11, and they obliged.

'Tis the season for sales! As a professional photographer, I've relied on several companies that produce very high quality products and services to help me run my business. Read below to get in on some deals and discounts.

Last night I went to San Francisco's classic corner of Haight and Ashbury for a love fest: a photowalk open to all lovers of photography. This event was led by Thomas Hawk, who also organized the Berkeley campus photowalk I attended in September.

Last week I spent another three nights at Café du Nord shooting the Blue Bear School of Music showcases. For added excitement and challenge, I also performed in two sets myself, as a vocalist, keyboard, and bass player (not all at once!).

On the first day of September I joined dozens of fellow photographers at my old stomping grounds, the UC Berkeley campus, on a photo walk led by local photographer Thomas Hawk and Google developer advocate Chris Chabot.

On Friday, Facebook announced an increase in their image display size to 960 pixels on the long side, a 33% increase. As I include Facebook-optimized images for all of my hired jobs, I am now increasing the size of those images for my clients at no extra charge. For Facebook-sized images licensed a-la-carte through my web site, I have upped the price by only a dollar. Prices for hi-res images and prints remain unchanged.

Today I learned that a bride-to-be was discriminated against in a New Jersey bridal shop on the basis of her sexual orientation. As a result, the shop's Yelp profile is taking quite a beating, with hundreds of angry one-star reviews, countered by some five-star reviews and Bible quotes. It is clear that the majority of those commenting are not actual customers of the shop, so Yelp is filtering many of these reviews out. And herein lies the dilemma.