B&H Rules

Nothing more to say! I ordered a Nikon 18-200 (the most sought after lens in the Nikon world) right after their site came back online from the Sabbath and less than 24 hours later it has shipped. I always order 3-5 day UPS and it usually gets to Maryland by the second day at the latest. This is why I buy almost everything from them, keep it up!

Shooting Indoor Sports/Printing Onsite

I was "fortunate" enough to get a gig shooting the Maryland State Boys Gymnastics Championship two weeks ago but I have mixed emotions about these gigs. First of all, I did enjoy it. I love capturing the emotions of these young men and watching their parents screaming with joy when they do well. I solicited the help of my friend and mentor, Mark Cozzoli, for this event. We started at 7:00am on Saturday and the event got us home around 11:30pm. We had a viewing station at this event but trying to cover 200+ gymnasts, taking orders and managing the browsing parents is difficult at best with just two people. On Sunday we started at 8:30 and the shooting was to begin at 9:30am but the schedule was wrong and it actually did not start until 11am. Either way we had to leave at 1:30 on the nose as my wife had to leave for a flight to Europe at 2:30 and we had to get home. We cleared about $270 for the entire weekend and subtracting the $100 in supplies, $40 in gas, $20 for food I cleared a whopping $7.27 per hour. Ouch!

This is my second attempt at an indoor sport and trying to print or take orders onsite and the first was just as bad. The advertising was great for this event so that is no excuse. You must invest in people and quality viewing stations to make money at this unless you just enjoy "doing it for fun". I do and thank God for the day job but I will probably stay away from these types of gigs and shoot events and upload later like I have been doing in the past.

Dave Fraser Relays - Middletown, MD

I have to admit, shooting outdoor track is one of my favorite sports of all. It is like shooting 10 events in one. You have the emotion of running to beat the opponent, straining to get over the pole vault pole, trying to reach farthest in the long jump, giving it all you have to get over that last hurdle and least another 5 or 6 events. I love going back to my Alma Matter and shooting at Middletown High School anytime I can and the next event I will shoot will be to commemorate my coach (who is still coaching) on Boyer.

Can You Find Me?

My day job has me running web sites for some of the largest staffing companies in the world so it is nice to be able to bring my knowledge over to my "fun" job. When I post SmugMug pictures of events I shoot I always have search engines in mind. What does this mean to you? Well, here is a list of things I do, at a minimum:

1) Unique Page Titles - Be sure that your page title is unique to the event you covered. If it says "New Document" in the top of the browser nobody is ever going to find you or what you shot.

2) Descriptions - Always do your best to describe the event you shoot the best you can. Add the name of event, date, venue and anything else that you think someone may enter into a search engine looking for pictures or information.

3) Google, Yahoo and MSN Site Maps - this is your silver bullet and every web site should have them .Think of it as bait on a hook when you go fishing. It tells Google and others that you have a clue and that you have content that you would like indexed. Just Google how to set them up and you should be able to figure it out, as long as you have access to publish to your own web site. The data you can get from these is tremendous as well.

I continually shoot events and post them on SmugMug for orders and on my own site for links and I always see tremendous traffic and I do not always advertise a thing. It all comes from just basic SEO and I would recommend that all of us do it.