Blog By Night

The 2010 Hutch project.

Another event for AM 1280 The Patriot. The photos are now online. You can find them in our photo gallery under events. This one featured Hugh Hewitt, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and Dennis Prager. Appearances were also made by MN gubernatorial hopeful Tom Emmer as well as several other state and local candidates.

Photos from Wednesday night’s AM 1280 The Patriot event are now online. You can find them in our photo gallery under events. It was a great night for conservative thought. One message was clear from Mr. Medved: we must stay focused on the message of small government and personal freedom and not get distracted by fringe issues. MN Governor Tim Pawlenty made a great point that very soon, it will not be a matter of liberal vs. conservative — it will simply be an issue of elementary school math. Our nation is spending more than we are taking in, and increasing taxes on the working class (and those who employ them) is not the answer to that problem. Hugh weighed in with his usual witty and concise legal knowledge, framing many of the current issues and pointing out what we can expect from the courts in the future.

Just a quick update to let anyone interested know that the photos from Tuesday night’s AM 1280 The Patriot event are online. You can go directly to the gallery here. Guests can download low resolution files for sharing via email or posting online for free, and you can also order prints directly on the site as well.

Tuesday night I worked an event for local talk radio station AM1280 The Patriot called “Obama: The First 100 Days” with radio hosts Bill Bennett, Dennis Prager and Hugh Hewitt. It was a discussion of how the first 100 days of this historic presidency have gone, and how it will effect this greatest nation on God’s green earth, if I may borrow a catch-phrase from the absent Michael Medved. An outsider might expect this to be an evening of Obama bashing, but that would be discounting the sheer intelligence and wisdom represented by the three gentlemen pictured above. Every criticism they had was backed up by logic, common sense and even history. These guys know their stuff. And they even had some points on which they commended Obama, usually something that didn’t go quite as he campaigned, but rather showing that the president is either more level-headed than we feared, or that perhaps access to higher-level intelligence and advisors have changed his tune. It was great to see people that I have listened to and hold in such high regard, in person.

More photos of the event and portraits of the VIP dinner attendees with the hosts will be available online by the end of this weekend.

Photos from Second Harvest Heartland‘s Dish event are now online. You can view them here, under “Events.” It was a great evening supporting a great cause: ending hunger in the heartland. They really are a fabulous organization. For every $1 donated, they are able to distribute $9 worth of food to a family in need. An astonishing 96% of their budget goes directly to programs. If you’ve done any research on non-profit groups, you know how awesome that is.

What a fun night! Second Harvest Heartland‘s “Dish” event is always a blast, but this year was even better. For one thing, I wasn’t just a guest this year – I was volunteering as a photographer (more images to follow), which is always fun. Plus, one of my favorite entertainers of all time, Louie Anderson, was there. As a kid I had Louie at the Guthrie taped and watched it over and over and over. Needless to say, I was very excited when I saw that Louie was the headliner for the evening. When we were just about ready to leave for the night SHH’s Executive Director, Rob Zeaske asked I would mind taking a couple of photos of Louie… Let me think about that… OK! So I took some shots of Louie, Rob, Dawn Marie Nelmark (SHH) and Cookie and Char of Coleman Mason Events. Rob let Louie know that they raised over $367,000 to fight hunger that night and Louie starting a round of high-fives. Well, I was right there, so I put my hand up too and got a high-five from Louie Anderson. He asked my name, shook my hand and asked if I wanted a photo. Char was nice enough to take the below photo for me.

If you are looking for a way to give back, a fun evening out, some good eats, some laughter and/or a great deal on your wedding photography… then check out Dish: Cuisine for Change. Dish is the annual fundraiser gala for Second Harvest Heartland. Their mission is to end hunger in the heartland. Dish is a really fun event featuring some of the Twin Cities’ best chefs who let you sample dishes from their upscale restaurants. There is also wine and martinis, silent and live auctions and a performance by Minnesota native, and one of my all-time favorite comedians, Louie Anderson! The event is selling fast, so click the image above for more info today!

OK, so what does all this have to do with wedding photography, you ask? Well, it’s simple… Fly By Night Graphics, Ltd. is donating an $800 credit towards a wedding package. The bidding will start at $300… so you could save quite a bit of money and what you do spend will go towards a great cause. Even if the bidding gets up higher, you’re not out anything and SHH gets a nice donation. I will be at the event taking photos if you have any questions. Or feel free to contact me ahead of time.

The uploading continues… I’ve got a couple more shows from the archives just added to the gallery. Both are from 2006. Kiss Me Kate at Morris Park Players and Twelfth Night at Macalester College. I haven’t done any editing or color correcting, so these are jpegs straight out of the camera – both keepers and duds. Mostly just wanted to get them uploaded for the purposes of backup, rather than actual marketing… but who knows, right?

We are in the process of switching our image hosting service. I had been using Pictage on a 6 month discounted trial basis. They have a lot to offer, but they charge quite a bit for everything. At the trial price, I could sustain a business, but once it kicks up their regular monthly fee, it’s just not going to be feasible. I can see it being a viable business plan for another studio that does much more volume than I do. Plus, their commissions on prints and products are on the high end for the industry… and just went up. So, over the last month or so, I did a lot of research on various services and settled on Zenfolio. If you happen to be in the market for online photo storage or marketing, use this referral code for a $5 discount: YSR-CAR-7SR. Still lots of uploading to do… broadband can only do so much in the up direction. More categories and events will be added as time permits. But, you can check out what we have so far here. Weddings are password protected – I tried to make them the same as they were before, if you had visited the old site. If you forgot or just want to check it out, shoot me an email.