It’s Tuesday, and while we are all waiting on Apple’s iPhone announcements in a week, here’s a two-fer for you. These were both shot with the very excellent 50mm 1.2 L, loaned to me from the fine folks at Ziplens.com. I’ll be talking about their company and lens rentals in general on this week’s episode of Shoot The Baby.

Lisa and our friend Cindy just completed their San Diego Rock and Roll Half Marathon! They totally kicked ass, beating several people that were waaayyy older than them! :) They also beat some young kids too! :) All told, they finished in the top 100 for the race! Rock on! Here’s an iPhone picture taken by Cindy’s husband, Lou:

I couldn’t make it because I had a wedding, but I am so happy for them both! Way to go!

Fresh off the heels of yesterday’s wedding, I spent some time today with our good friends James and Laura and their 3 beautiful children! James is my official poker mentor, and he’s probably the reason that Lisa has a shirt that reads “Poker Widow”.

This is the first session to come off of Lisa’s Team-In-Training Fundraising Spectacular. It is getting quite hot now in Texas, so we like to do these shoots quick!

How cute is this?

Here I gave the kids instructions to ‘go jump on daddy’. Luckily daddy didn’t need a tylenol after this.

What incredibly beautiful children!

Ok, I am looking to expand my portfolio with some high-energy, fun, on-location portrait shoots. These shoots will eventually build up into a commercial portfolio, so I am looking for some volunteers that have some time (maybe 1-2 hours tops) and need some cool, hip, well-lit portrait shots.

Oh, and you must have at least $0 to spend on new pictures, because that’s how much I will charge for giving you a couple of the best, processed images from these sessions. You can use them on your website, business card, whatever. All I ask is a credit/web link, and that you tell all your friends how much you love your pictures!

Some examples of the types of shots I want to do can be found here, here, here and here.

We’ll talk over some ideas and come up with something really cool.

So whether you need headshots, band shots, company shots, whatever - it just needs to be cool, fun, and not boring :) I am only doing a limited number of these freebie shoots, so contact me directly at doggett //at// doggettstudios.com with a subject line of ‘No-Budget Shoot’, or something similar :)

Just put together a space shuttle launch collage from 2 years of launches (although I missed one launch in 2007):

And before you ask, shuttle launch numbers don’t always run in sequence. That’s why STS-118 happened after STS-121 :) .

Having the Tivo really helped - we were able to pause the launch and get the perfect shot!

So there I am today, taking a break from designing some movie poster custom birth announcements for BoxOfficeBaby.com, and I decide to turn on AppleTV. I like to catch up on all the latest trailers, and it’s “Trailer Tuesday” every week here in the house (well, for me at least).

This time, I was watching some trailers for some old movies, and I revisited my youth by watching the one for Rocky IV. Here’s the screen that you see if you want to rent or buy the movie:

At the bottom, it lists some movies that it thinks I might like based on what others watched. Let’s review:

Karate Kid 1 & 2 - check.
The Natural - check.
Field of Dreams - maybe.
Rocky II - check.
Harry Potter - I guess.

Little Women? WTF? Are you kidding me? Here’s the zoomed-in proof:

Show me one guy that rented Rocky IV and also rented Little Women. I’ve never seen it, nor do I have any desire to see it. They are neither little nor are they women.

Sorry, AppleTV. Looks like your recommendation system may need some tweaking.

After about 6 months of crazy creativity, I am so happy to announce that www.BoxOfficeBaby.com is live!

But what is it?

Well, way back when we found out that Trevor was on the way, I decided to create a movie poster birth announcement. I printed up a bunch of copies at 16×24 and we mailed them out to friends and family. It was a hit!

Since then, I’ve gone on to create over 25 designs that are part of the initial launch of BoxOfficeBaby.com. They come in 3 sizes: a pack of 5×7 cards (*perfect* for mailing out to family), 16×24, and 24×36. It doesn’t matter whether you have a baby on the way, a baby that just arrived, or a birthday party coming up, all the designs work for these occasions!

The 5×7 cards are printed on this woven texture card that’s really high-end, and the posters are printed by my photo lab - so the quality is the same as if you had professional photos taken of your family and turned into framed prints! I don’t even know a pro photographer that would print a 24×36 under $100, but we’ve been able to do it!

The way it works is simple! You pick the design you like, and you fill in the information. We print it up and mail it to you! The 5×7 cards come in packs of 25, and the posters can be framed or upgraded to a Masonite back for extra durability.

We’re also big on giving back, so 10% of every order goes to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep.

I tell you what - instead of me telling you about it here, just over to the site and watch the cool introductory video! It will answer everything! And when you are done, check out the store! If you decide to purchase something, just use the code DOGBLOG during checkout to receive a free copy of my 25 page pdf e-book, “10 Tips To Shoot Your Baby Like A Movie Star”. The free e-book is an introductory offer though, so get cracking on designing your custom announcement!

So check it out! BoxOfficeBaby.com - it’s your baby in lights!

Last night we headed up to the fun and trendy Divine Wine in Austin for the official unveiling of Lisa’s mom’s custom wine! Divine will help you create your own wine, and then they throw a party several weeks later when it’s ready! You actually bottle it up, cork and label it yourself, and then box it up and head home!

Check out some of these shots:

Wine, wine and more wine:

Here’s the wine ready to go! Believe it or not, you’ll get about 25 bottles out of this:

A collection of empty bottles, ready to go:

Getting ready to bottle.

Check out this custom label, designed by yours truly!

Here’s Lisa getting ready to operate the corking machine. She was about to ‘cork her bottle’. Nice. :)

This interesting device heats up inside and literally melts the label to the bottle in about 1 second! I’d like to cook a hot dog in there.

Let the labeling begin.

Boxed up and ready to go!

After we were done, Lisa decided she wanted to make her own special blend. Here she is in the back room stirring it up.

We just got back yesterday from a couple of days in San Diego, sans kids. We were there for one of Lisa’s college friends who was getting married. It was weird to sit in the crowd during the ceremony and not do anything but twiddle my thumbs.

We did a Segway tour one day which was a lot of fun! Here are a couple of shots from the trip:

Getting some Segway lessons before the tour.

Here are Lisa’s college buds.

Relaxing in downtown!

Lisa and our friend Cindy held a fundraiser for their upcoming Team In Training Half-Marathon race last weekend! Team In Training is an organization that raises money for Leukemia and Lymphoma, and they will train you for specific races. In exchange, you have to raise a certain amount of money to cover your airfare/hotel/etc for the race. All that money then goes into TNT to help fight cancer.

Lisa and Cindy raised almost $2,000 at their event - awesome! It was a Margarita Contest party at the community pool, and they had raffle prizes, silent auction items and more!

I had donated one discounted photo session, but after it was snatched up some other people asked about getting in at the same price. By the end of the party, 8 families had signed up for sessions - too cool!

Everyone had a great time, and I am pretty sure that Lisa and Cindy hit their fundraising goal with this event! Here are a couple shots.

The classic shot - I’ve emailed a copy to Child Protective Services:

‘Why yes, it is funny to open the gate!’

Poor Fritz. Little does he know that this shot has a very good chance of ending up on his graduation announcement.

“And so, you want to buy here and sell here. Not the other way around”

Trevor crashes from all the excitement.