I LOVE UNSOLICITED TESTIMONIALS!!

---

Photography forums are becoming a
VERY powerful force in the photography industry.  All of the
camera manufacturers, product manufacturers, labs, etc are checking all
of the forums because it is a pure source of the “word on the
street”.  Now there may be some wacky people on them who seem like
they have nothing to do all day but post and complain like hell, but
you get a lot of good info.  And believe me when I say that when I
create a product I am REALLY aware that if it’s stupid, the discussion
forums will take down a bad product in minutes. 

This is why I am so jazzed that the LS2 is selling so fast and by word of
mouth.  If you click on the icon, you can see this testimonial
from the great “zuga.net” forum about how someone dug my product and
influenced a friend to get one.  I’m so freaking jazzed! 
THANK YOU!

STORYBOOK WEDDINGS ® – THE STORY
BEHIND STORYBOOK

---

There
is a big thread in the Digital Wedding Forum about why I have
registered the name, “Storybook Weddings” as a registered
trademark.  It is a little more complex than my wanting to
register and tie up the phrase.  This story is
interesting…

I had hired a young, ambitious photographer, (she started with me when
she was 19, numbering proofs) who worked her way up to manage my
studio.  She worked for me for five years, and when she got
married and moved, I shot the wedding, played piano with the band, and
wished her well.

When I went to launch my website, I found that the name of my studio
had been taken – BY HER!  She took the website,
“storybookstudio.com”  When I called her to ask what the hell
she
was thinking, she said it was her website and too
bad!    So I called an attorney, and when we
investigated, she actually went to the US patent and trademark office
and registered the trademark claiming that she was the inventor of the
phrase “Storybook Studio”.  

My attorney wrote her a letter informing her that her claims in
registering the trademark that I already owned after 15 years of common
law rights in interstate commerce constituted fraud. 
Additionally, if we did not reverse and report her registration – get
this you’ll love this one – then I WOULD BE INFRINGING HER MARK
STORYBOOK!  I would then have to pay HER up to 3x my revenues
for
any revenue I gained by using the “Storybook” mark.

So we had to sue her in Federal Court.  Despite my having all
of
the payroll records, she continued to deny that she ever worked for
me.  I mean it was absolutely amazing.  My attorney
took the
case on contingency because he knew that the jury would hate
her. 
And boy did they.

After a full federal jury trial (she refused to settle even after
admitting in her deposition that she lied about “creating” the name
Storybook) the jury awarded me $245,000 in damages.  Since she
was
insured, I got a check from her insurance company.  I used
that
money to buy my Raven Creek Estate at Big White Ski Resort and I used
the sanctions that the judge awarded me against her attorney to buy my
sailboat.  (I vowed to buy fun things with whatever money I
got
out of this shit thing I had to go through).

I really loved the fact that her attorney had to write me a
check.  THAT WAS SWEET!

You can see the judge’s decision at:
http://garyfong.com/verdict/1.html

Oh by the way, do a google search for the name, “Teresa
Halton”. 

WANT TO PARTICIPATE IN A SIX WAY COMPARISON SHOOTOUT AT PPA/NEW ORLEANS?

---

I just thought of a cool
idea.  I’m going to bring the following cameras to PPA
Nationals:  CANON EOS1DMarkII, EOS20D, EOS10D, FUJI S3/S2/S20,
NIKON D2H, D70.  We could go around New Orleans and have all of us
shoot each camera in different lighting situations, and ISO’s, etc. and
then I can publish the web galleries on my website.  If you would
like to be part of the test, email me at garyf@garyfong.com.  I
will also need you to bring some lenses because ain’t no way I’m
traveling with all of those lenses!

SEE YOU IN NEW ORLEANS!

---

Just decided to go to the PPA
National Convention in New Orleans 1/16-19th.  No official reason
to go but I’m going to have a few meetings.  So if you are going,
I’ll be hanging around the trade show area.

I was in New Orleans exactly last year because I was speaking at PPA in
Biloxi, MS and we took a little vacation over there.  If you click
on the collage at the left, you can see the photos I took on that
trip.  It was a trip.  Sorry for the awful pun.

I got a screaming deal on hotels.com for $159/night
at the Renaissance Arts Hotel.  .  This is a AAA four star, and that
is an incredible deal.  I always use hotels.com when booking rooms
because most of the major hotel chains have a price guarantee… so I
can use the hotel’s website (and cancellation policy) and have them
beat hotels.com website’s prices

ANOTHER WEBSITE KNOCKOFF!

---

I just got an email from Frank
Donnino, a friend of mine from the East Coast who has a wildly
successful children’s photography operation.  He showed me his
website’s “about” page which was a finalist in PPA’s marketing contest,
and another photographer from Santa Barbara.  The testimonials are
the same, the names are the same, but the CITY HAS BEEN CHANGED! 
And if you roll over the other photographer’s photo, Frank Donnino’s
name pops up!

See for yourself!  (click on each one to open, the original is first)

. .

So Frank asked me what he should do.  I don’t know maybe having
27,000 photographers who visit this site frequently find out about it
may help! 

If you have had your website ripped off, you know who to email!

GET READY FOR THE NEXT BIG THING!

---

Well it’s been a great year with
a whole lot of new and exciting products here at garyfong.com. 
From BullZeye to the Power Console Software up to the new GF
Lightsphere II – BUT next year is going to bring in the announcement
of a FANTASTIC new offering to anyone who wants to display albums on
the web – INSTANTLY in an instant movie:

Imagine making a web album or a selection of display images from a
shoot you did just a few minutes ago.  Imagine putting in your
memory card, selecting a number of images and then INSTANTLY upload
them to the web for an INSTANT MOVIE slide show with fade/zooms and
music.  No complicated web authoring, and it is all done online.

Best of all, you can experiment for free, and then if you want to go
“live” you just purchase the show for a really reasonable fee.

It’s coming soon so hang on to your whatever you hang on to when you hang on!

click here

THERE HAVE BEEN A LOT
OF POSTS ON THE S3

---

Giving whacky white balance and
tones that are too orange.  So I figured I would give some helpful
tips on settings for the best results.  I’ve been shooting
the S3 since September so I had a lot of time to play with it. 
Here’s what you have to keep in mind:

1) Because of the extended dynamic range, the shots will look a lot
smoother in the midtone range.  This will give an appearance of
less contrast, though if you really look at the histogram, the 0′s and
255′s are all there.  One benefit is that unlike the S2, you don’t
have to shoot with the tone in ORG setting, although you should pull
down the color to ORG in many portrait situations.

2) The camera has more options for imaging than any other camera, so it
can get confusing.  What other digital camera offers two film
emulation modes, plus three dynamic range settings (plus 1 stop, plus 2
stops and auto) as well as RAW in both Adobe and sRGB capture modes for
JPG?  Here’s what you can do to get great stuff
consistently:  shoot ORG color, STD tone (or ORG) with DR at +2
setting… 3 mpx Normal JPG is fine for prints up to 12×18″, with
sharpening on HARD. 

I’m enclosing images from a shoot so you can see.  These shots
were all from the camera, unmodified in PS and shot with the settings
explained above.  All indoor shots were shot with a Lightsphere,
domeless, straight up.

click here to see the website

YAY!  This is cool – happiness from Zuga.net – !  (great forums)

TRAVEL INFORMATION FOR THE D.I. TAPING JAN 24/25

One thing nice about my area is that we are surrounded by hotels. 
Many of you were asking about travel info, so I have put it all on one
website… click here

LIGHTSPHERE SHIPPING STATUS:

---

Canon 580EX
- according to Dan, my molds manufacturer – these will be produced next
week, and the shipping will be about a week after that.  Dan made
a few changes to the 580EX model to improve the functionality, thus
shipment which was due today 12/17 is delayed at least a week.

Nikon SB800/Canon 550EX – NOW SHIPPING

All other flash models – being
made today, we should receive them next week.  I am creating the
“How-To” guides for each of these models so we can insert them in your
box.

Thanks for your patience!  They are selling as fast as we can make them so if you want to avoid waiting forever… click here!

---

NEW E-COMMERCE SOLUTION COMING: My
e-commerce website has processed more orders in the last few months
than it did in the previous 2 years, so the time has come for us to
find a better e-commerce solution than we now have at
http://www.mycart.net.  I previously recommended mycart.net for
e-commerce, but their reporting requires that we spend most of our time
looking up orders in their awful software.  We have tried really
hard to get a solution from their tech people, but they just have no
help for us.  We don’t have the manpower to work around the
limitations of mycart.net so if any of you out there know of a better
e-commerce solution with strong reporting functions, please email me!

---

Ohhh. Thanks. I was considering using them.  Cool to find you on here. I found it by accident after ordering your products. Fun place this xanga is.Posted 12/18/2004 at 5:55AM by stuftmj

           

It is a riotious pain having to deal with mycart.net’s reporting. It’s not like I haven’t asked for the most basic stuff like searching a query of purchases of a certain product or whatever – YOU CANNOT DO EVEN THAT. All they have is some crazy “crystal” reports that is formatted for only I.E. running on Windows – so I had to buy a Windows computer just to see the reports! And if they were like, “responsive” I would hang in with them… but I asked for a CD of all records of the last year, whole thing went ignored. I just know that my mouth waters when I look at other e-commerce solutions… customization, reporting, all at about the same price.with our volume doing between 3 and 20,000 bucks a day depending on the alignment of the moon, maybe mycart.net is ok for teeny volume.    If they would just do basic database reporting then I could live with it – because the switching costs are CRAZY for me. If you are starting out – just do a search for online e-commerce solutions, and you’ll see a lot of stuff with groovy features – and check the stats for reporting. This is one headache you won’t have to deal with until you grow to a certain size – like even if you did only 30 orders a month, god help you with mycart.net.  Posted  12/18/2004 at 8:01 PM by garyfong1