Photographs aren’t always art – anyone can snap a picture. Real photographers have the eye, the skills with light and exposure, and the ability to set up situations where subjects feel comfortable really letting their personalities come through. Both of today’s subjects are capital ‘P’ Photographers, but with different, individual styles.
Samantha Joy tends toward rich looks that emphasize film grain and saturated colors. Darwin Mulligan’s work is somehow smoother – he manages to get a “studio lit” look even outdoors on locations. Samantha’s Wisconsin based, Darwin’s based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, though he travels extensively. Samantha focuses on weddings, while Mulligan has a long list of commercial work as well as doing weddings, engagements, portraits and landscapes.
They both have blogs with lots of pictures. Check ‘em out.
I remember college radio. Back when I went to the University of Missouri there was a kind of mystique about the campus radio station. That was mostly forged by the student DJs who finally had a forum to play the Germs and Heino back-to-back, and nobody could tell them not to! In reality the place was a dump in the basement of a crummy dorm. But I’ve seen some modern student radio stations, like the one down at Columbia College here in Chicago, and they’re first-rate. Today we’ve got some student radio stations that I’m sure are first-rate.
First up is WGTB at Georgetown in Washington, D.C. Their signal only goes out over campus cable, but wouldn’t you know it, they’re 21st-century at WGTB and you can stream them on the web! They’ve also got a sports channel for you Hoyas fans.
WTSC 91.1FM The Source is a fully student-run radio station based out of Clarkson University. We are not only commercial-free, but we are free-format. This means you can find all types of shows ranging through many genres: sports talk to hip-hop to classic rock to indie. WTSC is run by a dedicated group of students which make up our executive board.
Last we have WIUX 99.1 FM in Bloomington, Indiana, from Indiana University. It’s advertised as “pure student radio” because the entire board of directors, on-air staff, and support committees consist entirely of student volunteers. Interestingly, they also provide mobile DJ services for parties. I dunno, it sounds to me like a way for DJs to get invited to more parties, but, y’know, knock yourselves out. And of course you can stream them on the web.
StickerGiant customer Caked Las Vegas was recently featured on TLC’s “Fabulous Cakes.” Caked specializes in elaborate carved cakes. In the above video Carolyn Portuondo and her staff create a cake sushi boat and a hundred pieces of cake sushi for a friend’s party. They’re located at 9770 S. Maryland Parkway, Suite 1, Las Vegas, NV 89123.
The custom band sticker is a StickerGiant staple. Most new bands don’t have much money for advertising or promotion. Stickers are incredibly cheap, easy to distribute, and can give you a presence in the places your audience hangs out. Custom stickers last a long time, don’t spoil and never go out of style. They are easy to transport (hundreds will fit in your coat pocket) are very cheap to send in the mail and are a fun giveaway.
Our custom sticker printing services are second to none. For bands, we recommend keeping the stickers small, because there’s more places for smaller stickers to go. Try to limit yourself to just a few colors, to keep the costs down. If your band has a logo, design your sticker around it, and always include some kind of contact information – email or a web address or a MySpace page. You want any potential fan seeing the sticker to be able to find you! Here are four ways to think about distributing your band’s stickers:
1) Concerts of bands in the same genre are a good place to start. Bring them to concerts and hand them out, but resist sticking them all over the venue – they’ll just get scraped off and piss off the staff. If the venue has a place where they encourage stickering, like a posterboard in a bathroom or something, definitely take advantage of it.
2) Include stickers with merchandise. If you are selling CDs, every CD should have a sticker or two included. If you have a gig, give a stack to the doorman to hand out to everyone attending.
3) If you have a MySpace page or a website, include an offer to send free stickers to fans. Ask them to friend you on MySpace and send an email to you. In exchange for free stickers you get a mailing list of potential fans that you can announce your gigs to. If you don’t want to spend the money required to mail free stickers you can ask users of your websites to email for instructions on how to get free stickers. When the users write and email to you asking about the stickers, you can instruct them to send a self addressed stamped envelope (SASE) to you saving you the money and time required to label and send stickers out in the mail.
4) Last but not least, friends and family members are your core support group. Give them a few stickers each and ask them to spread the sticker love. You will be surprised where the stickers may end up.
You can tell we love band stickers at StickerGiant – just look at the bands that show up on this blog!
There is absolutely nothing like a good swimming pool. It’s got clean, clear water that you just don’t find in nature, with no sand, seaweed, or sea urchins to bug you. It’s chlorinated, so you can forget about algae and just enjoy the cool water. And, if you get one installed at your home, it’s right outside! Today we’ve got two examples of pool company stickers.
First up is Zaber Pools, which I take to be Zaber Pools of Amherst, because that’s in the Cleveland area and that’s what the sticker says. There’s also a Zaber Pools of Columbus which has a very nice website. Anyway, they both do indoor and outdoor pools.
Second is California Pools. Now, I’m not sure which California Pools this one is for, because they have more than 20 franchised locations in California and Arizona, with more states to come (maybe!) Google even found a California Pools in Dallas, though I think that’s a separate company. Anyway, if anyone recognizes this sticker, tell me! Just goes to show you should include some contact information on your business’s sticker.
Terrapin Adventures offers all sorts of outdoor fun. They’re a company based in Savage, MD, thirty minutes from Washington D.C., Baltimore and Annapolis that offers “adventures” like a zipline ride through the forest canopy or a giant, three-person swing that’s winched back and then released, using only gravity to create 2 G’s of force (then you swing back and forth for like three minutes — it’s crazy.) Terrapin offers their adventures for team-building exercises as well as straight-up parties. Other things you can do: climb a giant, four-sided climbing tower or cross the High-Ropes traverses, far above the ground. Its crazy outdoorsy stuff and apparently lots of fun.
Terrapin also offers tours. Biking, river tubing, guided nature hikes, geocaching, rock climbing/rappelling, sailing, windsurfing, fly & reel fishing and horseback riding. Whew! These tours range all over the Chesapeake Bay area and they’re really quite reasonably priced. So, Maryland adrenaline junkies, now you know where to go.
One strategy for fooling burglars while you’re away from home is using timers on the lights to give your house that “currently-being-lived-in” feeling. This post is not about that strategy. Rather, it’s a cruel fantasia, where your house is lit exclusively with high-tech spots, PAR cans and moving-head lights from Blizzard Lighting, like the hottest, crunkest club this side of the ATL, and the poor burglars can’t help but try to sneak in, bless their hearts, because it’s obviously so bangin’ at your crib. It would help if you have “Southernplayalisticadillacmusic” blasting away somewhere inside. Anyway, they try to break in, not so much to steal all of your worldly possessions and those efficient, durable, high-tech Blizzard Lighting fixtures, but just to be down with your whole, y’know, scene.
And what happens to them? They’re stopped cold by your new Dempsey Alarms system! You went for the Fort Knox package, with a digital alarm keypad, 15 protected doors/windows, 1 motion detector or monitored smoke detector and 2 remote controls, all for a $199 install fee and $34.99 monthly monitoring. Suddenly the gangsta-whine synthesizers are replaced by howling sirens as the po-po comes to cart your would-be thieves away. I almost feel sorry for them now. Almost. Dempsey Alarms are available in the San Diego area.
Big congrats to our customer @
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