Uebelhart . Net

Dawn said I must update the site, so…..

Brian’s Job: Still being independent contractor doing PI & consulting stuff. But the new company organization has finally started to come together and the lawyers have the paperwork to get it organized and filed with the state. After that we get a company license for investigations (me) and security consulting (Tom) and go forward from there. We have great partners and several contracts in the works, so a steady stream of income should start. Then an investor is ready to step in once we are operational and can prove we are working in the black. Yipee.

Dawn: Choir rehearsals are now on summer hiatus, so she once again has Wednesday nights free. A bell event is in Dallas this weekend, so she and I will proceed up there and while she is ringing, I’ll be geocaching and doing some photos. We may hit San Angelo afterward for a day and a half.

Photography: Speaking of photography, I have been selected by a new company to test out their product service for selling my photos. Basically Any photo I post on some of my websites will have a button attached where anyone can order a photo - the company will take the order, ask me for a true quality copy, then print and ship the order. They get a % of each order and the printing costs, I get the rest. This will work until I get enough images up and set to afford an independent merchant account for taking credit cards and to deal directly with a quality printer. The service has a few glitches we are working through, but it’s nice. I’ll have 3 sites up using it, and they are being redeveloped now (one for general photos, one for “fine art” and one for Houston & Texana subjects).

Dogs: The galoots are doing fine. With the summer here they are having a blast chasing squirrels.

Future Travel: Not much except about a week and a half in New York in Early September. I may also be making some trips to Mexico for work, and possibly elsewhere (especially San Antonio, Austin & Bryan/College Station, which will happen at least once a month).

It was a fortunate series of events. Dawn had to go to College Station to meet with someone about a work event on Thursday, so I was going to drive up Wednesday and go with her, and maybe we’d go meet with one of my partners (Tom) who lives up there and have lunch.

Wednesday I was having a meeting with Tom in Houston and another partner (Jim) about the business and Tom and Jim started discussing a meeting they were going to have on a different venture in College Station also on Thursday. When I mentioned I’d be up there and could attend if needed, Jim, who owns a private 4 seat plane, remarked that he could fly us up since that was how he’d get there.

So voila, Dawn & I got a personal ride in a nice 4 seater Mooney to & from BCS. The wind was very hairy for landing in BCS but Jim (who has been a pilot since Viet Nam) got us down without problems. Way Cool.

Here’s a pic of a shopping center I snapped on the way back from about 2K feet. Processed a bit and a fake “tilt shift” applied to make it look like a model in a toy train set.

We were in Texarkana last week for a bell ringing get together for Dawn. I went to do some Geocaching (got about 15) and take pics, but it rained for 3 of the 4 days we were there.

Managed to get a few pics, here’s an old hardware warehouse/factory I payed with.

Testing new service to add a zoomable image to check out.

On this sample I uploaded, zoom into the cars to the left - you can read a small sign, invisible in the normal picture, that says “Buses Only”.  Pretty cool.

David Bowie has a song called “Space Oddity.”  It’s about an astronaut named Major Tom and his tragic flight into space.  His capsule/ship encounters some kind of problem in space and fails, thus he dies while returning to Earth (home).

Peter Schilling did his own version of the song (and it’s often confused for David Bowie’s), which has some differences yet has the same theme (his is called “Major Tom (Coming Home)” youtube video link ).

So the song is about a person who’s vehicle fails him and kills him.

Now wouldn’t that be a stupid song to put in a car ad?  Well Lincoln did it!  Twice - previously for the Lincoln MKS and recently for the Lincoln MKZ.

At least they were smart enough to edit the song so it only has the “happy part” and beat.  But if you know the song, it’s a bit ironic and an Epic Fail!  Here’s the commercial: Youtube link

Well, I’m finally moving on the photo biz to get it better organized and together.

I’ll run it with 3 websites right now: Steel-sun.com , SunStockPhoto.com , and ShootHouston.com

Steel-sun.com will be the main site and feature the “fine art” and limited edition prints for sale.  I’m already getting linked in with Amazon to handle payments & money processing and some great pro printers to handle image printing.  It will also provide the gateway links to the other 2 sites.

SunStockPhoto.com will be general stock sales and licensing

ShootHouston.com will be specific stock photos dealing with Houston, Texas only.

I’ve ordered the general business cards for Steel-Sun.com (front & back images):

I’ve got to refile the DBAs for the company (address info has changed on them) and expand my sales tax permit.

The website structures are in development, I don’t know how long it’ll take though.

I’ve added a few new things on the side bar to the right (some were already there in test phase).

The 2 primary things are the Photoblog Addon, and the Random Images.

The Photoblog addition allows me to just upload a picture and it’ll show the latest 2 or 3.  This way I can upload an image without having to post a new article in the blog.  If you click the “More Photos” link, it’ll display the history of these photoblog posts.  (Right now there are only 2 images - a film stock photo I took last year, and an old store/warehouse pic I took a few days ago in Palestine, Texas).  I’ll update these images whenever I get a neat image in a set or if I just want to post something for the heck of it.  I probably won’t update that more than once a day.  If I have a set of images, I’ll be making a gallery of them like normal and post it, but may upload one of it’s images in the photoblog area.

The Random Images section finds 2 images from the history of my posts. These should not include any images placed in the Photoblog area above, and most gallery shots won’t be in there.  So these are basically historical images from when I posted directly in the blog articles.  I’ve been seeing some pop up there I have completly forgotten about.  It is truly random and new ones will show up with every refresh/visit.  I’m not sure how many are in the pool, so I don’t know how long before you see a repeat.

Last week I got to go to the Houston Museum of Natural Science after normal closing hours and shoot for about 3 hours.  This was due to a local photo group I hang out online at (Houston Strobist).  The object of the shoot was to experiment and learn about lighting in new and different ways.  Quite alot of fun.

Here’s a gallery of images I took that night (click on image for gallery):

Okay, finally got a gallery up for Chichen Itza.

Let’s see how this will work out.

Click on the picture for the gallery.

I’ve updated the site software (WP 2.7.1) and design template.

I still have some work to do

• Organize the photo libraries/galleries so they are all accessable from the link/button below
• Kill off some dead space & files
• Put my own graphics/pictures in here for the background and titles
• bunch of housekeeping and other junk.