I'm an Author!

I posted a while back about new projects, one of which was a book. It's now out, and I have to confess I am taking a certain amount of pleasure in actually seeing myself up on Amazon as an author. More later on everything going on, still suffering from limited connectivity while traveling, but check the book out, would love to get some reviews, it's free until July 25th. I expect to have good connectivity again in a week or so for another substantial update!

http://www.amazon.com/Shoot-Your-Childs-Show-Like-ebook/dp/B00LYQ8B6O

Rainbows, Magical Mysteries and a week in paradise!

    I have been incommunicado for a while, because I have been out to sea with no ability to post images or make blog posts, but I spent the last week on a port visit to Oahu. Next week I am out to sea and offline again for another month or so, figure I better knock out an update while I can, because a lot has been happening.

    Let's start with the trip out to Hawaii. Took our time because we had lots of flight ops to do for training before we got here. While I was out to sea, I got some editing catchup done. I also finished the rough draft of the text for my first book. That's right, if all goes well I will soon be the proud author of my first e-book. A while back I wrote a longer post on shooting aerial performers for another blog, which didn't wind up using it as far as I could find. I was kinda bummed, but after a bit of looking around on line and at book stores, I realized there was a niche I could fill if I adapted the post. I couldn't find anything targeted at parents who were trying to take their cameras and shoot their children's school plays, dance recitals, and the like. So I decided to re-work and expand the post into something a parent with a DSLR, but not much photography knowledge, could use to take better pictures of their kids shows. Figure if I can crack the marketing mystery there should be a good niche for it to fill, and since I have nothing but time while I am sailing circles in the water, it really doesn't cost me anything so as long as anyone buys the book, it'll be a profit. All I have left to do is edit the text, insert the images, and format it. Hopefully by the next time I get to an internet connection it will be ready for upload! 

   The second thing I did is put up a fund raising page for myself. I am pretty much at the limits of what my 5 year old computer is capable of when it comes to editing images. Even though it is maxed out RAM wise for what it is, it takes me about ten times as long as it should to edit images because I have to wait for the edits to catch up, especially when using the insanely high resolution images that come from the D800. I can't really afford to upgrade, but if I want to keep shooting for free and providing images to my friends, I can't afford not to. So I decided to try and toss it out into the universe and see if the people who I have been doing all the free shooting and editing for would maybe be willing to help me out a little in return. So far it's been a bitter disappointment. Only one person has contributed at all. I was hoping for a little bit better response, but I guess people really don't know how much time it takes away from my family working on their images. With my current setup, for example, just doing noise reduction on 200 shots from a show takes me around 5 - 6 hours. And that's before doing anything else to the images. Oh well, I am going to have to be a lot more selective in the free jobs I take on in the future I guess. I knew I would have to make that decision at some point, I just hoped to push it off as long as I could, but maybe that's now.  I've been making the argument to myself that it's been building a fan base, which it has, but it sure hasn't led to any paying gigs yet, so not sure there is much point in it anymore, even though I enjoy going and shooting the shows. There are a few people who, while not necessarily able to give back money wise, I know they do send anything my way they can and return the favor as best as they are able, if you are one of those friends, don't worry, I'll still shoot for you any day. 

     The next big thing that has happened is that I have been accepted as an apprentice by The Arcanum, which promises to be an awesome experience. Basically, it was set up as an alternative to traditional photography schools/classes by some ridiculously talented and cool people, it's sort of an online jedi academy for photographers, where a group of masters select a cohort of paduan learners who work together to learn and grow. I was selected by the incredible Jessica Lark, and have already started to meet a fabulous group of people who I will be sharing the journey with. There will be more updates on that front as I go along the path, it will take me a while to really get moving since right now I am going to be connectivitevely challenged. (yeah, I just invented my own word there, sorry)

   Now for Hawaii. Once I had my travel dates down, I got on Model Mayhem and One Model Place to try and find some local models to set up shoots with. I initially had a lot of interested responses, but as it got closer and closer, the majority of them flaked. Wound up with two relatively good prospects. One of them was interested in modeling nude, but wasn't comfortable with doing it in a potentially public place, so she asked about doing boudoir in my hotel. My first instinct was, "oh hell no, I am going to be in Hawaii, I am going to do beach and waterfall shots!" But I figured I would go with the flow, so I told her I would let her know. Then I checked into my hotel, took a look around, and decided it would work. So lesson one- go with the flow of the universe. Seems to have worked for me so far, went with it here and it paid off. Lots of good shots, but what really sold it was the cracked glass windows between the bedroom and bathroom. Lighting was a pain in the ass, should have brought some gaffers tape, wound up balancing a flash on top of a lighting fixture on the mirror and hoping it wouldn't fall, but here is the kind of images we were able to get: (censored just to keep the post PG13, you will have to wait for the full NSFW gallery later on)

   So pretty happy with how that worked out. Second model knew of some good beaches up on the North West corner of the island near Kaena Point so we planned an afternoon meet up. Traffic was lighter than I expected so I got there pretty early. The image I opened the post with was one I took while scouting around and killing time. I also found a glider port, and decided to take a glider flight to kill time. This was an excellent choice! 

   More from the glider coming later, it was challenging to shoot through the canopy, especially not knowing when the pilot was going to catch a wind gust and do something fancy to show off.  But it was cool. I know there are a lot of glider ports around San Diego, will have to investigate them when I get home and get caught up. 

    So got down from the flight and the model showed up. Not only was the beach she chose awesome, but she had been modeling for a while and knew what she was doing. The shoot was great, she gave me lots of awesome with minimal direction, which is great since I am still pretty inexperienced when it comes to posing models. She was just plain fun to work with. We timed it so the we just caught the golden hour, and the universe obviously listened when I said I wanted an epic beach shoot, because after some other great shots you will see soon, we ended with a set like this:

   All natural light, and yes, that is a freaking RAINBOW behind her head. I pulled up the saturation a little bit in photoshop, but no kidding, it was there. 

   So thus ends my epic week of Hawaiian working vacation. Tomorrow it's back to the ship and getting ready to head back out to sea. I'll be mostly off the grid for a little while again,  but I will have  a lot of time to work up all the images from the week of shooting, so when I get to civilization again there will be full galleries from my shoots in paradise, and hopefully more information on the book! 

    Until then, don't forget me, please feel free to stop by my fundraising page,  pass the link on to your friends, and finally, always remember that photography isn't about the gear.... unless it's this one from outside a coffee and chocolate factory on the North Shore.....

   Yeah, I said coffee AND chocolate factory. Told you it was an epic trip! That's all for now, back to the grind, see you again in a month or so. Aloha and Mahalo!

Epic photo shoot... this is how it's supposed to go!

  A week or two ago, while I was still out to sea on my last trip, a friend/fellow aerialist/fellow photographer, Meghan Meredith, tossed out a great idea. We have a lot of photographers as well as talented aerialists at Aerial Revolution, our gym/second home. (I mean that, it's kinda like the Cirque Du Soliel version of Joe's Gym from Dodgeball, we're family- even if we're nothing close to average) So why not collaborate and set up a photo shoot day. We'd all get to work together, the aerialists would get great pics for their resumes, we'd get great stuff for our portfolios, and the studio would make a little extra money. Everybody wins.

  So, yesterday was the first shoot of what hopefully will be a regular occurrence in the future, and I have to say it was awesome. I was a little worried at first because I wound up running late (note to self, GPS in the iPhone does NOT take traffic into account when it calculates travel times from point A to Point B) but I actually had planned ahead and knew exactly how I wanted to set up the lighting, so was able to get in and set up while the models were still warming up and getting into costume.

  Meghan had already worked out costuming, posing and makeup with the models, once I had the lights up and rigging set, it was game on. Our first aerialist was Amy.

   We got into a good rhythm, I was shooting, Meghan and two of our instructors, Ivo and Jackie, were posing the aerialists with a little input based on what I could see through the lens. Went pretty well, we were having fun, music was on (I'd comment on Ivo's playlist, but my musical taste has also been called into question at times, so I won't) all we really needed was beer to make it a perfect day. Amy came to the rescue and offered to make a beer run while we kept shooting. Her selection was as excellent as her posing and the shoot got even more perfect.

   Next up was Mary, who rocked it as well.

    Our third and final (planned at least) model for the day was Traci. She is one of my favorite people, recently returning to aerial after a hiatus, and it was awesome to see her flying again. She also gave the camera some great stuff:

even when we disagreed as to creative direction:

 
  See why she's one of my favorite people? Anyone who can look that awesome while flipping me off is definitely a person worth knowing, right?

  Anyway, while we were shooting Traci, Mary was getting ready to head home. She is a motorcyclist, and she happens to have the most awesome kitty ears helmet I have ever seen. She was putting on her boots and biker gear and someone said we needed to get her on the trapeze in her leathers and boots. She mentioned something about wanting to do a shoot on her motorcycle one day. I can neither confirm nor deny that the beer had any effect on what came next (and she hadn't had any- for the record) but someone said why not today? So we opened up the back door to the studio, and in rolled Mary on her cruiser. Parked it right under the trapeze and the shoot after the shoot started.

  We finally had to call it quits, mostly because we were laughing so hard I couldn't focus anymore, so we broke everything down and headed out. These are all rough draft images, the next awesome part is I get to take my time editing. Meghan is going to work up an image package for each model while I am out to sea, I get to just edit at my leisure and post the finished versions when I am back from my next trip.

   So, awesome afternoon of shooting, got some great shots, spent time with friends laughing and playing while making art, and I don't have to do any follow up. Not sure how many days like this I will have in my career as a photographer, but these are the ones that make me think it's worth pursuing and putting in all the less fun hours.

   Thanks again to everyone involved, especially Meghan for setting it up, and Jess - who apparently isn't going to kill us after all for driving a motorcycle into her aerial studio ;-)

How durable is the SB-910 Speed Light? Pay attention to your gear and don't assume anything.

    The image above isn't a finished product, it's a work in progress. You may see it again later on in a different form. It's a first quick edit of the first shot I am trying to take from a creative concept in my head into a finished image. It's a composite of about 42 separate frames, some HDR, some long exposure, some normal. But that isn't what this post is about. This post is about those rocks you see in the lower right corner and my SB-910.

   After we did the exposures for this shot, the plan was to finish the evening with more traditional shots. I pulled my camera off the tripod, and because we were short on time and light, I decided I would just use the tripod as a speed light mount. Threw the 910 onto the tripod, didn't really check to make sure it was locked down before I went into my bag to grab a soft box. Sure enough, in the second my back was turned, the wind gusted and the 910 fell off the tripod and dropped about 4 feet down onto those wonderful large rocks you see in the image above. It made a wonderful shattering sound and pieces of plastic flew everywhere.

 I picked it up to take a look and saw this (did you ever want to see your flash naked? If not look away now)

  It looked like the damage was only to the red plastic window covering the focus assist lamp. But when I turned the flash on and tried a test shot using the D800 in commander mode, nothing. Thought maybe I had just broken the IR window, so put it on the hot shoe, and luckily, it worked. Figured I now just had a very overpriced on camera flash, and wondered if I was now doing a $500 dollar photo shoot. Still, had no time to waste, so just shot with robo-flash on camera until we completely ran out of daylight and we needed to hike off the beach. I call it robo flash because with the cover missing I think it sort of looks like happy robot about to kill its' human masters... but I digress.

  The next day I had another shoot. Since I figured the IR mode on the 910 was shot I pulled out the mitros as my primary off camera for this one. But when I fired off my test shots, the mitros didn't work as an IR remote either. Now I  had to really sit back and take stock of what the hell was going on. Luckily I had more time on this shoot so my troubleshooting was more level headed and thorough, and quickly revealed that I was being a dumb ass. The last time I used my D800 as a commander was at the speed light workshop, where I was deconflicting with other shooters so had switched my master to channel 4. All my flashes were set to channel 1. Fixed that issue and not only did the mitros work perfectly as a slave, but so did the busted up 910 when I tested it later that night.

  So, what did I learn from this? First off, solid gear is much more durable than I give it credit for. Second, pay attention to the little things. If I had just taken the extra second to make sure the 910 was locked down in the first place, it wouldn't have fallen. If I had taken the time to reset my camera back to its' baseline after the workshop I wouldn't have thought the damage was as bad as I initially did. Finally, I got a good reminder of the importance of keeping going regardless of what happened. The flash fell, it broke, I went to a backup and still got good images and had a fun evening of shooting.

   More will come from this shoot later on when I finish processing images. I will probably be going blog silent for a little while, I am getting ready for a summer of travel, there will be lots of shooting but I won't have a solid and reliable internet connection again really until August or September, so I will post when I can, but I'll probably be gone for a bit then back in force this fall. Stay tuned. If all goes well, you may also see my first attempt at a book coming out shortly, since I will have a lot of travel time free to write.

   And just to finish it up- turns out the only damage was the red plastic window cover for the front of the flash, $12 plus shipping and handling later, my 910 is good as new and still blasting away.



 

Do or Not Do, there is no try... little green wisdom for life and photography.

  Not sure why, maybe it's because we just passed through another May the 4th, maybe because I just finished reading another Star Wars expanded universe novel, maybe because the next installment of the Star Wars films just started production today, maybe something else entirely, but I have had Jedis on the brain lately and yesterday as I was finishing up a run I had Yoda on the brain.

  There are lots of Yoda quotes out there, but one of the most famous is his admonition to Luke,  "Try Not.... Do or Do Not, there is no Try," really stuck in my head. I have written before about going all in and betting on myself with this photography endeavor, but hadn't really thought about it in Yoda's terms before. What does this mean really?

  There are lots of interpretations out there, but here is how I have decided to take it. I think that when you say, either to yourself or someone else, "I'll try," you are making room for failure before you even start, which means you are not fully committed to what you are doing and don't really have the deep seated belief that you can succeed. Entering a new endeavor with this mindset is almost a guarantee of failure as you will not truly be giving your all and throwing yourself full tilt into your work. When faced with a challenge, I believe what Yoda means is that you should commit yourself fully to the task at hand, throw everything you have at it. Leave no room in your mind for failure. Maybe you will do, maybe you won't, but there is no middle ground- and even if you don't reach your goal, you still DID something. Even if you fail, you made an effort and you can learn from that and decide whether to do again, or move on to something else.

  The most obvious example I can think of in my life is my first attempt at riding a tall bike my first year at Burning Man. Back when I had more free time in my life I was a triathlete. I raced one full Ironman, a couple of half IM races and lots of shorter triathlons. I was spending a lot of time riding bikes around training and racing. During this time, I wound up with a recurring nightmare in which I was strapped to a bike which somehow grew to incredible proportions such that I was riding with my head in the clouds. My feet were clipped in and I could not stop because I would fall over and it was so high I wouldn't survive. Read what you will in the symbolism, but I woke up many times in a cold, sweaty terror because my giant cloud bike had fallen over and I was heading to the pavement really fast. If you happen to know me in real life and know more of my history, there was lots more going on in my life that could have played a role in that dream and its' meaning, but it doesn't matter in the final analogy. Bottom line is I got to my first Burning Man with a lot going on in my life and a lot to issues I was trying to move past. As I went around, there were lots of people riding tall bikes all over the place. I decided that as part of dealing with my fears I would try to ride a tall bike and get over the fear from my recurring nightmare. I found someone with a bike that was willing to let me try, and went at it. Turns out the hardest part of riding a tall bike is getting started. I tried several times and failed miserably. Finally, I realized that what was holding me back was fear or failure. I was "trying," but not fully committing because I was afraid of falling. I was going slow and leaving myself a safe out in case I fell, which guaranteed I wasn't going to make it. Finally I committed and decided in my head I was going to get up on that bike and ride or I was going to wind up in a bloody, broken dusty heap, left caution to the wind and threw myself fully into the attempt to get up on the bike. Sure enough, when I could breath again I was riding a tall bike around the playa. Stopping was another bag of fear, but once I was going, I had to stop sometime so I had no choice but to face that fear of falling and get off the bike. When I stopped "trying," I DID, and it was awesome.

  So how does this apply to my photography? Lots of ways actually, but thinking of Yoda finally gave me the angle I needed to finally talk about a shoot I did a few weeks ago, which is what I will focus on here. I have been on Model Mayhem for a while not, using it to connect with models and network. Usually, I am the one sending out the messages, but about a month ago I got a message from a model saying she would be coming down to my neck of the woods and wanted to shoot with me. I looked her up, and I have to say she has quite an amazing portfolio. The quote from her profile was that she only took paid shoots and did not do anything on trade unless she thought your work was exceptional, but here she was asking me to shoot her on trade. I have to say that I was a little intimidated, much like back when the first model I was going to shoot casually mentioned that she was one of Helmut Newton's models earlier in her career. I had a couple of good locations in mind, but no clear idea of what I wanted from the shoot. But I decided to "try."

  Like I mentioned earlier, one of the reasons that there is really no such thing as "trying" is that as long as you make the effort, you did something, even if it fell short of your intentions. Although we did get some good images from the day, I can't help but feel that there was more "not do" than "do" in the day and I wasn't able to really capture any great, stunning images to compare with what the model already had in her portfolio. Anyway, the images throughout this post are from that shoot, and the whole gallery is available here, so you can let me know what you think. I could come up with plenty of excuses about distractions from a full audience of homeless people under the bridge and too much wind to use any of the lighting setups I had in mind, but really I just wasn't able to deliver and make some super awesome shots happen. Maybe it was intimidation, maybe it was just laziness, I don't know, but while I got good shots, I didn't get great shots. The shoot did end on an interesting note through, we had corresponded using only my first name and her stage name, when we were done and filling out releases with out whole names we finally figured out that we actually knew each other from a past life and had actually last seen each other about a decade ago. Small, strange world.

 

    It seems like the last few months or so have been full of too much try and not enough DO. I need to get my head around fears of failure, worries about not being good enough or talented enough, wondering whether I will be able to make a go of this, even when I haven't really been able to define where I want to take it, or what success will look like.  Outside of photography there are a few areas of my life that could stand to have a bit more DO and a lot less TRY these days. In many areas I have felt stuck despite my half assed promises to "try" and turn things around. I need to get over the fears of failure that are holding me back and just DO; let the results fall out however they will, because the alternative of Not Doing is not where I want to be anymore. 

    Luckily, there is no shortage of DO to be done. I will be traveling a lot this summer for my full time job, whenever I wind up in a port I am going to try and connect with locals and do some shoots. I have also decided that while I am stuck on a ship with nothing to do I am going to write a couple of ebooks. I may not know everything, but I think I have some good ideas to throw out into the world, and it'll just be fun to call myself an author. Worst case it falls flat, but at least I am going to DO. Lots of people with nothing meaningful to say get rich saying it every day, watch Fox "news" sometime if you doubt that. Time to stop trying, it's Jedi time. (and for the record, Han shot first!)

    

What you don't know may hurt you - The pitfalls of buying used gear...

  Like most photographers (excepting those who are lucky enough to get sponsored or those who are independently wealthy) I am always on the lookout for opportunities to get the best gear I can for the least amount of money. I have found out that there is a good way and a bad way to go about this and very recently had the distinction made very clear to me.

  I'll start with the right way. Use an established, well respected gear reseller like Keh, Adorama, B&H, or your local camera store. These guys know what they are doing and want to maintain their good reputations. I haven't done much business with the other big two, but I have made several purchases from KEH and they are easy to deal with and very conservative with their rating system.

  The wrong way. Unless you are an experienced camera technician, I don't recommend ebay, amazon, or craigslist. Ebay/Amazon I haven't even tried out, because buying used gear sight unseen always seemed to me like too much of a gamble and I haven't been willing to roll those dice. I have made two major gear purchases from craigslist and both turned out to be lemons despite my best efforts to protect myself:

   Purchase two: You will see the reason for the reverse order shortly. I bought a used Nikon 24-70mm F2.8 from CL for about 1/3 less than I would have paid new. Guy's excuse for selling was that he was switching to Canon. He did mention that the soon ring was a little sticky. I put it on the camera, tried shots wide open, stopped all the way down, and middle apertures at both ends and the middle of the zoom range, they all looked fine on the camera LCD, so I paid him, took the lens and went my merry way. Wasn't able to tell until I got home and looked at the images 100% on the computer that none of them were sharp. Thought maybe I needed to custom focus adjust for the camera/lens combo, tried that, nothing worked. Eventually took the lens in and had to get it serviced and repaired to the tune of $500. As it worked out, I wound up paying the same total that I would have paid to get the lens brand new initially, so at least in that respect I broke even, but after lesson two I decided that I would never shop CL again for photo gear.

   Purchase one: This is actually the reason I made purchase two, because I didn't realize I had gotten screwed basically until today, even though I bought this lens on CL over two years ago. Actually, since I have gotten a lot of mileage out of this lens, guess I can't really say I got screwed, but I really didn't realize what I had missed until today. The first lens I got on CL was a 70-200mm/F2.8 VR I lens. I got it for about 1/2 the price of new, guy selling it said it was because he was upgrading to the VRII. I put it on the camera, shot it at a range of apertures and focal lengths, everything worked fine. I have used the lens a lot and gotten awesome stuff with it. The first issue I noticed with this lens was last August, when I shot a soccer tournament and realized the lens would not work with teleconverters that it was supposed to work with. Based on conversations with some other shooters, I figured this was just a one off thing, apparently not uncommon. Recently the lens developed a new issue, it would occasionally just decided to stop autofocusing. At first it was really sporadic, then at the speed light workshop last week it started happening every 10th frame or so, really annoying. I knew it had to be the lens since it happened on both Excalibur and the D800. So last week I shipped it up to Nikon. They said it was a bent mount and quoted my $432. I sucked it up and paid, and just got it back this afternoon. Turns out there was more to it than the initial report. I slapped the lens on the camera and started to play, focus was awesome, if anything faster and smoother than before, everything was great, except there was this weird whining noise that the lens had never made before. I tried both bodies with no change. I thought it was weird that Nikon would send it back to me with a flaw so obvious, so I did a little goggling. Turns out that the noise I was hearing for the first time was the Vibration Reduction motor system working, which apparently had not worked for as long as I had owned the lens. I hadn't noticed the lack of a sound I didn't know was supposed to be there, and since this is the only VR lens I own I had nothing to compare it to. So even though the lens had functioned well for me, it had been crippled for the entire time I had been using it. It was shooting pretty sharp even with slower shutter speeds before, can't wait to see how it really performs now that is back to factory condition. And I guess it still didn't cost me much more than it would have to have bought it new or refurbished originally, and I also bet it will now work with the teleconverter.

  But twice bitten, forever shy. No more CL for me, I obviously am not equipped to properly evaluate used gear, so I will stick to buying from people who are and provide a warranty with their used gear.

Disappointment and the Bag of Holding (aka ZEN and the Art of camera bag packing)

  So, this started off as a pretty disappointing weekend. I had a sunset shoot scheduled for Friday afternoon with a really amazing model I have been waiting a while to work with. A few hours before the shoot she texted to ask if I had left yet, because apparently she had a really rough day and had been crying for hours. She still would have come out to shoot because she's a trouper (according to another photographer, she actually sat in a tree getting stung by ants repeatedly with no complaints until he got the shot) but we decided to reschedule because we both wanted her to be her best. Turned out to be serendipitous because once again the clouds rolled in and a totally clear day wound up with a useless grey in stead of a good sunset.

  What hurt worse was that Saturday I was supposed to do a pretty lucrative corporate gig, the start of a multi shoot arrangement. Or so I thought. We had talked on the phone, agreed to a rate and set yesterday as the first day. So this week I left a couple of emails and a voice mail to confirm and get the address of the job site I was supposed to shoot on and....... nothing. Client just evaporated. Guess I should expect this to happen more as I go on, once I don't have the Navy and a regular paycheck to rely on maybe I will have to start requiring deposits, because I did turn down some other opportunities for this one.

  So pretty much I had the entire weekend off, which is strange for me. I took some of the time to see if I could reorganize my Airport Accelerator, which - if you missed my review a while back - is my primary kitchen sink bag. I had just been keeping Excalibur in it, the D3200 was living in my car as a ready camera just in case, but now that I have the D800 as a second body and some more toys, I needed a better storage solution. I was debating buying a larger bag, but decided that since I had some time I would play with the dividers and structure and see what I could do. At first I was stuck because I wanted to keep the cameras ready to shoot with a lens attached, but between reading something about keeping lenses attached being bad for the mounts and having my 70-200 fail because of a bent mount, it was pretty easy to let that go. Once I was past that, options opened up, and I am happy to say that now not only can my current bag of holding hold all of my gear it needs to, I think I have room to also add the next pair of speed lights I will be adding my lighting arsenal.

  So, financially and artistically the weekend was a downer, but practically I got a lot done and emotionally it was awesome, because I got spend a lot of time with my two favorite people in the whole world. Took the D800 out to capture the fun on Mothers' day, and even though they seemed to find every shadow in the universe to hide in, had fun shooting my favorite people. I really think I need to see if I can sell my son out as a model, he's cute as heck and totally photogenic. So overall, despite the initial disappointment and loss of potential revenue, it was still a productive weekend and a good Mother's day.