Custom Smugmug + Local Gear Rental

Well since we have become Smug Leaders we decided it was time our Smugmug gallery looked awesome so we hooked up with Billy Young from FastLine Media to build us a custom Smugmug look.  You can check it out here.  Since a lot of photographers use Smugmug I thought you might be interested in getting away from the standard layout.  First impressions mean everything and I think FastLine did an amazing job for us.  In addition to being happy with how it looked, they were fast, had great communication with us throughout the process and even talked with us (yes, a real person) today on the phone to do a one on one tour of our new features.  It was awesome.  Nice people, great service and a wicked good product.  Can't go wrong.

I bought some 'Bling' for my GF1.  An old school leather case, matching leather wrist strap and electronic viewfinder.

I recently decided I just couldn't fully enjoy my Panasonic GF1 without a viewfinder.  Maybe I'm old fashioned, but using a camera strictly with an LCD is just a pain.  So it was either spend $200 on an electronic viewfinder or sell the camera.  I have looked at the Olympus viewfinder that is used on the PEN cameras and in my opinion it is much better than the Panasonic one, but it doesn't work on the GF1 so I was stuck.  While I was there at the store spending money I figured I might as well buy the cool leather camera body case and a matching wrist strap.  The GF1 now looks positively cool for the first time ever.  Kind of sheik retro.  Now I can hold that camera right up to my eye like cameras were intended to be used and I'm totally cool and in style while I do it!  The wrist strap is a nice change too.  I don't use neck straps on my DSLR's so why should I on my little fun cameras?  They just bug me.

Also I was super happy to go hang out with a photographer buddy of mine this week (we may have consumed some beer and spirits) at a local PPOC meeting and not only did I discover he had a blog (ahh Greg, it's so nice you are a fellow geek) but he is going to be renting equipment on Vancouver Island!  Nice to have a local avenue for gear if you need it.  So if you get a chance pop by his blog and say hi. 

Thanks again for visiting the blog.  I really appreciate you dropping by. If you like it, please share us on Facebook using the links at the end of each post.  Have a great weekend!