Can you tell I miss my son? I'm in the Fort Lauderdale Airport catching a flight home after my Nikon Master Class in Miami yesterday. It was a fun 8 hour class that was like a super condensed version of my Newport Beach workshops. It was nice to have someone else plan everything for a change. Phil Mistry with Popular Photography did an amazing job with every detail . Even with 80 photographers in attendance, there were enough models and assistants to go around.

I arrived at Miami International Airport around 1am Saturday morning after a long day of delayed flights due to wind storms going through Dallas. My good buddy Ray Santana was there waiting for me in his shiny black Porsche Cayenne. On our way to Denny's for a late night breakfast, we stopped by to pick up Kevin Keelan at a nearby hotel who also helped out at my master class. Ray and Kevin were such a blessing to have around and made everything flow so smoothly. They assisted during the live shoots and helped coach the students through a variety of different lighting situations. These two also assisted me on my Mar-A-Lago wedding in Palm Beach last week and did an awesome job capturing every detail for me! Look for this wedding published in Wedding Style magazine next year. I'll try to get up some photos this week from the wedding.

After the long day of shooting and lectures, Phil took us to Houston's for the most amazing New York steak I think I've ever had. I planned on hitting up a Calvary Chapel this morning with Paul McAllister, a cool photographer from Ft. Lauderdale, but my last minute change of plans kind of spoiled that idea for me. I was supposed to fly straight to Guyana for a shoot and then fly back to NYC for a Pictage booth presentation at Photoplus but my Guyana shoot postponed so I decided to go home and take Aidan trick-or-treating. Since I have a wedding booked in Santa Barbara on Sunday and everything was so tight, I cancelled my New York trip as well and will be home this week catching up on some production at the office.

Hope you're all doing well and enjoying your weekend! Sorry for not posting more, I'll try to make it up to you this week!

God bless!

I'm here in NYC and I just finished shooting market week for Grace Ormonde. It was another fun week packed with great shows including the above Badgley Mischka show. I photographed 26 designers and shot over 10,000 images. My good buddy Charles Maring came out to help and it was great catching up with him. Look for "The Making of a Runway Shoot" in the next issue of Wedding Style to see shots of us in action :)

Here in Cleveland after a very cool event with a really nice group of photographers! I wish those of you who were so close (like Missy & Gary, Laura, and Jim to name a few) could have made it out! You guys have no excuse because I had 5 people from Canada which is more than 3 hours away, a few from Pittsburgh which is more than 2 hours away, and a guy from Arizona who flew in. Just playing with you guys, but seriously I would have loved to see you! Here's a photo with the brave ones who didn't mind having their picture on my blog :) To all who came out, thanks for showing up even with all the rain and wind and thanks for being such a warm and receptive audience. I hope you got everything you came for and more! The shot below is missing Jeff Jochum who wouldn't stop talking to some guy and Skip Cohen who wanted to take a shot of his own (I think he's just shy). I'll make sure they take a pic with us tomorrow night if the group is as cool as tonight's group! Oh yeah, and check out the guy reading his email or something on the left and the peeking person in the back row.. haha! A special thanks to Randy Walker for emailing this shot to me! Wish I could find your website Randy so I could give you a link!

I'm here in Cleveland, Ohio for my Secrets to Success Seminar with Jeff Jochum and Skip Cohen. I'm so excited to share with all of the photographers here some of the things that have helped my business tremendously. I ran into a photographer named Randy Walker (can't find his website) on my layover in Phoenix yesterday. I was about ready to board the plane when I felt a tap on the shoulder and someone saying "I thought I recognized you!" It was the strangest feeling and I think my face turned red because he caught me off-guard. "I found out the other day you were speaking in Cleveland so I decided to come out and see you!" he said. It was so cool to know that Randy cared enough that he would spend 10 hours (round trip) on a plane to come listen to me speak for just over an hour!

People are starting to tell me more and more that my name is bigger than I think it is. All I know is that God is much bigger than we all think and He has the power to take us places in order to bring the gospel to as many unbelievers as possible. I am not important, nor is my brand or career, other than to bring glory to God.

I use to think that this business was really just a training ground for some future ministry that God had planned for me. All of the experience I've been getting with starting and running a business, public speaking, business management, taking care of clients, and learning to trust Him when I'm out of my comfort zone has turned into more than just training. It's turned into a platform that I think God is starting to use. It's so amazing to see what He's doing!

Wish me luck on stage tonight! I hope I can be a light to some who are lost in this dark world.

Photojojo.com emailed me this link today to a cool chart that shows you what megapixel you will need at the different print sizes if you want to print at true photographic quality. I think "true photographic quality" is subjective and hard to define, but this chart (and the other charts available on 215's site) gives you an idea of how big you can go when printing anywhere from 150-300 ppi. ***Click here to check it out!***

When widgets first became available a while back it was like an answer to prayer. I use them all day every day for everything. Here are some things I use my widgets for: making sure I'm making my international calls during business hours, tracking flights, checking the weather for shoots, mapping directions for driving time, adding up what it might cost to buy that new gadget, checking my spelling, translating languages, and checking for better (or superior, finer, more suitable, advantageous, preferable) words to use on my blog :)

One thing I've wished I could change was the feature in my address book widget that allowed me to click the address to map directions. It defaults to Mapquest and I wanted to use GoogleMaps instead. So I did what any responsible American would do... I googled the question and found the solution!

The solution took about 5 minutes to do and it was very straightforward. Here's the link to the instructions. Don't let the techy sounding steps scare you away... just do it :)

CLICK HERE FOR INSTRUCTIONS

I just finished hooking up my new 7.5 Tarabyte RAID storage system (3.75 TB of usable space mirrored). I usually fill up about one Tarabyte per year with just jpeg images so I'm hoping this setup will last me at least 2 more years. This system came to about $5K including tax. Not cheap, but it's built for professional use and I've had too many consumer brand drives (like Lacie) act up on me so I wanted to step it up. A video editor (who also works as a mac genius at the Fashion Island Apple Store) told me to buy Sonnet enclosures and Seagate drives. He said that he has never had a drive fail on him in 6 years of editing on the same system.

I had some help setting this up from Jeff LaPlante a photographer friend of mine who is extremely knowledgable in Mac harddrive systems. Those of you who are interested in putting something together something like this here's what you'll need and how you set it up:

2 Fusion 500P 5-bay enclosures ($499 each)
1 Tempo SATA X4P Serial ATA host adapter for PCI-X ($299) (this works with the G5 tower but check to make sure you don't need the Tempo SATA E4p for PCI Express)
10 Seagate Barracuda 750GB Harddrives (I picked these up at my local Fry's Electronics for $339 each totaling $3,390 for 10 drives)

Note: You'll need an available PCI slot in your G5 desktop computer for the host adapter mentioned above.

The setup is fairly straightforward and simple. Here's what you do:

1. Install the Seagate harddrives into your Fusion 500P enclosures using the instructions included (this is like playing with Legos - very simple)
2. Install your Tempo SATA host adapter (make sure to shut down your computer and unplug the power cable, open the side, and snap in the adapter - again, very simple unless you drop a screw down inside your computer and it takes 20 minutes to recover like I did!)
3. Connect your enclosures to the adapter you just installed using the eSATA cables provided with your enclosures.
4. Turn on the power to both your computer and your 2 enclosures (if an alert comes up saying that you have connected a drive that your computer does not recognize select the "ignore" button)
5. Open Disk Utility (a program in your Applications/Utilities folder)
6. Select the RAID tab on the right and then drag 5 drives from one of your enclosures to the RAID window. (note: you may want to turn off the power of one enclosure to verify that you are selecting 5 drives from a single enclosure)
7. In the RAID Set Name field, type in a name for your RAID (I named mine "Fusion500P#1")
8. In the Volume Format drop down menu, choose "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)"
9. In the Raid Type drop down menu, choose "Striped RAID Set"
10. Click "Create" (See image below for results. Note: The "Create" button changes to an "Update" button once the RAID has been created)
11. Do this again for the next enclosure using the 5 drives inside it and name it "Fusion500P#2" (you may want to turn off your other enclosure so you select the correct drives)
12. Click "Create"
13. Turn on both enclosures and go back to Disk Utility
14. Add both RAID Sets to a new Raid Set and this time choose "Mirrored RAID Set" in the RAID Type drop down menu and name your RAID Set something like "Client RAID" (This step will mirror both enclosures so you have absolute redundancy)
15. Click "Create" (See image below for results. Note: The "Create" button changes to an "Update" button once the RAID has been created)
You're done! Now you have 7.5 TB Mirrored RAID Drive giving your 3.75 TB of usable space that is always backed up.

Remember, you should also back up your files to DVD and store them in a safe to protect your files from burglary. You should also have an off-site backup. I back-up my jpg files off-site with Pictage and my important business files including calendar, contacts, and client contracts off-site with my .Mac account.

Jeff LaPlante uses a RAID 5 system that is actually cheaper, gives you fast file transfers and has better disk efficiency but does not provide as much redundancy as the Mirrored RAID Set. His setup uses a hardware RAID 5 instead of the OSX software RAID I explained above.

Hey folks! I'm currently on the hunt for another quality person to add to the Mike Colón team who has experience in the following areas:

Mac & PC (primarily Mac)
Photoshop CS2
Communicating with Clients
Telephone, Email, Typing, Writing
Internet & Web Applications

This position will start as a probationary internship leading into a full-time position. If you are interested please send your resume with an attached photograph to mike@mikecolon.com.

Hope you're all having a nice weekend! Happy shooting!
Mike