Weblog » Archives » September 2005

  • TODAY AT BIG WHITE SKI RESORT (PRESEASON PREP) It is so weird being at the ski mountain without snow! We came up to Big White because we're doing some major remodeling at White Crystal Hotel so it will be ready fo…

  • MY FRIEND WAS GOING TO GO TO A FINANCIAL PLANNER A financial planner will tell you to do the most lame things: 1) get a mutual fund 2) buy term life insurance 3) open a Sep/Roth IRA or Keogh. That is so old …

  • HOW TO PICK UP WOMEN WORKSHOPS - WHOA I was watching Diane Sawyer's "Primetime" on ABC news last night, and it had a feature on the new multi-million dollar industry for men on "how to seduce women". Among the …

  • AN EMAIL BROADCAST IS GOING OUT TONIGHT TO SUBSCRIBERS If you did not get it by tomorrow morning, then you are no longer on my "subscribe" list. To fix it, just email me at "subscribe@garyfong.com" and put "subscri…

  • I love Fall in New York, and Melissa Carl and I will be in New York this week just walking around in Manhattan. I will have some meetings with the photo trade representatives at PhotoExpo, and we'll have a coup…

  • THANK YOU FOR THE INSPIRATION Speaking of established photographers who discourage newcomers, I'm reminded of the story of a man who wrote me recently. He has an incredible eye, great timing and emotion and deep …

  • WHY TEACH? This was a good memory from Biloxi last year at the Beau Rivage. One thing nice about teaching is that it has given me a chance to do a lot of travel and meet a lot of people. It is now destroyed, bu…

  • MY SUBMARINE'S PRESS RELEASE FROM THE LIDO YACHT EXPO I've been so busy I didn't get a chance to stick my name all over the boat and get some traffic to this site - actually it's pretty hard to do when I am in a dif…

  • WE HAVE 4,500 LIGHTSPHERE PHOTOJOURNALISTS READY After a painful two weeks of sold-out status, we have run the factory two shifts a day and now have about 4,500 units in the Warehouse. I expect they will disappear …

  • I HAVE $1.52 IN MY JET JAR As confucius say, "A journey of 1,000 mile begin with single step" (chinese do not use plurals). I just need to repeat my jar 1 million times to get this bad boy. This two-seater is spe…

  • GLORIA ALLRED WAS NOT HERE IN CANADA Gloria Allred, the feminist attorney, has done a lot for the United States' feminist movement. Her reach doesn't go into Canada and it is an interesting place we got up here.…

  • BOOKED OUR FIRST WEDDING OF MANY! We have oddly enough started booking weddings at each of my Lake Homes! Twin Haven Resort, The Castle and The Beach House all have had happy couples book my homes for their weddin…

  • WHAT A GREAT IDEA! I found this at the camera store, a little tripod with springy legs that is so small that when it folds flat it is about the size of a thick pen! So you just put it on auto-timer and then run like…

  • THIS IS VERY NICE IF YOU HAVE A MAC! It's about time! I have used Retrospect for years, and have struggled with it a lot because 1) their nomenclature is still confusing with their different levels of "incrementa…

  • THERE IS NOBODY ON THE PLANET LIKE B.B. KING I just downloaded his new album on itunes and I just am blown away by how great he is. When you are a guitarist, the first thing you learn are blues scales, and somethi…

  • SUNSET AT DISCOVERY BAY - FALL IS HERE I love fall in British Columbia. The leaves are turning and tomorrow when I drive back into town, I'm going to do some really cool images of the trees and lakes here. The ai…

  • DELTA SOFTLITE DIFFUSER UPDATE It's moving along... now we will have FOUR different sizes to fit smoothly and snuggly on hundreds of different point and shoot cameras. As soon as we have some room on the mold -…

  • RED LIGHTBULBS IN SCONCES - COOOOOOL My internet is down at Discovery Bay so I had to come up here to the country. Since I stayed at the Castle on the Okanagan two nights ago, I know the Wi-Fi works so I had to dr…

  • THIS IS WHY I ALWAYS CARRY A DIGITAL CAMERA AROUND (*Well one of many reasons). Rather than buy a piece of furniture or artwork and "hope" it fits, I've learned to save the hassle and take a photo of the item firs…

  • DOG PHOTOS THAT YOU REQUESTED Somebody asked if they could see a photo of Otis on the little rug, so here it is. I got this rug (it actually is a mouse pad - isn't that cool?) and this was back when Nicole said th…

  • GARYFONGJETSPHERE.COM I just got my new website started in a VERY basic way. I have also formed a new corporation, "Gary Fong Marine Charters, Inc." to run my teeny tiny marine charter business. Mostly, we're g…

  • REDESIGNED THEATER AT DISCOVERY BAY - YAY I'm fighting a cold so I think I am going to be a homebody for the next few days. Actually I'm looking forward to it. Being lazy is so fun. Me and Melissa love to jus…

  • THE PROSPERITY MESSAGE Stevie Wonder said it best in his song, "Superstitious"... "when you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer..." I am at the Castle flipping through channels trying to fin…

  • NICOLE'S MIGHTY GUARD DOG OTIS Up here in Canada, we take our security very seriously. So my assistant Nicole got a ferocious guard dog to protect my homes. I made a movie of him, and you can watch it if you want t…

  • THANK GOODNESS I HOPE THE COURT ENJOINS TREO - I cannot believe how bad the TREO 600/650 is. I was on my sixth warranty replacement and none is better or fixed, or even works! Thank you Rachel Priddy for emailing…

  • LIGHTSPHERE PHOTOJOURNALIST UPDATE We were having some "release" problems with the newest FongDong. It for some reason had a problem "getting off" the mold - ok serious now - At the factory, when the units were c…

  • NEW FUJITSU 15PAGE/MIN PDF SCANNER!!!! Hi Sam Carrington! How the heck are you? I ask about you all the time - ChrisAnn says you're doing great! Sam Carrington is the go-to man to find the coolest items. One …

  • I HATE TANGLED CORDS SO I spent this evening hacking all my cords to shorties. I hate cords. When I travel it's like they are always getting tangled. So I went to the electronics store, bought some wire strippe…

  • CLICK HERE AND SPEND FALL IN NEW YORK CITY WITH AN AMAZING PHOTOGRAPHER Melissa asked me who my favorite person in the world was. I said, "you baby" but then she said after that? And I said, well I freaking dig…

  • I CAN ANSWER ONE E-MAIL EVERY FIVE SECONDS So believe it or not, I can get caught up in 3 hours. Please be patient if I am slow in responding to emails - what I normally do is respond L.I.F.O. (MBA's know what th…

  • TWO YEARS OF FUN! I have known Melissa Carl for nearly two years now. It was so funny because I was talking to my album designer Corinne Cobabe about dating in general, and I was saying how much better it is to be…

  • I have a friend named Jeff Gold. He is honestly one of the few generational super-geniuses that come along every once in a while. We met at UC Santa Barbara when he was 15-1/2 years old and a student in college wh…

  • THANK YOU MISTER FOZIBEAR... He made the suggestion that for the LS2PJ tutorial to include a printable 4x6 quick reference card. GREAT IDEA THANK YOU! So I made it, and when you look at the tutorial, you can dow…

  • INVERTED REDUCER DOME (APPROX TIME 6 WEEKS) This is not an easy piece to make, and we are just now finishing the CAD drawings. This will allow you to shoot this unit outdoors direct to the subject without worrying…

  • THE TUTORIAL FOR THE LS2PJ IS KINDA FINISHED! When you get your new LS2PJ there will be a sticker on it directing you to the online tutorial. The reason I made it a web tutorial is so I can collect the questions …

  • I AM GOING TO CANADA FOR A WEEK, I GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE My new boat, the Gary Fong JetSphere, is going to go through a big factory pre-service and it's going to be appearing in a boat show this weekend. Randall al…

  • THE LIGHTSPHERE PHOTOJOURNALIST IS SOLD OUT - I AM SORRY The plastics factory has been running two shifts all week and despite this we still sold out. I don't know if we are going to go to multiple molds because the…

  • MOTOROLA ROKR IPOD PHONE REVIEW Whenever I see a pair of snowshoes, I think, why not just strap your boots to your tennis racquets. I guess that was the idea when they put the ipod with the phone. It is an odd pa…

  • COOL I looked and it's true... 20,000 happy people. YAY!

  • COMPOSITION AND TRIANGLES When I was learning about photography, they had all of these weird rules, like, "rules of 1/3's" where you put the point of interest not in the center. That just seems so weird! Anyway, …

  • I SPENT THIS AFTERNOON SCANNING MY ENTIRE FILING CABINET With the Visioneer XP450 and it blistered through it and i filled a huge trash can with the shredded leftovers. It's fantastic. It creates PDF format multi-p…

  • AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO NOTICES THIS? Well we were looking for Denis's tug on the ear, which didn't happen, but has anybody noticed the little "signals" that Alexis Glick gives on the screen? She will be doing an in…

  • NEARLY ALL OF THE LIGHTSPHERE PHOTOJOURNALISTS HAVE SHIPPED! I've been getting reports from our new distribution facility regarding our output of the new LS2PJ's for the private offering. All is going smoothly acc…

  • DIVORCE AND SURVIVING IT... I just got a letter through this blog from somebody going through a divorce. His tender letter reminded me of the searing heartbreak when the final decision has been made to part ways. …

  • RANDALL BURG YACHT AND SHIP, INC. This is so cute. It looks like my Killer Whale is smiling behind us in our group photo. With me is Randall Burg and John Holbert, the salesman who sold me the boat. This photo …

  • THE MOTOROLA ROKR - IPOD/CELLPHONE COMBO I was SO excited to kiss my TREO goodbye - had to change my phone number to do it, and I got one of the new Motorola ROKR telephones. The idea is cool - your cellphone is a…

  • GEODESIC DOMES - TWO LEVELS, SEPARATE GARAGE, LOFT... UNDER 50 GRAND TO BUILD AND IMPERVIOUS TO HURRICANES... INCREDIBLY ENERGY EFFICIENT. Because of elevated global temperatures, the jetstream is moving down ev…

  • GEODESIC DOMES - ALSO A GREAT CURE FOR THE HOMELESS In the early 90's, I was involved in a project with homeless activist Ted Hayes here in Los Angeles where they built geodesic dome "villages" to temporarily house h…

  • DENIS ON THE TODAY SHOW!!! Wow - they did such a nice feature on Denis! It was a way longer segment than last year, and they showed a lot of images! Denis, congratulations! You did a fantastic job representing wed…

  • MIGHT AS WELL GET USED TO THE FLAVOR... I figure someday soon I'll too be hanging on to a floating door or something waiting for help to arrive, and I guess one can hope that the authorities will get to me in time -…

  • PEOPLE ON PHOTO FORUMS ARE SO - HARD TO FIGURE OUT There is such a huge difference between boat forums vs photography forums. People in boat forums are so nice! Respectful of each other and just classy individuals…

  • WOW THERE IS A LOT OF PRESS ON THIS BOAT AND BOAT FORUMS TOO! I didn't know there were boat forums! I thought the only forums there were were about digital photography! I don't get out much. CLICK HERE

  • FINAL NAME - THE GARY FONG JETSPHERE I've learned a lot from Donald Trump. Put your name on everything and polish your brand. You know, this boat instantly gives two wrong impressions about the owner. An…

  • MAIDEN VOYAGE - WHAT A TRIP I couldn't sleep last night hardly at all. It was kind of like back when I was a kid knowing that Christmas was tomorrow. I cannot believe this boat. It is like a fighter jet. The elect…

  • SET YOUR TIVOS FOR THE TODAY SHOW TOMORROW! DENIS REGGIE WILL BE ON! Sometime around 9:02am, Denis will be shooting the Today Show wedding on NBC! He will be plugging the Lightsphere Photojournalist! (right on D…

  • PEOPLE LIKE TODD JOHNSON MAKE THE WORLD A GREAT PLACE Todd Johnson is a very successful photographer here in Los Angeles. He not only has an incredible eye, he has an incredible heart. First of all, he sent me som…

  • WANDA SYKES IS HILARIOUS Tonight I was talking to Melissa on the phone and she's just freaking cracking up. She said, make sure you watch the tonight show tonight, because Wanda Sykes is hilarious. So Jay Leno is…

  • LIGHTSPHERE PJ'S SHIPPING TOMORROW WOO HOO I SAY WOO HOO OK here's the latest on the early shipments of the LS2PJ. The private offer e-mail for some reason got to only less than a thousand people, which is a small…

  • THANK YOU LGREGG - YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS ISN'T WORKING Steve would've been OK but in marketing it's better to have a name that is tightly descriptive of what the item does. You know like BullZEye (get it? nails the …

  • I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS CAT MISSES ME I've had so many cats over the years, and for some reason they find it like - weirdly entertaining when you try to cram their heads into your mouth. Jessica and Mark Strickland…

  • TAKING A CRAP ON "STEVE" I thought this was funny. They give you a photo CAD drawing of configurations showing you how they can do stuff. It's so trippy that they have one dude sitting on the pot while his "life …

  • NEED HELP WITH A NAME PLEASE Anything come to mind? I have to register it and I can't figure out a name. Batboat, Squirt (but that would belie the 600 horsepower blast) Tonka, Saturn V, Boner, Pampers, Monoclo…

  • OFFER ACCEPTED!!!!! THIS IS MY NEW BOAT! I had no idea that this is the only boat in the world like this. It was built by the same company that made the Soviet Submarines. I guess it's like how Humvees became Hum…

  • FREAKING HILARIOUS One of the funnest parts of my visit to Ohio was going to Melissa's dad's house to watch home movies of her growing up. There was one that just killed me. For three days, she was dressed as a c…

  • OH - MY - GOD I cannot believe this thing. There is one here in the Marina and we had to stop and look at it - this is a GLASS-BOTTOM catamaran that flies like a bullet. I did a search for the Russian-built EL…

  • SOFTLIGHT DIFFUSER COMPARISON Cool?

  • IT'S HERE IN REALITY! THE SOFTLIGHT DIFFUSER! Thanks David Hessemer for helping me re-name the "delta" diffuser. By the time we got to the final product, it completely lost the "wedge" shape, because we wanted to …

  • CLINICAL COMPARISON OF THE LIGHTSPHERE PHOTOJOURNALIST VS. OTHER LIGHT SOURCES Today I'm writing the final changes to the tutorial that goes with the new Lightsphere Photojournalist. While we were at the camera …

  • SORRY FOR THE LACK OF EMAIL RESPONSE EVERYBODY - ROLLING BLACKOUTS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.

  • THIS POST JUST IN AT DIGITALPHOTOGRAPHERS.NET

  • MY MOM, THE GHOST OK so any of you who like have been an assistant, roommate, girlfriend, etc. have met my deceased mom as she has been known to frequent us. The night she died, let's just say I didn't really bel…

  • TOUR DATES ANNOUNCED! I'M COMING TO A CITY NEAR YOU! We've finalized the schedule for the upcoming seminar tour. I'm going to come to a city near you and give you an exciting game-plan for pricing/merchandising and pr…

  • I'M STILL IN INDIANAPOLIS I have great friends here, and Indy is really nice! The shopping is great, and the architecture is really pretty. We're having so much fun and now everybody is saying, "buy a ranch here!"…

  • MIKE HOLLINGHEAD'S HURRICANE PHOTOS These images are crazy. And with the new hurricane Ophelia coming toward the Florida Coast, I just don't know but if I were in FL, or anywhere near that part of the country, I w…

  • THIS DOG HAS NO NAME YET This is my assistant Nicole's new dog! He is so small that he can fit in your hand. And he snorts! They say after a while dogs begin to look like their owners, and vice versa, but in this …

  • I JUST GOT THE IPOD NANO It feels just thicker than a credit card, and even smaller. It has a color display and it accepts photos just like the ipod photo (which has been discontinued). I got mine in black. It …

  • NO WONDER NOBODY GOT THE MAILING I got so many emails from y'all saying that they didn't get the emails so I contacted mycart to see how the last emailing did. Well they had a little glitch - because my outbound …

  • HOW INSENSITIVE CAN YOU BE IN A TIME LIKE THIS?My zen training comes in handy when I read comments about this sign hung in East Texas by a Pastor Wiley of the Woodland Hills Baptist Church.He wants the world to know t…

  • IMAGES GOOFING AROUND INDIANAPOLIS We are having so much fun with Jessica, her husband Mark, Jessica's family, Angela and Chris - everybody! We are always doing something here. As always, the point-and-shoot F10 …

  • THE LIGHTSPHERE IS THERE IN THE HOUSTON ASTRODOME We were so bummed watching the Katrina disaster - Oprah did an amazing job showing the human side of the tragedy from ground zero. Then all of a sudden, we saw a L…

  • ELLEN MATCHES YOUR DONATION I normally try to find programs that match your donations so that it doubles the relief power of my contribution. This year, Ellen Degeneres is going to match contributions up to $500,000…

  • OK I FOUND A SOLUTION FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DIDN'T GET THE EMAIL! It's weird, because Keats didn't get the email, and I checked my list and her email address was on the list, as well as others who have emailed me an…

  • THOUGHT YOU MIGHT FIND THIS HANDY, THEN LATER, ANNOYING Everybody gets the line wrong after, "Let's ride with the family down the street". And I've also heard people get it wrong and sing, "they're a monasonic fam…

  • THE PRIVATE SALE OFFER E-MAIL WENT OUT! you can order! OK - if you are an owner of the Lightsphere - you WILL get the private offering email TONIGHT - so if you do NOT get it - check your junk mail box definitely! …

  • HILARIOUS WEDDING PHOTO So I'm just doing my thing doing some wedding images for Jenny and Chris, and Melissa taps me on the shoulder and says to look at the LCD of her EOS20D. So she took a picture of the clouds. …

  • LIGHTSPHERE PHOTOJOURNALIST COMPARISON!! I have to do testing and comparisons when I come up with new stuff, or recommendations for digital cameras, etc. When I get a new toy, my first thing is to go run around…

  • YESTERDAY AT THE HEAD COMPOUND It was such a fun day at Jessica's family's compound. The Head family have such an incredible lifestyle. As we were laying on the loungers visiting with everybody, guys were jetskii…

  • MEMORIES OF BEAUTIFUL NEW ORLEANS (click on image to zoom). Last night I got sad thinking of all of my wonderful memories of New Orleans. We just had the PPA National Convention there last year, and I'm there all …

  • CONGRATULATIONS JENNY AND CHRIS! What a fun wedding in Indiana! Jenny is Jessica Strickland's sister - Jessica is Melissa's college roommate and a friend of mine now because she begged me to do a D.I. in Cincinatti…

  • FINALLY I FOUND A REALLY GREAT BLUETOOTH HEADSET OK I tried Jabra (hurts my ear, lousy sound quality) and Motorola - fits great, lots of static on the sound quality. So there's this really cool store at the Atlant…

  • WHAT A GREAT PRODUCT! SO SMART! This is called "neat receipts". It is so awesome because it SCANS your receipts with a self-powered USB scanner and it uses character recognition so it produces a report that goes st…

  • I GOT THE PROTOTYPES OF THE LAPTOP FEET! YAY! They are so freaking cute! They work great! And as with all things recently, I changed the name again before it hits the market. I am now calling them GUPS. GUPS s…

  • OH NO Here are before and after scenes of New Orleans. It is completely destroyed. It is as bad as a nuclear blast - we've lost an entire city and I don't know how/if/why it would be rebuilt since it is in a b…

  • SPEAKING OF PROTOTYPES I just received the final prototype of the LS2PJ diffuser. We did some more texturing to the little prisms to increase the scatter effect, plus we gave you cut lines in case you want to make …

  • WALLARTDECO.COM PROTOTYPES - Today is prototype day. Whenever I mass-merchandise something we have to like, figure stuff out. So this idea I came up with a few days ago (two) of selling fine - art travel images r…

  • YOU HAVEN'T CHANGED - NO YOU HAVEN'T CHANGED! (10 YEARS) This is Jill Sobule - you probably remember her song, "I Kissed A Girl" which topped the charts a few years ago. Anyway we haven't seen each other in abou…

  • SPEAKING OF AMAZING POINT AND SHOOTS I cannot believe the image quality of the new point-and-shoots. Other than a little bit of noise on the file (easily cured with "noise ninja") the only other drawback would be …

Recent Weblogs