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So late Tuesday night I received an e-mail from the Sick Puppies inviting me to a free acoustic show in Dayton. I wasn’t really interested in driving to Dayton at 10:00 in the morning, but when I woke up on Wednesday I decided that this would be a great photo opportunity, and I was really wanting to get some photos of the Puppies. So, I hauled my butt up to McGuffy’s outside of Dayton and it was AWESOME! The acoustic set sounded really great and as an added bonus there were only around 150 people in attendance, so it was really intimate and I was able to get really close… which helps when you’re shooting with a fixed focal length lens. Unfortunately, the lighting sucked as the bar had a four light setup with a red and blue light in the front and rear. So after downloading my photos into Aperture, I thought I had a real mess on my hands… but thanks to the flexibility and power of Aperture I was able to salvage some beautiful black & whites. Click on the thumbnails above to view some of my favorites or jump over to Flickr and view the entire higher-rez set. Let me know what you think!

Contact information:  Jason Bayer - jmanstudios@gmail.com
© Copyright 2008 J MAN STUDIOS

So this weekend saw the largest amount of snow fall in the Cincinnati region in a long time. We received over 12″ of the fluffy white stuff at our house in Villa Hills, KY. Of course, this made for a fun, creative photo opportunity with the kids. So we ventured outside during the afternoon on Saturday while the snow was still pounding and made the most of it! Click here to view the entire photo set on my Flickr site.

This post from ZenHabits.net is ideal for anyone interested in Getting Things Done (more on GTD) – or just being productive and organized, for that matter — to be able to quickly add things to your to-do lists without interrupting your work; to be able to see what you need to do right now, without worrying about everything else; to be able to organize stuff without too much work. SIGN ME UP! I’m going to check out a couple of these apps and report back on which one I prefer. Click here to read the full article at ZenHabits.net.

My favorite blog to read right now is called ZenHabits by Leo Babauta. He writes about ways to simplify your life, find inspiration and motivation, and simple life changing practices that I like to call LifeHacks. In his infinite wisdom, he has uncopyrighted his work, allowing all to freely share as long as proper credit is given. So with that being said, I would like to share with you a recent post about keeping your online life simple.

Being an internet professional, I frequently get completely distracted by what’s going on in my e-mail, browser and other applications, and end up feeling completely stressed out sitting in front of the computer by the end of the day. In Leo’s article titled “The Zen of Tech: 12 Powerful Ways to Keep Your Online Life Simple and Peaceful” he lists 12 practical, simple steps to calm things down while you’re working online. Here’s a snippet:

“I think that’s the true challenge of technology: how to get the most out of it without letting it overwhelm us. How to keep things simple but powerful. How to master technology without letting it become our master (to paraphrase Stephen Covey).”

Click here to enjoy the full post.

So Trent Reznor has done it again… causing another ripple in the music industry by re-shaping the way that artists sell and distribute their music. Yesterday, Reznor “quietly” released a new Nine Inch Nails studio album called “Ghosts I-IV” from their website NIN.com only to have their server crash from huge demand. The collection of 36 tracks is available in a variety of formats including a $5 digital download, a $10 2-disc CD, as well as a $75 Deluxe Edition Package that includes 2 audio CD, 1 data DVD with all tracks in multi-track format and a Blu-ray disc in high-def 96/24 stereo.

In an unprecedented move, NIN has also released Ghosts I, the first 9 tracks from the Ghosts I-IV collection, free for download on their website as well as through various torrent sites. Reznor states, “Now that we’re no longer constrained by a record label, we’ve decided to personally upload Ghosts I, the first of the four volumes, to various torrent sites, because we believe BitTorrent is a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them.” A visionary move that the record industry should pay attention to. To download or order a copy of Ghosts I-IV visit NIN.com or if their servers are down again you can download it at Amazon.