This past week I've been working mostly in the studio shooting food; notably images of ice cream cakes for a large grocery chain packaging. That's always a pretty cool project. :-)

To do this differently (more control), we are marrying the large format Sinar P2 camera (the squarish box on the right side of the rolling stand) to the Hasselblad 39 megapixel 39 CFH digital back (on the back of the P2 with the white cable going into it).

The P2 Camera/digital back combination is controlled by Hasselblad's Phocus software running on the Apple MacBook Pro (the Phocus screen is on the large monitor).

It works putting the image files on the digital media card in the Hasselblad back. Now we're counting on Hasselblad Atlanta and the Danish software developers to work out the final kink so the image files go direct to the computer hard drive.

Most visitors to Cozumel have pictures of or in the red VW in front of Senor Frogs and next door to Carlos & Charlie's. Wonder how long it will take to restore it? I'll bet not long.

The Fat Tuesday parade in Cozumel's Carnival was halted a while last night while firemen put out the Senor Frog's fire. Fireworks into a thatched awning started things and a stiff breeze fanned the blaze. Most of the damage was to the exterior and the party continued.

Virginia snow is usually a little sprinkling that melts in a few hours. Last night was different and we have a solid blanket that isn't going anywhere soon.

There are more frames, including the big hole where the pool renovation is happening. Should have a like-new underwater "tank" by mid-March; way in advance of warm enough weather for it. See this link:

http://chriscrumley.com/Proofs100130_VaBchSnowDay

My left brain, the orderly one, got great pleasure yesterday assigning the first image number of the new year and new decade. I love that number. It looks, well, almost binary.

Forgive my musing and read on. I'll be brief.

Since most image database software requires a unique filename for every image, I became an advocate of using a chronological shoot date and a four-digit number to generate unique numbers many years ago. It is surviving the test of time nicely.

Every new shoot folder get numbered using the shoot date in the format: yymmdd_BriefNameOfShoot. Using a 2-digit year gives me 99 years before I have a numbering year duplications. If anyone feels their image files will span 100+ years, they could use a 4-digit year that would format like this: yyyymmdd. Note: it's important to have the year first so the files sort properly.

Each image coming from the camera gets renamed with the shoot date followed by a dash and the 4-digit number generated by the camera. The four digits allow 9,999 images in a shoot. If multiple camera bodies are used and numbers might cross each other, the re-name software can sequentially number batches uniquely from each of the bodies. In the days of film, the four digit number was rrff for Roll and Frame.

One day, camera manufacturers will allow us to define a starting number at the time of capture. Why it is taking so long is already beyond me.

We also append an "A" at the end of the number which allows us B-Z to uniquely identify another 25 post-production versions of an image.

So, you see, numbers are totally under control here and I love the look of 100101-1001A.CR2 and 100101-2001.3FR. Happy New Year again.

This little guy is headed toward a new year in a big ocean; new adventures with sand in his toes.

Welcome 2010.

It's nice to look back into 2009 and smile at some of the more tender moments. And, nice to look forward to sweet times coming in 2010. I guess it goes without saying; focus on the positive.

It may be fitting to end the Blog Year with this image taken last month on the east side of Cozumel, Mexico not far from Coconuts and the highest point on the island. I happened upon 132 turtle hatchlings scurrying from their sandy upper beach birthplace to the water and the start of a new life.

If you've never seen anything like this, resolve to start looking now. It's very special.

Happy New Year.

The mid-November nor'easter that came on the heels of tropical storm Ida pushed water levels higher than hurricane Isabel in September 2003 and did significant damage to the pool. Renovation is in progress and is expected to be complete in January if the weather cooperates.

I'm continuing to work on getting a good motion blur underwater. This frame is subdued ambient light only.

I'm still hobbled by Canon's refusal to allow rear shutter curtain sync on at least four generations of digital Pro bodies for any strobes but their own Speedlights. That excludes studio strobes the world over.... and, of course, underwater strobes.

The idea is to have a very light kiss of strobe light, maybe on the face, at the end of the blur (2nd curtain time), not at the beginning (first curtain time).

The studio needs some help; we can hardly walk around in here. This week for sure.

Another view of the rear of one of the Sunsations buildings in Virginia Beach. You have to admit, it's a riot of yellow colors.

Sunsations also has an interesting business model with stores seemingly in every other block of the resort area selling inexpensive t-shirts and lots of other tourist trinkets. Added to the mix are more stores with different names selling other price tiers of merchandise to tourists (Tommy Bahamas for one) and another large store catering to the young surfer/skateboard crowd. Some of the stores are right next door to each other.

I like colors and designs like this as much as I like the softer lines and color of people. This is the back of one of the Sunsations stores in Virginia Beach, VA. Pacific Avenue in the resort area at 4PM yesterday after a late lunch.

Might also have been a little left brain/right brain in-fighting. I can't help it; I am what I am.

Sometimes when photographers are looking through history files, they come across an image they like now, perhaps better than during the initial edit. This is one of those.

I was helping a friend prepare for a shoot and offered to show her a child's mermaid costume. This image of a young British girl was shot last summer and it made a good sample of an inexpensive, but workable costume.

The model is one of those outgoing fearless happy young kids in water. But, you could tell that, right?

I know there are lots of people out there who are "full up" with work. We get bogged down with bids, invoices and lots of "stuff."

But, then, a few moments surface where you can do anything you want. Here's where I went with those moments yesterday.

I took a full color image of Erica and subdued the color pallette, then copied and pasted a photo I'd done of a glass pane sprayed with shellac and scuffed and scratched. The scratch and scuff addition went on its own layer at 30-40% opacity. I also made a layer mask, filled it with black and erased the black where I wanted the scratch and scuff to show through.

It's like magic!

I wonder if I can do it again tomorrow or Wednesday.

Erica Gunter won an Illinois Model Contest with prizes including a week for two in Cozumel, Mexico and a one-day location shoot with an advertising photographer.

The connection to me? The show's organizer, Sherry Smith Reichart, was a creative partner with me for seven years shooting tropical and underwater photo illustrations for stock, editorial and advertising uses.

We spent all of the day on the east side of the island and used a variety of settings. This is a frame done at a beachfront out-building for the Chen Rio Restaurant Bar.