Occasional Musings

Volusia / Daytona

admin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 04:30:59 +0000

Last week I got the opportunity to spend some quality time with some students and staff from the University of Northwestern Ohio in Florida watching them race and wrench at Volusia Speedway. It was a great experience and I had a wonderful time (in spite of the rainy / cold weather).

The University took 8 (yes race teams to Volusia for speedweek. 4 of the team were owned by UNOH and 4 of the team were privately owned and sponsored 100% by UNOH. All 8 teams had students working on the crew. 2 of the teams were complete student entries – drivers included. UNOH even got David Reutimann (of NASCAR fame) to drive one of the cars one night. I got the chance to spend some time with David and found him to be a very likeable guy. I hope he and UNOH do some more projects together. He spent a ton of time talking to and working with the students.

The team that I own was one of the privately owned teams there and although we did not perform as well as we had hoped, we had a good week and our 2 students, Jared and Freddy, were very professional and able to work on the car on their own. They are the type of guys that I would love to have on the team full-time – of course, that is why they are on the Motorsports Team at UNOH.

Because the racing was at night, I had some time to do a little shooting during the days. I got some cool shots!

I also got the chance to visit the pits for the ARCA race and the Bud Shootouts at Daytona. What a blast. It is amazing to see how much different everything is at that level compared to our relatively small budget operation.

All in all, I had a great time. If you get a chance, go to the UNOH website and have a look around. What a great school! It is truly unlike any other University in the country.

See you all later!

House for Sale

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:42:21 +0000

Well, the time has come to move on. My wife and I have made the decision to sell our house in the country and move closer to town. We live in a great little community, Bluffton, Ohio, where the kids who live in town are able to walk to school (and not uphill both ways). We think it would be great to live closer so our 4 kids can do just that. Plus we would be able to walk to football games on Friday nights, the Dairy Freeze in the Summer, etc.

We are going to list the house with our friend, Valerie Emans. I told her I would take the pictures of the house for hew website and brochures. I thought I would do a natural HDR look for the upstairs rooms and kind of a grunge HDR for the basement. Our basement has 2 areas. The 1st area is a home theater, the 2nd is a home arcade. The whole basement is done up very crazy and I figured the “Harry Potter” look would be cool.

Let me know what you think!

House

Roadhouse

admin — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:47:04 +0000

This Saturday was the Invitation Only pre-opening of the new Findlay location of Texas Roadhouse. My wife and I took our dear friends Kurt and Valerie Emans and had a wonderful afternoon. The store Manager, Joshua Kouts was a gracious host. The place was packed as it seemed that everyone who worked there was allowed to invite some friends and family.

There were plenty of pagers for people as no one had to wait for a seat.

Once we were seated our lovely waitress, Ashley A, quickly showed up to explain how the ordering was going to work and get our drink orders.

There were four entrees on our table and we were requested to each pick one of the four items. I had the ribeye, Cindy had the sirloin, Kurt had chicken fried chicken, and Valerie had the portobello chicken. As usual, the food was awesome. We had great hot dinner rolls.

Plenty of peanuts.

Salads showed up.

We loved our meals, talked for another half an hour, thanked Josh for the invite, went to the ‘outhouse’ and headed home.

It was a mile or two down the road that I realized we had not tipped poor Ashley. I’m not totally to blame, though. The meals were all free, so having not had to get my wallet out I just plain forgot. But worry not, I turned around and drove back and apologized and took care of it (After all, I didn’t want to be haunted by ‘Puff’)

All in all, it was a wonderful experience and I would recommend either Texas Roadhouse to anyone!

Help Portrait

admin — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 14:43:55 +0000

What a way to start a weekend. Friday I got to help Eric Meffley with the Lima Help Portrait Project. He lined up 2 photographers, 4 hair and make-up artists, 2 computer/printer people (we printed the pictures and gave them to the people on the spot), 2 “runners” (to deliver the pictures), an Emcee, and a videographer.

It was as close to a professional photo shoot as I’ve ever been.

The people were incredible.

In the beginning, we had to coax people up and convince them that there were no hidden agendas…it was just a free portrait. By the time we closed, we had people “striking a pose” like models.

As one of them said, “The camera loves me, what can I do?”. Here are just a few of the shots from the day.

For more information…please visit the Help Portrait Website.

Thanks again to Eric to inviting me on this fun and fulfilling day!

What a Great Weekend!

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:16:22 +0000

Nothing says holidays like a 5-day weekend! I took Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off work and spent some quality time with my family. It was really great. Its times like these that I try to remember Psalm 107 – Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.

On Wednesday, we spent the afternoon and evening at my father-in-law’s house for Thanksgiving. It is also the time when his 4 daughters set-up and decorate his Christmas tree.

Thursday we spent at my parent’s house. I attempted to take a family portrait, but it sucked — judge for yourself. I told Mom to get us all together again and I promised to do better (or bring someone with me to take it). Family just won’t listen to me the same as they do for a stranger. I assume that is everyone’s toughest customer??

Friday was relaxing around the house then off to the start of the girls basketball season at Bluffton High School. I shoot the game for a local website run by a friend of mine… www.BlufftonPirates.com. Its a fun gig that let’s me get into the games for free and it helps a friend out. I post all of the pictures on my Facebook page and the kids on the teams really appreciate seeing themselves.

Saturday was the big Blaze of Lights parade and official lighting of the Ream Family light display. They close downtown for the evening and have performances and food and schmoozing with the locals. It was perfect weather, 50+ degrees. It was the largest crowd in recent memory and I assume it was due mostly to the good weather.

Sunday was church, football and we ended the day watching Elf while we decorated our Christmas tree. Life is good.

It was a busy weekend – even wore out Harley!

Back to work today – should be a good one. Our sales manager comes back from Maternity leave. We have a lot to discuss with the new printer addition!

What’s New at IGT America

admin — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 01:33:00 +0000

Welcome to the first post of my new blog. My name is Troy Breidenbach and I am President of IGT America. Our primary business has historically been custom printed dry-erase boards. These are both magenetic and non-magnetic in any size up to 40×84. We sell some sizes in frames and some as just skins. We also do a fair amount of business with the adult beverage industry. We make those cool aluminum embossed signs that hang in bars and restaurants all over the country.

About a year ago, I found a love for photography. I remember telling our graphic designer, Eric Meffley (who is a professional photographer), “I just want to be able to take good pictures of my kids playing sports”. He talked my into reading Scott Kelby’s Digital Photography Book. Scott makes everything seem so fun and easy, I was immediately hooked.

Jump forward to last month…I decided to buy a new Epson GS6000 64″ Solvent printer that let’s IGT America start to print vinyl banners, posters, car wraps, and … CANVAS PRINTS. As soon as the installation was finished, I printed a 24×36 gallery wrap and a 16×20 gallery wrap. Its amazing how much better prints look at that size. In discussing possible uses, Eric and I decided that we could offer these to other photographers. If we were going to offer canvas, we thought, we should have more to offer. So we decided to also make our aluminum products available. We had been printing on those products for quite some time for our own purposes, but never considered selling them to others – weird I know. I had been following Jason D. Moore and noticed that he had photo of the month contests pretty regularly. I decided we would see what other photographers thought of our products. I offered to give a 16×20 aluminum print to the winner of the November 2009 contest. When the winner was announced, I decided to give a total of five away so that each of the honorable mentions could have one also. So far, we have shipped three…all to stunning reviews. We are very excited.

Eric is updating the website so that we will be able to take online orders…look for it in the next 2 weeks. In the meantime, feel free to contact me through the contact link and we can discuss pricing and whatnot.

I hope to use this space to discuss, miscellaneous thoughts and concerns, IGT America stuff and also show off some of my mediocre photography. I feel that showing my photos to others in a public forum will force me to make better shots…at least in theory.