HAPILABS Introduces HAPIfork, World’s First Smart Fork, at CES

CES kicked off this week with CES Unveiled, the official media event on January 6 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

HAPILABS, a company focused on well-being in every aspect, whether that is achieved through fitness, diet, your sleep or how you eat, showed off their new HAPIfork at the event. Their goal is to make it easy for people to take control of their HAPIness, health and fitness through applications and mobile connected devices.

The world’s first connected fork that helps you lose weight by eating at the right time and at the right pace is also showing this new smart device at the Showstoppers media event on January 8 at the Las Vegas WYNN Hotel and all week at Digital Health at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The smart connected device, which has a crisp, elegant and clean design, was created by French engineer Jacques Lepine. The HAPIfork will be available in five colors when it hits the market this year: blue, green, white, black and pink.

This smart fork knows how fast you’re eating and helps you slow things down using a patent-pending technology. By eating slower, you can improve the way you feel after every meal, enhance your digestion and reduce your weight.

When you are eating too fast, HAPIfork sends you gentle vibrations and indicator lights so you are aware of when you’re not eating at a pace that is optimal for your health, allowing you to slow down without a disruption to your meal or conversation.  

All of your HAPIfork eating data is transmitted to your online account when you connect your HAPIfork to your computer via USB or your smart phone via Bluetooth. This flexibility means you can monitor your health improvement at home or on the road from a mobile device.

You can choose to keep this information private or share some or all of this data with friends who are supporting you, your health and lifestyle.

The complete suite, which will be priced at $99, will include the HAPIfork Device, an Online Dashboard, which stores and reviews your eating-related data and helps you track your progress meal after meal, a Mobile App which allows you to follow your stats from your mobile device, a Online Coaching Program for tips and tricks on eating smarter and healthier, and an Online Social Game, designed to motivate you to implement your new habits with your loved ones.

Below, HAPILABS CEO Fabrice Boutain shows a HAPIfork and HAPItrack prototypes in Paris this past December. 

Disclosure: I am a consultant for the company.

Happy Holidays from Magic Sauce Media!!

Happy Holidays from Magic Sauce Media!!

Mobile Loco Brings the Best of Advertising, Geo-Location & Branding to the Mobile World

Held last week in San Francisco, the MobileLoco event merged the best of geo-location, advertising, branding and the mobile world.

Run by serial marketer Mark Evans, the event aspires to dive into the brand, advertiser and mobile convergence in the context of the Social, Local and Mobile (SoLoMo) marketplace.

The discussions revolved around what this convergence means for big brands, consumers, SMBs and the mobile and location industry.  

On-stage, we heard from the likes of Andrew Mason of Groupon, Benchmark Capital's Bill Gurley, Banjo's Danien Patton and the Mobile Engineering Lead of Airbnb Andrew Vilcsak.  Other voices included Bloomberg TV's Cory Johnson, Google's Don Dodge, Nextdoor's Nirav Tolia, Postmates Bastian Lehmann, Foursquare's Holger Luedorf, Micello's Ankit Agarwal and others. 

Above: Andrew Mason, CEO of Groupon

Client inTooch partnered with MobileLoco so users could easily and seamlessly exchange contact and social network information on the fly. A free mobile app for iPhone and Android, attendees could network that much faster and more efficiently using the app rather than have to exchange business cards or manually add Twitter and Facebook 'handles.'

Above: Steve Brehaut, Renee Blodgett, Julien Salanon

Since geo-tagging is built in, the inTooch app tracks where connection requests are made and will link all connection requests to the location, in this case the Mobile-Loco event in San Francisco, CA. When users browse through their connections, they can see all the connections they made at Mobile-Loco. 

There were other cool products there too. A group out of Japan from Daq was on-site showing off their creative iPhone and iPad IRUAL cases.  I find that most cases are pretty bland, come in plain colors or are frankly too tacky. Then there are those specifically targeted to the 13-18 year old market, but what happens if you don't fall into any of those categories? I loved their designs specifically aimed at women - from soft and feminine to daring and electric.

Then, I had a demo of DigitalGlobe, who apparently did a deal with MapBox on the same day. Mapbox, which is a provider of open source solutions for designing and publishing maps via the cloud, chose DigitalGlobe as their commercial and earth imagery provider.

Users can now incorporate DigitalGlobe's high-resolution satellite imagery as their maps' base layer for added quality and rich detail. The result can be quite beautiful, especially compared to the bland offerings today.

Then I went back in time to my speech recognition and natural language processing days. I saw a nifty demo from a group who call themselves SpeakToIt. What they do? Develop talking personal assistants.

The SpeaktoIt Assistant is a virtual buddy for your smartphone that answers questions in natural language, performs tasks and notifies you of important events. The Assistant is meant to save you time and make communication with gadgets and web services easier and less stressful. 

All photos by Renee Blodgett.

Cormac Conroy VP, Engineering, Products, Qualcomm

David Staas, President, JiWire

inTooch Teamed Up With MobileLoco: Users Can Exchange Data On The Fly

inTooch, a mobile application that supports both Android and iPhone, easily and seamlessly allows you to instantly exchange contact and social network information on the fly.

inTooch teamed up with San Francisco-based Mobile-Loco this past week, an event that explores the convergence of brands, advertising and mobile.   

Attendees were encouraged to download the free mobile app, so they could quickly exchange all their contact information or a portion of it with new people they met at the event, including their social media network data. 

Whenever you meet someone you want to stay in touch with, you simply call the person, the app detects that you have called them for the first time and prompts you automatically to exchange your contact information, giving you the option to exchange your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn details as well.

Since geo-tagging is built in, the inTooch app tracks where connection requests are made and will link all connection requests to the location, in this case the Mobile-Loco event in San Francisco, CA. When users browse through their connections, they can see all the connections they made at Mobile-Loco.  After the event, inTooch will also send an email to each user who sent a connection request during Mobile-Loco with the list of all the contacts they met at the event, resulting in a more efficient way to follow up and turn contacts into relationships that matter. 

A useful augmented reality feature, which is popular for personal encounters, is a report that informs you of all the things you have in common with that person (friends, places you visited, music, movies you like, social network info, check-ins, interests you share).

Unlike most apps, inTooch works regardless of whether the person you just met has it on his or her cell phone, making it the most natural, straight forward and easy way to share your personal or business details.  inTooch is available for download at http://www.intooch.com and is free for users. Currently, inTooch works with both the Android and the iPhone, with support for other platforms and mobile devices coming later this year.

Photo above is of inTooch's CEO Julien Salanon on the MobileLoco stage. 

Disclosure: I provide some consulting to inTooch.

Don't Die a Slow Death in a Mountain of Business Cards: Try inTooch!

I no longer get pumped up about cool new social apps or drink the Silicon Valley coolaid - there's just too much of it.

When I learn about new products or services, these are my two go to questions: would I use this today and does this solve a real problem that I've had for awhile?

When inTooch co-founder and CEO Julien Salanon gave me his pitch and suggested we work together, I was at first skeptical about their promise: to eliminate the business card problem.

While it's too early to tell since there are so many variables in this business not to mention human behavior, as a fellow entrepreneur, I couldn't help but be intrigued by his idea. And besides, Julien has one of those personalities that is impossible not to like. 

He shared a story with me as we sipped tea at one of my favorite haunts in San Francisco's SOMA. Nearly ten years ago, he was at an important conference and forgot his business cards and a result, important connections were lost.

Over the last decade, he said that he tried several apps to solve this business-card issue, but none of them worked. They still don't. Don't even get me started with BUMP btw, an app that peer pressure forced me to download yet it only worked one out of ten times I tried it. And, frankly, the whole concept of crashing two phones together doesn't quite gel with me. 

Julien said, "whenever I didn't have a business card or they didn't, I ended up calling the other person to leave my mobile number. And, that’s when I got the idea to enhance those natural connections with inTooch.”

While I may not call every person I meet at a conference, when I do meet someone I want to stay in touch with and we don't have a pen or card, what happens? They call me so the number is saved in my phone. What I don't have in that scenario of course is their name or email automatically, but it's a process that works in a pinch.

inTooch takes it a step further allowing you to email or call them on the fly which automatically sends a link: this link is the conduit which allows that exchange of information to happen. The beautiful part about the app and why it stands a strong chance of taking off, is that both parties don't need to have the app to work.

Intrigued that perhaps I'd soon have a client with a product I'd ACTUALLY USE, I decided to be the evil dragonness to avoid any surprises later on, so I started drilling him with questions. 

What about categorization I asked? Not in the first version he said, but it's coming. What about social networks? Built in he said. What about privacy and personalization? Built in he said. Hmm, I wanted categories of course given that I have nearly 100,000 contacts in my database, but also realize that I'm not your average Nelly when it comes to contact management.

As my friend Steve said, "you're not normal, you're in the business of needing to mate with the world. In fact, you love to mate with the world." I had to laugh. He's right. I love meeting people and no one seems to come home from an event with more business cards than I do.

AND, he said, the ability to add contacts to categories is coming. They already have the ability to separate personal and business contacts.

I'm a realist. Anyone who works with early start-ups needs to be a realist. Rome wasn't build in a day and most apps when they first go to market don't have every single detail or feature you want built in in their first version. As long as the team has it on the roadmap or thinking about it, it's good enough to give it a shot. If we didn't trust that process, real innovation wouldn't happen and we wouldn't be where we are today.

Unlike so many social apps that are Web 2.0 features rather than solutions to problems, I thought to myself, "inTooch would actually take care of a huge pain point in my life."

And so, we embarked on a journey in early September. Forward wind the clock. Julien took People's Choice Award at GigaOm's Mobilize in mid-September when he pitched a panel of VCs on stage.

Then, he officially launched inTooch on the DEMO Stage on October 3 with Dave Mathews in an amusing skit that included the duo tossing 2,000 business cards into the DEMO audience as they shouted FREEDOM, FREEDOM, FREEDOM.

At one point, I thought Julien might start dancing when the music came on. OR, maybe it was one of those Halleluja moments.

Consider this: did you realize that of all the people you meet at a conference or even in a personal situation, you won't stay in touch with 85% of them? Without sounding too trite - inTooch to the rescue.

Trust me, I want to be rescued and I think most of us do. I can't keep up with the volume of contacts and there are always people to want to follow up with and just don't have the time. There are also people's contact information I'm trying to locate months later and realized I didn't have time to enter their data.

There are 4 cool features I personally love about the app:

1. The Mobile Geo-Location Piece: since I travel a lot, I often think about people (and their faces) based on 'where' I met them. Oh yeah, that was John who I met at this festival in Louisville Kentucky, or that was Jeannie something and we hung out at CES in Las Vegas. Using geo-tagging, inTooch lets you search for people by location and their photo appears as well to jog your memory. Sweet!

2. Seamless/Fast: additionally, if I don't want to call the person or they don't want me to, I can shoot them an email and the inTooch connector still works. The other cool thing is that both parties don't need the app for the exchange to happen. Obviously the process is even faster if both people DO have the app, so I'd encourage everyone to download the app. Let the seamless exchange of data begin! 

3. Social Network Exchange. So many people I meet under the age of 30 either don't have a business card (even in a business setting), give me their Twitter handle or say connect with me on Facebook. (as if I'm going to remember their name or handle the next day or a week later when I'm back home).

I'm always amazed that they think I'll take the time to jot down their data with a visual queue of our conversation. It's too much work. What's great about inTooch is that you can opt to include the exchange of your social network information as well. It currently supports LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

I've known Chris Taylor from Mashable for years and for some odd reason, didn't know he was @FutureBoy on Twitter. Ever try to Google a "common name's" Twitter handle and not get so frustrated by the fifth click that you finally give up? Don't get me started on the poor search functionality within Twitter itself although I know they're improving it all the time.

4. Augmented Reality: for personal encounters, inTooch brings augmented reality to your connections, alerting you to all the things you have in common with another person (friends, places you visited, music, movies you like, social network info, check-ins, interests you share) so you can instantly engage in mutually interesting conversations.

Bottom line, it's been a fun ride so far and we're only a month into it. Free to use, the app is available now for iPhone (except iOS6) and alive and ticking for the Android as well.

Support for iOS6, other platforms and mobile devices are also coming later this year.

So, give it a try. Don't die a slow death in a mountain of business cards like poor Matt Marshall here! Everyone has their limits.

Below is a video shot by Jean Baptiste Su of their demo presentation.

See my earlier write-up on inTooch on the day of launch. And, refer to my two write-ups on Demo, 8 cool commerce apps and my DEMO photo summary.

Photo Credits: photo at GigaOm taken by Carla Schlemminger and all other photos by Renee Blodgett.

A Visual Journey of DEMOFall 2012

I missed DEMOFall last year if I recall and hate to miss a DEMO since I'm a huge fan of their events, having gone for years (and years). I'm also a media partner every year. As always, they had a great line-up of companies, many start-ups making the trek over from Asia and Europe to unveil their latest and greatest on the DEMO stage.

Some of the highlights included a kick-off Beer reception in the Oktoberfest theme. The great thing about such a theme is fabulous dark German beer and fashionistas like Jolie O'Dell showing up looking like Heidi. (it doesn't seem to matter what outfit she puts on or color her hair is, she always looks smashing).

The downside? The food of course. It was great to reconnect with old friends, some of whom I only see at Demo every year. Not everyone was as stylish as Jolie of course, but the pressure of women pulling out in the stops in Silicon Valley has Dylan Tweney rethinking what he puts on before he goes out of the house...yup, even the socks! (see my geek fashion hurts my senses piece).

Dean Takahashi decided to support the theme in one way he knew how: put on an Irish hat to support the Germans of course. :-)

In all seriousness, the beauty about Demo is that after hours (and before hours), people still know how to have fun. Below - is it easy to recognize a Brit among us? After all, the Brits know how to let loose despite myths that they don't. (Trust me, I lived there...ask me for stories sometime).

The every so "fun" Redg Snodgrass and Andrew Scott announced Taploid, a gossip tabloid for the digital age, so hey, they were just celebrating their unveiling after all...

 

Speaking of celebrating and having fun, Dave Mathews and co-founder of InTooch Julian Salanon demonstrated to the audience that they can START to have fun if they only freed their lives from business cards with their new mobile app. Hear hear.

Given that this event was Matt Marshall's last DEMO event, Neal Silverman bid farewell to Matt on stage while the audience cheered him on (and yes, we even stood up and whistled). Erick Schonfeld takes over in 2013 and am looking forward to seeing what direction he takes things.

There were also the traditional DEMO God awards that DEMO is notorious for. This year's winners included: bandu from Neumitra, Birdeez, ElectNext, Flinja, RentLingo, and VPC from Neurotrack (Alzheimers development).

One conference - multiple personalities. Up on day one was Ray Kurzweil, who talked about everything from singularity and speech recongition to nano bots and our brains. Up on day two was Twitter co-founder Ev Williams.

In between each category, a group of "sage" panelists came out and gave their opinion on every app that presented - what they liked and didn't...and why!

Journalist Rob Pegararo made the trek from DC...

There was, as always, loads of schmooze time as well and on the last night, a farewell celebration party thrown by Citrix.

With InTooch, Instantly Turn New Connections Into Relationships That Matter

For those of you who go to a lot of conferences and events like I do, collecting business cards, exchanging data and keeping in touch with people after the fact is a daunting task.

Sure, there are apps who have promised to faciliate the exchange of information in the past, but most require both people to have the app installed or the need to work in some unnatural and awkward way.

And, then there's card scanners. I've invested in three over the years and two of the three ended up in a yard sale not so long ago. 

The other one I donated to Goodwill. 

Bottom line, they're not accurate so you're stuck stuck fixing all the mistakes or retyping the contact info into your database for the second and third time.

I recently started working with a French-founded start-up called InTooch who is now based in Silicon Valley. 

InTooch is a mobile application that allows you to instantly turn people you meet into personal and business relationships that matter.

Selected to present their technological innovation with over 75 other companies on the DEMO Fall stage this week, their demo will be included in the social media category.

Did you realize that of all the people you meet at a conference or even in a personal situation, you won't stay in touch with 85% of them? InTooch aims to not just decrease that number but improve those relationships using their app.

The great thing about the product is that it's easy, it's fast and it's free. Instantly, the moment you meet, the InTooch social connector exchanges contact information and connects you on your preferred social networks on the fly.

While many apps have tried to solve the contact update and data overload problem, most require both people to have the app installed for it to work, or they involve connecting in an awkward way.

In doing research about how people around the world stay connected, they discovered that the majority call each other to exchange numbers in real time more than they connect on social networks and exchange a business cards. InTooch takes it a step further by allowing people to share more than just numbers in real time, including your social data.

 How it Works:

Whenever you meet someone you want to stay in touch with, simply call their cell. The app detects that you have called someone for the first time and prompts you automatically to exchange your business or personal contact information.  

 

Works on Any Receiving Device: you can send and receive new contact information regardless of what phone the other person has. If the other person doesn’t have InTooch, it simply sends a link and the rest is done seamlessly through their social connector technology.

 Social Network Integration: In just one call, you can connect through LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. There’s no need to search for a contact in each social network nor to send invitations – connections are simply established on the fly.

No Need for Both Parties to Have the App: unlike so many solutions which require both parties to have the app installed to work, InTooch works regardless of whether the person you just met has it on their phone, making it the most natural, straight forward and easy way to share your personal or business details.  Obviously if the other person has the app, exchanging data is even faster.

 New Connection Highlights and Personal Match Score: For personal encounters, InTooch brings augmented reality to your connections, alerting you to all the things you have in common with another person (friends, places you visited, music, movies you like, social network info, check-ins, interests you share) so you can instantly engage in mutually interesting conversations.

It also provides a matching score based on an algorithm which calculates the probability of how well you should get along with that person.

Geo-Tagging of New Connections: since it’s much easier to remember where and when you met someone than his/her name, InTooch automatically tags the location of the initial connection, so you also can search for people by when and where you met them.

Privacy (Control What Data Your Share): InTooch respects your privacy, allowing you to customize what information you want to share and with whom.

InTooch is available for download at http://www.intooch.com and is free for users. Currently, InTooch works with both the Android and the iPhone (except for iOS6), with support for iOS6, other platforms and mobile devices coming later this year.

 

CarWoo! Teams Up With AOL Autos: Consumers Get Best Offer Deals on Cars

This week, CarWoo! announced a partnership with AOL Autos.

How it works: the partnership provides "Best Offer" deals from 10,000+ U.S. dealers to arm buyers with the information needed to quickly and easily negotiate great market prices on the car of their dreams while retaining their privacy.

CarWoo! essentially puts consumers in the driving seat so to speak, allowing them to accept the best bids on cars in an open transparent way so they can get the best price for a new or used car. 

Below is the CarWoo! interface, but gives you an idea of how the system works.

Fotobabble for Websites, Facebook Timeline & New iPhone App Release

Fotobabble announced three new updates this week: Fotobabble for Websites, Fotobabble for Timeline and a new iPhone App release.   

Fotobabble for Websites is a new application that for the first time lets an organization run photo and audio-driven campaigns and promotions directly from any website. Through the visual impact of photos, the emotion of voice and the power of social media, brands and businesses can increase web traffic and audience engagement.

Everloop.com, the leading online social site for kids and tweens, selected Fotobabble for Websites to power its INSPIRE contest with international pop star Greyson Chance. Kids were invited to take a photo of what inspires them, add their voice, and enter to win an iPad and autographed posters.

Fotobabble for Timeline is the only Facebook application that engages fans with the visual impact of photos and emotion of voice. Easy to install, brand and customize, the app lets organizations launch creative Facebook marketing contests and campaigns.

Fotobabble features such as photo contests and voting; "like-gating" with Talking Photos; customized photo galleries; and more are now fully Timeline compatible. 

Creating Talking Photos with Fotobabble’s iPhone App allows you to make iPhone photos bolder and more beautiful with just a couple of simple clicks. Powerful effects, filters, cropping tools and more help you create Talking Photos that you’ll want to share with everyone. 

• Effects – Choose from ten gorgeous effects ranging from vivid color to washed-out retro.
• Filters – Enhance, adjust, and perfect your photos with one-click editing tools.
• Cropping and rotate tools – Flip, crop, and rotate your photos to position them however you want to.
• More – Fix red-eye, brighten or saturate your photos and more. 

Learning About the Magic of Lighting with Rick Friedman

If you have never done a photo workshop, and are remotely interested in photography, then you should figure out what you want or need to learn and set aside some time for a few workshops and classes. Why do one if you're not a pro or planning to be one?

Easy...workshops give you access to the best photographers in the world (aka the instructors) and people who are the most passionate about photography you'll likely run across (aka the attendees).

Rick Friedman is a well known photographer based in Boston who I met and worked with about 15 years ago. Although I've known of and respected his work for a long time, I've never done one of his workshops and the timing couldn't have been better. Rick's magic sauce? Among other things, lighting.

Lighting isn't an easy thing to master. If anything, I find the thought of dealing with flash more stressful than actually dealing with it. While mastering the art of lighting takes time and understanding it can be complex, once you dive in, you realize that you can get up to speed fairly quickly with the basics and Rick is an excellent instructor to get you there.

He did a series of workshops on the west coast recently: San Francisco, Los Angeles and the San Diego area. 

While Rick is primarily a Nikon shooter, we had plenty of equipment and toys that worked on both Nikons and Canons and as most people know, I'm a huge Canon fan and am never far from my trusty Canon 7D.

His workshops are designed for wedding photographers, portrait photographers, photojournalists and serious amateurs who want to improve their knowledge of lighting. He started with a single light and a single piece of advice: "Look for the element you can't control and set your exposure for that unknown element," which btw, is often the sky. Read the ambian light first and proceed from there.

The strobe gets set to TTL because if you shoot on shutter priority, then you'll always be shooting wide open. You want to use a strobe to fill in the shadows on someone's face even if there's a lot of light. You can see this again and again with so many failed portrait shots we've all done in our lives.

We then moved onto Infrared remote controls which apparently don't work as well in bright sunlight and pocket wizards, which gives you a lot more flexibility. If money isn't an issue, go for the Pocket Wizards TT5s, because they can be used as both a transmitter and a receiver. (here's the one for Canon and here's the one for Nikon).   

We tested out different light modifiers, using grip equipment, adding colors to images using Rogue's photographic gels and something they also make called a Rogue Grid Set. Frankly, next to the Rogue Flashbenders (they come in small and large sizes), I thought the Grid set was the coolest thing I used all day. 

The Grid set also reduces light or rather diffuses it. It features stacking honeycomb grids that provide 16 degree, 25 degree, and 45 degree spot lighting control.

This means that photographers can choose among three different size grid spots using this small, lightweight system. Love love love it.

Since I didn't have much time with the product during the seminar, what I'm most eager to try in more depth is the use of the color gels inside the grid and testing them out in both indoor and outdoor settings (notice the purple one inside the grid in the photo -- more after I have had a chance to try it out).

Remember that I travel a lot, so bags need to get packed and moved frequently from place to place, so it's important for me that my equipment is flexible, small and lightweight. It also has to solve a problem I have often when I shoot.

Bringing along a flash isn't a high priority at the best of times, since I often end up with additional glare, shiny foreheads and harsh effects on people's faces. Flashbenders diffuse the harshness in a similar way that photo softboxes do however they're smaller in size and faster to set up. (this is key for me). And, while I may have the time to set up a reflector (California Sunbounce model is a decent one), more often than not, I won't have time to fuss. That said, I do have a reflector (the Calumet model), since they're useful to have on hand for a studio shoot and when you have more time.

If you have the space, the money and the time to fuss, then you'd probably want a Dynalite in your collection, but know that it takes a little training to use them effectively and they're over $1K to purchase. If you're going to do more studio shooting on a regular basis however, then I'd encourage you to check them out. (we got some pretty fabulous results using one in the Calumet studio, which is where the workshop was held).

Of course if you're Rick, you're used to carrying things around and sometimes in this business, a reflector just becomes a natural extension of you from time-to-time.

Below, we are practicing shooting on the set we created for testing out various lighting methods.

And seeing different effects using beauty dishes, Calumet Softboxes versus the California Sunbounce model, versus something as simple and minor as adding some black cinefoil into the process. 

Matte Black Cinefoil is essentially nothing more than a matte black aluminum material that virtually soaks up light. It is ideal for masking light leaks and/or eliminating unwanted reflections and can also be molded to form barndoors, flags and other configurations.  

You can of course overdue it with the colored gels but a girl has gotta play until she figures out exactly what kind of effect she ultimately wants to end up with...

Other small photo toys that can assist in the process are the ExpoImaging ExpoDisc which helps analyze color, and the X-Rite Color Checker Passport.

I love Sepia, antique black and white and every variation in between, but if you're going to go dreamy and soft, you may as well add a tint of color.

Photo walk anyone? Our days were perfect.

Below is our team photo, the one we created on the fly after a little imagination and modification. Since we were in San Francisco's Mission district, adding a l'il graffiti backdrop seemed like the right thing to do which means that we required a lot less time to get the lighting perfect than the "Vermont" class who chose the inside of a New England barn for their shot.

If it doesn't look like we're having fun, then look again!

Above group shot by Rick Friedman. For more info on his workshops, check out his site and Facebook page.