White House News Photographer's Gala

So, you may have noticed that I've been somewhat abscent from my daily, and semi-daily postings. It's been a combination of things, not the least of which has been the 14 assignments that have kept me busier than a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest. Yet, I was also preparing for v2.0 of the Photo Booth that I posted about earlier. Well, v2.0 made v1.0 feel more like a beta. Dual printers (purchased from Imaging Spectrum, and a ZigView purchased from my friends at Penn Camera (see the "Live Viewfinder Preview" directional sign in the middle with the black/red arrows) meant that the people doing their self-portraits could see what was in the viewfinder and properly align themselves for their photo, and thus, the system would hum along like nobody's business. Which it did, for awhile. And then, a few problems cropped up. The printers kept jamming. I finally realized that it was my own mistake though -- I did not have the printers on a level and flat surface. This caused a full 11 minutes of delay (according to the camera capture time), but I experienced this problem for about 30 minutes. The beauty was, the TEPS-X software handled these problems in an amazing way. Whichever printer was available, would print.

If you're curious to see how many of the world's finest photographers have a blast and make photos of themselves in front of a seamless, check out the Gala 2007 Photo Booth link at WHNPA's Digital Railroad customized section of the website. Above is a photograph that DRR's Mark Ippolito made of me at work in the booth, with my faithful assistant Lauren Sandkuhler in the foreground helping out.

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