Prepare to be amazed

You probably know by now that I work for the best photo-sharing site there is: SmugMug. Full-disclosure: I am as biased as they come because my brother and my dad started the company out of my parents’ house.

What you may not know is that we host an online photography forum, Digital Grin, where lots of AMAZING photographers swap tips and plan shoot-outs. This past year we sponsored a $25,000 photography contest that ran the whole year with photo contests every two weeks, semifinals, and finals.

We just announced a winner and the gallery of photos from the final will take your breath away. Check it out.

Click on the photo on the right to make it the center of attention, then you can arrow through all the photos.

Not bad, eh? Here are the semifinal entries and the photos that won photographers a spot in the semis (note the themes for these).

Some of my favorites?
Pride of workmanship
Make a move
The children’s fountain
Carefree and living it
Unfair
Against all odds

Interested in more cool photos? Check out the Found on SmugMug blog. My brother posts stuff like these snowflakes and these photos from the Solomon Islands.

Bean Greetings

Whew! I’ve had a lot of late nights lately helping test new features at work. We just released something I’ve been hoping for all year… holiday cards!

Many of my loyal readers (as in, like 3 out of 5 of you) have asked me what I do for work. Well, in addition to testing this new feature, I wrote our product page for the greeting cards and the corresponding help page. Don’t laugh! It’s harder than it looks.

Our customers have been begging for holiday cards for months and hopefully these will be just in time! I know I’m glad that I don’t have to order my greeting cards from Kodak this year.

Just look how darling my new niece looks on one of our cards:

And of course, one of my favorite dogs:

So with that… I’d like to wish you a Happy Kwanzaa (and a good night’s sleep for me):

Call me “Black Cat”

Ok, so I may have mentioned previously that my family’s company, SmugMug, take some very interesting portraits of the employees. The way it works is, uh, um, well… EveryoneGetsPaintedAsASuperHero. Whew, that was hard to admit.

No, actually I thought the idea was very fun and I really enjoyed seeing all the pictures.

Until.

I visited headquarters in CA and had to step up and get my own face painted. Woah. Fun, but the pictures are a bit… um… incriminating?

Officially, I am dressed up as Black Cat, a love interest of Spiderman (other than Kirsten Dunst, I guess). Someone jokingly suggested a dog collar for Scott and thus I bring you… Anne’s Most Embarrassing Blog Post To-Date:

Not your father’s company portraits

Wait, no… these ARE my father’s company portraits. Here’s my brother and my Dad, CEO and President of SmugMug:

Some out-of-town SmugMug employees made the pilgrimage to headquarters in CA this week. I was bummed that I couldn’t be out there to join their photowalk in San Francisco, but when they whipped out the face paints I realized I’d really missed out.

After all, what’s my family portrait without Wonder Woman?

Click here for the rest of the photos. And go here to catch a rare appearance of The Silver Surfer posting on a pregnancy blog. Hehe. I love my family!

read more | digg story