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Last Saturday our local photography group had access to a Lamborghini Diablo for a group photo shoot. This was a thrill since I spent a considerable portion of my teenage years drooling over cars in “Road & Track” and “Motor Trend” magazines. Mixing fast cars and photography is about as good as it gets.

After finding a parking lot with enough green grass nearby to provide a decent background, we started shooting. Cars like the Diablo aren’t exactly common around here, and we drew plenty of looks from passers-by wondering what we were doing with such an unusual car. I think someone asked if we were working on an ad.

Shooting cars can be a challenge. You really have to keep an eye out for harsh shadows and reflections that can spoil a shot. Since I like to use a wide-angle lens, I spent a lot of time crawling around the parking lot trying to keep my reflection out of the picture. Is there a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon?

With another successful group shoot in the bag, I’m already curious to see what we come up with for the next outing.

We had a very inspiring RefreshBCS Wednesday night. Kelsey Ruger of PopLabs came in from Houston to talk to us about visual and creative thinking and ways to exercise our creative potential.

He talked about how creativity isn’t just the domain of artists, and how all pursuits, from business to programming, start with an idea that sparks action.

Unfortunately, the fantastic imagination that we have as kids isn’t always encouraged into adulthood. He talked about common myths that can hamper the creative process and how the fear of change in the business world often discourages the formation of new ideas.

Kelsey introduced several methods to help boost creative thinking, such as creating a visual library, keeping an idea journal, setting idea quotas, and playing games that encourage the creative process.

One of the games he mentioned was Visual Eyes. I’d never heard of it before, but after playing it for a bit after the presentation I find it extremely addictive and effective at encouraging visual thinking. If the host location hadn’t needed to close, there’s no telling how long we would have kept playing.

A couple volunteers also participated in some impromptu creativity exercises designed to make you think on your feet. This was entertaining and I hope there is video floating around somewhere of the performances.

Before the presentation, I had never really thought about working through ideas or brainstorming in such a visual way. My creative process usually goes something like this: 1) Have an idea at random, 2) Maybe jot something down, 3) Forget about it. Hopefully by implementing some of the techniques Kelsey talked about, I can not only not only increase creative output, but be more effective when it comes to implementing those ideas.

The RefreshBCS post for the event has been updated with a detailed list of books, websites, games and other visual thinking / creative resources. In addition, I want to check out “The Art of the Start” and “Myths of Innovation,” both of which were mentioned during the talk. If you’d like to view the slides of Kelsey’s presentation, they can be found over at Slideshare.

I think it was the best RefreshBCS yet. Big thanks to Kelsey and the RefreshBCS crew for making it such a great event.

I’m trying to decide if I want to go to SXSW Interactive this year. Every year I think about going, but never do. Well, last year I wandered though the halls for a bit since I was already in Austin, but that doesn’t really count.

Browsing the session list, here are a few that caught my eye:

Saturday: Opening Remarks: Henry Jenkins + Steven Johnson

• Behind the Scenes at the Onion News Network (Sean Mills)
• Managing the Media Blur (Douglas Merrill)
• The Weird Turn Pro: Crowdsourcing For Creatives (Derek Powazek)
• You’re the Pawn, Sucker: a Google Maps-Nintendo Mash-up (Rodney Gibbs)

Sunday: Keynote Speaker: Mark Zuckerberg

• Africa 2.0: Affecting Change Using Technology (G. Kofi Annan)

Monday: Keynote Speaker: Frank Warren

• The Art of Self-Branding (Lea Alcantara)
• Beyond the Blogosphere: How Online Talent is Being Developed Offline (Omid Ashtari)
• Blame Canada: 7 Ways We’re Ahead in New Media (Kris Krug)
• Hardware Mashups: Introducing the Long Tail of Gadgets (Peter Semmelhack)
• How Piracy Will Save the Music Industry (Jason Schwartz)
• Make Your Audience Love You (Tom Merritt)
• Pimp My Non Profit — Real Non-Profits Kicking Ass with Online Technology (Ed Schipul)

Tuesday: Keynote Speaker: Jane McGonigal

• Driving the Future of Consumer Electronics Devices (Rob Pait)
• The Future of Corporate Blogs (Lionel Menchaca)
• MASH Notes: A Miltary Surgeon’s Videoblog from Iraq (Carlos Brown)
• Roll Over Gutenberg, Tell McLuhan The News (George Kelly)
• Take Municipal WiFi Back (Joanna Rees)
• Taking Over the World: the Flickr Way (Simon Batistoni)
• The Trials and Tribulations of Using Music Online (Elise Nordling)

Once they post the schedule and more details for the panels I can give it more serious consideration. Of course, I’m guessing hotel reservations should have been made a year ago to avoid paying $$$.

BarCamp Austin III will be held March 7th and 8th.

I’ll try to be there.

Thursday night several area photographers met up for what I hope becomes a regular gathering of photo geeks. The idea had been floating around over at Texas Photo Forum for awhile, but only last week did we have the people to actually make it happen. Seven of us met at Fox & Hound for food, drinks and photo talk. After dinner some of us decided to brave the cold and do some shooting.

One of the group members was able to get a friend of a friend to come out and be our subject for the last minute shoot. She was awesome and stuck it out though the 40 degree temperatures as we set everything up and started shooting. We were out there for almost two hours before calling it quits so we could get the feeling back in our hands and feet.

Only one of my images turned out well enough to post (critiques are encouraged), but it was a great learning experience. I’ve already made a mental checklist of things I need to do differently next time to get better results.

The best part is that it looks like we will be doing this type of thing on a regular basis. If you are in the B/CS area, check out Texas Photo Forum or the BCS Photographers Flickr group for more information on future meetups.

Despite my late arrival, difficulty locating the venue and frustrating wireless connection issues, BarCamp Houston was a lot of fun. It’s like a one-day summer camp for geeks where everyone says “Show me what you’re up to.” and “How do I do this?”

I arrived just before the start of the Spresent demo by Sasha Kouznetsov. Spresent looks like a wonderfully simple, yet full-featured tool to create presentations for your website. Sasha’s enthusiasm for the project showed in his demo.

Unfortunately, most of my attention during the OpenTeams demo was spent trying to figure out why my wireless suddenly stopped working. Not a good thing when using Google docs to take notes. I don’t think it had anything to do with Dwight Silverman taking off with his powerstrip, which was powering the WiFi in that room. I’m going to take the easy way out and blame Vista since it didn’t work the rest of the day.

I ate lunch with the programming group and shared a table with a few barcampers who were looking for the entrepreneur lunch and ended up at the programmer location. The mixture of entrepreneurs and coders worked out well and led to some interesting conversations. We discussed everything from starting a training company, various content management systems, camera gear to recommendations on how to best learn programming. I really enjoyed hearing about what others are working on and interested in technology-wise.

After lunch I caught some of Robert Nagle’s presentation, “Optimizing for Reading: the Art and Science of Presenting Content.” His ideas regarding multimedia attention span and literacy depth were intriguing. I found many of his comments dead on, especially about how websites are bad about breaking a reader’s focus with intrusive advertising and page layouts. I feel the same way about newspapers. Having to interrupt my train of thought and find page D17 to finish an article is a big reason I’ve never enjoyed reading the paper. Interesting factoid from Nagle’s talk: 27% read no books last year. Of those who did, men read five and women read nine books. Good to know I read more than some people - just not anyone I know.

When Nagle finished I went down the hall to catch “Training Noobs in Web 2.0″ by Michelle Boule. Unfortunately I arrived just as she was wrapping up. Then it was back to Room 1 for Building Scalable Websites and Building Great Web Teams by the Hush Labs crew. I also caught the end of “Design Is __” by fellow RefreshBCS’er Roby Fitzhenry.

BarCamp Houston has me jazzed for BarCampBCS, which I think is slated for November. If you have the opportunity to attend a local BarCamp, do it. It is a great way to meet the people behind the websites and projects you follow online and discover new ones.

Events like BarCamp Houston prove that not all innovation comes out of Silicon Valley.

More photos in my Flickr set.

Technorati Tags: barcamphouston2

At BarCamp Houston today. More updates and photos to come.

Update: Processing photos now. For some reason Vista wouldn’t let me reconnect to the WiFi at the event so I had to wait until I got home. Oddly enough, that is my first Vista issue.

Technorati Tags: barcamphouston2

I’m looking forward to BarCamp Houston later this month. Hopefully my laptop will arrive in time so I can blog and upload photos (and possibly video) live from the event. Judging from the session and attendee list, it looks like a great way to meet up and geek out about design, technology and media.