Today Missy and I had lunch with Dave Hoffmann, a talented photographer located in Harford County (my homebase) that freelances for the Examiner in his spare time (he's a software engineer full-time). Missy stumbled upon Dave's blog a couple of weeks ago and shared it with me. His sports photography caught my eye, so I asked him if he would like to meet up sometime so I could pick his brain (I have a lot to learn about sports photography). We decided to meet at my house for lunch - this was good, because whenever we have people over, we always get motivated to do something with the house that is long overdue. Now you might be thinking we vacuumed our basement or mopped the kitchen floor....nope - we took down our Christmas tree (we were sad to see it go, but it was time).  It was a very professional meeting - we met at my house for pizza, the kids were running wild, and little Miss Shy (our 1 and 1/2 yr old) was flirting like crazy. Once the kids went down for their naps, we were able to get to business. We both had a lot of similar views on the hardships of trying to start your own business while raising a family. Dave had a lot of interesting tips to share from lighting concepts to remote-camera usage (this was pretty cool - check out his blog for some details). I'm always looking to meet photographers and do a little knowledge sharing - it's always cool to learn something new and teaching others always helps to reinforce your own knowledge and practices. West Coast photographers are all about sharing knowledge, but for some reason it seems that East Coast photographers like are less willing to share. Personally I like the West Coast philosophy (maybe because I  would really LOVE to live in California :) so any other local photographers looking to network, give me a shout! Dave - thanks for the tips!

Here's a sample of Dave's work: