I am a founder and the Chief Executive Officer of MindTouch, a popular open source business application and collaboration platform used by millions. Read more.
Another of my photos in the wild, originally uploaded by Roebot.
KPBS used one of my photos in a piece about the possibility Farmers’ Markets might accept food stamps. Michelle Obama’s new policy is to make fresh foods accessible to those with less means.
On my ride home today I shot this sunset over San Diego from Golf Course Dr. in Golden Hills.
This is a kind of cross-post from the MindTouch blog. The original post is about MindTouch hiring. Read that if you’re looking for a job.
Roy recently started shooting with a Panasonic Lumix GF-1. He’s using a 20mm pancake lens, which I believe is a no-name Zeiss. He recently wrote about the imminent move to new MindTouch offices and shot photos around our current office. Only Roy is more sentimental than me. Or is he? 
Tim O’Brien is a MindTouch sales representative. Indeed, Tim is the highest earning MindTouch sales representative. He was one of the very first sales hires and has been with the company for 1.5 years. In this photo Tim is on a call with a customer. This customer generates more than $4.5B in annual revenue. We have an exciting project underway.
Pete Erickson was a MindTouch contractor before we had any employees. The guy is brilliant. He was at Great Plains before the Microsoft acquisition. Microsoft recognized his talent and made him a crisis ‘firefighter’ of sorts. When I met him he was the CTO for a fiber to the home startup. It’s a joy to work with and to know Pete. Unfortunately, he still lives in Minnesota and I don’t get to see him much, but he is omnipresent at MindTouch.
Max Mass is another of the many brilliant members of MindTouch engineering. He started with MindTouch 3.5 years ago. It was only earlier this week that I realized it’s been that long. It seems like yesterday. I interviewed him over the phone from an airport, the Minneapolis airport if I recall correctly. I remember giggling during the interview while I addressed him by his full name: Maxim Mass. Say it aloud. 
Corey Ganser is the gentleman on the left and GuerricS is on the right. Corey has performed the following roles at MindTouch: office admin, trainer, sales and support manager; in that order. He has been a MindToucher since the first year of business. Corey is the reason our customers consistently rank MindTouch support 4.75 out of 5 every month, quarter and year. Guerric is responsible for a lot of the user interface at MindTouch. He’s a real engineer from Urbana-Champagne (he couldn’t get into UNC 
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The remaining photos weren’t shot by Roy, but I felt compelled to include more faces in my MindTouch blog post and I may as well keep them here.
Damien Howley is the technical lead for the professional services team at MindTouch. He’s been with us for three years and started as the webmaster. There were fewer than ten of us at MindTouch when Damien started.
Sarah Carr is the marketing coordinator at MindTouch. She’s been with us for almost a year.
Roy Kim is a fellow UNC alum. He is also the first employee of MindTouch and our VP of Engineering and the photographer of most of these photos. Roy started college at 16 and graduated four years later with a degree in Economics and Chemistry while simultaneously launching a popular blogging/social site that has only suffered from his investment in MindTouch over the last five years.
The first four photos were shot with Roy’s Panasonic Lumix GF-1. Fantastic! Since this is a post about photography, kind of, I want to share a concept Ricky Montalvo shared over Twitter: FART. I know it’s a disgusting acronym. However, it’s a great system for shooting. Maybe we can rename it though.
I know this guy, Mykl Roventine, from when MindTouch was still only a year old and located in St Paul, MN. He worked for a web development company in the front of portion of our office. He also had an insane collection of jackalopes. I just discovered his Flickr stream. Check this out:
I feel so inadequate. 
A web development and design firm has asked to purchase the right to use one of my photographs commercially. This is the photo in question:
I took it at the Stephen Birch Aquarium in La Jolla. This is flattering. I’ve never had anyone want to buy one of my photos. Although, I have had my photos used in several online publications including, most notably, The Wall Street Journal. I license all my images under Creative Commons, Attribution-Share-alike.
I suppose I should donate the money to the aquarium. I have no idea how much to charge. Thoughts? I do not know how they’ll be using the image. I’ve asked for clarification.
I’ve had my photos used by the Wall Street Journal, Building.com and other less popular pubs. Here’s another of my photos in the wild:
In case you’re wondering, the article is about Israeli moms that have natural child birth after having had previous births by Cesarean. The subtitle for the image reads: “Weary but jubilant.” 
Last Sunday Roy, Ashby and I went “shooting” for the second time. We made another stop along El Camino Real. Regular readers will know this is a photo project we started with Ricky Montalvo in December. 
Mission San Luis Rey was founded in 1798 by Padre Fermin Francisco de Lasuén, a Franciscan. I thought it was interesting to note the mission was founded nine years after UNC-Chapel Hill. A reminder of California’s youth. San Luis Rey is the youngest mission in Southern California; however, it became the richest and largest of the 21 California missions. The mission was named for Louis IX, King of France (1215-1270); a Sainted two time crusader.
The native Americans called the mission Tacayme. The mission church, as is common in Catholicism, is in the shape of a cross. The interior has double-dome wooden construction. The quadrangle contains the first pepper tree in California, imported from South America. Unfortunately this was gated and out of sight; therefore I couldn’t get a photo of it.
I think I took some of my best photos to date at San Luis Rey. It was difficult to take great photos given the subject and weather. The day was stunningly beautiful with the temperature in the high 70s F and a glorious blue sky that provided a sharp contrast to the white adobe walls.
50 Photos | Are You Interested?
Nate has come up with this fantastic idea to print a photo book of 50 carefully selected photos from various talented photographers whom have released their photos under permissive Creative Commons licenses.
Details:
Excellent! $80. Ok. This might be a hard sell for Tara, my wife. What’s the details on the book? Binding, etc? Will this be unique too?
