Friday, July 23, 2010

This Month In Style Magazine...

Yeah, July is winding down, but if you know where to look, you can still find the current issue of Lake & Sumter Style Magazine with my fun cover story on the new Tavares (Florida) Seaplane Base and Marina.

Written by staffer Karin Fabry-Cushenbury, the feature showcases a bevy of my photos, including a handful of aerial shots taken while crusing high above Lake Dora hanging out of the open cockpit of a mighty SeaRey seaplane.

My special thanks to the long cast of characters that helped make my job shooting this story both easy and enjoyable: the City of Tavares' Joyce Ross, John Drury, Bill Neron, and John Ruggeri; Roger Kooser and Sherwood Heinman of AL's Landing restaurant (especially for roof access!); Frank Beek for letting me shoot his beautiful 1981 Piper SuperCub featured on the cover, Kerry Richer of Progressive Aerodyne, Inc. for flying me around with my head out the window like a dog on a Sunday drive in the country; Greg Burtner for being my seaplane "model" and patiently following my directions in the sky so I could get some nice shots; and finally seaplane pilot and enthusiast-extraordinare Dan Nickens for helping me coordinate the enitre event and enticing a myriad of seaplane owners to fly in to the base en mass so I could photograph them.

You can read the story and see the shots online: here...

The magazine is free at locations throughout Lake and Sumter County...

Friday, July 16, 2010

When I Say Hillshire...YOU SAY FARM!

So, you wanna know what's been stuck in my head the past few days? It ain't pretty...

Basically, it's been "I said a BEEF! HOT LINKS! I said a BEEF! HOT LINKS!":



So, why do these things happen? All I can do is give Madison Avenue all the credit in the world for still being able to manipulate me, especially at a point in my life when I feel I'm pretty much immune to that sort of thing.

I mean, I rarely eat meat at all, and your smoked variety is something that I don't even think about, even when grocery shopping. But here I am, singing that silly song all day (of course I use the term "singing" very loosely), and wouldn't you know it, I'm actually thinking I should take a look at this stuff the next time I'm by the deli case.

God bless America...GO MEAT!!!

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

New York Yankees Owner Steinbrenner Dead At 80...

Well, those of you who know me, and especially any of you that have followed my older blog on photographyreview.com , understand that I often wander far from photography and art-related topics in my musings. Sometimes very far...

So today we have the first off-topic post of my new blog. The passing of long-time New York Yankees baseball club owner George Steinbrenner at the age of 80. According to news reports, Steinbrenner, in poor health for several years now, died of a massive heart attack at approx. 6:30 this morning:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/bbo_obit_steinbrenner

As a lifelong Yankee fan, I'm sure I'm not alone in saying it has been a love-hate rollercoaster ride of emotions over the years with Steinbrenner as the owner of the team.  For many sports fans, the ends justify the means, and in that sense I've been very happy with the great success of my Yanks since the mid-1970s.  Plenty of great baseball, and American League Divison Championshps and pennants, and of course World Series Championships.

But I've also suffered greatly over the years (at least in the sense that you can suffer as a sports fan), being embarrassed many times at his public behavior and royally pissed many other times when he fired popular managers for what sometimes seemed like the slightest of reasons (Dick Howser being let go after winning 103 games in 1980 comes to mind).

Still, in the end, he not only transformed the Yankees into perennial winners, but forever changed the way baseball and every other type of professional sports franchise is operated and marketed. To me, the ultimate irony (and compliment to him) was that at some point, nearly every owner that criticized him was actually trying to emulate him, but simply couldn't do it as well, and the fans of other teams that publicly berated him, secretly wished their teams were more like the Yankees and their owners more like George...

Thankfully, George Steinbrenner mellowed as he got older and acquired championships. While his drive to succeed never waned, he took a much less public profile in later years, rarely "calling out" coaches and players the way he had done in the past.

Now, this may sound a bit morbid to some of you, but I can't help but smile thinking Steinbrenner could not have picked a better time to die: on the eve of tonight's MLB All-Star game. At a time when baseball wants the fans and media's complete focus and attention on all the teams, who should be dominating, not only the sports networks, but every news channel and outlet?  His beloved (and hated) New York Yankees. He would not have wanted it any other way.

Rest in peace King George...

Sunday, July 11, 2010

New Updates At STEVENPAULHLAVAC. COM...

Well, it's been a while, but much needed updates have been made to my commercial flash site: www.stevenpaulhlavac.com.  An integral part of my multi-pronged strategy for marketing my work online, sph.com is targeted almost entirely towards publishing creative professionals: magazine editors, art directors, photo editors, production managers, agency directors, etc., etc., etc.

Powered by liveBooks, the site presents a no-nonsense, quick loading, one click, very viewer-friendly slide show format that showcases my images without any of the bells and whistles that serious folks in the industry tend to frown on.  I use it to grab someone's attention instantly, and (hopefully) hold it long enough for my work to make a good impression on them...

Due to the constraints of the site, for the time being I'm limited in the number of image slots I have to use. So chosing the right photos to show is crucial. Right now, I've decided to ease up on the fashion and creative portrait, and concentrate on my editorial lifestyle tearsheets and magazine covers.

Take a look if you will, and let me know what you think...

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

My Artwork Now On Fine Art America...

I am very happy to announce that I now have a profile page and image archive on fineartamerica.com:

http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/steven-hlavac.html

The site provides high-quality and reasonably-priced art prints and framing of my work, with many many choices to let you customize the type of photo or art paper, mat, and frame type. There are also greeting cards with my photos available.

As if that weren't enough (and if you're my friend, it should be!), the site offers literally thousands of other artists' work, in every imaginable medium and price range. The huge artwork database is easily searchable by keyword, art medium, or subject matter.

I will try to get all of my exhibited gallery work up on site as soon as possible, and plan to eventually add many other images including some of my graphic design and illustration work. If you're my friend or fan on Facebook, those pages will be updated automatically when I add new material to the fineartamerica.com site.

I'll be linking to my fineartamerica.com page from many of my other web sites and pages, so it should always be easy to find, but feel free to go ahead and bookmark it if you'd like.

As a special celebration of this exciting new online venture, I plan to keep my commision on all the work EXTREMELY LOW!  I set my own prices, and as of now, the most I am making on ANY single piece is $20. Yep, twenty measly bucks. The rest is the cost of materials and the custom printing/framing service.

My plan is to keep this promotion going for the entire summer (assuming I don't starve, that is!) and maybe make some adjustments after that. Anyway, for now, it's more important to me that folks can buy some of my work for themselves or as gifts at a great price...

So, let me know what you think, or if you have any requests or suggestions. And thanks in advance for your support!