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Congratulations to our good friends Jenn and Adam Linke, who gave birth to their first child, Hayden James, yesterday. Jenn runs The Decisive Moment. Adam, in addition to being a photographer with The Decisive Moment, is also a Pictage Pro Consultant for the Southeast. Mark had the honor of photographing their day, from start to finish. The rest of us bonded in the waiting room with family members, anxiously waiting to meet our new little friend.
Adam gives Jenn some loving encouragement shortly before she was to start pushing.
The doctor put Hayden in Jenn's arms immediately after delivery.


















Adam hugs Jenn after the delivery.
Jenn's mom Barb, who was also present for the birth, congratulates her daughter.
The nurses polished Hayden up a bit and put him right back in his mother's arms.
Adam gets a hug from his proud father, Don Linke. Hayden is the first grandchild for Adam's parents, Don and Colleen.

So I'm in. Here's 8 things you might not know about me:

1. I lived in Alaska for a year and had a blast. Just a few of the fun things I did there: Two weeks on the Iditarod documenting the race, 8-day trip telemark skiing through the Brooks Range, sweatin' in a sauna with Jewel's grandpa, ice climbing and spending any waking (or sleeping) moment I could doing some sort of mountaineering.
2. After college, my brother, Phillip, and I spent 4 months traveling through South Africa and Zimbabwe. One of the highlights was being about 10 feet away from a Lion and having it look directly in my eyes and roar. Oh and an elephant nearly killed us. And we spent a night in a tiny cave at the top of the Drakensberg mountains that was infested with the ugliest spiders you've ever seen. This cave was about 2 feet high and 15 feet deep. Just enough for us to sleep in. Only reason we were in the cave was because of an insane rain and lightning storm that shook the mountain all night long and we had nowhere else to go!
3. In Africa, I started growing dreadlocks (I lost my brush somewhere along the way). I kept them for about 5 years. They were down to my butt when I cut them. Now I'm going bald, so I try to buzz my hair really short. I'll have to dig up some old photos at some point.
   
4. I've been learning Jiu-Jitsu for the past two and a half years. I love it if I can make it to the gym 3 times a week.
   
5. I am a Multimedia Flash Designer and programmer. Although I haven't worked on anything big in a while, I still love it. Check out some older work I created: WW2 Vets, Can You Step?, Monks of Wat Carolina
   
6. I'm a drummer. I have the same Pearl drum set that I bought in High School. It's in our guest room, so if you come to visit and stay the night, you can wake up in the middle of the night and rock out! I've also been collecting lots of hand drums from my travels around the world. Djembes, doumbeks and more.
7. In college, I took a modern dance class and also an afro-haitian dance class, the latter which prompted a trip to Haiti, where I also learned some drumming and went to a Voudou ceremony (where they had the most amazing drummers ever!). So, let's get our groove on at the next conference. WPPI in Vegas '08, anyone?
8. Vanilla is my favorite flavor of ice cream. Vanilla Bean, especially!

Um, now I'm supposed to ask other people to list info about themselves. Anne Ruthmann asked us to do this. So let's see, how about:

• Sean Cayton
  
• Matt Adcock
• Sol Tamargo
• Cameron Clark
  
• Jenn Fraser Linke
• Patrick Williams

That's probably enough for now. Hopefully this has been a great distraction for y'all!!

Seems that word about ShootQ is traveling fast, which is great! Thanks so much for everyone's support! There was a recent thread on the OpenSourcePhoto forum where people had some questions about ShootQ. We've been posting info here on our blog, but we realized that not all of that info was also posted on the ShootQ website. So we've updated the ShootQ website with some detailed information about ShootQ, what it does and how to sign up and start using it.

Click here to view the ShootQ information.

Our own Andrew Niesen turned 31 on Monday, so we threw him a surprise party (his first ever) at the Andretti go-kart park. We blindfolded him on the way there and drove in circles to confuse him (he was trying to guess where we were based on the direction of the sun - that's Andrew for you). We chose Andretti because - as anyone who has ridden in a car with Andrew knows - he likes to drive fast. Scary fast. The kind of fast that has Rachel screaming at him and his passengers holding onto the door handles for dear life.

We had a blast racing go-karts and playing video games, and eating birthday cake that said "Happy Birthday" in German. Only for you Andrew! Below are some photos from the evening.

With our boys out of town on the Chicago/Indianapolis leg of the ShootQ tour, Rachel and I decided to put our party dresses on and stop by Atlanta Magazine's launch party for their new Atlanta Weddings edition.

We were fortunate to run into some of our good friends at the party, held Wednesday night at new Atlanta hotspot Opera.


From left: Lauren Hutchinson; Mora Hanlon of Classic Weddings of Buckhead; Rachel and Erin

Susan Jabaley, Lichen Frank and Emmi Braselton - the girls of Lichen Frank Design, which did Erin and Mark's wedding invitations and those of many LaCour clients.


Rachel with photographer Nancy Jo McDaniel


Erin and photographer Drew Newman