GM Employee Stock Fund Dumps All GM Shares

Yahoo Finance is reporting GM employee stock fund dumps all company shares.

The manager of General Motors' employee stock fund has sold off all remaining shares of the troubled auto maker, which is closing plants and slashing costs in a bid to avoid bankruptcy.

General Motors revealed in a regulatory filing late Friday that its employee stock-purchase plan has unloaded all shares of the company in favor of short-term and money market investments. The plan's financial manager, State Street Bank and Trust Co., said it began selling off shares of the Detroit automaker in late March "due to the economic climate and the circumstances surrounding GM's business."

GM Weekly Chart



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GM started dumping in March, the first blue circle in the above chart, and just now finished. Congratulations of sorts go to GM and State Street Bank and Trust Co., the plan's financial manager, for one final display of ineptitude.

Is this a case of better late than never, or a case of why even bother?

What it does show is why company plans, especially plans for struggling companies ought not be in their own shares. GM employees will be out of a job and any shares owned are essentially worthless.

Now, in all likelihood, GM's pension plan will be dumped to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) which is another way of saying US taxpayers.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Gold Continues To Act Well

Here is a chart of gold that I have been following.



click on chart for sharper image

The traditional seasonal strong period for gold is August through January. The chart shows that for quite some time it's a case of "seasonals be damned".

Earlier this year gold was moving lock step with the dollar as noted in You Can't Fool Gold. That pattern too has ended.

Gold Inflows into ETFs up by more than 300 Percent

Inquiring minds are reading Gold: Inflows into ETFs up by more than 300pc.

Figures from the World Gold Council show that investors appetite for gold showed no sign of abating with record inflows in to gold exchange traded funds.

Inflows into gold ETFs continued to grow throughout the quarter, with investors buying a record 469 tonnes of gold, dwarfing the previous quarterly record of 145 tonnes, set in the third quarter of last year. This took the total amount of gold in ETFs to 1,658 tonnes, worth US$48.6 billion, the World Gold Council said.

Ongoing risk aversion, growing uncertainty over where consumer prices are headed and a renewed vigour in the search for effective portfolio diversifiers all supported gold investment demand throughout the first quarter of 2009, the Council’s latest Gold Investment Digest.

Regarding the broader economic backdrop, commentators expressed two distinct views with respect to where consumer prices are headed. One sees inflation coming, as a consequence of the staggering increase in public spending and the quantitative easing measures being put in place by central banks around the globe.

The other view argues that deflation is the more likely prospect, pointing to recent inflation figures - US consumer prices were unchanged on an annual basis in January for the first time since 1954 - and the continued deterioration in consumer confidence and spending. Both scenarios have possible positive implications for gold:

“Gold is not just effective during a financial crisis. The unique and diverse drivers of gold demand and supply mean that changes in the gold price do not correlate with changes in the prices of other financial assets, regardless of the health of the financial sector or broader economy,” Dempster said. “Gold is an effective portfolio diversifier regardless of the stage of the economic cycle.”

The idea that gold does well in periods of inflation and deflation is easily disproved. Gold fell from over $800 to $250 over the course of 20 years with inflation all the way. The reality is gold does well in periods of high economic stress (deflation, stagflation, hyperinflation, and periods of prolonged credit stress).

When it comes to trading, it's frequently a mistake to look for reasons, because they are often not known until it's far too late. In this case, there is no doubt we are in a period of extreme credit stress. Moreover, nearly every country on the planet is attempting to debase their currency simultaneously.

By those measures, gold should be acting well, and it is. Seasonals be damned.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Let the Criminal Indictments Begin: Paulson, Bernanke, Lewis

New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's letter to the SEC and Senate Banking Committee on the Bank of America, Merrill Lynch Merger provides strong evidence of coercion to commit securities fraud by former Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, and actual securities fraud by Bank of America CEO Kenneth D. Lewis.

At issue is Lewis's decision to back away from the merger deal with Merrill Lynch on a MAC (material adverse change) clause because of rapidly deteriorating conditions at Merrill Lynch. Here are a few pertinent snips from Cuomo's letter.

Immediately after learning on December 14, 2008 of what Lewis described as the "staggering amount of deterioration" at Merrill Lynch, Lewis conferred with counsel to determine if Bank of America had grounds to rescind the merger agreement by using a clause that allowed Bank of America to exit the deal if a material adverse event ("MAC") occurred. After a series of internal consultations and consultations with counsel, on December 17, 2008, Lewis informed then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that Bank of America was seriously considering invoking the MAC clause. Paulson asked Lewis to come to Washington that evening to discuss the matter.

At a meeting that evening Secretary Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Lewis, Bank of America's CFO, and other officials discussed the issues surrounding invocation of the MAC clause by Bank of America. The Federal officials asked Bank of America not to invoke the MAC until there was further consultation. There were follow-up calls with various Treasury and Federal Reserve officials, including with Treasury Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke. During those meetings, the federal government officials pressured Bank of America not to seek to rescind the merger agreement. We do not yet have a complete picture of the Federal Reserve's role in these matters because the Federal Reserve has invoked the bank examination privilege.

Bank of America's attempt to exit the merger came to a halt on December 21, 2008. That day, Lewis informed Secretary Paulson that Bank of America still wanted to exit the merger agreement. According to Lewis, Secretary Paulson then advised Lewis that, if Bank of America invoked the MAC, its management and Board would be replaced.

In an interview with this Office, Secretary Paulson largely corroborated Lewis's account. On the issue of terminating management and the Board, Secretary Paulson indicated that he told Lewis that if Bank of America were to back out of the Merrill Lynch deal, the government either could or would remove the Board and management.

Secretary Paulson's threat swayed Lewis. According to Secretary Paulson, after he stated that the management and the Board could be removed, Lewis replied, "that makes it simple. Let's deescalate." Lewis admits that Secretary Paulson's threat changed his mind about invoking that MAC clause and terminating the deal.

Coercion To Commit Securities Fraud

It's crystal clear from the letter that a strong case can be made that Paulson and Bernanke coerced Lewis to carry out a merger agreement that was not in Bank of America's shareholders best interest. Lewis arguably did so only to save his own job and the board.

Flashback Monday, September 15, 2008

I called this correctly at the time. Please consider Market Votes "No Confidence" In Merrill, Bank of America Merger.

“There was no pressure from regulators, absolutely no pressure,” said Mr Lewis, who described the deal as “the strategic opportunity of a lifetime”. He said: “The first contact came on Saturday morning and we put the transaction together in 48 hours. The instant we talked it made sense.”

My Translation: "The pressure from the Fed was enormous. Anyone in their right mind knows this deal makes no sense to Bank of America".

....
The moral of this story is: The strong swallow the weak until the strong become weak.

And so it was, the relatively strong was coerced to buy the pathetically weak.

I suspect Lewis he will be forced out as CEO whether he is indicted or not. Certainly he deserves to go. The more serious issue is the appearance of coercion by Paulson and Bernanke.

Please note that Cuomo's letter states "In an interview with this Office, Secretary Paulson largely corroborated Lewis's account. "

As far as I am concerned, Paulson just pleaded guilty. I do not care what Paulson's reasons were, no one is above the law.

Let the criminal indictments begin: Paulson, Bernanke, and Lewis.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Twilight Zone Treasuries

In accordance with its "print to buy" program, today the Fed bought another $7 billion of Treasuries.

The Federal Reserve bought $7 billion of Treasuries maturing between May 2012 and August 2013 on Thursday, the New York Fed said on its Website.

Dealers submitted $15.99 billion for consideration in the purchase. The Fed made its heaviest purchases in Treasuries maturing in May 2013 and June 2012, respectively.

The Fed said at its last meeting it intends to buy $300 billion in Treasury securities over six months in a bid to lower long-term borrowing costs and revive economic growth.

Inquiring minds are looking at a chart to see what the market thinks of this manipulation.

$TYX - 30 Year Long Bond Yield



click on chart for sharper image

$TNX - 10 Year Treasury Note Yield




click on chart for sharper image

The Fed also purchased $7 billion on Tuesday. Professor Fil Zucchi on Minyanville had this succinct comment:

"Today the Federal Reserve printed $7 billion dollars and used it to buy an equivalent amount of 7 and 10 year Treasury bonds. As I publicly asked before, if Mr. Fed can't rig the price of an asset by buying it with printed money, why should anyone else buy it?"

Those wishing to keep an eye on these price rigging attempts can follow the Federal Reserve Bank Permanent OMOs: Treasury link.

Bernanke's Hubris

It is ridiculous for the Fed to think it can control the vast $trillion treasury market with pea shooting efforts at $7 billion a pea. However, as the charts above show, the Fed announcement hugely distorted the market in smaller timeframes.

As Prof. Zucchi says "If Mr. Fed can't rig the price of an asset by buying it with printed money, why else should anyone else buy it?"

Other than the initial pop, the Fed's silly attempt to game the system may have caused so much mistrust that it is putting upward pressure on yields.

What we do know for sure is that Bernanke's efforts to prevent deflation have failed spectacularly as documented in Bernanke's Deflation Preventing Scorecard.

That 10 year treasury wedge is likely to break sharp in one direction or the other. The competing arguments are substantial:

Case For and Against Treasuries

1. The idea of a sustainable economic recovery starting in the second half is a farce. A collapsing recovery effort will renew a flight to safety in treasuries.
2. The Fed is printing massive amounts of dollars to bailout the banks in an effort that is also doomed to fail. The Fed's printing is putting upward pressure on yields.
3. Seasonality on treasuries is negative from January through May. Seasonality turns positive in June. How much more selloff is left?
4. The Fed's blatant attempt to force yields lower is arguably counterproductive.

Regardless of what happens, this seems to be a poor place to initiate shorts. The time to short treasuries was December or the subsequent retest of the yield low in January. There is little reason to enter a trade in the Twilight Zone with all these competing factors.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Fannie Freddie Delinquencies Soar (and they are going to get much worse)

On Tuesday, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reported Mortgage Delinquencies Rose 50% in a Month.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage delinquencies among the most creditworthy homeowners rose 50 percent in a month as borrowers said drops in income or too much debt caused them to fall behind, according to data from federal regulators.

The number of so-called prime borrowers at least 60 days behind on mortgages owned or guaranteed by the companies rose to 743,686 in January, from 497,131 in December, and is almost double the total for October, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said in a report to Congress today.

Of all borrowers who ended up in default, 34 percent told Fannie and Freddie they were earning less money, about 20 percent cited excessive debt as a reason for missing mortgage payments, and 8.1 percent blamed unemployment, FHFA said.

Those are pretty nasty numbers.

Mark Hanson (aka Mr. Mortgage) at The Field Check Group said "We saw this coming well in advance by watching notices of default (NODs)."

GSE Notices Of Default Rate of Change



click on chart for sharper image

Fannie and Freddie data is woefully late. The GSEs are just now reporting January delinquencies.

In the meantime, Mark is tracking actual notice of default data (90-120 days late) for March. If defaults are soaring, it stands to reason that delinquencies will be soaring as well. In this way, someone watching Notices of Default (NODs) is able to know in advance whether or not an upcoming GSE report is going to be bad.

Mark is also tracking California specifically. Please consider the following chart.

Notices Of Default Rate of Change Total Universe (Not just GSEs)



click on chart for sharper image

A key point for the above charts is that Fannie and Freddie loans are now blowing up at a faster rate than the entire universe of loans!

Mark's data is for the west coast, primarily California. However, his assumption is that if his west coast data is bad, the overall numbers for the GSEs will be bad as well.

SB1137 Effect

Note the effect of SB1137, a ridiculous foreclosure prevention act that gave give delinquent payers 30 days grace period before the actual foreclosure process begins. All that bill did was add red tape and delay the inevitable.

CA Foreclosure Prevention Act Coming Up

A new CA law dubbed the CA Foreclosure Prevention Act comes into effect in July that will essentially do the same thing. It's primary purpose is to delay the time between the Notice-of-Default (foreclosure stage 1) to the Notice-of-Trustee Sale (stage 2) by 90-days further delaying the foreclosure process and ultimate end of the foreclosure and housing crisis.

Hanson says, "It is likely we are already seeing unintended consequences of the new law. A certain percentage of the last few month's surge of new loan notice-of-defaults was likely servicers gaming the calendar in order to get borrowers into the foreclosure process prior to the July enactment of the new law."

FHFA Expands Reporting On Homeowner Assistance

Inquiring minds are digging into news that FHFA Expands Reporting On Homeowner Assistance

Since late November, the Enterprises had suspended foreclosure sales and evictions on owner-occupied properties. The suspensions, which ended on March 31, 2009, allowed servicers additional time to work with borrowers in foreclosure who were eligible for the Streamlined Modification Program (SMP). The impact of the suspensions caused completed foreclosure sales and third-party sales to decline 77 percent from the prior three-month average of 16,342 to 3,711 in December, and 79 percent to 3,391 in January. At the same time, loans that were 60+ and 90+ days delinquent increased. All loans 60+ days delinquent increased from 834,831 as of November 30 to 1,229,051 as of January 31, representing an increase of 47 percent over the period. However, prime loans 60+ days delinquent increased by 69.6 percent while nonprime loans increased by 23 percent.

Total Delinquencies

The reported 743,686 in the first widely read article was only Prime loans. The total 60-day and worse delinquent/defaulted loans stood at 1.229 million as of Jan 31st from 834k in November, up 47%. This represents 4.1% of their entire portfolio. This was led by prime that was up 70% while Subprime was up 23%.

Successful loss mitigation is increasing BUT in January only 9k loans were successfully modified. That would have to increase 10 fold to make a dent in the upcoming foreclosure wave.

The multi-month foreclosure suspension that ended on March 31st came at the same time as the new GSE loss mitigation initiative -- but with a 400k increase in distressed loans over the past 2 months and a recent record of 9k mods per month, the broken dam has a lot of water coming over it.

It's no wonder why the Fed is buying Agency MBS. Foreigners are likely a tad worried about now about this trash they were peddled by the trillions carries no explicit guaranty.

Fannie Mae Certificate



click on image for sharper view

MBS Purchase Program

Please consider the MBS Purchase Program.

On Wednesday, March 18, the FOMC announced the expansion of the Federal Reserve's program to purchase agency MBS to a total of $1.25 trillion by the end of the year.

...

Does the agency MBS program expose the Federal Reserve to increased risk of losses?

Assets purchased under this program are fully guaranteed as to principal and interest by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae, so the Federal Reserve's exposure to the credit risk of the underlying mortgages is minimal. The market valuation of agency MBS can fluctuate over time based on the interest rate environment; however, the Federal Reserve's exposure to interest rate risk is mitigated by the conservative, buy and hold investment strategy of the agency MBS purchase program.

When did the purchases begin?
Purchases began in early January, 2009 and will continue until the end of 2009.

Defaults and delinquencies are soaring an the Fed has the gall to say there is no risk because the principle is guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Pardon me for asking, but I have two questions:

1. Exactly who is guaranteeing Fannie and Freddie?
2. How the hell does the Fed think it can get away with such a blatant lie about the risks?

Those who think that lie would be hard to top need to think again. Please consider the GSE MORTGAGE BACKED SECURITIES PURCHASE PROGRAM FACT SHEET

Risk. Treasury is committed to protecting taxpayers and will ensure that measures are in place to reduce the potential for investment loss.

Under most likely scenarios, taxpayers will benefit from this program - both indirectly through the increased availability and lower cost of mortgage financing, and directly through potential returns on Treasury’s portfolio of MBS.

Any idea that taxpayers will benefit from gains on the MBS portfolio is complete nonsense and the Fed and Treasury both know it.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Working Around the House

[UPDATE: Results from the shoot-your-own-sales-brochure experiment -- the house received multiple offers over the asking price and sold quickly. Twice, actually, as the first buyers had some trouble putting the financing together at the last moment.

Advice: If you are a decent photographer and are selling your house, most definitely help it to stand out from the competition by spending a day shooting photos of it for your real estate ad. And consider creating a website of your own to really show it off.]
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I have been playing architectural photographer this week for a new blog I am working on.

This blog will have one post, and is designed to do one thing -- help us sell our house in a down market.

I have a separate post about the mechanics putting together a blog/brochure. It is mostly designed for general consumption, as I think the idea has worked out really well and might get a little play as a house-selling strategy.

But this lighting post details the problem solving on some of the photos I shot, because any readers heading to the other post for the general real estate / recession stuff probably would not understand our interest in the lighting end of it.

(Heathens...)

Architectural Digest on the cheap, after the jump.
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Some General Stuff

Some of the techniques were the same throughout the shoot, which happened over Monday and Tuesday of this week. I had shot some available light stuff earlier, when the daffodils were more in bloom. But most of the lighting pix were done over a couple of days, along with the gazillion other things you have to do to sell your house.

No umbrellas of softboxes were used. Not that I was trying to avoid them. But a Flickr commenter pointed it out after the fact, and I found it interesting. That was mostly a function of lack of space. I was hiding flashes everywhere, and bare lights are smaller. Ceilings (and sometimes walls and doors) were my bounce cards.

No tripods were involved either, which is a little unusual for architectural stuff.

Why? Because Chuck Norris don't need no stinkin' tripod... No, actually, I was working off of an ambient base for most of the shots, and I needed an appropriate exposure to let daylight work as a contributory light source. Mostly pretty comfy handheld range.

Everything was done with two-to-six SB-800's, a D3 and a Nikon small-chip 12-24. That's not a typo, either -- that 12-24 is my FX format wide zoom. It covers full FX frame down to 19mm. I would get an FX-format 14-24, but I simply cannot be trusted with a lens that wide.

Strobe triggering was done optically. That is to say that each shot started with some kind of on-camera flash for fill, which triggered all off-camera SB-800's in SU-4 mode.
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Let's start in the living room, shall we?

This picture (final seen up top) is built on the ambient coming through the doors at back right, and the lamps in the room. The ambient exposure is a compromise to pull all three of those continuous light sources in as best as possible. This is a late shot with no flash, and I think I may have opened the ambient up half a stop or so from this level. But you can get the idea.

There are four flashes -- two fill and two accent. I lit the room up to about one stop down with two flashes aimed at the ceiling -- one on camera and one out of frame at camera right.

One accent flash (also camera right) brought the couch and painting up to full exposure from a hard angle. It was a snooted, bare flash. The other accent is hiding behind the tree on the ground playing a little subtle pattern on the ceilings.

Why? No logical reason. Just to do it for a little interest. Kinda like no-underwear Wednesdays.

Exposures? Flash power? Aperture? Couldn't tell you.

I built the ambient highlights exposure as stated, and filled with the bounce flashes for a good baseline exposure. Then I accent-lit to taste. (If that's a little bit Greek to you, you can read more here.)
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Almost forgot about the powder room, as I shot it last month. This is lit, but with on-camera flash. This room is only 3x6 feet, so bounce off of the ceiling is a default choice. The trick is going into vampire mode for the mirror.

The solution is to shoot with a very wide lens, vertical, from a very low position. Keep the camera vertical to keep the lines straight. Use the top part of the frame and you just got yourself a poor-man's shift camera -- no reflection.

The other reflection to watch out for is that of your back wall being nuked by the flash. So I angled the flash a little forward to paint a more pleasing reflection of the back wall in the mirror. (Even still, I smoothed it with a little Gaussian blur.)

Exposure is straightforward, but delicate. Exposure at a reasonable aperture with manual (bounce) flash, then dial in the shutter speed until you get exactly the amount of glow you want from the continuous lights. The walls and floor of such a small room act as fill cards, so the shadows magically fill themselves. You actually have very little choice in the matter.

I left the towel a little rumpled just to not be too anal.
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The kitchen had me scratching my head for a few days as I wondered how to light it. I wanted to show the whole room, which had no windows -- and lots of very warm CFLs as light sources.

At first, I did not know where I could hide a flash. And in the end, I wound up hiding five speedlights in the frame -- plus one on-camera aimed at the right wall, to trigger the others and fill the front. The room is entirely lit by hidden speedlights, with the only ambient coming through the back door in the living room at rear.


How do I light thee? Let me count the ways.

1. Main fill / trigger light on camera, as mentioned above.

2. Main light in the room: An SB-800 hidden in the overhead fixture. Nifty, huh?

3. Not so nifty: The flash was wedged in off-center with a diffuser dome, so it threw a cockeyed light pattern onto the ceiling. I disguised this somewhat with another SB low and behind the counter. It was snooted and aimed up at the fixture to splash a more even circle of light around it.

4. My over-sink fluorescent lamp was swapped out for an SB which was duct taped to the near cabinet wall. (We had already packed the gaffer's tape.) A sheet of white paper on the underside of the bottom of the cabinet gave a soft bounce surface. This also lit the fruit bowl nicely.

5. Same thing, over the stove, but no paper needed -- the range hood interior was already white.

6. Last but not least, a flash was stuck in the living room and aimed at the ceiling to bring the whole room up. Sliding door daylight was the basis for the ambient exposure.
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Here is where I shot the kitchen from. I made this photo later in the evening (we needed the full dark) with two SB-800s and some road flares that we painted white.

Kidding. The fireplace was lit with a few small candles. We shot in the dark with long exposures and the candles really glowed the place up when we opened up that shutter -- even lit the kindling box nicely.

But now the room has to be lit believably. Again, one SB in the overhead fixture (I later cropped that out, but still a perfectly natural spot for a key light. Problem now is contrast. So I fixed that with a fill strobe bouncing into the kitchen at camera left, which smoothed it all out.

Fill was set a coupla stops down. You can see the ratio on the floor at bottom left. Highlights are key-lit, shadows are fill lit. This is the area that shows you how much fill to dial in. Make it look like your eye sees the room normally. No ratios -- salt to taste.

The room was left just a little dark overall, to let the fireplace sing a little bit. We pretty much bought the house the moment we rounded the corner and saw that kitchen fireplace 17 years ago.
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As it starts to get dark on (a rainy) Monday night, Susan asks if I remembered to shoot her garden in the back. Of course I did not remember to shoot it, because I am a total moron during allergy season. So I stepped out onto the deck and saw this mix of tungsten light and deep, foggy twilight.

Okay, technically I only saw the foggy evening and imagined the tungsten light, but I knew I could make it if I worked fast in the last few minutes of light. Before I even go back to get a strobe, I metered an ambient shot and dropped the exposure about two stops down. The color was real -- no tungsten white balance needed.

Working very quickly, I grabbed an SB on a stand with a dome diffuser and stuck a 1/2 CTO on it. (I wanted tungsten the way my eye sees tungsten.) Where to put the light? Heck, I am batting pretty good aping our normal fixtures, so I went to the well again. I put it on a stand right next to our deck light, which is on the house edge of the deck, in the middle.

I powered my warmed-up flash to balance the ambient with a couple of test shots and it looked great -- except the shadows were too contrasty. That's easy enough to fix, quick and dirty, with a two-stop-down on-camera flash. It looks great when you are using it to erase contrast with off-axis light. (More on that here.)

If you look at the deck shot bigger, it looks very crisp and 3-D, but legible everywhere. I was rushing fast (gotta get the garden with the last bit of light) but with a little time I would have prolly dropped the fill ratio a bit. Just a matter of taste, tho.
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The waning foggy light made the garden look lush, if a little flat. And the garden was way darker then the grass in back. So with the last bit of twilight I grabbed an ambient (somewhere in the 1/4 - 1/2 second range) and exposed for the grass.

A little on-camera fill with the flash zoomed way tighter than the lens gave me a nice center-vignette, and I underexposed that a stop or so. Then I grabbed my stand flash and pulled the dome and gel off for some off-axis light. It came from the far corner of the deck at camera left and was aimed just past the center to feather the key a little.

The ratios are very tight, but even so the two lights bring the garden up to the level of the grass in a very sharp, 3-D way. Bare light sources do that very well, but you do have to keep your fill levels in mind. (Here for bigger.)
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Among the fifteen shots I did for the house brochure, this detail of the library master bath shower area went very quickly. It is white-on-white, so again the exposure is delicate. But that is not to say it is difficult.

Bathrooms are just big softboxes -- and you work inside the box. The key light is an SB on a stand in the shower behind the curtain. Aim it at the back right wall and you have a nice, soft source. But even in an all-white room, the fact that the key is behind the curtain means the shadows will be too deep.

An Orbis made quick work of that. Just dial up the fill light in manual mode to taste -- chimp and go. That way, you can keep the whites white, and have just as much contrast range as you want. The ring light fill adds no directional light signature, either.
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The last one I am going to mention was a little bit of a challenge to work through. Ben's room is only about 10' x 11', and the loft bed soaks up a lot of that.

Note the two-toned rails on the right side. We had to augment this design after he fell out of bed during the middle of the night. (That'll wake everyone in the house up quickly...) We still have not stained and poly'd the extra rails yet, but he is pretty much in jail up there.

Problem is, there is just no place to hide a flash in here, and my goal is a lit/natural balance. So this one was a little bit of a head-scratcher, too.

The exposure was based on the light streaming in through the window, or more accurately, what that light was doing in the back of the room. No leaves on the tree yet, so the view is not worth saving. Thus, I could let the window blow out a little and also grab some under-bed ambient from the desk lamp.

Now, to build the rest of the frame with flash, but only up to a ratio that looks like normal room light the way your eye sees it. Fill on the far left was from a stand-mounted flash, up high tucked into the corner of the small room. The wall was blue, so we had to correct the bounce color by taping up a shoot of newspaper to get it neutral.

If you ever need to fix the color of the splash your flash makes on the wall, newspapers are a pretty easy fix. For a few more years, anyway.

The other side fill was easier, once I realized that the open closet door out of frame at camera right made a great big reflective light panel when you shot a flash into it. The trick was not overdoing either of the fill lights.

This picture is an rarity in the Hobby household, as we have not actually seen Ben's carpet in several years. It is usually covered in about two feet of Legos, most recently Technics and Mindstorms. He builds these weird robots and vehicles and is teaching himself the programming.

He is even trying to blog a little bit (all by himself, as you can see) but I think we need to work on the "actually developing content" part. To be fair, I must say that his site is better than my blog was at 8-yrs-old.

I digress.

That's it for the lighting stuff. I am working on a more general-audience post on the "buy my house" pseudo-blog idea, which will go up shortly. One more thing, which I will not be mentioning in that post:

If anyone within the sound of this post actually ends up buying the joint, you'd better believe there will be a full Starving Student light kit (with an SB-26) a boxed set of Lighting DVDs and a case of cold, delicious Diet Mountain Dew left behind when we move out.

Just reveal your secret decoder ring flash status after we agree on a price.

How To: Use a Free Blog to Help Sell Your House

NOTE TO REGULAR READERS: This half of a two-post Thursday is very off-topic. But I thought it would be of use to those of you who, like us, are trying to sell your house in a tough market.

It's a how-to on using the web to make a spiffy "For Sale" brochure on the cheap -- and how to make it work for you. If you want the lighting low-down, you can see how we lit many of the photos in the other post.
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The Three Dreaded Words: Sell Your House

We are hoping that the market is not completely dead -- only mostly dead, as Miracle Max says in The Princess Bride. But we are realistic and do know we'll need all the help we can get.

Our first step was to choose a price that would let us stand out within our price range. After we stopped crying, we then cobbled together some free web resources to try to create an spiffy online brochure on the cheap...
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Before You Start: Get a Good Address

No, not for your house. That boat has already sailed. I mean on the web, where your address is called a URL.

The good news is that the best one for you is probably still available, unless you live at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., or at 10 Downing St. Your current address makes an ideal and most logical URL. Our address is 7353 Broken Staff, so that became our URL.

Well, almost.

What I wanted was to build this on a free blog platform, so I grabbed www.7353BrokenStaff.Blogspot.com. You can set up a blog for free at Blogger.com (where all of the ".blogspot" blogs hang out) in about 2 minutes.



My address was available on Blogger, as was the straight "dot-com" version when I checked on GoDaddy.com. You can easily by the dot-com and have a (free) redirect set to point to your Blogger site.

Cost is about ~$10, and it is not even really necessary. After all, we are going for zero budget here, right? But if you want to live large, by all means buy it and redirect to Blogger.


Next: Build a Site

I love Blogger because it lets you tinker around under the hood with the HTML, which is how to make a blog template look like a nice "For Sale" brochure. But blogs have post titles, post dates, multiple posts, etc. You do not need that, and it is a little distracting in this context.

If you have even a slight amount of experience with HTML, it is easy to find those things in your template (use the "Edit in HTML" method in the template) and get rid of them.



Now, your "blog" starts to look more like a normal web page. BTW, I chose the "White Minima" template and it was a very easy one to tweak.

You'll want some pictures. More on that later, but you might need to address it in your template. I chose to use Flickr, as it is free and I already had an account there. And because Flickr's standard photo size is 500 pixels wide, I "stretched" my Blogger Minima template to accommodate that photo width in the main bar.

Again, it is easy to find in the HTML code. Just make sure to adjust your blog's total width in pixels so the main and sidebar add up right, with a little space in between.

You do not absolutely need to do that, as Blogger handles photos quite well in 400px sizes. Just upload your pix to Blogger and Bob's your uncle. I just wanted a little more splash, so I went wider. And if you are an HTML newb, I would go the latter route.


Tweak the Sidebar

You'll need to swap out the typical sidebar stuff. Nuke the blog roll links, archives, etc. and replace those items with the info you would want if you were buying your house.


Some ideas for sidebar links:


1. Local schools

2. Restaurants

3. Recreational facilities

4. Nearby public transportation

5. Don't forget your Realtor's contact info (or yours, if you are a "For Sale By Owner")

6. Be creative. Use your imagination and have a little fun.
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Take LOTS of Pictures

You cannot have too many photos of your house. The more pix people see, the more it helps them qualify your house for a visit. It also keeps them from wasting a visit if your house is not for them.

If you are a total klutz with a camera, ask a shutterbug friend. You should plan to end the shoot in the rec room with pizza, beer and a good game on the tube.

If you are a regular reader here, this will be the fun part. If you just happened by from another site, you are reading Strobist, where we are really into lighting. And again, you can see how I created many of my brochure photos here.

But I also recommend the site PhotographyForRealEstate.net for great advice on the subject. Larry will totally hook you up with the skills you need. It is one-stop shopping for this kind of thing.


Location, Location, Location




Where are you? One easy way to show them is to embed a Google Map.

They can see exactly where you are, get driving instructions and find any nearby items of interest that you missed. While you are at it, place some clickable markers on a public map you can create. Now, when you embed that map, the markers will be on your brochure site, too.


Spread the Word

When your house gets listed in the Multiple Listing Service by your broker, (or you may have to buy into that somehow if you are attempting a FSBO) give them a good selection of most of your best photos.

Then request a link that says, "For more photos, go to [YOUR BLOG URL]." This will draw people from the visually restricted MLS format to your splashier, picture-heavy site.

You may wish to buy classifieds in the local newspaper, or perhaps on Craigslist. In that case, it may make sense to spring for that $10 dot-com URL to keep it neater.

That would be an easily worded link in, say, a cheap newspaper classified ad:

East Columbia Townhouse for Sale: $299,000. More info and photos at www.7353BrokenStaff.com.

It's cheap, but has lots of leverage. I ended up not buying the dot-com name (we just went with the Blogspot address) as we chose not to buy newspaper advertising.


Next Step: Cross Your Fingers

That's where we are now, as of Thursday, April 23. It is all up to the fates, but we are hopeful that the upgraded pictures and visibility will make a difference. We'll check back in and let you know how it went.


One Last Thing

After the house sells (humor my optimism for a moment) do not tear down the brochure blog. What better way to help you remember your old house -- or for the next owners to be able to email a tour of their new house out to their friends and family?
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UPDATE: From the comments, a really cool example of a house site (although not a tweaked blog) in Atlanta.