Aug
28
Return to Auburn University

Last week, my sister Anita and I traveled to our shared Alma Mater, Auburn University, on our way home from Pensacola. Neither of us had visited the campus in almost a decade.

A couple of years ago, I started an online gallery selling my images of Scenic locations. It included lots of photos from Tuscaloosa, but none from the Loveliest Village on the Plains. With these new images, I have remedied that.

Anita and I drove around to take note of the changes. Lots of parking decks that would’ve been nice when she and I walked a mile to Haley Center. We also noticed how the students have tiny backpacks, presumably filled with tablets instead of the 40-pounds of textbooks that we used to lug around.

Auburn’s season opener in college football is this coming weekend, a rematch of the 2010 National Championship Game that we won. Wish I could travel to watch it, but not in the cards right now. I’ll be watching on TV and yelling, “War Eagle”!

 

Aug
12
Testimonial from a Client: Oldham Properties

I received the nicest endorsement last week from a former client, Mark Oldham of Oldham Properties. He’s a former client because I no longer employed full-time with the marketing agency through which I performed work for him.

It follows:

Wednesday, August 7, 2019

To Whom It May Concern:

This letter is being written on behalf of Steven Stiefel.

Steven handled my various accounts while he was employed with Riverworks Marketing in Chattanooga. We owned 2 inns and 2 restaurants during his tenure there — StoneFort Inn, TerraMae, as well as Dancing Bear Lodge and Appalachian Bistro in Townsend, Tennessee.

Amongst other things, Steve wrote a ton of copy, “word-smithed” many ads, responded to complaints in the most incredibly professional manner (which we still miss to this date), brainstormed ideas, and generally was a fantastic person with whom to deal on all aspects of our marketing.

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Aug
08
Glamour Photography: A Casualty of Changing Times, Yet Timeless

When my older brother Mark was a pimple-faced, overweight teenage boy with zero prospects of dating a real flesh and blood woman, he pinned iconic posters of sexy female celebrities like Farrah Fawcett and Loni Anderson all over his bedroom walls. These voluptuous babes — their firm breasts threatening to burst out of their bikini tops at any moment — were accompanied by classic beauties like Jane Seymour.

The display essentially surrounded him on all sides by the women who eluded him in real life outside of that room and provided him with an outlet for the adolescent angst he felt by the societal constraints on doing what comes naturally to teenage boys.

via GIPHY

I would visit his room to listen to albums he owned and talk about science fiction TV shows we liked – all an excuse for me to marvel at the exceedingly beautiful faces and bodies on display like a Sistine Chapel of the Erotic.
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Aug
04
Stories Behind the Images: Alois Schweda

I’m starting a new blog series called “Stories Behind the Images.” I’ll share select images from the archives and reveal details from its creation.

This is Alois Schweda, a man I met in the early 1990s when this portrait was made to accompany a feature story I did about him for the Times-Journal newspaper.

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Aug
04
The 40 Questions to Ask Before Starting a Business

“Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.”
– Tony Robbins

Having the information you need to determine whether a new business idea is practical begins with asking the right questions.

Starting a new business often begins with a desire to create something unique that we can control instead of spending the rest of our careers reliant upon someone else making decisions that affect our livelihoods.

The spark, the entrepreneurial fire, begins with an idea and a desire to create something. Maybe it is buying a popular franchise and bringing it to your community before someone else does. Or perhaps it is starting something from scratch and shaping it into whatever you want.
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Copyright Steven Stiefel 2018. All Rights Reserved