Prior to this year, I had never seen any version of The Nutcracker. In December 2010, I was at the show 21 times and saw The Washington Ballet perform more than half of that. Basically, I donated my time to operate their photobooth, where people paid $10 for one photo. It was a pretty assignment as I'd walk over to the Warner Theater every night in December after work and then hangout and photograph customers for 10 to 15 minutes. The problem though was that we had to print the photos so that they could walk away with their photograph. The printer, needless to say, was like that printer on Office Space.

But, the photobooth did raise over $7,000 for The Washington Ballet and I got to see the show 21 times. Septime Webre's production is pretty amazing.

The Washingtonian magazine chose "The Panda on the Metro" as one of their favorite photos.  They liked it so much that they also printed it out on their December issue.  I ended up buying thirteen copies.