Great trip!

Yesterday was fantastic! I absolutely loved this PPARI group and the whole event was just amazing! Everyone really embraced the FREEdom principles and I'm so excited to see these photographers succeed in a whole new way!

I'll be back out here in September for an even bigger conference for all of New England so if you're on the East Coast be sure to come!

After the conference I got to connect up with a wonderful couple of mine! Justin Marantz and Mary Bess and have dinner and chat about their upcoming wedding in CT! So fun!!!




Also, if you were at the conference please send me photos! I have a couple but I want to keep them all and put them up on my blog.

United rocks

United rocks, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

After hassling with the American people for the last couple of days and getting nowhere it was quite the treat for United to give me a free upgrade without even asking!



Props to them!

DJ

Lori Nordstrom

Today I sat in on Lori Nordstrom's presentation and it was amazing.

She's a phenominal photographer, has a killer business, she's gorgeous and do you believe she has a son in college...yea...me neither!

Definitely check her out!

Also...she's stuck in Chicago so give her some love on her blog....she already spent one night in the airport this week.

Rhode Island Pictures

Yesterday I walked around Newport, RI and took pictures! I had so much fun and it's crazy because I never take pictures just for fun anymore but I really did have a good time. Everything here is so colorful and where I grew up everything was kinda bland so I think that's why I liked taking pictures here.

Yea! My bags have arrived!

Yea! My bags have arrived!, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

Finally! 40 hours late but better late than never.

Rhode Island

I just arrived in Rhode Island and there's nothing better than arriving at a hotel and having a gift basket there waiting.

I love it...and everyone here has been so sweet and i'm really excited about the PPARI conference.

I actually don't have to do anything till Monday so it's nice to have a couple of days to get to know everyone...and I need to go buy clothes because American lost my luggage but the cool thing is if an airline can't deliver your luggage that day you can go buy clothes and they'll pay for them.

Sweet!

:)
DJ

Thank You Pictage!

Pictage had their annual BoB conference this year up at the Big White ski resort in Canada and it's been an incredible three days of skiing and sharing and I promise to post more about what we talked about but first I wanted to share a fun video! Enjoy!



...and here's a shot that Shyla snuck of me on my crackberry!

Thirst Relief Auction

This year at WPPI a bunch of photographers will be offering mentoring sessions and donating all the profits to Thirst Relief.

***Click here*** to enter the auction...and whoever I meet with gets a free meal (sorry I gotta get together over breakfast or Lunch) and the full suite of Showit products ($500 value)




Checkout the video I made from our trip to Brazil last year for more info about Thirst Relief.

My Cup

My cup, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

Shyla and Bibiana found a special cup for me. They are so sweet.

Today I have just been hanging out and getting some work done.

Tonight at 4 we have our second meeting and it's so incredible to be able to hear how all these photographers have grown their businesses...I will post about it tomorrow.

Rock on!

DJ
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No spam

Haha...my blog just got blocked because apparently it had characteristics of a spam blog...lol...


oh...after reading this I guess they're right...hmmm....I guess I should be more sensical....lol....

:)

First run

First run, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

...and i'm done...lol...not really but my legs are so tired already! I really need to go running more or something because this is pathetic. It really is...but it's so fun...it's getting very white out so it's kinda hard to see sometimes but that makes it more fun.



Ok bye!

Woohoo

Woohoo, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

Slideshow Picture

Hi everyone! :)

For all of you that have shot with me I'm looking for the coolest picture of an on-site slideshow in action for a PDN article that they're doing on Showit slideshows.


Please email it to me dj [at] davidjay.com and of course I'll tell them that you took it so they can credit you in the magazine.


Rock on!
DJ

Jets look cool

My friend Ashley sent me some pictures from her ski trip and they got me so excited to go skiing. (today is our first day and I got a new ski suit so that's fun) She works with a guy who owns a bunch of hotels and so they flew on their private jet which is totally crazy.

I've never flown on a private jet but my buddy Deyl just got to fly around on one because he buys and sells hotels and shopping centers...and his company just bought 100 million dollars worth of shopping centers. Insane.

Ashley also saw this quote of mine stuck to a board at the college that I dropped out of so she took a picture of it and sent it to me...how funny...I never liked to say "I photographed..." because I thought it sounded funny and that's what the Brooks students said and it just sounded kinda stuffy and proper so I always said "I shot..." I'm glad to hear that my memory and contribution lives on at that school. :)

Create Tomorrow!

I read a great quote by Tony Robbins today,

"How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I'm committed to?"

What "tomorrow" are you committed to? How are you gonna create it?

Who are you meeting? What books are you reading? Where are you investing your time? When are you going to act? Why are you still reading my blog :) ... go start right now!
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Haha

Haha, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

Dorks

Dorks, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

The ranch is insane!

The ranch is insane!, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

It's so peaceful and gorgeous here and Gary and Missy are gonna get married here when it's all finished...and they're making a special room in the basement for me to live with them.



It's snowing right now and so quiet and relaxing.

Made it to Kelowna

I made it up to Kelowna and everything is so beautiful up here. Seriously, I was even inspired to grab the camera and start taking pictures tonight.

Anyway, we are staying at Gary's castle and it's only 11pm and I'm so tired so I'm going to sleep.

oh yea...I was trying to approve some new accounts for OSP and I accidently deleted them. It was only 7 or 8 new accounts but if you tried to sign up yesterday and didn't get access then be sure to sign up again. Sorry. My bad.

Bye bye

Bye bye, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

I'm just leaving SB and I actually don't have a return flight and I don't know when i'm coming home. It will be sometime before Wppi.



But I'm gonna see so many friends in the next couple of weeks so I'm excited! Right now i'm headed up to hangout with Gary and Missy and Bob and Dawn Davis are coming up too!



Then on Monday Pictage is coming up and we're gonna have a "boondoggle" -sp? ...I don't even know what that is but that's what Shyla told me it was. Sounds fun!



Oh yea...I only brought my backpack of clothes. I found it's way nicer on long trips that. involve lots of destinations to just bring a small bag and send the laundry out mid way through so i'm not having to lug a big bag around.



Ok...i'm gonna take off now. Takeoffs are scary but santa Barbara is so beautiful to fly out of because you fly out over the ocean and it's almost like a sightseeing tour.



:) bye

DJ

I have just been reading

I tried to think back about what I've been doing and I really haven't been doing anything. I've been reading a lot and I think reading is super important and I've been hanging out with my friends but I haven't been doing a lot of emailing and work type stuff other than urgent things. I'm gonna be flying a good bit over the next couple of weeks and I'm gonna try and get email back in order then. :)


The main book I'm reading right now is Richard Branson's autobiography called "Losing My Virginity" and it's an incredible story of this crazy man's life. It's so fascinating to hear about how it all came about and to learn from his success and mistakes. My friend Deyl told me about it and my buddy Brett bought it for me and it's a wild book.

Tomorrow morning I leave for Kelowna. I'm so excited! :)

3 day workshop with me and ....

I've never hosted my own workshop but I've done a bunch up at Brooks and just did one with Planche Contact and I have a couple more being planned in the UK, France, Italy and here in SB and they're always a lot of fun so I'd like to host one so I can do it completely my way! ;)


Go vote and let me know who I should team up with for a series of workshops!

***Click here*** to vote and see the poll.

Sweet!

Defeating a lion

Defeating a lion, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

Right now i'm sitting at one of my favorite spots in Santa Barbara. Those of you from sb know where I am and this is a place I often come to think and try and define my life.



Today I'm here because my dad just shared something with me that really hit home in many areas of my life. We were at breakfast and I was telling my parents some things about my life and he told me a story about how someone could go about defeating a lion. He said all you need is a chair and a whip...because when you hold the chair up and point it towards the lion the lion can't focus on what's attacking it because it sees the four legs of the chair and it gets parallyzed. The lion can't focus and can then be defeated.



Many of you have heard my " Get FREE" talk and you know that the first thing we must do in order to be successful in anything is to FOCUS our attention, our energy, and our emotions and not become distracted and parallyzed by all the possible opportunities.



What are you going to focus on today? ...and what are you going to give to give up in order to do that?



:)

DJ

The Best Days

The second wedding I shot was for a dentist by the name of Jeff Rohde. At the rehearsal the best man gave a toast and he said that the thing he appreciated the most about Jeff was that he always encouraged people to live in the best days of their life.

Isn't it tempting to say things like "Those were the good days" ...well it's ok to reminisce but I want to encourage all of you the same way that Jeff encouraged me - wherever you are in your life journey be living in the best days of your life...and if these aren't the best days of your life then make the commitment today to change the way you're living to make them the best.

You have the power to change what you're doing, change the way you're feeling and to even change who you are! So don't look around, don't compare yourself to anybody else, just look at your life and ask if it's what you want. If it is then do something today to make it even better and if it isn't then start making adjustments now!

Going home! :)

I'm headed home right now and I'm stoked. I have a few days before heading out for a month so I'm gonna rest a lot...

Joe Photo has, in my opinion, the best blog for wedding photographers. He posts about photo stuff but also about ways to go about living a better life. Joe's so full of passion and I get so amped everytime I'm around him.

Today he posted about being thankful and so I wanted to thank him for the encouragement and inspiration he's been to me ever since I became a wedding photographer.

Click here to read his post.
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Slideshows Rock!

Uhhh....ok...I'm really tired but I wanted to say thanks to Shyla and Jason for shooting with me tonight. It was my friends wedding and we had so much fun.


I took a different approach today and really didn't try and guide the day at all. After the wedding the bride was hanging out talking to people and then the Mom of the bride wanted some bigger family shots in the church and so I was like ok but then the sun went down and it was dark so we went out and did pictures at night which is so cool.

I really like just letting the day pan out and it forced me to be not just fall into my same routine because I had to adjust more to the situation and everyone was tripping out about the slideshow at the reception. One girl was yelling because she accidently bumped my computer and the show accidently shut off and she wouldn't shutup about how great the pictures were. lol... I was laughing and it was great for Jason to see because he hadn't seen a slideshow at a wedding but I'm sure he's a believer now! haha.

When I was in Atlanta I got some resistance to the on-site slideshow idea from people saying it wouldn't work with their clients in the south and their clients would kick them out of the wedding. I find that weird. I've shot weddings in the south and everyone has always loved the slideshow. Have any of you had success with slideshows in the south?

Click here for the Showit Web show featuring the new "Pre-loader" image and the "Re-size" feature! Enjoy!

Take a shower

I love taking showers. When I was little my mom used to make me set a timer in the shower so that when it rang I had to get out otherwise I would stay in there forever and be late for school.


Nowdays I don't set a timer but I stay in the shower until there's no more hot water and then I get out. I think that may be my biggest sacrifice when I get married is to not take up all the hot water. I will know I'm in love when I'm willing to do that.



Anyway, one of the best blogs out there is Tim Sanders blog and today he talked about why we have so many breakthroughs in the shower and it's really cool.

Click here to read the post!

Rock on!
DJ

Fongs Condo

Yesterday I flew back to LA because I'm shooting a friends wedding here tomorrow and to be honest I'm not a huge fan of LA but there is one place here that I really like and that is Gary Fong's condo. It's in Marina Del Rey and my wedding is like 2 blocks from here so he's letting me stay here.

It has the most beautiful view of the city and the mountains and you can see the ocean too. Also, he has really cool taste in stuff so all his houses are decorated really cool.

He sent me an email in ALL CAPS yesterday and marked it URGENT so I slept naked in his bed to get him back.

Email Etiquette

Since Emily Post doesn't say a lot about email I figured I'd step in from time to time and give some things that I like about email and some things that I don't like.

One thing that I like is when people send emails that are easy to read with paragraph breaks, capitalization and punctuation. We read words as words and shapes - not as individual letters so if everything is in caps or everything is in lowercase it makes it much slower to read.


One thing that I don't like is when people mark their emails as "High Priority" and especially when they are not important at all. I just received an email about something that I'm not even involved in and it's a group email marked "High Priority" and there is nothing about it that is of high priority to anybody.

Last tip for today is to use email for communicating but not for conversations. My friend Kevin Sturm taught me this and it's a very good piece of advice especially for those group lists....It's so annoying when a group of people is blasting one line emails back and forth.

To a better inbox,
DJ

Beautiful but Cold

When I hopped in the cab this morning Michael, the driver, said "It's beautiful - but it's cold." and he wasn't kidding. Wow! I actually like the cold weather a little bit and it reminded me of Paris because it was cold there too...I do wish I had a scarf though. Scarfs are kinda fun so I'm gonna pack a scarf the next time I go to a cold place.

Atlanta is a cool city and I wish I could stay all week because I have so many friends here or close by...but I have to get back to LA for a friends wedding this weekend. It will be fun...and then my parents come in for a quick visit and then I head out to Canada, Rhode Island and Chicago! I'm so excited! I've really missed my friends (and family ;) there.

Oh Yea...I saw a great question that Anne posed on the forum about what gifts a girl can give to a guy for Valentines day and so I was curious about both sides... What's the best thing a guy can give and what's the best thing a girl can give?

Thanks again to LaCour and Denis Reggie for the great week!
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Happy Valentines Day!

I don't know how they knew but can you believe it! Krispy Kreme's!


I'm in heaven! :)


I hope you all had a wonderful day and are spending it with those you love!

<3
DJ

Ecco Dinner!

Just got back from an amazing dinner! LaCour doesn't mess around. They treated their whole crew to one of the best meals I've ever head. Denis said this restaurant was rated in the Top 10 restaurants in the U.S. and I believe it! Actually...he just sent over the article.

It's a restaurant called Ecco!

...and here's a little video of the carriage house and keep in mind that I haven't slept in nearly 24 hours. I was up at 2am this morning to get ready for the trip so I realize I look totally out of it on the video but it's still fun.

Atlanta!

I made it to atlanta! Yea! There was a crazy rain storm earlier today but I just missed it so that was good.

Denis Reggie is the best host ever and he lets me stay in this back house that he calls the carriage house. This place is like a compound with so many cool things.








He just put in a new putting green right behind the house which has this high teck drainage system so even when it dumps rain like it did today it doesn't fill up at all.

I guess it uses perfectly round pieces of sand so they can't compact and clog like normal sand would do. Isn't that wild. I wonder who sifts through and finds the round sand. That'd be a tough job.

Now we're off to dinner with the LaCour folks!

:)

Early Morning

It's 5am and I'm down at LAX getting ready to head to Atlanta. It's gonna be kind of a turn-around trip because I have to be back in LA for a wedding this weekend. I wish I could stay out there longer but I'm also excited to come back to Santa Barbara.

I'm staying at Denis Reggie's carriage house while I'm there and it's so nice and comfortable. Rumor has it that he has the sheets ironed.

It's funny because this is the first I've traveled since Paris and so it's kind of a shift getting used to traveling alone again. It's really different and I don't think I realized how different it was until now.

Thank You

What a wonderful group we had up at the Brooks workshop this weekend. I loved hanging with all of you and I am already so encouraged and excited to see you implementing the stuff we talked about! rock on!

Here's our group photo from Kristin Renee's blog! :)



Tonight I'm headed off to Atlanta to hang with the everyone at the LaCour workshop! I'm so excited! This group of wedding photographers is phenominal and I always learn so much when I'm around them.

Awesome photographers

Awesome photographers, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

Here are all the cool people at the Brooks workshop this weekend!

Jacquievan just made an awesome post about the workshop and managed to capture some great pictures of me which is next to impossible! Awesome!




Here's a picture of me grabbing this shot!

Dreaming on the Job

A couple of months ago I saw Rebecca St. James in Christian Singles magazine. I had never seen the magazine before but since she's one of my celebrity crushes (along with Avril Lavigne and a few others) I happened upon this one.

Anyway...I was like thinking that would be a cool magazine to be in the next week totally out of the blue they called for a story! How crazy! The writer, Amy Jacobs, is currently headed out to Africa for a missions trip so keep her in your prayers.

Click here for the article.

Where'd you go

My buddy Mark put this video together and it really made me think about why I do what I do. Why I travel so much. Why I sacrifice things that I want.

Anyway...enough thinking for the week.

Thinking

Thinking, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

Santa Barbara is so amazing and i'm at one of my favorite secret spots right now because you can see the ocean and the mountains and the city. It's so beautiful and I think i'm going to move from downtown. Downtown is cool and it's fun to live there but I think I want more of a getaway type place to live and then maybe just go downtown to work.

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Emotions

In my "Get FREE" talk I give four basic principles that I believe are the way to create freedom through our businesses.

Focus
Relationships
Emotion
Expandability

Over the past couple of weeks I've been having lots of conversations about emotions and Pastor Joe said something that really stuck with me. He said,

"Emotions are great fuel but lousy pilots."

Isn't that true ...and that's why before we even get into the four ways to create freedom we must seek out and define our purpose. The "Why" question! Why are we doing what we're doing? What are we trying to accomplish? ...then we can use emotion to help us get there.
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What's Your Standard?

Back in college I was an athlete - strong, fit, chisled...oh how times have changed. ...Anyway, at practice I remember Coach Wolf constantly barking "Have a Standard!" What he was encouraging was for us to have our own standard and not simply to live up to his standard.

I think this often happens in our life. We look around and get a feel for what other people expect of us and we work hard enough to fulfill that expectation. The problem with this way of living is that it gives us the idea that there's an end to our growth and once we reach that standard we can settle in.

I know that I must define my own standard based on my potential because I'm the only one who really knows if I'm giving 100%.

Everyday we have the opportunity to do more than we did the day before, to help one more person or to invest in ourselves and make ourselves better. True success is never stopping, never settling, never living up to somebody elses standard for our life.

So whatever you're doing right now I want to encourage you to put 100% into it. If it's not worth putting in 100% than do something that is.