3 Years Old - 1982

Here's another audio clip of when I was 3 years old.

CLICK HERE.

:)

OSP iBlack

Another fun OSP option for those of you looking to change it up a bit. You can now go the bottom of the page and switch to a new look called iBlack. I like to click this one on at night so my screen doesn't burn my eyes out. :)



I've been kinda fighting some bug lately which is a bummer but one thing that always makes me feel better is buying new stuff so today I went to the camera store and got some new toys for this weekend and a new outfit for the wedding too! I will show you on Monday. Dane, Jules and my buddy Brett are helping out so it's gonna be a blast!

:)
DJ

New OSP Stuff! :)

Today is very windy in Santa Barbara and I'm afraid to go outside so I've been tweaking out OSP! As you can see we got our look all modified for the new features which is sweet! ...and I'm gonna be adding some styling options in the coming weeks so people can pick their own look and feel.

I also wanted to point out some new features! You can now add in a profile picture that is different from your Avatar and it shows up in your profile section so when you visit peoples profile or leave them a message they'll get to see your pretty face with it! Also, be sure to add in your "Personal Statement"



...and you'll notice that the colors on the member names is different and it relates to the member status. If you have 0-30 posts then you are in the "Shy Cat" group and your color is gray. When you hit 30 posts your color is green and you are advanced into the "Knowledge Cat" group and when you hit 300 posts you are advanced into the "Love Cat" group and your color is red!



With each group comes extra features like more PM's allowed and more space to upload files and stuff like that. Also, once you reach the Knowledge Cat group you can post HTML and stuff like that too so don't be shy for too long! :)

Cheers!
DJ

p.s. the chat room has been a riot when I've been in there so don't miss out on that!

Back to SB!

Here are some pictures to go with the audio below. :D


Oh yea...Our parents really did love us despite what they made us wear! :P

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and got to spend some time with family and friends!

I've been at home in AZ reminiscing with my folks and going through some old tapes so I thought I'd pass along some Christmas memories from 1987.

Click here for a special David Jay introduction by my big brother Jon Jay.

Click here to hear what I was up to in 1987 and to hear a special acapella solo by me and I even got my first camera this Christmas!

:)
DJ

I made it! Yea! Thanks for all the love! Merry Christmas Eve everyone!

8 hours later...

Well after 8 hours of boarding the plane, sitting, deplaning, sitting, sitting, sitting, sitting, and sitting I left...not for AZ unfortunately. I'm back at my place in SB wondering if I'll be able to make it home for Christmas.

U.S. Airways forced everyone to deplane because there was so much fog in AZ but they didn't tell us if the flight was just delayed, cancelled, or what they were planning to do with us so there was 150 people sitting on the floor in the Santa Barbara airport wondering what is going on for the past 6 hours. A KEYT news crew even showed up and interviewed people but still no announcement from the airline. The flight schedule at the airport remained as it was when I arrived and the online system showed that our flight had taken off and landed at 12:28...lol...it's pretty funny that the airline gives actual departure and arrival times when the plane is sitting at the airport.


After sitting around since 5:30 in the morning with no communication I was over it so I convinced a baggage girl to go get my bag which had been sitting with everybody elses out on one of those carts and I came home.

It was really interesting to see people's attitude shift through the entire experience. At the beginning everybody was calm....even for the hour and half we sat on the runway. We understood that it wasn't the airlines fault and that a weather delay had caused the problem. We got this information from the pilot who was fantastic about apologizing and communicating the updates every chance he could. I was very impressed with the pilots handling of the situation.

...but once we were asked to deplane the communication ended AND the decision making ended. Nobody from U.S. Airways communicated anything to anybody for the next 6 hours about the status of our flight, our bags, or even where to wait or what to do...and that's when people started to get bothered. U.S. Airways actually called in a security guard to stand behind the ticketing agents and I don't blame them. It was madness and nobody from the airline took charge.

It appeared that a bunch of interns were left to run the airport while the boss was out enjoying the holiday. I actually started to organize lines so people could get to the right agents and not be in a big moshpit of bags and angry people. It was kind of fun because I was moving those poles with the stretchy ribbon in it and I felt kind of important at that point.

Moral - The importance of communication and leadership in "crisis" situations. When something goes wrong, and we all know that things will go wrong, communication becomes 100x as important and decisions need to be made - FAST! In situations like this the longer that customers go without hearing from a business the more negative the perception of that business. Make decisions and communicate through the entire process.

Delays...

I'm delayed in Santa Barbara right now because there is too much fog in Phoenix...that's weird...but i'm just finishing up this sweet book by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba called Citizen Marketers.


I was reading about how people used to be able to buy their way to success and growth through advertising but this is no longer the case.

Realness and authenticity are now requirements for every business and I think it's dangerous to focus on exposure and growth without establishing a way to personalize your business.

Also...* small rant from me*

...I've been on dozens of websites in the last week without a picture in the bio. I can't stress the importance of having a nice friendly photo of yourself in the bio section (put a photo on the forum too!).

I've also been on hundreds of sites where the bio was more of a resume than a way for the client to connect or relate with the photographer. Think about the purpose of everthing you do...what is the end goal? Will your current system deliver that? If not - change it.

:)
DJ

Awesome Pictage Prints!

Cool timing on this!

Every once in awhile I have somebody request proofs so they can see the actual pictures before deciding on the final prints and so I had a client who's wedding I shot at the Four Seasons in Chicago ask for proofs and so we ordered them from Pictage on Monday and they were on my doorstep on Wednesday! How's that for delivery time the week before Christmas... and they are AMAZING!

Since I so rarely get to see my work in physical form I tore open the box and it's pretty cool because they package'em all in these nice little black boxes so you can send'em right to the client and the prints are incredible! Pictage's proof prints are better than the final prints I used to get from my local lab here in SB!

These pictures are just random shots from the wedding - not even shots that I edited up for my favorite's folder.

Gotta admit I'm impressed!

Brilliant - well thank you! :)

I thought it was quite funny that when people search for "Brilliant" they somehow end up on my webpage. :) .... It's pretty cool that search engines can judge those sort of things. LOL....

You

Time magazine came out with their person of the year article a couple of weeks ago and guess what - it's YOU!

"...But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before."

Brilliant!

Faithness!

I shot my friend Faith's wedding a couple of months ago and I saw her at a party the other night and she was telling me that she checked her visitors on Pictage and it was all photographers who had viewed her event. You guys are sneaky!

She has a super fun blog. Today she had a makeup tip and it's good to know because the last time I bought makeup it cost like $35 so click here to check her out!

What do you think?

Has anybody used Brian Krouch also goes by Skooks design or Flaunt Books?

If so what was your experience like?

I haven't ever used them for anything because of what my friends have said but I'm wondering what you guys think.

Text Messages

I love getting text messages from you and if you ever wonder if I got it or not - I probably didn't. Blackberry's system for text messages is good for people who only get a handful of email a day but I've been getting 400-600 emails a day (only 100-200 that I actually have to respond to. The rest are orders and forum posts) so the text messages get buried fast.


I try and respond to all my email but it's easy for it to take over. Yesterday I sent 101 emails which is my new all time high so thanks for understanding if it takes me a little while to respond....and if it's a photography or business related question be sure to ask it on OpenSourcePhoto! :)

Blessings!
DJ

Stouffers bad - Kids good.

The Stouffers post was taking a dive with the ladies so I'm attempting to cover it up with some cute kids. Dane took this shot of me at his annual "Sanders Family Bake Off" (Don't worry - I didn't bring Stouffers).



It was on Saturday night and it was so fun and great food! Dane's daughter Alaree and this other little dude were so cute and they even took my camera from me and took some great pictures! Very abstract and artsy. Here is Dane distributing the awards.

Stouffers!

I was at the supermarket yesterday and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw this! That's right save $11 on 6 boxes of Stouffers! The sale ends tomorrow so you better go. This is the best Christmas present for a bachelor! I'm so happy because now I can eat at home more and I don't even need a plate because it comes with one.

I am an Elf

****and now for our next story**** :)

My friend Pastor Joe just sent me the funniest thing and I had to make one!

Click here to see me dance!

and Sarah just posted this hilarious video!



:)
DJ

Pictage ROCKS!

***Good conversation in the comments*** As you all know Becker and I are great friends who run incredibly different business. I have tons of respect for him and what he's done with his business which honestly is the best "Do it Yourself" setup I've ever seen and he's a brilliant guy and that's why it works. I imagine he and I will be debating on this for awhile, maybe forever, and that's good because as long as nobody trips out I think these are killer conversations that make everyone better.

Read - Participate - and [b] cool! :)

-------------------------------------------

As is becoming expected Pictage delivers another revolutionary service!

FREE Color Correcting! Wow! This is great news for me (not so good of news for all the Photographers Asst's around the world) lol....

I'm so stoked! This makes things just too easy!

Click on the picture to read more!

Store is live - Yea!

Super Special Showit SALE to celebrate!!!

HUGE savings on the first 100 orders!!!

Sale ends soon!

• Showit Web 2.0 - $199 on sale for $149
• Showit Effects 2.0 - $149 on sale for $125
• Showit Borders 1.0 - $99 on sale for $75
• Brilliant Presets - $59 on sale for $39
• "Vamos" w/FREE music - $119 on sale for $49
  

***CLICK HERE*** to hitup the new store!

Thanks for your patience through all the drama! :)

Nespresso Club

A couple of weeks ago I showed you all an exciting way to add sugar to your coffee and now I have a more advanced video with the making of an espresso via "The Cube"

Click here to Watch and learn.

Shyla, Emily, and Susan came up from Pictage for sushi and then we had a PUG party!

...and last night the PUG group came over and hungout and it was so fun.



















It's such a wonderful group and here in the photo is our fearless leader and super stud film photographer Michael Costa, and then we have the amazing Lyons and De La Torre's! and be sure to see more hilarious pictures on Shyla's blog! You can even see my Christmas tree and Justin trying to eat my big nose. :)

I am the Ironman

Somebody asked me what superhero I am and my buddy Brett told me about this site that tells you and I'm amazed at how accurate it is!

Angela Talley

If you haven't seen Angela Talley's new website you're missing out. Amazing!

PUG PARTY!!!

Don't miss the PUG Party tonight!!!

Here's the info!!! Sweet!!!

Live again

We're back live but still working on getting this server dialed in so we'll probably have a few bugs and interruptions. Forums are one of the most taxing things on a server...but I'll do my best to keep everyone up to date here on the blog.

:)

Working on the site...

Sorry the site is down right now...we're doing some work on it to try and get the gallery and email working correctly. I didn't know it was gonna go offline or I would've let ya'll know ahead of time.

Should be back up in a few minutes though. I'm glad you all liked the Christmas skin too! I had to join and French forum and try and translate all this stuff to figure it out so you may notice some French words popping up but we're just using it until we get an update for our old skin.

:)

OSP Ranking

Since OSP is back in action I figured maybe we should do a collective vote on somethings...and we'll start off easy with the Ranking System! :)

When I first setup OSP I used soccer teams (league's actually) to define the ranks as you can see here...

Every 5 posts or so your rank is improved and when you get to 30 posts you also get advanced into the "Knowledge Cat" group and you get some extra features there as well.

Would you guys like to change the current rankings or keep them? If you'd like to change them give some suggestions...and there doesn't have to be a bunch like I initially setup but probably a system with 5-10 would be good.

Rock on!
DJ

So here it is...

It's been a long couple of weeks for all of us. Having OSP down for this long is not fun and for something with a reputation of being "An Addiction" I feel everyone's pain as I know we were all run through a bit of detox over the past 10 days.

There is more info about what Bliksem hosting did specifically here if you'd like to read it but I'm not going to go into it here.

It's a sad sad thing that has made me quite angry and I need to move past it. I really have been stirred up by this and I need to get back to a place of peace because we all know how anger can really control us and have very negative effects on our life.

I truly believe that everything happens for a reason and although I don't know what the reason for this is I do know that it has forced me to deal with some things both personally and professionaly that will hopefully help shape who I am in the future. Possibly the same is true for some of you. Maybe this time helped some of you reconnect with your family or get some things in your business straightened out. Again, I don't know why this happened but there are many good results and I need to spend more time focusing on those things rather than getting more upset over what is lost.

For the past four days our new host Invision Power, which is the same company that created the forum we use, has been working non-stop to get any little bits and pieces of our forum back online. The first couple attempts left us with a forum that had all the data but no topics so all 130,000 posts would be in a big mushpot of 1 post. I looked through it and it was a nightmare that nobody could make any sense of. So the other option was to go back exactly 1 year and pretend like 2006 didn't happen. Neither option is good but the odds of us ever getting a full database are so slim that I think it's better to just get back together and move forward.

In the next couple of weeks I'll have them install the database with all the posts into another forum so you can at least use the search to find something specific...and feel free to repost it if you'd like it to stay around. Some of you may want to go back and repost parts of your bio into our much cooler "Profile" section that allows you to add more info there so be sure to check that out.

Also, you'll notice that you can now add friends in your profile and leave people messages so that's a fun new feature.

You'll also notice that we don't have the OSP "skin" and graphics but we will get that soon. Another company develops that so as soon as they update it for the new forum we'll get it installed.

For now...enjoy being back and I want to leave you with this quote by William Durant who is the founder of General Motors,

"Forget past mistakes. Forget failures.
Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it."

Let's make sure 2007 is even better than 2006 so we don't miss it!

:)
DJ

Pictage Christmas Party

Pictage is such an amazing success story! There was a time when many people doubted that they'd even be able to survive and now it's pretty cool to see them leading and shaping the industry for the better.

Last night was their Christmas party and Shyla invited me down and all 200 of Pictage's employees were invited so it was quite a party! They had a whole casino setup and because Shyla and I finished out in the top 10 we won a trip to Laughlin! How cool is that!



Also, my friend Susan Han who does client training for Pictage gave me this funny shirt because she knows how much I like Sake! She's awesome and a bunch of them are gonna come up this week for PUG Christmas party that Michael and Anna Costa are running!

...I'm off to church right now but when I get home I will be putting OSP back live and explaining all that's happend. Matt Antonino got the new server up and then the amazing support team at Invision Power has been working nonstop on recouping as much info as possible and inserting it back into the forum.

I'm excited to be back together and I'll explain more later.

Blessings,
DJ

Home from Cancun!

It was a great vacation and Cancun was absolutely beautiful!

Since I couldn't bring all of you along I wanted to put together a special video to show you everything so here a go...but next time all of you should come with! How about OSP-Cancun! :)

Click here to watch the video

...speaking of OSP...the most current backup was apparently not complete which is a bummer and the old webhost went completely awol and my attorney is doing his best to track him down and get something back. It's been an incredibly frustrating and costly experience for me and I know it's been rough on everyone so just know we're doing everything we can and enjoy the video.

Cheers,
DJ

More dolphin video to come!

:) For Gary's birthday we went to this interactive aquarium and it was insane!

How cool is this!!!

Click here to watch the video!

I'm flattered! :)

Apparently many of you think I did some photoshop on my muscles in the previous post. Dan posted and I got a few emails as well so I am deeply flattered.

Here is the video that I took that picture from...and look for lots of killer new water video from today because we got to swim with the dolphins and it was insane!

Again thank you so much for thinking that I photoshoped my muscles when I did not. I can't believe how proud that makes me! You guys are the best! I love you!

Click here to watch the video

Rediculous Fun

I can't believe that I've never had a water housing before! It is so amazing! Check these photos and video out!

Click here to watch the video.

or click here to watch it.

And how about these photos of us flexing. It was difficult to get my whole body in the picture because of its massiveness.

100k miles

For some reason I got really into this little United frequent flyer program. It's funny and I dunno why I like to check how much I've flown but I'm really excited because I just reached the highest level which is United's 1K program. They also have a "Global Services" thing but that's more int'l stuff.

This is just since february and only on United so I've actually flown more than this but I try and stick to United when I can. US Airways is good to and I might use them next year but United just updated their website so now it's super easy to schedule trips with multiple destinations. For example if I wanted to fly to New York for 3 days and then to Chicago for a couple of days and then back to LA for a day and then back to SB I could do it really easy on United.

Anyway...you guys probably don't care but I was excited.

:)

Cancun Cooking

Today was so fun! Well...it didn't start off fun b/c I had to spend a couple of hours collecting all these emails for my attorney so we can deal with this web hosting thing. It sucks but we are making progress. Gary took this picture because I turned my desk in my room around so at least I can work looking out at the ocean. :)

It was really hot here today so we hungout at the pool and then Gary signed us up for a cooking class which was super fun. It was like a competition and Gary and I dominated...I think we won because I made my secret "Caballero" sauce that you'll see in the video.

Here are some photos!

They are such lovebirds...


Me making my Caballero sauce!





The girls botched their sauce so we won.


They are good losers though...


Gary and Missy really bonded with our chef teacher.