Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Pay Now or Pay Later

My friend Deyl always says "You're either gonna pay now or pay later" and usually it's cheaper to pay now because if you wait until you really need something you're always gonna pay more for it than if you buy it before you absolutely must have it. This is true for acquiring just about anything including skills and knowledge.

Most photographers choose to pay later. They start their businesses and they do all the things they want to do because those things (studios, gear, letterhead, samples, etc...) make them feel important and they differ the things they need. Most go out of business completely and 80% of wedding photographers only shoot 2 or 3 weddings a year.

So decide for yourself. Do you want to pay now and get things on track for success or are you going to take the quick and cheap route to failure?

I'd love to hear your thoughts...

*** Click here to comment ****

:)

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Sunrise on the water


Sunrise on the water, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

I shot this beautiful sunrise this morning. I spent the last couple of
days buried away reading and praying. Taking a little mini sabatical
is something I'm going to do a lot more often!

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Thailand

If you want to keep up with what Christianne and Bethany are doing in Thailand checkout their blog and give them some love. Keep praying too. :)


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Monday, June 22, 2009

FREE pre-loader from Spilled Milk


Nick Haskins over at Spilled Milk Designs created an entire business using Showit to design websites and has been doing an incredible job building sites for many of you. That rocks!

...but what has impressed me the most about Nick is that understands the power of FREE! ...and the trust that is built through helping others. He's been a great help to us and all of our users by being active on the forums answering questions and just the other day he did something very smart. He offered something for free. It's a super cool pre-loader that you can easily drag and drop into your website.

Click here to get your FREE copy!

Mail


Mail, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

Here is my mail from the last couple of months. Almost completely
unopened. I don't like the mail much. Most of it is junk or bills that
are on autopay (hopefully) :) ... It's just more noise in my life so I
just set it on the floor.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Sweet post...

What a sweet post! :)

One of my former clients from almost five years ago just made the nicest post on her blog about me!

You can see one of my first ever "hill shots" if you click here and checkout her blog. ;)

Monday, June 15, 2009

What went wrong?


photo.jpg, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

Something did go horribly wrong! ...but we have the opportunity to fix
it!

Right now ask yourself these three questions!

- How do you want to live?
- How much of the time are you actually living that way?
- What is one thing you could do TODAY to increase the amount of time
you're living that way?

...then go do it right now!

:)

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Reframe now using Showit!

Checkout another cool Showit site!


Reframe used Showit to create a fabulous unique website for their stellar videographer conference! Showit is a fantastic tool for videographers because of the massive amount of storage space that is offered as well as our fully integrated SmugMug and Vimeo video players so all the FLV compression and cataloging is handled automatically ...and beautifully!

Showit also offers the freedom to display video in a multitude of different ways on your site including: page transitions like on Jasmine-Star.com or custom video galleries like on ElysiumProductions.com or individual videos displayed and played at any size like on Nick Haskins website.

Monday, June 08, 2009

Showit live Chat!!!

CLICK HERE to Join members of the Showit team for a question and answer time!

Date: Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Time: 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM PDT

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows(R) 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista

Macintosh(R)-based attendees
Required: Mac OS(R) X 10.4 (Tiger(R)) or newer

Saturday, June 06, 2009

What a week!

This past week was possibly the busiest of the year...but it was great. My folks were in town and somehow I had planned like every meeting of the year into the past 6 days so I was running around like a chicken with his head cut off...


I'll start with something fun ... I learned to cook my own steak! Can you believe that I have never done that. My dad always took great pride in manning the grill and now I have some friends who always do it but last night I had to man-up! ;) We were at a restaurant where you cook your own steak and it was pretty funny because I wasn't even that hungry and so I was just gonna share a steak with Christianne's sister but Christianne said "be a man and get your own" and I was a little embarrassed b/c I didn't know how to cook it so she helped me a little bit and I was very proud to have cooked my own steak...well...kinda cooked it. She likes her steak rare so that's the way I cooked mine too. It was the first time I've ever had a rare steak and it was so good!

So going back...our Wednesday morning get together really got me stoked and filled up for the rest of the week! Wow! God is doing rad things in our lives and to get together and celebrate that gets me so stoked!

Then I cruised down to OC for a meeting that my friend Greg Bumatay put together in his awesome studio. He's an incredible photographer and he also gives back by teaching at Cypress College so he invited 10 of his students over and we shared Showit with them and got feedback about what they liked and didn't like. The response was unreal and we are looking to do more of these around the country so if you are an educator or a student then please contact our Director of Love - JD@showitfast.com and we'll set it up.


Then the Orange County SMUG happened! Wow! SmugMug is doing such an incredible job building community and it doesn't hurt to have Jasmine Star leading the group! There were 250 people including other inspirations like Becker, Bobby Earle, Gabriel and Carlie Ryan, Dane Sanders etc etc etc.....


ok... this post is too long. Have a great weekend!

Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Stephanie Fay got Myntd with Showit :)


Wow! Checkout Stephanie Fay's beautiful new Showit site! I love it!!!

Stephanie and her Groom-to-be stayed with me while they were here shooting a wedding a few months ago and they are as gorgeous as their photography!

My buddy Michael Thompson over at Myntd.com created this stellar site! I really like how he gives all of his sites a very smooth fluid feel so if you're looking for someone to help you rock out a killer site then hit him up!