Good Day

Yesterday was a great day. I stayed in OC after the wedding and then met up with Dane Sanders in the morning at Rock Harbor. I miss hanging out with Dane because he always talks about important stuff. Conversations with him always leave me challenged to think and act in new ways.

Then we went over and saw his awesome family and his new second home! Seriously! This thing is decked out with a flatscreen, full kitchen, 3 beds and tons of other cool stuff!



...and then!!! I came home and found my kitchen looking like this! WHOA!



Now some of you might be thinking "yea - that's a sink DJ" but ya see I haven't seen my sink in a long time because when I'm traveling a lot I tend to let the cups stack up a bit and I have PUG groups and homegroups for my church come and meet at my house and so there is usually like a ton of cups in my sink but Kristin Renee washed everything! Amazing! I was so happy.

...and now I gotta get a hotel for NY because I leave tomorrow and I heard there is some big race out there so all the running people have booked up all the rooms.

Another Year

Four years - wow - I can hardly believe how God has guided this journey. Yesterday closed out another year for me so I've been reminising a bit...

I've been thinking a lot about how every three or four years a huge change occurs in our life...elementary school, jr. high, high school, college, marriage (for some :) and so I've noticed the urge to continue that pattern in many of my friends. Over the past year many, almost all, have left their jobs and become self employed or are thinking about it and others have gotten married.

This is an exciting time and I'm excited as well because although I haven't had a career change or been blessed with a wife my business is changing a lot. I've tried to control the weddings I shoot for the past two years and next year my goal is to hold it to 10, I have 9 now so we'll see if I can be disciplined about that. I really want to be careful about shooting too much because my relationships do suffer and I recognized that this year with only shooting 20 weddings. My time in community and fellowship with all of you was limited and that's a big priority for me. I also have learned the value of just spending time thinking because when I spend too much time doing I find myself offering less of value.

- I spent the 1st year of my career learning "how" to shoot and then shooting anything and everything because I loved it.
- I spent my 2nd hear learning "how" to get work.
- I spent my 3rd year learning "how" to handle that work.
- I spent this past year learning "how" to get free from that "work" and get back to shooting for the love of it.

So next year I'm planning to revisit those "Why" questions that I often talk about because they are the important ones. They are the questions that I believe really shape who I am and it's too easy for me to get trapped in the "How" questions and never get back to the purpose of why I'm doing what I'm doing.

I want to encourage you, no matter where you are in your business, to take some time to ask some of those "Why" questions because if you find those answers first you will find that the "How" questions get answered a lot easier.

Blessings,
DJ

Basketball Game

Trying this post again...

This past week has been so great. I got a lot of work done and I also got to spend a lot of time just hanging with friends and I think Gary Fong has figured out the perfect balance of work and play...Gary and Missy were in SB and you can see some fun videos on his blog



...and tonight I was on my way down to OC for a wedding tomorrow and Deyl and Paige called me up and invited me to the Clippers game and so I called up Shyla and we went to watch some basketball! It was so fun and here is a video of Shyla talking about basketball but I could tell her mind was really on the upcoming elections.

and here's a video of the highlights from the game.

blogger is jacked

The only way I can post is from my email.

jacked

I somehow jacked my blog and I can't delete those posts. They don't even show up on my lists of posts.

...and it keeps giving me errors when I go to post.

Sorry about that.

weird

TSA

TSA stands for "Toothpaste Stealers of America" and it is such a hassle because I fly somewhere for one day and they take my toothpaste and so I have to go and find some when I get to wherever I am going. Then I fly home the next day and they take that tube as well so I have to go get more when I get home.

...so I went and got a ton of little tubes to keep here at the house so at least when I get home I will always have toothpaste and I think the little tubes you can sneak by easier as well. I think 3 ounces is the biggest one you can take and these little tubes are only one ounce.

Call Me! :)

CLICK THE RECORD BY PHONE BUTTON BELOW TO CALL ME AND LEAVE ME A MESSAGE! How cool!

Get Your Own Voice PlayerManage

What a Rush!

Well the last couple of days have been a rush!

I left on Monday to head to Utah for the IPPA convention. Monday night was really cool because the Pictage PUG was meeting there so I got to see so many friends and ride on my first Harley! WOW! Jennifer Grigg ( Jumanjijuice ) took these awesome pics!

Here is Shannon Hodson giving me my first ride on a Harley!




and me and Dustin Izatt at the PUG meeting!



Me and Pepper! Oh how I love Pepper!



Then they had an auction to raise money for the IPPA group and they auctioned 3 Showit Apps and brought in over $500! How cool is that!



Then on Tuesday I had a chance to talk and show some of the latest RAW processing tips and tricks as well as give my four ways to "Get FREE" in your life. Unfortunately I couldn't stick around for long and had to be on a flight 90 minutes after my talk ended :( which was a total bummer because everyone there was incredible and I would've loved to have stayed. I flew back to shoot some engagement pics and it went great and then it was straight to the PUG group that Chris Humphreys was running. He walked everyone through his new Livebooks site! (it's not released yet) but I heard it was really cool and has some great functionality!


...and then I went to sleep and OSP GOT ATTACKED! Ahh! :) ...It's a good thing we have Matt Antonino around to ward off the powers of darkness! This is the biggest pic I have of Matt. I woke up to an email from him telling me how he had been defending OSP and I logged in to see how he had hacked the hackers! I was laughing so hard!



The hackers had cracked my password (like you see happen on MySpace all the time) and were messing around with stuff and so Matt cracked their password and started deleting their accounts! haha! Brilliant! I had the the guys at Invision Power Board check everything out and they did some cleaning up right away (within minutes actually - I was incredibly impressed at their response) so everything is back! :)

Tonight is Janey's birthday party and tomorrow I got invited to share my story at a business class up at Westmont! When I got this email I was very excited because when I dropped outta college pretty much everyone said you're gonna fail, not in those exact words, but I got a lot of pressure to go back and everyone kept saying you can't do this and you can't do that so I must admit it feels pretty good to be headed up there.

Ok...now that it's 4pm I guess I need to get to work. :)

Rock on and once again Long Live OSP!
DJ

Utah! IPPA

So I'm out in Utah for the IPPA convention and unfortunately it's just a 24 hour trip but it's been incredible so far! I arrived and found out that Brody (who just got a snappy new website) and the whole Pictage PUG and TONS OF OSPers were meeting in the same hotel as the convention! WOW! What a treat to meet everyone!

but now it's off to bed...and I'm presenting at 8:30am! YIKES! Which is actually 7:30 for me....and guess what - I'm the second speaker of the day! Ah! They start at 6:30! This is so not "hippyville" (as my brother calls Santa Barbara)

:) I'm super excited though - everyone here has been great!

2nd best thing about being on the road - roomservice!

Y Blog

I want to ask everyone out there why you have a blog?

...and if you don't - why not?

There are no right or wrong answers and I think many of us have different reasons for using blogging technology so if you had to narrow it down to the main reason why you DO have a blog or the main reason you DON'T have a blog what would that be?

Your Words

I spent yesterday down at Pictage chatting with Jeff Jochum, Sara France, and Shyla and it was great! One of the things we talked a lot about was language and how words have such a great power to unite or divided people.

Then on the way home I was listening to a presentation by Tony Robbins and he was talking about the same thing! ...and how we have the power to change the way we feel and the way we act and the way others feel and act simply by taking some extra time to think about the words we're using.

Faith and Ryan's Wedding in AZ

Gorgeous couple!

Click here to see the Showit Slideshow!

BreakDance! Yea!

Checkout this cool picture I got of a break dancer in Seattle!

Change

Woodrow Wilson once said,

"If you want to make enemies, try to change something"

Isn't that true. :) Don't we all hate change. I know I sure do. I have also learned the importance of understanding changes before wasting energy pointing out the negative affects of change and instead I choose to focus on the positives of any change I'm presented with. I also give any change time before declaring it good or bad.

I kind of chuckled this morning when people saw the 60 posts that I added with my sneaky little friend, the Blog Pirate, and I really wasn't surprised by the immediate resistance to this new feature which I think will be a great addition to OSP.

So rest assured that OSP is not going to be overrun by posts from every blog or news source in the world. Currently it's pulling from 5 sources. Colon and Becker (who post a couple of times a week), Godin (who posts daily), Google Business News (5 or 6 posts a day) and DP Review (usually a couple of posts a week).

So we're looking at very few posts a day. I added some at the beginng to give it some depth but I think we will all do ourselves a favor to wait and give changes on OSP or changes in our life a chance before immediately finding the few reasons we don't like it and working to build resistance to it.

:)
DJ

Blog Pirate

Check this out! The Blog Pirate is so cool! I guess he goes around to blogs and grabs the info and brings it to OSP for us so we can talk about it. I think this is perfect because I've found blogs to be really difficult to have conversations on because they only notify the blog owner when a post is made.

The two blogs that the Blog Pirate is grabbing right now are Mike Colon's and Seth Godin. Both are great blogs. Seth Godin is marketing guru and I just read one of his books called "All Marketers are Liars" and it was incredible and now I'm reading two of his other books "The Big Moo" and "Small is the new Big" which are both awesome as well....and look what Seth says in both of them.

"When you bought this book, you also bought the right to photocopy as many pages as you like, as many times as you like, go ahead and make five hundred copies of your favorite story and send them out via interoffice mail."

Seth Godin is a master blogger and Word-of-Mouth marketer and so that's why he gives stuff away for free and that's why I buy all of his books. He's brilliant.

Slideshows

Slideshows are so powerful! I think I've gotten a dozen emails in the past day of people just raving about the power they have not only to totally stoke out clients but also to get clients to become evangelists!

Liana Lehman has a special place on her site where she puts all her shows for people to enjoy and I think that's really smart because they really are fun to watch and it helps turn your website into an experience and something that's entertaining and not just informational.

...and Andy Martin just sent me this email about this slideshow! What a wonderful thing to be a part of and look how this slideshow is blessing these people and how it's also giving them a way to pass along Andy's name. :)



Rock on!
DJ

WHOA!

Deyl just posted the gnarliest video from the earthquake in Hawaii. It shows lots of smoke and lava and it's cool.



CLICK HERE and watch!

:)

Freaking Hilarious

Michael Boardman shot with me at the wedding below and he got a picture of me as I was being very brave and descending down this cliff to capture a phone that the best man dropped. I got the "primal" underwear in Italy - it was all I could find but I like it.


CLICK HERE to see my underwear.

:)

San Diego Wedding

I realized I never showed you guys the pics from San Diego!

It was a wonderful wedding and the bride was a friend of mine from college and sorry I don't have any dancing pics in the slideshow because the bride and the groom were the most amazing dancers and so the reception was really fun!



Also, I got to shoot with Michael Boardman and Amber Dawn! I had never met Amber before but she's a sweetheart and Michael was in my last Brooks workshop. They are great! ...and when you guys get your websites up let me know so I can post a link.

CLICK here for the slideshow!

Enjoy! I already put the slideshow up from last weekend but you'll have to wait until tomorrow to see'em. :)

35 Years

Yesterday was my mom and dad's 35th wedding anniversary! Yea!



I'm so proud of them! They've taught me so much about what it takes to have an amazing marriage and they've set an example of serving and loving other people that I could never match.

I love you guys!
DJ

Fun

Ok...I'm tired but I thought this was a fun sequence from todays wedding - more to come!



I suggested these poses. ;)

EMS

A year ago I spent a lot of time thinking about the long term plan for my business and my life and I came up with three little letters that I ask myself everytime I'm presented with a new opportunity or idea and the letters are "EMS" and they stand for Everything Must Scale.

One of the biggest problems I see in most businesses is that they don't have any ability to grow let alone scale into something increasingly more profitable for the owner.

Tim Sanders talks a lot about scalability and he says that the process of a company is "the heart and soul of a company's worth" and so we should build a process that doesn't break when it gets bigger.

How can your business get bigger without "breaking"

Happy Friday!
DJ

Good Day

Yesterday was the way life should be. I think I'm going to have more days like yesterday.

I woke up really really early (click here for the video) to go out and play some golf with some cool AZ Photographers. We have Jedd Johnson, Jared Platt, Me, The infamous Gino, and Isaac Bailey.



...checkout this video of Isaac. The sun wasn't even up yet so it was kinda hard to see the ball sometimes but I think he got a hole in one on this shot. Isaac was the smartest golfer though because he decided to time the round and run the whole time so he got his exercise as well as the round of golf.

Here is a video of me approaching my perfectly placed shot. I really did mean to hit it out in the dirt close to the killer dog.

...and so after golf I came home and was really exhausted so I took a nap all day and then got up because Shannon Rice invited me to this thing called "Adore" and they are doing this series called The Art of Living. and it was so good! ..and at the beginning it was really funny because the speaker came out and said "I know some of you have had a long hard day at work" and I was like yup...and then he said I just want you to forget about your job, forget about business and then they started playing this song I couldn't believe it! I can't escape it! BarlowGirl is everywhere now. Shannon and I were laughing.



Then we met up with Hollye Schumacher for some dinner! It was a great day.

A few of us are headed to dinner tonight as well so if you are in AZ and wanna hang post up here and I'll try and make sure everyone knows where and when. :)

New Queensberry Site

Be sure to checkout Queensberry's new website! I love Queensberry. Their albums are gorgeous and whenever they call and leave me a message I always save it so I can listen to their accent over and over again. They are wonderful!

:)
DJ

Get your Music!

Ok so this is a pretty sweeeeeet thing that I've kept hush hush because I didn't want to get anyone's hopes up (including my own) but it's really happening and I'm so stoked!

Everyone wants a legal solution for music use on their websites and slideshows and we are almost there - we just need to know what music you want!

So if you have music that you like and have been using or are hoping to use post it up here and we'll get cranking on it! We are planning to present a list to the publishers tomorrow and we have already collected lots of songs but post up anything and everything you would wish for!

Post up:
Name of the artist
Name of the song

...and post FAST so your songs can be submitted and approved in the first round and you can use it on Showit Web DVD's for your clients this Christmas (shhhh...don't tell Todd that I told you it's coming soon) lol

I Agree :)

Bethany Gilbert is a fantastic photographer from Mississippi and she just made the most wonderful post on OSP and posts like this make me cry because I have been so blessed and amazed by the people on OSP and I know thousands of others have as well.

OSP really is a family, a BIG one, lol...and it's so incredible to see so many people stick together through thick and thin and grow together sharing their businesses and their lives.

San Diego Weekend w/ KT

I had such a fun weekend! I really love being a tourist. I didn't used to enjoy it but I've found that if I'm hanging out with someone it makes it way more fun! My friend Katie lives in Coronado and we've been friends for so long. I first met her when she was only a junior in high school and now she's in grad school. I can't believe how she's all grown up now. I would post a link to her blog but Katie lives a very secret life. (ie. she doesn't have a blog or MySpace) I think she is hiding something but I dunno.



On Saturday we went and hit golf balls in the morning which was so fun.



...then we went and walked along the water and there were so many weddings going on. I think we saw five weddings all within just a few steps of each other. I took all these pictures with my Blackberry. It has such a good camera on it.



After that we went shopping at the Apple store and I just installed Aperture 1.5 to test it out and see how it compares to Bridge and Lightroom...and then we saw the movie the Guardian which was really good. I thought I was gonna cry but I didn't but it was really good.



....and then yesterday I shot a super fun wedding for a friend from college and I'll put a slidshow up later because now I'm taking a little road trip! I'm headed home for the week! I'm so excited! I haven't seen my parents forever. I'm at Borders right now picking up 3 books on CD to listen to on the way.



AZ - Here I come!

:)
DJ

Thanks Brad!

My buddy Brad Person just sent this info! I am sooo bummed I'm shooting today!
--------

Sorry this is off topic, but for all you Barlow Girl fans out there, there is a FREE, LIVE concert webstream of their CityFest Houston performance today! To access, go to www.Palau.org and click on the "Watch CityFest Live!" link. Barlow Girl is scheduled to play at 5:55pm central time today (Sunday). Also, Wynonna Judd performs at 6:50pm, and Chris Tomlin tops off the evening at 8:50pm. Hope you enjoy!

-Brad Person

Mac stuff

Mac stuff, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

Umm...got some toys...looking forward to playing a bit in az next week. I'll let you guys know what I find out. Sweet.

My friend KT

We are waiting for dinner and so we hitup the Apple store...haha... ok bye

Found it!

Found it!, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

So I'm down in San Diego hanging with my friend Katie and she has the book of answers and it's great!

Ask us a question and we will open the book and find an answer for you.

OH yea...sorry I didn't post this earlier but there are rules for the questions and for using the Book of Answers so please click on this picture and read the rules otherwise we won't be able to properly answer the questions. We will do our best to reword the questions already asked though.

ClusterMap

So yesterday when all my websites were down I checked my Yahoo mail account to see what was up and I came across this email from the ClusterMaps people. I was blown away! Could this be real? That's a lot more hits than I could imagine getting in one day.



Anyway, I love seeing how far of a reach you can have through the internet and so ClusterMaps are fun because they show you where people are hitting your website from.

Blu Interview

Well I'm off to San Diego for a wedding this weekend and to hangout with my friends down there and then I'm off to AZ for a week! Yea! I dunno if I'll get to see my parents because they are in Papua New Guinea with some people from my church so I'm gonna try and break into my house. :)

...and I did a fun interview for the BluDomain Blog so be sure to check it out and thanks to those of you that told Kailee about me. She was so funny and asked me a few personal questions which was nice because I seldom talk about my personal life.



***CLICK HERE*** to read the whole article and have a great weekend!!!

:)
DJ

This must be audio day or something

I really like this song. My friend Shannon Rice gave me a CD when I was in AZ a couple of months ago and I had never heard this song before but I really like it.

Trying out Audio blog

Gabcast! Audio Blog #1



I deleted this one on accident...sorry...will post another one soon. :)

My First Hill Shot

As you all know - I love the hill shot. I will find a hill anywhere because there is just nothing better than a nice clear blue sky, green grass and a gorgeous bride and groom up high on a hill. lol...actually there are lots of things better than that but hill shots are cool and like most of the cool things I've come up with...it orginated through a complete accident.



I was shooting this couple down in Orange County at Coto de Caza and after their wedding I didn't really know where to take them because I don't think I had shot a wedding at a golf course before so I was stumped so I just said go up on the hill and they started dancing and I was shooting and when I looked at the pictures I was like "wow" those are cool.

...and to see some awesome pregnancy pictures of this wondeful couple checkout Chelsea Hudson's website!


I found these shots because I had to plug in the old Windows box tonight to do a little testing for something that you'll all be very happy about when it comes out but that's all I can say. bye.

Seminar

Seminar, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

One of the authors/speakers that I respect a lot is John Maxwell. I get a monthly CD from him where he teaches on a wide range of topics. In this month's packet came an opportunity to attend one of his 4 day workshops. I thought hmmmm...I wonder how other industries charge for things like this so I checked it out...and it seems that the guys at the top of our industry like Colon and Reggie who are offering their knowledge through these workshops are doing it for a bargain!

Maxwell charges $6,500.

:)

If you're wanting to learn from one of these guys I would do it fast because I'm guessing they'll start charging more and more.

DJ's PhotoWall

Thank you to all of you that sent in pictures! How FUN! I love this! I didn't get all the pictures printed up because I have to go to bed and because some of them...well...hmmmm...yea.

Click on the picture to see it bigger.

pictures of you

pictures of you, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

I ordered these cool wall hanging things from gnyc.net but I don't have a lot of pictures of everyone to hang on them so if you will email me a picture of you to pictures [at] davidjay.com I'll print them out and hang them up!

The picture on there is of me and Tim in Hawaii last year...don't ask any questions about it.

I'm so excited to finally have pictures on my wall!

Funny

So today I was at Finestra all day and Kristin was here working on editing some weddings and all of a sudden she sends me an email and is like "Music was playing on iTunes and then it stopped and I heard Mike Colon telling someone not to shoot you."

Click here to hear it

:)

5 hours later

Wow...I spent the last 5 hours emailing...I kinda like email days and check this out - I got 70 emails sent out in 5 hours so that's exactly an email every 4.287 minutes and that's faster than I thought! I thought it took me on average 5 minutes per email but I guess I got faster. Cool

I'm so proud because now I'm down to only 98 left to respond to and it feels so good to be below 100.

Bunkering down

Bunkering down, originally uploaded by davidjay13.

I have a lot of work to do today so I'm bunkering down at Finestra with coffee and granola...yum...



:)

Your Advice Please

In college I remember learning that the responsibility to communicate a message is that of the communicator not the reciever. 90% of what I do is communication oriented and I realize that I failed miserably at communicating a message this past weekend...and it created quite a stir.

So I sent an email to Derek tonight apologizing for not taking the extra time to present my message in a way that would get it across without looking like I was personally attacking him and giving him the option of whether or not the email stayed on the blog.

I posted the email, along with my responses, because I wanted to get the message across that the world is very connected and anything you say or do has the potential to reach 1000's of people in a matter of seconds. Because of my pride and my sarcasm the message came across as me attacking Derek or trying to get revenge or hold him down. Not at all the what I was trying to do or communicate.

My thoughts - Nearly every wedding I go to I have a bridesmaid or groomsman come up to me and tell me how rude the photographer was at the last wedding they were at, I get voiemails from photographers screaming about this or that, and emails from people who pretty much say they hate me because I charge a lot of money. My friend Dane was even interupted during one of his talks at PartnerCon by somebody who just didn't know how to act in public. I think there is a big problem with how a lot of photographers interact with other people and because I live and work in this industry my hope is to see all of us change into being more likable people and I think if we are aware that what we say and do will have consequences and people will find out about it we will be more careful about saying things that we shouldn't.

So a couple of questions...

Question #1 - If somebody is intentionally hurting people or is just generally mean should we open it up for everyone to know about? I'm not talking about somebody making a mistake, we all make mistakes. Should we keep it a secret and allow them to continue on or bring it out in the open?

Question #2 - If you answered that we shouldn't bring it out in the open then give me a long term approach to how we will solve this problem in our industry. By long term I mean a solution that doesn't focus on changing that one person or that one problem but a solution that let's everyone in the future know that this sort of behavior is not ok.

Question #3 - If you answered that we should bring it out in the open then what steps need to happen before it's brought out in the open and how should it be presented to let everyone know to protect themself and avoid this person.

....and if there are other options through them in. I'm always up for conversation and I'm honestly seeking a solution because if we've gotta spend our lives in this industry let's at least strive to make it better.

Disagree but don't divide...

I know the discussion about the Email below will continue but one thing I always want to say is thank you for caring about this and for caring about me enough to let me know when you agree and when you disagree.

In every decision I make there is the opportunity for me to make a mistake, and I have made many in my life. I'm seeking God in this as I have been for the last week and God is always good about letting me know when I screw up so I'll keep listening to Him and talking with all of you because you guys are my friends - whether we agree or disagree on something we're friends and I love you all.

"OSP" - All of you - have shown time and time again what an amazing community you are and how you handle disagreements is one of the key reasons why this place is so incredible. Don't forget that.

Friendships, Relationships, Communities are about people and about those people working out our differences and having security that the differences aren't going to divide us, the flames we experience in our relationships should be like the flames they use to refine and purify gold. It's the tough times that make us who we are.

Again, I love the fact that we're talking about this email about how I handled it and about who we are and how we should live our lives. I'm not upset with anybody and believe me I grew up with an older brother and we disagree on everything and I still love him and I love all of you and no disagreement will change that.

I'm here for you guys and I'm so blessed that you're here for me too...that's what it's all about and here's a little slideshow from my wedding yesterday.

:)