the Blog - Photographik.org

Different Perspectives and Controversy!

Thu 15 May 2008 00:03:33 GMT

Yes... It's been awhile since my last post. Sorry to all four of you who follow this blog...

Anyway, I wanted to say that a certain article, which has been live on our site for more than 6 weeks, received a lot of attention the other day when we sent out our newsletter that included a link to our current articles. I'm going to let you all guess which article it was. I received some emails that expressed some about of dislike (dare I say outrage) and disagreement with the basic tenets of the aforementioned article. However, this article has also been lauded and picked up by various photographers in the blogosphere who have both praised it and even linked to it from their blogs.

Which brings me to my point... photographik loves different points of view! We love different opinions! And our articles section will feature the thoughts and ideas of members, industry experts, pundits and even photographers who aren't members. We believe that offering unique, opinionated, idea-driven content on our site will enhance the knowledge base and understanding of both photographers and civilians alike (yes, civilians... aka np's... non-photographers). Soooo... Please read the content on our site and agree, disagree, love, loathe, enjoy, be bored, learn, unlearn and, hopefully, have fun.

Got an idea for an article / testimony / rant / rave? I'm all ears...

Articles!

Sat 19 Apr 2008 22:11:58 GMT

Got back from Mexico from a wonderfully relaxing and rejuvenating vacation last week. Julie shot a wedding in Playa Del Carmen... so a little bit of business mixed with pleasure. Then we headed over to Isles Mujeres a short boat ride from Cancun. It was great and the weather was wonderful.

I wanted to let you know that we just launched a new feature: Articles! Check out our first two articles here:

Scarlett Lillian has a message for brides

David Beckstead and Brooke Schwab rap about destination weddings

We are looking for good, informative articles from our members. If you have an idea and want to write something, email me at: jesse @ photographik.org and pitch me your idea.

Off to Mexico!

Thu 03 Apr 2008 04:26:25 GMT

I'm off to Mexico with Julie tomorrow for some much needed vacation. I won't be doing much email (I'll be on the beach drinking margaritas!) so muchas gracias in advance for your patience. Please contact Josh, our Member Services Manager, with any issues or questions. Thanks!

Thanks for taking the survey!

Thu 27 Mar 2008 22:04:48 GMT

Thanks to everybody who participated in our survey. We received lots of positive feedback regarding photographik 2.0 as well as a number of suggestions and comments on how to improve our website and community. We will be moving forward with some enhancement upgrades over the next few months based largely on member feedback. Additionally, we are launching a new Articles section on the website that will be geared towards the photographer and photographer-seeker alike. We will be featuring articles written by both professional writers as well as our own members. Contact me if you're interested in writing an article for photographik.

Below are the 10 survey-takers whose images were selected for the homepage. Thanks again to everyone!

Chris Humphreys - Santa Barbara, CA	Deb Schwedhelm - San Diego, CA
Denny Fenbers - Denver, CO	Ian Johnson - Orange County, CA
Julian Fuhrmann - Munich	Paige Eden - Denver, CO
Parris - New York City, NY	Poser - Dallas, TX
Scarlett Lillian - Ft. Lauderdale, FL	Seshu - Boston, MA

The Vegas Experience

Fri 21 Mar 2008 00:54:22 GMT

Soooo, the plan of blogging daily in Vegas obviously didn't happen. The fact is, I was just too busy running around meeting people, walking the trade show or partying to find the time to blog. So here's a quick recap of our first ever WPPI experience.

We stayed at The Palms which was fun. I've stayed there a couple of other times. It feels less noisy and congested than some of the other hotels.

Grant Oakes showing off our cool new tee shirts.

Katie Van Buren, Kim Jarmin, Me and Jennifer Bowen at the Pictage booth.

Chris Humphreys speaking at the LiveBooks booth.

Regina Holder smiling for the camera...

Kevin Von Qualen, James Christianson and my wife showing off the tees.

Getting crazy with Jenna and Katie of Jenna Walker Photographers. Love these gals!

More silliness.

Chatting with Crystal Goss of Arkansas.

James, Chris and Katie, Katie and Jenna cutting up... :-)

Checking out the Pictage booth.

J Sandifer at the LiveBooks booth.

Our bill for, like, 4 drinks or something! Ridiculous. Vegas is a town engineered to take your money.

Chillin' with Scarlett Lillian at the Pixel 2 Canvas party.

Josh and Jared Wilson.

Scenes from the Blu party held at this amazing house. It was kind of a trip from the strip though, but worth it. A LOT of people showed up for this one.

The uber cool Travis Broxton.

Katie Van Buren and her husband, Dzifa.

So some of you may not know that the power was out to a portion of the Strip last Tuesday. Unfortunately, Mandalay Bay was one of the hotels that got hit. The image above is the line of people hoping to get back to their hotel rooms. The elevators stopped working and I think some people got stuck!

So we were about to head to The Party at The Hotel hosted by The Becker, when the above happened. When the power was out initially, the casino floor area was not affected. I suppose they'd prefer that their guests deal with a power outage rather than those gamblers in the casino. Anyway, we were about to head over to The hotel elevators and the power went out throughout the entire casino! I'll bet you've never seen Vegas like this before. The slot machines went out, the cash registers went out. Everything but the emergency backup lights. It was weird. I half wondered if riots and looting might break out. And though the lights came on rather quickly, we had lost our courage. The thought of getting stuck in an elevator on the way up to the 62nd floor was just too scary a notion to overcome! I'm really bummed too. Would've been a great party to be at, I'm sure. Next year, Becker!

WPPI

Sun 16 Mar 2008 03:33:57 GMT

It's Saturday night and we're busy packing up to leave for WPPI/Vegas tomorrow afternoon. Hoping to get to the airport in time to have a cocktail too. Looking forward to meeting many of you at the convention and at some parties. We don't have a set schedule but we'll be around. Anyway, a safe and fun trip to everyone!

The Happening

Tue 11 Mar 2008 00:34:26 GMT

Anyone else out there an M. Night Shyamalan fan? If so, check out the trailer for his new movie coming out in June, The Happening. Looks spooky. Question: Why are we all so fascinated with the end of the world? I mean, how many times have we seen New York City be destroyed or attacked (anyone see Cloverfield). Anyway, makes you wonder about the human psyche a bit, doesn't it?

I see all of Shyamalan's movies and love em'. This should be another good one.

Click here to see the trailer.

Democratic nominee still up in the air

Thu 06 Mar 2008 02:34:21 GMT

Wow. The Democratic race for the presidency is still up in the air. I was pretty sure that Obama was going to wrap it up last night but Hillary took 3 of 4 states. And now that McCain has clenched the Republican nomination, he's going to be able to go after the Demos and not have to battle with other Republican candidates any longer.

As the Democratic convention is going to be held here in Denver in August, I'm particularly interested in how all of this is going to play out. What's really crazy is that the Democratic nominee may not even be chosen until the convention! If that happens, that leaves only a couple of months to debate and battle McCain until the general election in November.

Denver is buzzing about the convention. It will be interesting to see how the town responds to the thousands and thousands of visitors we'll be hosting. We've even considered renting our house out for the convention (we live close to LoDo and the Pepsi center ) as apparently you can make 3 - 5k in a week. But Julie will be slammed in August and we really don't want to go live with her parents or ours for a week or two!

I'm hoping to attend an event or two in August just to experience the American political process up close. I have to admit, I've never been as interested in politics as I am now. Should be interesting...

Survey

Tue 04 Mar 2008 02:52:13 GMT

We sent an email to all of our Directory members a couple hours ago inviting everyone to take our survey. So far, the response has been awesome! Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to let us know your thoughts, preferences and suggestions. We are listening.

I look forward to hearing back from everybody. Myself and my team are reading everything and already taking notes on how to take your feedback and put it to action.

Muchas gracias!

Jesse

I've been lame

Sun 02 Mar 2008 03:48:11 GMT

My apologies for not blogging recently. Of course, I'm really not sure how many of you even read this. Nevertheless, I need to post a bit more frequently. The thing is, I've never really blogged before and most of you photographers do blog so I've got to "catch up" with all you blog gurus. I've also got to figure out what to blog about. Just photographik stuff? Or maybe some personal life happenings too? Not really sure so bear with me as I "learn" how to blog.

Okay. That's it for now.

Jesse