This cracked us up – enjoy!

Registration is LIVE for our 2012 IN-CAMERA Spring Workshop Tour!

REGISTER HERE!

Newsletter Subscribers got first dibs on the seats for 24 hours, and now those not subscribed are able to sign up!  It’s been 24 hours and some cities are close to a sell out.  Don’t miss the chance to have your business forever changed!

PHOENIX, AZ
Shooting & Post – 6 seats remaining
Light – 6 seats remaining

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NASHVILLE, TN
SOLD OUT

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SEATTLE, WA
Shooting & Post – seats available
Light – seats available

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CHARLOTTE, NC
Shooting & Post – 1 seat remaining
Light - 2 seats remaining

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ATLANTA, GA
Shooting & Post – seats available
Light – seats available

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DESTIN, FL
Shooting & Post – 6 seats remaining
Light – 4 seats remaining

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VANCOUVER, CANADA
Shooting & Post – seats available
Light – seats available

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NEW YORK, NY
Shooting & Post – 7 seats remaining
Light – 5 seats remaining

On creativeLIVE you saw us using reflectors (and yes, if you missed it, you are able to purchase all three days for $149. This is an absolute STEAL and your purchase helps supports creativeLIVE and enables them to keep bringing out amazing photographers for you to learn from for FREE when watching live), so in this month’s newsletter we share with you a video on the ins-and-outs of reflector usage :)

Only those who are subscribed to our photography newsletter get to register FIRST.  They have 24 hours before registration opens on Wednesday to the public.

Make sure you’re signed up!

We are coming to:

PHOENIX, AZ

NASHVILLE, TN

SEATTLE, WA

CHARLOTTE, NC

ATLANTA, GA

DESTIN, FL

VANCOUVER, CANADA

NEW YORK, NY

It’s great to learn and better your photography, hang out and meet new photographers, but what if we told you that by attending our workshops YOU could actually make a difference in someone else’s life?

For those of you who may not be aware, since 2011 we have partnered our workshops with  Thirst Relief International.

Thirst Relief was started by a photographer, Jim Davis Hicks, who simply has a passion to help those that need help the most. Those who don’t have something as simple as clean water. One of the biggest causes of disease and death in third world countries, especially among children, is water-born illness. Children in these countries drink unclean water, get sick, and their fragile bodies can’t fight it off. Jim Davis realized that he could do something about this problem by bringing in sand filters that are easy to maintain by the locals and easy to use, and thus was born Thirst Relief. Every filter can last for up to 25 years and can help a community live longer lives by having clean water to drink, and they have now helped thousands around the world fix this problem! How cool is that?!

As we have been out speaking and meeting so many amazing photographers around the country, we have been asking the question, “do you want your life to be about something bigger than yourself?” And we have heard a resounding YES; all of us do!! We want our lives to impact others and help others. Nothing in life is more fulfilling than when you take your resources and help those that can’t help themselves. That can be anything from an encouraging word, loving someone who is hard to love, helping someone get treatment for drug or alcohol addiction, or simply giving a cup of clean water to a dying child. So, we ask you again. Do you want your life to be about something bigger than yourself? It can be!

One way that we are getting involved is through a brand new initiative from Thirst Relief called PLUS ONE.

Here is how it works. We have opened up one extra seat in all of our workshops that are the PLUS ONE Seats. If we sell all 16 seats for the workshop, then that final 16th seat is donated directly to Thirst Relief! It takes exactly $5 to give one person clean water for 25 years, and every time we sell that PLUS ONE seat we give $600 directly to Thirst Relief which in turn can help 120 children get the clean water they need! So, no matter what seat you may buy to one of our workshops, you are getting us closer to the goal of helping someone else!

This workshop tour has the potential to give almost TWO THOUSAND people (1,917 to be exact :) clean water for LIFE!  Be a part of the change that you want to see in the world!

Our time in Seattle has been absolutely AMAZING!  After creativeLIVE concluding on Sunday, we, our in-studio audience, and a few of the amazing creativeLIVE crew (Kenna, Kate, & Stephen) took us to the very first Starbucks!!

(Thanks to one of our in-studio students, Valentina for some of the images!)

Watch a little video we recorded inside :)

Behind-the-scenes to the video making :) ha ha

We got our mug!

Having fun in the store :)  Here is the fabulous Kenna from creativeLIVE.

Us with our fab creativeLIVE in-studio audience. Thanks to Kenna for capturing the below images!

(Samantha, Z, J, Valentina, Janelle, and Kris)

Yay for happy times in Seattle!!!!

(Us pictured with Samantha, Valentina, Janelle, Kris & Kenna)

It has been a little over 48 hours since we said goodbye live and on air to all of you. It’s been hard for us to put into words what we experienced on creativeLIVE and we have to say that all of you tuning in made this one of the best and most fulfilling things we have ever done.

The students…Kris,  Samantha, Janelle, Valentina.

We were so motivated and encouraged by all of you who had a HUGE hunger to learn and were forsaking sleep, meals to your family and even carrying us around with you on your mobile devices throughout your day as you took to the tasks that you couldn’t avoid. You are committed, and if you keep up that intensity and hunger to learn, you will do great things.

As an internet viewer, you don’t get to see a lot of what happens behind-the-scenes, but let us tell l you – the people running show behind the curtain are amazing people. We cannot thank enough Craig Swanson (@CraigMSwanson) for taking the chance on bringing us out and having this course on-location (so much more work than we think!), Celeste (@CelesteLIVE) the production manager who worked out ALL of the crazy logistics of putting this together and responding to our emails late in the night to make sure that all of our details were taken care of, the sweet Kenna (@KennaKphoto ), one of the fabulous chat hosts who fed us the questions coming from all of you, who is so giving and has such a great spirit that anyone would want to be her friend, Kate (@katehailey) for monitoring the packed out chat rooms with her team and making sure that your questions were heard and that you guys received giveaways, all the way down to Adam & Nikko and their fabulous team who headed up all of the amazing techo-mumbo-jumbo stuff, making it possible to air live and not complaining when we wanted to shoot in different rooms and locations, which of course, made their job way harder =D So much goes on behind-the-scenes, and it was really cool to witness what goes on to pull off a production like creativeLIVE.

Of course, a huge thanks goes to our fab sponsors who made things way exciting by giving away free stuff!! Westcott Lighting, Lens Rentals, Melissa Love Design, SanDisk, KISSbooks, SWATdesigner, Showit, PASS, Expo Imaging, and JoyOfMarketing.

A +site (designed by Melissa Love, and built with Showit – www.creativeLIVE.zachandjody.com) was put together for all of you who tuned into creativeLIVE. On the site you can see the images we shot when streaming live, behind the scenes images from the in-studio students as well as creativeLIVE staff, and also all of the sponsor promo codes and giveaways are also there, AND you can also read about the personal experiences of our 4 in-studio audience members – Kris, Janelle, Samantha, and Valentina.

(click below to visit the +site)

For those of you who missed out on the weekend, you are able to purchase the 3-day course for only $149. This is an absolute STEAL and your purchase helps supports creativeLIVE and enables them to keep bringing out amazing photographers for you to learn from for FREE when watching live.

It was a pleasure spending three days with you all online (thanks for all of your twitter & FB comments and love!), a pleasure to hang with our in-studio audience, and an absolute joy to work with the creativeLIVE team.

(us with the fab Celeste & Craig!)

Until next time… see you all in Vegas at WPPI (Sunday, 9AM is our platform)!

Having a strong brand is one of the most important things for your business and we highly recommend that if you have any $$ to spend, put it toward having a solid brand that represents you well! Remember, perception is reality.  You may be the BEST photographer out there but if your brand looks unprofessional and not put together, that is what people will perceive your business as.

Listen to Melissa share the process that we went through to bring our brand where it is today!

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I’m not sure who is more excited about the new visual identity and website for Zach & Jody – me or them.

I’ve been lucky enough to attend several of their business workshops over the past year. Like many people who have been able to tap into their business experience, I’ve learned tips and tricks from them that have transformed my business, so it’s been a thrill to have the opportunity to help them transform theirs – visually at least!

We started the process by spending time talking about the transition from Gray Photography to the Zach & Jody identity that they wanted to move towards. We agreed that the new identity needed to be fresh, sophisticated and able to showcase the warm personalities of Zach & Jody. In addition, the identity needed to be flexible enough to appeal to both brides and photographers.

I even got the chance to set Zach & Jody some homework. I feel that most design trends are driven by printed media so I sent them off to buy a selection of magazines – bridal, fashion & style – as well as taking a good look at their home & studio surroundings. They spent an entertaining few hours ripping inspirational images and making collections based around colour, texture, typography & style.

After further discussion, I put together a digital mood board which reflected the tone of the inspiration board they had compiled, with the beginnings of ideas for texture, typography and colour.

It didn’t take us long to agree on a logo – sophisticated but dynamic – and a set of textures & typefaces to signify different areas of the business. We settled on elegant text with pretty bokeh circles for the main wedding photography website, a fashion-led font with a lightburst to signify areas for photographers and lastly a dark distressed concrete texture and some custom icons to lead visitors to the blog and social media areas. And of course, there had to be coffee! Everyone knows how much Zach & Jody love Starbucks!

With the identity kit ready to go, building the website was a smooth process. Zach & Jody have been long-time fans of Showit so not only did I get to build their new site using one of my favourite tools, I got the opportunity to try out a new Showit feature that’s coming really soon – mobile HTML5 – which will display a perfect copy of your main website on all mobile devices. Knowing this was on the cards, we made sure to build the site to be responsive to any size or shape of browser. The result – sophisticated, warm, friendly and full of personality.

Zach & Jody – thanks for the opportunity to crash your blog. It’s been a pleasure working with you on this fun transformation and I can’t wait to see you in action on Creative Live!

We’ll be rolling out Zach & Jody’s new identity across all of their sites and to this awesome blog too, in the coming weeks.

Melissa x

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Isn’t that so exciting??  If you’ve enjoyed reading about the design process, there are plenty more stories on Melissa’s design blog as well as a sneak preview of her new online design store which is launching shortly!  SO exciting!

(video by Eugene + Heather)

This past weekend we officially launched our spring 2012 IN-CAMERA workshop tour DATES on creativeLIVE.

Check out the cities we are coming to!!

PHOENIX, AZ

NASHVILLE, TN

SEATTLE, WA

CHARLOTTE, NC

ATLANTA, GA

DESTIN, FL

VANCOUVER, CANADA

NEW YORK, NY

For dates and more info, visit workshops.ZachandJody.com.

Registration Opens NEXT TUESDAY (Feb 7th) at 12noon CST to newsletter subscribers FIRST for 24 hours.

>> >> Make sure you are subscribed to our newsletter or you may miss out on purchasing your seat! << <<

We are looking forward to coming to your city!!

The amazing, talented, savvy and super cool Melissa Love (what an awesome name!) of Melissa Love Design rocked our world and resigned our main website using Showit, and yes, our mobile site is viewable and built on HTML5!

Make sure to update your blog links – we are now at ZachandJody.com/Blog.

We also have a brand new Facebook page!

Enroll HERE to watch us for free on creativeLIVE starting tomorrow!