Tuesday, September 16, 2008

WOW!!!

I haven’t posted in over a month! I probably lost my entire readership of three due to my absence :(. If I promise to post more will you come back to me? So this must mean that nothing has been going on in my life and I’ve had nothing to write about, right? No way Jose! I’ve been a busy little bee!

It all started at the beginning of August when I attended the Free to Succeed Tour with DJ and Jasmine Star…and it was AMAZING!!! I met my American Idol J* and I love her more now than ever. She is utterly fabulous! And DJs pretty cool too. JK…I LOVE him a lot too! He’s really business minded and I love that coming from a business background myself. He’s all about streamlining your business, outsourcing what needs to be outsourced and doing only what you are great at and love to do! Hallelujah! And he has some fabulous programs for photographers that I can’t wait to get.

After The Tour, we went up to the Freedom House, which is his house up in the mountains of Santa Barbara. It’s a seriously SICK house. But my favorite part about his house party was meeting my new friend and neighbor, Jen Harris! We were just chit-chatting in a group and she was like oh yeah I just moved to Camarillo. And my shy self was screaming in my head “OMG I live in Camarillo too!!!” then I proceeded to actually say it out loud and started talking about Cam-town and it turns out we are neighbors! So cool! So we went to lunch a couple weeks later and she’s so nice, and giving, and helpful! It’s so fabulous to have someone in your same town that can be your friend and fellow photographer so you can talk shop too! (I’m just realizing there are way too many “!!!” in this post. I’ll try to pare it down in the future but I’m just too excited in this post!)

Then after that something else REALLY exciting happened but I’ll have to wait to post on that till I have the physical evidence to show you. Hehehe.

Then my new friend, Jen, and I went down to the Truth or Dare Tour with Dane Sanders, Robert Evans, Sara France, and Carlos Baez. It was fabulous! Robert shot Brad and Jen’s wedding and Tom and Katie’s wedding and he showed us some pics of TomKat’s wedding that were published in Europe but not here so that was cool to see! Sara was the cutest thing ever and she’s works a lot with Apple which would be so cool! I’m an Apple geek. I can’t wait to use some of the tricks she showed us when I have clients! Carlos was hilarious! OMG! The big joke was that he has a gay stylist and trust me you can tell! Too cute. I would love to just sit and have a meal with that guy one day. And then Dane finished up the evening and he was great! I had already read his book Fast Track Photographer which is an amazing book for photographers. My only comment to Dane is STOP GIVING IT AWAY FOR FREE!!! Everywhere I go I’m being offered a free PDF of his book. It’s too good to be given away! He deserves some scrilla for the work he did on that baby! And as a presenter he was awesome! Such a good guy with a big heart.

That evening Jen and I went to dinner with Jen’s friend, Scarlett Lillian. Dinner was fabulous and at a very fabulous restaurant at the LAX Sheraton. (More to come on Scarlett, keep reading…this technique is called a “teaser”)

THEN I went to PartnerCon. I guess you are technically supposed to be a member to go but I kind of snuck in. I mean I paid and all. But I didn’t have a “studio ID” so I just went the morning of the conference and had a girl put in a fake studio ID so I could register. Hey they still got the money! And I will probably be a member in the very near future, especially considering that their sales reps keep calling.

I was pretty intimidated to be at PartnerCon. I think there were like 300 photographers and here I am without even a business card or a website or anything! Even though I was pretty shy everyone was so nice and welcoming. Especially Scarlett!!! I tagged along with her as much as I could because she was the only person I sort of knew, but she was so great to me. She introduced to me to many people (including THE Jessica Claire!) and let me eat lunch with her and sit with her at a couple of the meetings. I met many photographers that were so nice and jumped to give advice to a newbie. I think I’m going to really like being in a community like this! I see nothing but good times ahead…

But wait! There’s more! This is getting to be a LONG post, but I’m making up for 1.5 months!

Nate Kaiser of The Image is Found glory announced his next Shootshops and I got in! He sold out in 24 hours, but because I am a loyal stalker I got in just in the nick of time. More on Nate in another post…again a teaser to try and get my readers to come back to me. October 29th I will be in Oceanside, CA to get learned good.

And to finish this post off…another workshop that I will be attending… The Love Affair Workshop. It will be in November at the W Hotel in San Diego. It will be a whole week with Lauren Clark (we have the same color dining room), Millie Holloman, Kelly Moore, and Davina Fear. There will be a lot of estrogen and I was a little worried but in talking to my new friend, Scarlett, I discovered that she has gone to one of their past workshops and said it will be great for me! Stoked!

Ok, I’m done now. Oh and I almost forgot…Scarlett put pics of me on her blog! Coolest thing ever? I think so!!!

4 comments:

Scarlett Lillian // Jacksonville Senior Photographer said...

LOLOL. Crack me up! It was awesome to meet you and I'm glad I could help. I think you have a bright future ahead of you Amanda!

RobertEvans.com/Blog said...

Hey Amanda,

Thanks for the nice words about the Total Truth Tour, we all had a great time and are happy you liked it so much. I am headed off to Florida to shoot a wedding and will also be shooting with Scarlett while i am there for Photographymentor.com, she is awesome.....

Thanks again for your nice blog post.

Robert Evans

Dane Sanders said...

Right on Amanda!

What's a guy got to do to get on the shelf of yours :)?

Amanda said...

@Dane Sanders...apparently you need to talk to the powers that be at Shelfari...I couldn't find your book in their database to add to my shelf :( I'll keep checking to see if they add it.