I saw these COOL new flexible books from PICTAGE at WPPI in VEGAS!!! Then, I got an email a month or so ago that they were FINALLY available!! So, being the product obsessed person that I am, I had to order myself a few samples!! I’m a FAN of these books!!! So, they are technically WILLOWBOOK PROOF BOOKS and in the proof product category on Pictage, but you can really make them into whatever kind of book you want, depending on the images you put into them!! I’m going to offer them as parent books or mini books!! The 5×5 comes standard with 100 images! LOVE that! They also do a hard cover book, which is cool! I’m a fan of the flexible soft cover books, though…and I’m offering them in th 5×5 and 7×7!! You can choose different options for the look of the book, such as cover design, page design, font, color and more!! CHECK the new BOOKS out!!

I found this cute little site with custom camera straps!! They are fun and I’m a girl who loves fun stuff….it just makes life better! I also love color (if you haven’t noticed!)…so I thought these were great!! I also heard that she adds more all the time! I guess she had some super fun damask patterns and is adding more dots & stripes in soon!! I also heard that she will use any custom ribbon that you find to create your custom strap! Fun stuff!!! Check them out! http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=102997

So, I found this GREAT new product and I just had to share it with you! It’s a PICTAGE product, so SORRY if you aren’t with Pictage and go ahead and TUNE OUT now! It’s their new product, the COMPANION BOOK! I just sort of noticed it for the first time when placing an album order the other day! Then, I ordered some to just give them a try and turns out that THEY ARE GREAT!!! They are these little 4×5 (if you had a rectangular album) or 5×5 (if you had a square album) soft cover albums that are just a perfect duplicate of your original album! They have this awesome, modern pearlescent silver cover with a clean modern font with the names on the cover. I find that it’s very challenging to find products that are just very simple and clean without alot of fluffy or pretty stuff…and I love that this is just super simple, but VERY COOL! The pages are actually SUPER impressive!! They are cmyk, but they look REALLY good! You also buy these albums in lots of 10, 20 or more! I think they are GREAT!! CHECK THEM OUT!!!! How convenient that I happened to do the sample of these in the same album I featured on the album design post!!

So, you are going to think this cheesy, but I just need you to TRUST me on this one!! As of last year, I started receiving these PHOTOVISION DVD’s in the mail…and I would just let them stack up in the “come back to this later” pile of stuff!! Well, a month or so ago, I was organizing things and came to this collection of PHOTOVISION DVD’s and decided to throw one in and see what it was all about, while I was finishing my organizing! Seriously, before I knew it, I was to the fourth DVD and hadn’t taken my eyes off of it and it was like 2 in the morning and I’d been watching them since late afternoon! They are GREAT and packed with AWESOME stuff!!

In my first few DVD’s, I got to watch Jeff & Julia Woods do an amazing wedding in California and get a tour of their uber cool new studio, got to watch Marcus Bell do an awesome city shoot, watched Sandy Puc shoot some awesome portraiture in her daylight studio and got to see Vicki Taufer work her magic in this amazing vacant warehouse building she uses for shooting! I was seriously inspired and had no idea that these DVD’s that I had been letting stack up were SOO GREAT!!!! They also do studio tours, do demo’s of new products such as the new versions of photoshop, lightroom, etc! It’s really fantastic and I had no idea until I watched one!! It’s $150 a year for 6 DVD’s that have at least 5 different features, per DVD! If you are renewing, it’s only $35 a year!! CHECK IT OUT!!!

that I LOVE THE new PHOTOSHOP CS3 with BRIDGE and ADOBE CAMERA RAW!??? Well, I DO!! I use ACR for all of my editing and have REALLY been wanting them to make some changes to it, for some time now….and FINALLY, they did!!! You NOW have the ability to control saturation in LOTS of ways, which I LOVE LOVE LOVE!! You can control the vibrancy and saturation, then pull the saturation from certain colors…which is really helpful! There are also lots of different brightness features, such as a fill light slider and a recovery slider. You also have have a built in healing tool and cloning tool, which is SOOO fantastic! It’s also fast and has TONS of great new and updated features!!! I just LOVE LOVE LOVE it!!! I have yet to really see what’s new on CS3, but I’m sure it’s pretty rockin’ TOO!! CHECK IT OUT!!!

So, I’m stealing this directly from the PHOTOGRAPHERS OFFICE BLOG…but it’s a SUPER cool application that is REALLY helpful for MAC users!! it’s called WHATSIZE and it sorts out each section of your harddrive and tells you how much size is being taken up by each area, the folders within that area and so on! It puts the folder or item using the MOST space, at the top of the list and hilighted, so you can easily see the ranking of where the space is being used! I just cleared a TON of space because I had NO idea that certain areas where using soo MUCH space!! Seriously…I went from using 68Gigs to 28Gigs and it was all just useless stuff that I wasn’t paying attention to!! This thing ROCKS!!!! Thanks to the PHOTOG OFFICE BLOG for the tip!!! You NEED TO CHECK IT OUT!!!

Wow…so while doing a quick session of blog stalking the other day, I noticed that Becker mentioned a product that I used to use waaay back when called PHOTO MECHANIC by CAMERA BITS. It’s an image browsing, sorting, tagging and more kind of program…and while it was great when I used it, I just moved onto other programs with the course of time.

So, when Becker mentioned that he rediscovered it and was SUPER impressed, I thought I should maybe check it out again, as well! So, I downloaded the demo and WOW….it’s a GREAT program and I really love it. I use (or should I say, used to use) Bridge for viewing, rough editing, sorting, tagging, color coding, etc….but it was known for being slow at times….and when I opened a folder of raw images with PHOTO MECHANIC, I was blown away at the speed of it!! For rough editing, NOTHING is faster!! TRY IT OUT!!!

They seem to be ALL the rage right now and while I haven’t really found the right opportunity to utilize them, I do think they are COOL!!! I’ve seen them in everything from textures over images to image borders to being used a full patterns for backgrounds of whatever nature! So, I found a GREAT source for TONS of brushes!! SEISHIDO!! http://seishido.biz/seishido.html!! They pretty much have everything from the UBER trendy OLD FASHIONED DAMASK WALL PAPER patterns, to words, to seasonal stuff! It’s cool!! Check it out! (Here are two examples when I used brushes…for a Christmas card!)

So, I found this site a while ago and I think it’s worth sharing!! It’s called WONDERFUL GRAFFITI and they do custom designs made into vinyl clinger things that are stickable, removable and movable! They call it GRAFFITI and I think it’s pretty cool! I recently saw a wedding where they made a cool “graffiti” logo with their names in a very modern font and affixed them to various mirrors/walls in the reception venue. It sounds a little cheesy but it was actually very cool! What I like about it is that you could make your logo and affix it to various things….i.e…the entry wall of your studio, under any large prints or canvases you have on display or in your studio, on items for displays at bridal shows, shows you are having in a gallery…or anywhere and in any way that you can imagine! Then…you can pull it off when you are done with it and move it somewhere else!! They also have a full wedding website, www.wonderfulgraffitiwedding.com so TELL YOUR BRIDES and lots of stuff that is just plain cool…for your house! Here are a few examples!

Soo, as many of you have heard, the UBER cool JESSICA CLAIRE is introducing her own line of PHOTOBAGS, called the SHOOTSAC!! (keep your name comments to yourself…we’ve already heard them all!!) Her BIG DEBUT was at WPPI in VEGAS, last week…and she was a HUGE HIT!!!! I will admit, I was a bit skeptical at first because the bag almost looked TOOO simple (I thought I was just an open messenger bag)…BUT, when I saw the bag in PERSON, I realized that it was NOT what I thought but INSTEAD…..EXACTLY what I have been searching for, for a LONG TIME!!!

It’s NOT an open messenger bag, but it DOES give that impression from the front, which is GREAT…and not to “LOOK AT ME I’M A PHOTOGRAPHER”ish. Once you open the stylish, fully customizable cover flap, you REVEAL a 6 lens slotted, open top, flexible & soft, body hugging neoprene shooting bag, aka a SHOOTSAC!!

Now, you would PROBABLY NOT want to put 6 lenses in it, as that would be heavy and annoying, BUT…..you WOULD want to put your three or four FAV lenses up from, then use the back compartments for batteries, cf cards,

business cards and more….and have yourself an ALL YOU NEED bag!!! I was MOST surprised by how much I LOVED the way it FIT on me. Jess gave me a bag to try on and it had three lenses in it, including the DADDY of all lenses, the 70-200….so it was full and would have seemed HEAVY……and it fit GREAT, totally HUGGED by hip and would have been PERFECT for shooting!! I LOVED IT!! Order yours AS SOON AS YOU CAN! You are going to LOVE IT!! I cannot wait to get mine!! Thanks for thinking of us, JESS and creating this super FAB BAG….YOU ROCK!