J Sandifer ROCKED the CT PUG!!

J Sandifer was so awesome to come down from Maine and speak to our PUG a couple weeks back (can't believe we're just getting around to posting about this now) and he ROCKED the house!! We had by far our largest turnout yet- 54 PHOTOGRAPHERS!- and everyone was so blown away by J. He talked all about how to get the most out of our websites and then ended the night by giving away one FREE website and a $500 gift certificate for another one!

We met J this past May at the Chicago PartnerCon and he has quickly become one of our absolute favorite people in the industry. You will not find a more genuine, kind, generous heart around. He's just one of those people you instantly fall in love with and hope to know for a very loooong time. We love you J!!!

Here are some fun pics of the night's festivities stolen from the adorable Joy Moody's blog...who also was the big winner of the night!



us, Joy, and J

Miami Pug, Christmas (12-16)

Better late then never.

The Miami Pug Holiday Party was held at our home. As you can see, we are definitely a family affair down here. Lot's of children, lot's of food, and lot's of laughs.

Thank you everyone for coming. I know not everyone is in the photograph, but a few had to leave early, sorry we missed you.

My wife Alison wants to thank everyone also for bringing so much food, we had left overs for days. Our son Carson had so many kids to play with, he was thrilled. See you next year, or at WPPI too.

Raleigh NC PUG Group

We have been averaging about 10 people at each of our PUG meeting and at just 5 months old, I was pretty happy. This past week we met at a different time of the month because New Years Day fell during our regular meeting time. Justin & Mary Marantz came out to talk to our group and I advertised the meeting in advance through email, we had a SUPER turnout. I believe there were 21 of use total (OUR BIGGEST PUG GROUP YET!). One guy said he had no idea what he walked into or what PUG meant and at the end of the meeting he told me how much fun he had and that he would be back.

I feel like we are finally beginning to establish good relationships with one another in the group and just this week we started up a nice email dialogue with our opinions on what someone in the group was dealing with. I am also working to get some things lined up in advance because I find we have better attendance when we advertise what we will be discussing in advance. In Feb we will be given a demonstration of Lightroom by Elizabeth, who is a PUG group member and in March we will have a CPA come out and chat about taxes and what we are doing right or wrong. I am excited about the relationships we are building and our growth over the last 5 months.

We have several people driving in from 1-2 hours away to be with us.

Justin and Mary did an awesome job and I continue to hear how much they inspired everyone in the room. Here are a few shots I grabbed at the meeting, Justin actually asked our waiter Bo to grab the group shot. A neat little note: Bo has been our waiter has served us since we started and he even came in on his night off to wait on us this week... We love him!

SB UGLY SWEATER HOLIDAY PARTY!

IT'S BETTER LATE THEN NEVER! Sorry I'm just now posting about our holiday party. I finally have some down time after the holidays.

We had a great night at DJ's amazing ocean view home. We usually only have 5-8 people at each PUG, but I knew if we had it at DJ's house, we'd have a great turnout. I think throughout the night, we probably had close to 40 people there. We had great food, drinks and some even enjoyed the hot tub overlooking the ocean!

We set up a "photobooth" and got some fun shots of everyone.

Unfortunately most of the people thought they were too cool for the "Ugly Sweater" theme, so myself and a couple others were the only ones dressed like dorks! :)

A big thanks to Pictage for driving all the way up here to join us for our party!!!

Philly January PUG

Well we started off with a nice little group of 6 people

I asked the group what they wanted from our meetings and if they had ideas for topics

An insight from a friend who never has attended a meeting said that he felt like the invitations needed to really express community and the building of a strong network and the offering of a strong network

It is good to hear from others because I thought I had expressed the goals of the monthly meetings in the evite but now know that others are not feeling it. Does anyone have suggestions for expressing the strength and opportunities we will have if we build a strong community? I think the people who attend on a regular basis feel this but we need to do more to attract more.

On another note:

some ideas our group came up with:

- have a panel discussion with other people in our industry- videographers, florsits, planners, caterers
-do a lighting demo
-exchanging "press packets", what we send and give to clients who meet with us
-have someone do demos on retouching - skin retouching, thinning people out, removing objects etc
-posing demo- ways to work with heavier clients or awkward clients to get the most out of their portrait
-accountant to come in and talk about tax stuff
-pricing seminar
-model shoot, workshop
-SEO, blog and website design


anyone have good ideas for topics?

Philly/NJ PUG part 2

Yeah, we had a really great time. Here are those pics from the photo booth.

Philly/NJ PUG Holiday Party

We had our holiday party last night. While we did not have near the showing we would have liked the people that did show up had a blast. We bowled two games, had lots to eat and drink and were very merry. It was a great time had by all.

Here I am concentrating hard, straight down the middle! I am not good at bowling.

Heather Fowler showing her stuff

Ryan Estes, master bowler.

Sofia Negron and her sparkley ball.

Chris, who won both games and was very nonchalant about the whole thing. He was good.

Ryan again, a full succession depicting his true form of bowling.

Los Angeles, OC & Clairmont Holiday Party!

Los Angeles, Orange County and Clairmont PUGs had our holiday party at the very cool Life on Wilshire. The party went from 7:30 to 11:30pm... it was great!

One of my PUG members, Zephrine Hanson, came up to me as she was leaving just to tell me how much she has appreciated the monthly meetings. She told me that not only has she really grown in her business because of them, but the community that Pictage and the PUGs has provided her as a photographer has been invaluable. Hearing her say that made me so happy!!



PUG leaders Lauren Hillary, Julie Weaver & Jules Bianchi



The party people!!!

Phoenix PUG Holiday Party!

Last night was the PUG Holiday party! So fun!! This concludes our second year together meeting monthly as a community. I've made so many great friends through this group and continue to meet new ones! Phoenix has so many amazing photographers who are also great people and I feel so blessed to know many of them.

Here's a fun group photo. Everyone got together and hung out in this pose for about 10 minutes while Tod ran out to his car to get AA batteries for my flash. I got a good lesson in being prepared!



Melissa Jill :)

PGH PUG Holiday Party Recap: 12.04.2007

Wow! We had a blast! Thanks soooooooooo much, to Pictge for having PUGs in the first place, and for supporting us throughout the year and with the party! It was a blast!

The usual suspects came: (left to right in the photo) Sommer and Mike Purvis, Terry Clark, Kelly Crawford, Kim Reed, Dana Scheller, Melody Farrin, Tony Araujo, Karen and me. Buca di Beppo was our choice for our dinner; re pleat with great food and even a Baritone-singing waiter! It was full of great conversations, lots of laughter a few toasts for success in the new year and lots of conversation about how we wouldn't know what we'd do without the great services and products Pictage provides us.

Honestly, it was so nice to relax and enjoy each others company, talk a little shop and laugh and let our hair down it made me wish we could do it all the time. OH! Wait; we DO do this all the time! Every month at our PUG meetings!

A BIG thanks goes out to Pictage for supporting us through our second year of PUG gatherings. It's my pleasure to be involved in such a great community with such great shooters on the local and national levels.

On to 2008 with continued and abundant success for all of us!

Best, Joanne

Just a Little Bit Crazy

I'm not much of a blogger. My wife, Whitney, takes care of our studio blog page. However, I would like to share an activity of the TN PUG group.

A few months back we spent the evening at Lifetime Portraits. As our local topic, we were supposed to take head shots of each other. As you can see, things did not really go as planned. We had a lot of fun and learned a little from each other in the process. We were also reminded what it was like to be on “the other side” of the camera.

- peter

Peter Carlson - Dove Wedding Photography

Whitney Carlson - Dove Wedding Photography

Mindy & Phil Thornton - Thornton Photo

David Pavol & David Wright

The Gang

Pittsburgh PUG Holiday GetToGether!

It's that time of the year, the holidays, and the end to our 2007 season. I hope everyone had a great year - let's talk about it!

We are having our 2nd Annual PUG Holiday GetToGether:
WHEN: Tuesday, December 4th
TIME: 6:30 PM
WHERE: Station Square / Buca di Beppo
LINK: http://www.bucadibeppo.com/locations/location.aspx?location=3802

As a PUG member, please feel free to bring your significant other and another photographer who may not be a member of our PUG - let's get them into the fold!

Pictage is expensing $150 for us to cover expenses for our GTG - WHICH IS GREAT OF THEM!...be sure to tell them so and thank them for it...so, I'll probably be asking that everyone chip in maybe $20+ bucks per person to help me cover the remaining costs after the Pictage contribution, depending on the final bill, of course.

Wanna hang out after our meal? Weather permitting, we could go to the ice rink in PPG plaza, or see the window decorations at Macy's, or head out for more celebrating, if you know what I mean ;-) !

I'm really looking forward to some relaxing, so drag another shooter along and I'll see you there!

Best, Joanne

Knoxville PUG Christmas Party Info

Location:
Oodles18 Market Square, Knoxville, TN 37902 US
When: Thursday, December 13, 6:00PM
Cost:$30 per person


It's that time of year again!!! Time for us all to get together and celebrate!We have planned a great party to take place in downtown Knoxville at Oodles in Market Square. We have reserved the Green Room, so come and enjoy a fun and relaxing time with your peers as we reflect on 2007 and look forward to 2008.

MENU
Homemade Foccacia Bread w/ Herbed Olive Oil
Choice of House Salad w/ Balsamic Dressing or Caesar Salad
Choice of Entree: Iron Skillet Ribeye, Morocan Braised Chicken, Wild Mushroom Pasta or Fresh Fish of the Day
Choice of Beverage (alcohol can be purchased separately)
Choice of Dessert: Classic Tiramisu or Holiday Spiced Cheesecake

Cost: $30 per person
RSVP and payment is required by December 1

After dinner, you can even enjoy some shopping in Market Square or we can all have fun skating around the ice rink! I hope you all can join us!!! I look forward to celebrating with you!

Jamie Weiss
(865) 233-2257
jamie@jamieweiss.com

Philly November PUG

We had our November Philly PUG today and I filled in for Sofia who got a job at the last minute. We had a great time at Josh Gardner's Studio. Josh went over Lightroom and I think everyone learned something they didn't know about it today. We talked about the new products that Pictage wants to roll out in 2008, everyone was on board with the canvas prints, but nobody wants the client to be able to order them. There was concern about quality control and packaging though.
Everyone was on board to allowing their clients to purchase framed prints on Pictage of any size.
We covered a lot of Pictage topics and I have a ton of feedback to share. We also talked about what we would like to cover in future meetings. These topics are:
copyright issues
accounting/book keeping
insurance
marketing

There may be a few more I am not thinking of at the moment. But those are all great topics. So I think we will work on covering them, bringing people in to talk. I would like to try and get someone in from ASMP to talk to us.

I believe we are going to combine the New Jersey and Philadelphia PUGs for the holiday party. I have to chat with Laura but I think Dec 13th is the day set for Philly. We are going to have it at North Bowl, an awesome retro bowling alley in the hip neighborhood of The Northern Liberties. Should be a lot of fun.

-Joy

Coming to a PUG near you!! :)

Hey guys!

Justin and I are going to be visiting some PUGs this winter to talk about relationships and how important they are for our businesses, especially our relationships with other photographers and how amazing PUG is for that!! We're trying to figure out the schedule and where all we're gonna be able to go, so if any of you leaders think that's something you'd be interested in for your group please feel free to shoot us an email at justin@imagine-imaging and we'll see if we can get it set up. It would be such a HUGE help in trying to figure all this out! Serioulsy, thank you guys SO much in advance! I feel so blessed by all of you that I already know and I can't wait to meet even more of you!

xoxo
Mary:)