Join us for Photo Talk Plus EP5 with Colby Brown Tonight!

At January 4, 2012
By Lotus, aka Sarcastic Mom
In Google+, Photo Talk Plus, Photography
1

Join us tonight at 8PM PST on The Vidcast Network for Episode 5 of Photo Talk Plus. You can also watch live via the “On Air” Hangout feature on cohost Thomas Hawk’s profile (refresh around showtime to see it appear). Our special guest tonight is Colby Brown, a very talented, professional fine art landscape, travel, and humanitarian photographer. You won’t want to miss out on the interview with him and find out what makes him tick, how he finds time for all his projects and efforts (like The Giving Lens), and what kind of processing secrets he has. And maybe whether he ever sleeps.

As always, we’ll be discussing popular photography topics from Google+ from the previous week with our guest and our panelists. Joining us this week are Google+ Community Manager Natalie Villalobos, Photographers Michael Seneschal and Anna Nguyen, and our Videocast Broadcaster Extraordinaire Keith Barrett. Thanks to our sponsors who support us and offer fantastic services and products to photographers: SmugMug and Drobo.

We’d love to have you there LIVE at 8PM PST – the discussion threads on G+ and Chat Room at Vidcast are great places to hang out while you watch the show so you can talk to other photographers, make new contacts, and of course ask questions you want answered during the second hour of the broadcast!

See you there!

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Photo of Colby by Scott Jarvie of Jarvie Digital
Find him on Google+:
Scott Jarvie
Jarvie Digital

Dancing With Me, Cheek To Cheek

Photo Talk Plus EP4 with Special Guest Trey Ratcliff

At December 29, 2011
By Lotus, aka Sarcastic Mom
In Google+, Photo Talk Plus, Photography, Video
0

What a great episode of Photo Talk Plus last night with special guest Trey Ratcliff of Stuck in Customs. I’ve grown to respect Trey a lot over this past year. We are all very complex human beings, but it’s really great when someone so talented and interesting opens themselves up on so many different levels and shares such a wide range of information. I really appreciate how much Trey contributes to the photographic community and admire how personal and open he is about most everything about himself. Check out the video above if you missed the live show last night!

Thanks so much to our panelists Chris Chabot Brian Matiash of OnOne Software (and he gave away a copy of Photo Suite 6 to one of our viewers!), and +Lili Ana, and to our awesome tech-guy Keith Barrett of Vidcast Network @ http://vidcastnetwork.com. It’s been such a pleasure to be able to get groups of photographers together and do these shows. It’s so exciting for fellow host Thomas Hawk and myself when we see people in the chat room and the hangout threads asking questions, and when we hear that others are enjoying this, too!

Special thanks to our awesome sponsors, SmugMug @ http://smugmug.com and Drobo @http://drobo.com These are two companies we believe in personally and we appreciate their support!

Join Us TONIGHT for a very special episode of Photo Talk Plus with special Guest Trey Ratcliff, 8PM PST

At December 28, 2011
By Lotus, aka Sarcastic Mom
In Google+, Photo Talk Plus, Photography
0

Please join Thomas Hawk and myself tonight live for an interview with Trey Ratcliff! Tonight’s broadcast will be LIVE at the Vidcast Network and LIVE on Thomas’s Google+ stream with the new Hangouts On Air feature. Learn more about Trey’s unique photography, outlook on life, and how he has been able to build one of the most successful photography businesses on the planet today with Stuck In Customs.

Tonight’s panelists include Google’s Chris Chabot, Brian Matiash from onOne Software Lili Ana and Vidcast Network’s Keith Barrett.

In addition to tonight’s interview with Trey Ratcliff we’ll also discuss some of the top Google+ photography related stories of the past week including the upcoming Google+ Photography Book being curated by Ivan Makarov as well as the upcoming Google+ Scavenger Hunt curated by Chrysta Rae. We’ll also take questions from the chat room directly for Trey so come prepared to learn more about what makes Trey tick.

One lucky viewer tonight will also win a copy of onOne Software’s Perfect Photo Suite.

This will be an episode you won’t want to miss.

As always thank you to our +Photo Talk Plus show sponsors SmugMug and Drobo for helping to bring you more great Google+ photography interviews live each week. Check them out here at SmugMug and Drobo.

If you’ve missed our first three episodes you can watch any of them here.

The show is also available as a Podcast now on iTunes.

Merry Christmas To All And To All A Good Night

At December 24, 2011
By Lotus, aka Sarcastic Mom
In Happiness, My Son, Photoblog, Photography
3

You Slipped Away Before I Ever Got To Hold You

There’s a little something that pulls at my heart this time of year.

I don’t talk about this stuff very much any more. I talked and talked and talked about it a lot for awhile. I even mentioned it a few straggling times once I’d mostly grown quiet about it. A lot of friends and strangers questioned my resistance to healing. I don’t know if this is just something about me, an excessive emotionality that disallows me from ever really letting go of the deepest pains.

Maybe everyone is like this. Maybe you are. Maybe you aren’t.

It still hurts me at this time of year when I think about the babies who are not here, the one who was due on Christmas Eve, the one who quietly died in my womb in December and then had to be removed. Two of my kids won’t get presents from Santa this month, nothing to do with being naughty. They just didn’t make it. They never had a chance to be naughty. They slipped away before I ever had a chance to hold either of them.

I’ve always loved Christmas. I still do. But this little something pulls at my heart now too. It’s a melancholy kind of joy I feel nowadays during the holidays.

I choose to feel the happiness of the season, because most of the time, I do have a choice.

But when the tears come, I let them take over for awhile. That’s a choice, too. A mostly healthy one, I think, regardless of what anyone else might believe. When they dry up again, I hold onto all the joy I can find, and while I let the pain visit, the joy is where I remind myself to dwell.

May you all find the greatest joys and dwell in them for the rest of this year and into the New Year. xo