PUG Shootout.

Last month, the illustrious members of the Asheville PUG grabbed a stunningly beautiful couple, and took them downtown for some photography fun.

A little competition is always good for the community, so most of the photographers involved have sent me their 5 favorite images from the evening.

Without further ado, the entries!

****Everyone has been so curious about who the images belong to, so I have gone through and added in the photographers' names next to the images. Congratulations to Dana whose image that she bled for won! She had multiple wounds on her legs from climbing the chain link fence to get up there. Congratulations to Jason Tench who won 2nd place and by default will have his image on display at Pictage's Partner Conference in Los Angeles. A special THANK YOU to Amber Holritz who took the time to be the mediator and rode a Greyhound bus to get to the meeting. - regina*****
1 - Jeremy



2 - McNabb



3 - McNabb



4 - Jeremy



5 - Jeremy



6 - McNabb



7 - McNabb



8 - McNabb



9 - Jeremy



10 - Jeremy



11 - Erica



12 - Regina



13 - Regina



14 - Regina



15 - Jason



16 - Regina



17 - Jason - 2nd Place



18 - Dana



19 - Dana - First Place! Congratulations!



20 - Dana



21 - Dana



22 - Erica



23 - Erica



24 - Erica



25 - Erica



26 - Cagle



27 - Cagle



28 - Cagle



29 - Cagle



30 - Cagle



31 - Regina



32 - Dana



33 - Jason



34 - Jason



35 - Jason



Email your vote to amber@holritzphotography.com. You MAY NOT vote for yourself!!! See you Tuesday night!

amber

april PUG meeting

We held our monthly Pictage User Group meeting on Tuesday night. Corey McNabb was our studio spotlight and he did a presentation of his work and talked about his business. Corey has been named one of the top 100 photographers in the country and is a recent first place and multi-award winner at WPJA (Wedding Photojournalist Association). He also recently studied with Mike Colon in Newport Beach, CA and is a member of the Grace Ormonde 5-Star Directory. Several of Corey's friends came to show their support and two of his brides and his wife joined us at Carraba's for dinner. Then, a few of us went to Corey's studio until the wee hours of the morning and he showed us how to use Lightroom. We have been teasing Corey that he is on every photographer's blog that attended the big WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) conference in Las Vegas. Michael gave him the new name McBlogStar. Corey had over 600 hits to his blog and most of them came from other photographer's blogs linked to his.

Tara, Jill, Corey and his wife Jill













Corey with former brides Laura Tolle and Tara Jordan













Regina and Dana













Michael, Corey Cagle and her husband, Billy













Laura and Troy Tolle, with Tony McCune of Digital Chalk, Tara, and Jill Schwarzkopf.

Officially a PUG - no longer "Puppy" group

I got exciting news from Pictage! Our "Puppy PUG" has been officially moved up to a full PUG. We are the first of the groups that they started this winter to move up. This means we will be a target for Pictage speakers and have a $100 credit to raffle at each meeting.

Thank you all so much for attending the meetings and making us the first group to move up!

If anyone has topics they want to discuss, please let me know. I also need volunteers for studio spotlights.

March PUG meeting - guest speakers Nathan and Amber Holritz

For the March meeting, we had 17 photographers get together and guest speakers Nathan and Amber Holritz came from Chattanooga. Nathan and Amber are amazing photographers and great speakers. Nathan is so super organized and has transformed their business into a paperless office. He spoke a lot on the concepts from the book "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. Warren Sanders won a free copy! Amber seriously rocks on the baby portraits! She is definitely one of the best in the business.

The management tool that Nathan has designed is called Photographers's Office. Right now, it is an online only but will soon be relaunched as a stand alone application.

website: www.photographersoffice.com

blog: www.photographersoffice.net

Here are some of the links that Nathan referred to:

SyncMyCal - synchronizes iCal, Google and Outlook calendars.

SimulScribe - service takes voicemails and converts them to emails

GotVMail - virtual phone system, makes small businesses sound big, also sends voicemails to email

A lot of the group went to dinner together at Carraba's after the meeting and then a few of us went to play pool. We all want to say a big "THANK YOU" to the Holritz for their time and generosity. Please check out the amazing photos on their blog, too!

Please note: All of these photos are from a point and shoot camera!

Corey McNabb, Corey's office manager, Jeremy Russell and Christopher Record

Jason Tench and Dana Andreasson

Terry Hopkins, Lisa and Warren from Blue Moon Portraits with Nathan.

Jason Tench and Regina Holder

Honour Hiers and associate Aimie Cook, with Honour's baby and Corey McNabb

Corey Cagle, Jason, Christopher, Corey, Nathan and Terry

Michael Juiliano and wife, Sue

Dana Andreasson and Brady Linkous
Regina and Amber

Corey Cagle, Nathan, Amber, Corey McNabb and Regina!