So in tune with Britt’s 36 in 365 mentioned in the last post, I decided to do my own list, so that my friends, family, and clients can hold me completely accountable if I don’t try to do everything on this list. I’m not totally sure if I can come up with 36 or even 33 as she did in her follow up for 2012. I think I probably have way more personal goals than business ones, but I ended up trying to even things out a bit with the most important ones.

By no means do I have any one of these in any sort of order, some of them are long term goals that have melded over from 2011…yikes.

Business Goals

1. Combine all of my sites into ONE.  I’ve heard the horrid stories about not keeping certain aspects of personal life separate but I’m willing to go out on a limb and just combine everything that is well…me, into one place.
2. Expand, I’d really like to hire out some help after the new site launch early this year.
3. Home office makeover. I’ve been needing to drive that 4 hour trip to Ikea for some time, and I’m dying to get a love seat in my office so I can make this coffee table to go along with it.
4. Spring clean the home office. Like..legit spring clean. Watching episodes of hoarding: buried alive has just made me even more not clingy with things I don’t need.
5. Expand out of my comfort zone. This isn’t something new I haven’t tried. My design type tends to be more minimalist and I’d like to step out of bounds for a bit and try some new styles.
6. Start using other means of communication. I really want to get into video chatting and skyping for 2012. I’ve offered it, but not pushed it enough. I think that should take the custom work to another level that I need to be at.
7. Video tutorials and tips. This is something I wanted to do last year, but didn’t have the means or the time to devote to it properly.
8. I want to start pushing some guest design work, articles, tips and overall more goodwill towards photographers and designers alike for the blog.
9. Finally going to order those press-printed business cards I’ve always wanted.
10. I haven’t had a laptop in about 4 years, I think it’s about time I break down and get a new one or a tablet for on the go leisure or working (is that a good thing?!)

Lifestyle Goals

11. For years I was taking pictures and getting an album printed of my chihuahua as a Christmas present to my wife.  He’s definitely the child we’ll never be able to have,  and last year he got a companion and I’ve yet to publish another book for us since 2009. I have to keep this tradition going for 2012.
12. I’ve been renting for 9 years, and moved twice. I’m ready to own something I can sink my own hands into. Buying a house should probably be numero uno on this list.
13. Take way more vacation time for me and my wife, and definitely more time for reflection and to take better care of myself, being overworked takes a huge toll on anyone.
14. I want to paint at least two very large paintings. I miss mixed art mediums.
15. Take at least one major camping/kayaking trip.
16. Visit my aunt and uncle in Alaska + take eleventy billion pictures.
17. I know my wife hates getting pictures of her taken :p but I would really like some new pictures for family and for ourselves.
18. Take more time to make friends and visit with old ones.
19.  See a Blink-182 or Angels and Airwaves Live Concert.
20.  Write, star and direct a short film.

Wow I can’t believe  in just a little while it will be Christmas! I’m wondering why I’m still working this late. :p

So the year is almost over, and with that comes great reflection. It’s time to see what I accomplished, my mistakes and weak points, and what’s to come for next year. I really enjoyed getting to read about Promise Tangeman’s idea for self reflection, along with the 36 goals of 365 project from BrittCroft. Very inspirational and definitely something to look forward to the upcoming year. I’m not one to get overly excited about new years eve or even setup “resolutions” but I do strive to improve myself and my business.

Unfortunately at the time it’s still really only me doing everything at H2, but next year I will be merging into La Lune  and working with someone that can help me push the design business in a new direction to consolidate well…everything. Here’s just a few of some important things from 2011.

Accomplishments

I’d say over the 2011 year I accomplished quite a bit, I worked with Pro Photo for months beta testing Pro Photo 4 which finally went to launch a few months ago, what an undertaking and definitely something I’m excited to continue to do! Not only that but I launched the new H2 site which was also being done in tandem with P4 to launch in the same week. I’m kinda disappointed that I have to see the design go, as the merger will have something completely new and fresh and I’m hoping to nail down the design so there won’t be much more switching from here on out. Have I mentioned it’s not a good thing for designers or photographers to keep changing branding and site designs? Because it’s not. :p I worked hard to release new templates in the months since P4 has released and continue to release them on a regular basis, I’m excited to be able to ramp that production up for next year. I also launched over 40 custom blog designs for clients this year, a huge undertaking, though I was overbooked am proud to have done so much. :)

Weak Points and Evaluation

I’ve been in the Pro Photo design business for over 2 years now, you would think I would be able to figure this all out, but unfortunately unlike photography it’s taking me longer to figure out the ins and outs of client work, which is completely different than photography clients. Plus I could be doing this until the day I die and still keep learning on how to improve and do it all better. :) I ran a photography business for 6 years until this year when health issues forcibly made me give it up just recently. There’s some good and bad to that, shooting weddings every month and doing custom designs I was overbooked and overworked on didn’t help either business in the long run. Regardless of having to quit and didn’t want to, I’m glad I’m being pushed into a direction that I’m supposed to be going and I’m happy to be moving on. :) Some of the things I learned…I way WAY overbooked myself, which is why I’m still not taking any custom blogs. I overbooked myself for months, I’ve since caught up but at this point I’m not taking anyone new to take a break. This area needs some more reflection to get figured out before moving back into it like I was before.

I also took clients that wasn’t a good fit for me or my business in the long run, on that note I think it’s super interesting to go back through my old clients sites and see where everyone is at (this will be a later topic for a post.) One HUGE thing that I have to mention…maybe email communication isn’t the best route for me or my clients any more. I knowingly am really nit picky and ocd about certain aspects of design, and I can’t always communicate what I’m needing in the design without sometimes coming off wrong when I type even though the tone my email may sound isn’t what I’m thinking it sounds like or would say in a negative tone if I was talking about it over the phone instead. I see Skype or Google Hangouts with the awesome screen sharing features being a major addition to my work flow for 2012. :)  Last but not least…I did not take one iota of a vacation in over 12 months, I have not a single time to step back away from everything long enough to feel refreshed at all. I haven’t been able to do that since after I started H2 really. This is my own fault and will make this another huge priority to do at least bi-monthly.

For the Future 

One thing about self-reflection is that it’s great to see that you can make mistakes and learn from those mistakes, and continue to thrive and push to be better, and no matter what happens and no matter how long you do it you’ll always learn something new. :) I have a very large to do list which during the year I’m going to hope that you all, hold me accountable for. The final list will be in a later post, but some of them include working on better communication for clients, getting back to doing more custom design work, taking more vacation time, sleeping more (I need this so much!), consolidating websites, posting on a regular basis again, and slimming down the social networking to an acceptable level. I’ve been so blessed and thankful for all the great clients and friends I’ve met this year and I’m super excited to see what 2012 holds for me and hopefully our growing team!

I truly hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Matt-

At first I was going to write a post about how we’re taking suggestions for new templates, but it turned into a contest instead. :) We have some Pro Photo 4  templates in the works for release before the end of the year and some new ones for next year, but I would LOVE to be able to get some suggestions on what you would like to see! So far we’ve done a few niche designs, like a few boudoir templates and the very special pet template we released not long ago, but for the next few I’m looking to expand out a bit into some different territory.

To enter in the contest all you have to do is leave a suggestion for a new template design you would like to see, by leaving a comment below!  After we’ve picked through the suggestions and finished the design, one lucky winner could win the template free when it goes on sale. :) We’ll be using the random number generator for this competition to select the winner.

Due to the great responses we’re getting, I’m going to extend this contest through January 1st! Keep submitting on what you would like to see in future designs!

Safe Travels and Happy Holidays!

Matt-

In celebration of  the holidays all current designs in the pro photo store are half off! You can now get Red Baron for $20, Mighty Dog for $40, Daily Planet for $13, and Magician for $20! Sale lasts until Cyber Monday! The store on the site will redirect you to the pro photo store, or you can click here to get to the sales! There’s no discount code needed, all prices have already been slashed!

Everyone have a happy Thanksgiving, be safe in your travels!

Matt-

Thanks and if you have any qeustions please just leave a comment!

Matt-

Check it out in the store!

Soon after the first week of November things are going to start getting busy around here quite a bit, with some other good news and lots of tutorials, articles, guest posts and everything else. Also, our next template which I think people will be pretty excited about will debut very soon!

I’m probably about to be bombarded with inquiries, but if you’re wanting a custom pro photo site, check out prices here and then hit up the contact button.  :)

Here’s a very early concept of what I had in mind, in a plain sketchbook, you can see where I got some of the elements, but this was so early on, I based some of it on features that I knew were coming but not here yet (grids). This is definitely my favorite way of coming up with new templates and ideas. I usually have 2-3 pages of different versions of what I’m thinking about, a lot of times I combine elements that didn’t work for other designs and use them for others.

I knew I wanted the original colors to stay, but as the design went on the grays tended to get darker in places (namely the footer and menus). I’m huge person on gray and yellow, it’s all over my pinterests, which is actually something I didn’t know about myself until I started Pinterest really. I also tend to favor a lot of greens and even a particular red color, I tried those out at one point but didn’t feel like they were “me” so I went back to the gray and yellow.

The new design is pretty sterile, and minimalist I know. That wasn’t the plan originally at all either. When google introduced google+ and started updating all their apps to match the new site, I really dug the clean style with minimalist color. I eventually carried that over into the new design, but I felt like there wasn’t enough elements in the design to offset the minimalist approach I took. I’m a big fan of textures and threw those into the mix to bring back character I really wanted, which I think gives a bit more edge.  Here’s one version I did in Photoshop with just about the opposite of everything I have now, and was based more on the concept drawing above.

A lot of times what I do now is create a folder of screenshots of elements I like in a design, colors, objects, styles and find some way of implementing that into the design. It would be simpler for me to create a pin board on pinterest, but then I’d have a million of them for client sites and stuff so now I encourage clients to create their own. This actually helps me in the design process SO much. I can get a real sense of their style, wants, needs all in one place. For future design process posts I’m going to show you everything from sketch, to the final product and the pin boards and inspiration boards that made them. :)

At one point in the design I waited for a long time to even work on it because of all the beta testing and features were being added at once, it was almost dumb to even try to mess with it because of the issues that new features bring. :p The Pro Photo guys work really hard to get you a perfect product for sure. :) Once it all got worked out I eventually toned back the all the textures and pushed for the single spanning footer. I think it’s one of my favorite areas of the new site for sure. It’s also a first for any pro photo blog I’ve seen. It took some doing to work out how to get it the way that it is, but as of last week Jared put in a last minute feature to allow two backgrounds, one being an overlay, which basically just took away all the work I did to get around having a huge footer. :p

I even took the logo through a few revision processes before hearing from people that they liked the original best. Here’s another concept I came up with, much cleaner and more of a logo than just a type mark like I’ve had…
Every time I look at it, I start to think yeah I was totally right to keep the current one. :p Hopefully this gives you a little bit of a in-depth look into how the process went a long. I’m more than happy to answer any questions on how I may have done something or came up with my ideas.  There’s still quite a bit of work I want to throw into the site, as I still feel like it’s not personal enough. The pages and such are still walls of text which I plan to change over time, an about section and others will arrive in due time as well.

Of course as pro photo updates after release I’ll be changing things as it goes along, and I’m sure I’ll probably do another design when P5 releases eventually to stay fresh and up to date. :)

Until next time!

I’ll be collaborating on a few more templates throughout the rest of the year and with various designers as part of an outreach I’m trying to do for the site. That being said, I’m spilling the beans on a new boudoir template H2 and La Lune are getting together on and is in the que coming up for release, when I can’t say, but this template will NOT be exclusive or limited edition like H2′s last boudoir template, so everyone will have an equal chance of getting one.

Anyway, as I’m expanding into more and more templates I partnered with someone new and up and coming to come up with something a little different than what you’re used to seeing from me. In that regard this design was also one of my most ambitious, the design itself was a challenge in the way that it was shaped with the bone, which I had in mind for the original design for some time, the inner elements were all ideas we shared together to make a whole, which I think came out great!   This template was meant to be fun, quirky, colorful and meant to POP right off the screen without screaming it at your eyeballs. :)

This theme features ALL the works, everything can be customized and includes all the photoshop files so you can make your own. I spent a lot of time making this a lot like my last boudoir template so that it can be extremely customizable.

To check it out, head to the store. :)

Also, thanks to the awesome and wonderful Erin Vey for providing the template photo examples. Always love your work!

By now the world knows, that the inventor of pcs, macs, iphones, ipads, and everything in technology that we take for granted every day has passed into the great heavenly void. Thank you for your great ideas and inspiration.

Matt-