Category Archives: Behind-the-Scenes

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Parker- Ambassador of Public Relations + CityDog Magazine Muttmixer

February 10, 2010 – 12:57 pm

This adorable little guy is Parker. You will see more of him in the upcoming Winter issue of CityDog Magazine. I’ll give you a heads-up when it hits newsstands. :-)

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Speaking of CityDog Magazine, a reminder that the annual Valentines Day Puppy Love CityDog Muttmixer is tonight! It’s at the gorgeous W Hotel in downtown Seattle, runs from 6pm-8pm, is dog-friendly, and I can attest from experience, is a blast for both you and your pups. Dress up, drink some champagne, socialize with other dog lovers, and maybe even meet someone special for you and your pooch. I’ll be staying in tonight, as I’m still trying to recover from the exhaustion of moving, and for those who know the normally energetic outgoing party-girl me, you know I MUST be tired, lol. Fergie and I will be there in spirit though!

By Jamie 'Cowbelly' | Also posted in editorial | Tagged , , , | Comments (5)

Welcome 2010!

January 5, 2010 – 8:16 pm

2010 is off to a very very good start for us here at Cowbelly, and we are super excited and enthusiastic for what the year already promises to bring. Unlike many I actually had a good year in 2009 but I expect 2010 to be even better. Hey, reach for the stars, right?! I will soon be kicking into year 7 here for the biz, and from what I hear, 7 is a lucky number.

While I am motivated to get started on my current projects and planning and all kinds of other stuff, I have some new policies and clarification I need to put in place. These things should be self-explanatory, and were written by both Christina and myself, after deciding to improve upon our communications with others. Enjoy. ;-)

Our new 2010 policies:

We DO:

  • Accept commercial requests, as long as you can give us some remote idea of what you are needing and what it will be used for.
  • Photograph dogs and cats on location. As in, not in a studio. And no, those ‘backdrops’ you see on our website are not fake.
  • Happily provide a myriad of advice and assistance to other photographers if you dig just a teensy bit. See the ‘for photographers’ page above. You don’t even need to send us an email for most of your questions, we promise!
  • Enjoy receiving marketing emails from our vendors and partners. Just not from the same ones every single day.
  • Appreciate and enjoy emails from others speaking of being inspired by us. You are very sweet. (Most of you.)
  • Accept donation solicitations from nice animal-related organization representatives by email who seem to respect us and what we do.
  • Provide blog links to companies we love, whose products and/or services we stand behind and use ourselves. Which are generally pet-related, as opposed to links about vaccuums, golf drivers or hotel resources for cities we’ve never even been to.
  • Reward our great clients with complimentary goodies as much as possible. Not because they ask, but because they don’t, and we love them.

and lastly:

  • Love and cherish our marketing partners and colleagues who are nice to us and respect us and value our time.

We do NOT:

  • Give our images, files, prints, or art away for free (unless you are a documented 501c organization)
  • Grant you permission to use our images on the swedish website stallet.se
  • Provide editorial or any other kind of work for ‘image credit’, as the term is insulting to an established professional, and well, we’d at least like to think of ourselves as being one.
  • Photograph animals in cute little costumes in a studio set in a basket filled with fake flowers, or fake anything for that matter. We prefer the ‘real’ over the ‘faux’.
  • Reply to solicitations for advice that were clearly sent to a group of other pet photographers as well as us. Please make us feel special first. We like to have our egos stroked.
  • Do photo shoots, post-processing, and ordering sessions in order to sell our clients a single 4×6 ‘portrait’. We have resources we can send folks to for that. (Yuen Lui).
  • Share our price sheet with other pet photographers posing as fake clients (yes, we know the real from the fake!).
  • Appreciate and enjoy emails from others speaking of being inspired by us who then go on to extensively plagiarize our website.
  • Give arbitrary discounts on products, ‘just because you asked’.
  • Accept donation solicitation requests from pushy people who call us by phone, or send us a generic donation letter + procurement form, whose organizations have zero connection to animals. *Especially* if they want to include our gift certificate in an auction package where they are auctioning off a puppy. (Really, people, REALLY?)
  • Provide links to businesses with no reciprocation. Thanks for asking though. You can take us off your mailing list now.
  • Need any help with SEO. Um, have you done a google search for pet photography recently? I’d be happy to sell you MY knowledge. That’ll be five thousand dollars please.

Lastly:

  • We do not photograph dogs you are ‘pretty sure MIGHT’ attack us when we arrive.

(And in case you were wondering, yes, all of the above are based on true-life experiences.)

Happy 2010 Everybody! :-)

By Jamie 'Cowbelly' | Tagged , , | Comments (13)

2010 Cowbelly Wall Calendar

December 30, 2009 – 4:49 am

Are you needing an awesome 2010 calendar for your wall? Of course you are! Have you already bought several but need just one more? Of course you do! Do you want to buy a calendar that will have you smiling all year? Absolutely! The SUPERAMAZING 12-month 2010 Cowbelly wall calendar is here (finally, I know! you have waited so long for this, right? Right!). That’s 12 months of the most glorious photos you have ever seen! Now, go buy it my friends. Do it now. CLICK HERE. Because $20 to buy happiness for an entire year is a bargain. You don’t have to thank me now, but just in case you do, you’re welcome. And I love you too. ;-)

Cover:

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12 months of gloriousness. so colorful. so wonderful. so… SUPERAMAZING. (Yes, I know my modesty impresses you. Of course it does. I’m impressive).

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a few select AMAZING pages. really, they are the coolest things in the whole universe. (One time a guy I was dating told me “you are the best kisser in the whole wide world”. I thought it was pretty cute and funny.)

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Click on any of the images to go to the Cowbelly store to purchase.

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Are you still sitting there? What are you waiting for? Go get your debit card, and click on the little linky above, and put in your card # and your address and buy it already. Sheesh.

LOL, in all seriousness, I just bought my own copy, so if you want to be cool like me, you’ll get one of your very own. Maybe even two if you’re *really* cool. And if you’re Fergie, you’ll get three.

ENJOY!

La dee da la dee dee….

By Jamie 'Cowbelly' | Also posted in miscellaneous randomness | Tagged , , , , | Comments (5)

en vacances

December 28, 2009 – 10:39 pm

I am on vacation until January 4th. Because I don’t have a day job, this means no work for me, whoopee! :-) Ok, maybe a few hours, but mostly this will be time spent relaxing, playing with the dog, drinking mimosas, going to the park, seeing movies, hanging with friends and family, shopping and other recreational pursuits. Hope y’all are having a lovely end of 2009. I imagine everyone is ready for it to be over!!

Since no post is complete without a photo, here’s Fergie at a cabin at Mt Rainier where she spent Christmas weekend frolicking with her family.

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This is the view I had pretty much the entire time we were driving. Fergie with her feet on the console, whining with excitement to see what fun place we were going to next.

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Mt Rainier happened to be one of those fun stops.

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A shot of Fergie taken at Paradise near the visitor’s center on the left, and a rare shot of yours-truly on the right.

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This is what she looked like at the end of each night, and also what she looks like right now, still recovering from her fun 3-day trip.

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I LOVE SCRABBLE!!! I won this game with something like 325 points because I’ve been playing every night on my iPhone for months. The hard level. Ohhh yeah. I only win about 50% of the time, but when I do it sure feels good…

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By Jamie 'Cowbelly' | Also posted in fergie, miscellaneous randomness | Tagged , , , | Comments (8)

new dogs gallery

December 11, 2009 – 5:11 pm

It only took me 2 years to do (and several hours of picking and editing my favorite images), but I finally have a newly updated dogs gallery on my website. A few of the images are the same, but most of them are new, and as always, I pay homage to each individual dog by placing their name (and now location too) on their image.

Go check it out here: Cowbelly dogs gallery

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I received this super sweet comment via email about my dogs gallery from a gal here in my city:

“I stumbled across your website and wanted to let you know that I think you do amazing work!  I had a really crap day, and seeing the doggies in your gallery TOTALLY made my day so much better.  Thank you!!!”

And thank YOU Tala, you made MY day! :-)

By Jamie 'Cowbelly' | Also posted in NEWS! | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)