So my colleague Jamie over at Cowbelly Pet Photography and I have spent many months pondering some way to help pet photographers that aren’t able to make it to our Passport Workshops or who DO make it to our workshop but want more personal attention from us to ask specific questions about their photos or their business name, brand etc. Although Jamie and I both offer consulting services, we find that we get many of the same general questions over and over, and we often have the same answers. So we set about to come up with some way to answer these questions for more people, while keeping the cost affordable and also maintaining our ability to shoot and work with our regular clients (ie not spend our entire work lives answering emails). Well folks we’ve found it!  Portfolio Reviews care of Jamie, Branding Reviews care of yours truly!

Here’s the bullet-point deets on the postcard I whipped up for Jamie to hand out at WPPI tomorrow {if you’re going to her Masterclass be sure to grab one!}

These online reviews will be offered in PDF form, dressed-up with Cowbelly or dane + dane branding and chock-full of valuable information for YOUR business, all done through email, from your home, your “day job” or just about anywhere you have access to email. Unlike generic PDFs you can buy on photography, these reviews will be specific to you and your business (based on a whole gang of questions we ask of you ahead of time). We are confident this is the perfect way to help you move forward with your photography, your business and your brand as a whole – and we are SO excited to finally make these services available to you!

I should note that based on the feedback we’ve already received (and the list of emails we’ve already got for people waiting for these services) we expect our schedules to fill fast. Please keep that in mind and contact us well ahead of your hard deadlines so we can fit you in. We will only be conducting a limited number of reviews at one time, and we will each be conducting them personally, so there may be multi-week wait-times as we move forward, but we are dedicated to providing you with the most personal and complete information possible and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

NOTE: WE ARE ACCEPTING APPLICANTS IMMEDIATELY BUT REVIEWS WILL BEGIN AFTER MARCH 1st WHEN REGISTRATION FOR THE PASSPORT WORKSHOP OPENS.

To read more about Jamie’s extensive Portfolio Reviews – read her blog post about it here.

To read more about the custom Branding Reviews I will be offering… here’s the detailed information you can now find on the Brand Me page of this blog + some sample images from a PDF similar to what you will receive with your Branding Review…

5. Within 10 business days you will receive your completed Branding Review PDF. {We may have more questions for you along the way, in which case, we will email you!}

Simple as that.

Hop Kiln Winery {who you’ve definitely seen mentioned in this blog before} is one of my favorite clients – partially because they are a winery {i love wine} and partially because they are a sister property to Kenwood Inn and Spa {which has become one of my favorite places in the entire world} but mostly, because the people there are really fantastic and a joy to work with. Did I mention they make really great wine? Yeah, they do. Located in the heart of the Russian River Valley in Sonoma County – Hop Kiln produces some delicious estate Pinot Noir as well as a charming Chardonnay and several other delicious proprietary blends.

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We are about to embark on another exciting design project which is still top secret – but you can bet I will share it with you when it’s finished! In the meantime, check out their new web site, join one of their three wine clubs and generally investigate this jewel of Westside Road: Hop Kiln Winery.

We seem to have acquired a niche in designing logos for other pet photographers… Makes sense I guess, we sure do know the biz inside and out!

I met San Francisco Bay Area photographer Pam Biasotti at Jamie’s Pet Photography Workshop where I was a guest speaker. Pam wasn’t clear yet about the way she wanted to change her existing human portraiture business to incorporate pets, but new she wanted to create a new and separate brand.

A while after the workshop, she contacted me in a rush of excitement and said she’d finally found it – her new name: You Had me at Woof Photography! I loved it immediately (what’s not to love!?) and we set about creating an identity for her new path.

Anyone who knows Pam knows that she’s an avid Golden Retriever fan, so it was pretty important to her to incorporate this concept into her brand. She also has a minimalist eye for design – white on white, clean lines and simple shapes. She wanted to convey fun and whimsy but in fairly monochromatic, dynamic and simple way.

After our first round of sketches it became clear that a silhouette would be the way to go (yet another one of our design niches) and we started to narrow down concepts.

Well my friends we are all done!  Here is Pam’s new brand, complete with simple shapes, clean lines and of course, a Golden Retriever.

The concept works on many levels, my favorite being that used in the right capacity, the ball the Golden is looking down on can also act as a period, which then makes the dog the sentence.

This idea of the dog being the words/language is fun and relates to her business name: “You had me at woof” – our suggested tagline was “speaking the language of dog” – I think you’ll see this concept realized with a fun flash design that we suggested for her new web site.

Pam also just got a new Golden puppy: “Karma,” so she’ll be plenty busy plastering her new watermark all over the massive quantity of photos she’s bound to take over the next year.

Congrats Pam! Stay tuned to learn more about the new projects we’re working on: two wineries, a pet networking site and yup, another pet photographer! Never a dull moment…

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Handsome Riley-dog images included in this post are all Copyright Pam Biasotti- 2008

From this day forward, ditch the ampersand and add a plus sign, no capitals and no serif…

Dane & Dane Photography has become dane + dane studios

In addition to arriving just in time to accompany our FAB new website {www.dane-dane.com — visit it again for the first time} and a whole slew of events {which you will see coming up soon in this little bloggety blog} this identity overhaul marks a new era for dane + dane.

No longer are our services limited to the fabulous pet photography you’ve come to know and love, but we now also offer graphic + web design and WEALTH of other resources for our small and big business clients.

These are services we’ve long offered by referral only, but with some small changes and some new additions (which you will learn all about shortly) we are now able to support the demand that publicizing these services has created.

Of course can still find us, as always, in CityDog Magazine every quarter, and in Bark Magazine every other month.