Show Champions Internship

Looking for a great internship at major stock shows? Show Champions USA is looking for interns for the 2011 San Antonio and Houston stock shows. Students can apply and work both shows if their school schedules will allow. Katina Costerisan is asking that applications and questions be directed to her, katina@showchampions.com.

Application deadline is December 10th with phone interviews being held the following week, and notification of internship placement by December 29th.

On a personal note, I know several college students who have worked for Show Champions as interns over the past few years. They say it's a great way to gain experience in the photography sector and also some relaly good business contacts. You'll meet tons of people. If you're interested in photography, there may even be some opportunities to build your portfolio and make a great professional contact with the rest of the Show Champions team. They're tops! Plus, you get to hang out at a stock show all day and GET PAID for it :) Seriously, if it wasn't just for college students, I'd sign up!

Show to Win on Facebook

We just created a new page on facebook for Show to win -- http://www.facebook.com/pages/Show-to-Win -- check it out and if you like it...then "Like It". Next week we'll start our weekly give-a-ways and launch the new web site for show to win.

Anyone else get this Louisville scam?

This is totally our own fault, but this weekend Brandon and I got a phone call about a "free vacation grand prize give-away" scam from something we picked up at Louisville. Wondering if anyone else had this?

When we were walking through the trade show, Brandon dropped a business card at one of the trade show vendors booths that was giving away a free drawing. We didn't think much of it, lots of booths have those drawings.

Then Friday, he got a phone call saying he WON the prize from the drawing at Louisville. The person calling said that his card was drawn at Louisville stock show and he had won a free trip to Disneyland, Daytona Beach, and a Nascar event for ourselves and another couple. The caller asked if his spouse was around to confirm the trip. Since I was at work, the caller said they would call back on Saturday at 9:00 a.m. with our official information about the prize.

Of course, we're both thinking this is too good to be true, but whatever, we'll see what they have to say when they call. Well on Saturday morning, me and Brandon were hanging out at the showbarn and the lady called back again, at 9:00 a.m. on the dot. Brandon was on the other side of the barn from me, and the lady insisted we both be there for the "official prize call" so she said she would call back at noon.

Well as noon rolled around, we had just finished working some bulls when Brandon's phone rang. Caller ID unavailable. We remembered it was our prize. So Brandon puts her on speaker phone and she starts telling us about how we won from the drawing at the Louisville stock show. She's like all super nice and saying how we are ranchers, we probably would love a vacation, they love it when people from the Louisville show win, bla bla bla. She starts off by telling us we won a 3-part vacation for us and another couple. The first segment is 5 days 4 nights at the Ramada Inn MainGate Orlando Florida plus 2 free tickets to Disneyland, and free shuttle service and meal money. From there, we go to Daytona Beach for a few days. Then from there, we can choose a "bonus trip" ranging from a Nascar event to Vegas. So she says we don't have to say the dates or the name of the other couple, just whether we want the trip or not. She says it has to be used sometime within the next 18 months. Then she starts pressing us do we want the trip or not.

I asked, how much does it cost us? Then she said that it's totally FREE, except we have to pay a $400 "promotional fee" plus any hotel taxes, which are usually $10 a night she tells us. Plus we also have to pay for our own travel to get there. Starting to sound weird.

Then I asked her, when do we have to pay? Then she says RIGHT NOW, with your CREDiT CARD, then you just call us whenever you're ready to take the trip.

Brandon says he doesn't think we can agree to that at this moment, and then suddenly her tone totally changes. She snaps at him something like "Well fine then, take care" and hangs up.

Just for fun, we looked up the Ramada Inn Main Gate hotel she told us was the five star hotel that we had won these luxurious accommodations for.....the nightly rate was $45/night.

RHD Clients in the NAILE Trade Show

We had a great time strolling through the trade show and chatting with all of the RHD clients that were participating in the NAILE trade show. If I had to guess, I'm sure lots of you also stopped
by these booths....it seems like they were packed every time I walked by.

Our leading lady of fashion - Randa Yezak with the Southern Jewlz booth. Of course I had to purchase something from there :) Congratulations Randa on all of your business success!

We met up with Katy Kemp of ABS Global, a new client we have recently started developing e

-mail marketing plans for. Katy reported to us that they had lots of people stop by the booth and say
that they loved getting the emails from ABS that were sent out by US! Woo hoo!!! If you haven't
signed up for the RHD mailing list, you can easily do it on our facebook fan page (join my list) or at the very bottom right corner of http://www.ranchhousedesigns.com/

Another big hit of the show was SJ Creations! They had tons of awesome custom metal

creations on display. These make great ideas for Christmas gifts. Check out all of Stephanie's work at http://www.sjcattlecreations.com/

Our last stop on the trade show tour was at Twisted Stitch. I fell in love with the stuff here!! They had some awesome cattle artwork and also a really neat wooden cattle cutout. They promised us that after Louisville they would be posting these on their web site too. So check out http://www.twistedstitch1.com/. Their stuff is fabulous!

Thank you Shorthorn breeders!

 I couldn't help but feel a huge amount of thankfulness and pride as I was hanging out in the Shorthorn barn at Louisville last week when I saw all of the RHD work displayed at the stalls of so many friends and fellow Shorthorn breeders. Some of our very first clients were Shorthorn folks, and as I walked down the aisles I was so proud that RHD represents the leading Shorthorn breeders in the United States.

For example, this year, Cyclone Trace raised both the champion and reserve heifer; Sullivan had chamapion bull, and Cates had reserve bull. We are the proud web designer of all of these farms. We love doing a Shorthorn web sites, and probably do more Shorthorn sites than any other breed.

Here are a few snapshots of some of the RHD work that you can see through the Shorthorn stalls. This is just a small sample of what we can do in addition to web sites. So THANK YOU Shorthorn breeders, we love working with you!

Here are a few pics from the Fischer Cattle Company stalls. Completely outfitted in RHD work :) We do their web site, did their logo, their signs, and this year just did their individual cattle stall signs. We love Stacey and Jeff!

I got to meet Stephanie Conrad from AMS Shorthorns for the first time at the show. The AMS Shorthorns booth,was also sporting lots of RHD work....we do their web site, did their logo, and did their stall sign for them.

And here is a banner we did for John Sullivan at Sullivan Farms. Each year we do a few bull banners for them, and this year, just so happened that STOCKMAN was also the champion bull! Look for him in Denver.

Thanks again to all of our Shorthorn friends for all of the work we get to do for you!

Louisville News: Black Friday Sale

One of the first people I had ran into at Louisville was the crew from Saddle River Ranch along with Kyle Conley of Conley Cattle...both Oklahoma Angus breeders. Kyle was dropping off a few of the Black Friday sale catalogs hot off the press and ready to hand out at NAILE.

We've worked with Cathy Conner and her team at Saddle River for just over a year now on both their print ads and web site. I love their really cool logo and they have a beautiful place. They're also on facebook if you want to check out Saddle River Ranch.

On our way up to Louisville, one of the people I was most excited about introducing Brandon to was Kyle Conley. We recently designed the print advertising and sale catalog for the Black Friday sale, which is going to be held the day after Thanksgiving this year in Oklahoma.  While working with Kyle so much over the past 3 months, I have developed a great deal of professional respect for him after seeing the passion he has for this sale. There aren't many young people like Kyle who are willign to jump off into creating a brand new production sale, and I've been inspired by Kyle's work ethic and motivation. 

Also, in the catalog, there is just the CUTEST picture of Kyle and his wife Amanda, that made me instantly want to be BFF's with Amanda. She just looks so nice and sweet and I can tell she is just a great girl. Go check out the catalog and you can see this picture too. Okay so yes, now most likely Kyle is going to kill me for posting something cheesy like this ha ha.

If you'd like to get a sneak peak at the catalog, visit this page: http://pembrookcattle.com/sales.html - the picture I like is on the inside front cover :)

Photoshop Tips: Automation

First of all, thanks to everyone who emailed to us about the photoshop tips blog. We'll try to keep it up! We are scheduling quite a few boot camps for December, especially when college gets out. If you've been thinking of coming go ahead and email us to get on the schedule. I apologize for not updating our boot camp calendar as much as I should, we forget sometimes when we get so busy.

Anyway, here is another Photoshop tip to share today: Automation. If you are in Photoshop, and you click on the File menu, Automation is about 3/4 of the way down on the menu.

If you've never used this tool before, this is another example of a photoshop tip that can greatly speed up your production, much like the Actions we talked about before. As you can see in the menu, there are several automated features available. The ones I use most are the Contact Sheet II, Picture Package, and Web Photo Gallery. 

Batch is a pretty cool one, which I would describe as like one step up from Actions. When you click on batch, it automatically applies an action to every image in a specific folder. So by using this, you eliminate the step of having to open each file. Here is a screen shot:

So you can see here, using the Batch automation tool, I select my source folder (which is where I have all of my originals saved) then I choose the action I want to run. In this case, I've made a special action for this project that converts all the images to 300 dpi, CMYK, and saves them as a JPG in the Links folder for InDesign. If you need a refresher on making these custom actions, read this blog. So by using this automated feature, I can do all my image work for a sale catalog in say, 30 minutes or less.

Another tool I like a lot is the Contact Sheet automation. I mostly use this for comparing lots of pictures and trying to decide which I like best. It is also really helpful if someone else is going to be choosing images with you. This one automatically makes a proof sheet of multiple images on one page.  To get started with Contact Sheet, click on the Contact Sheet II option, which will bring up this screen:

You will have several options. First you choose your source folder. Make sure you have all of the pictures saved within one folder (i.e. Calf Pictures November 15 2010 or something like that). Then you choose how many pictures you want on a page. Obviously the more pictures you have the smaller they will be. In this case I chose 2 rows of 2, so 8 pictures per page. Another thing I like to check is at the very bottom: Use Filename as Caption. This way I can easily know what pictures I like best. Once you hit Okay, Photoshop will automatically make a sheet like this for you:

You can easily print this out and share it with others within your creative team, or even clients, to decide which pics you like best.

I don't use the Photo Package option all that frequently, but it is still neat. This one would be helpful for people who like to print their photos at home. Perhaps you have a great family picture you took and you'd like to give a few to grandparents and relatives, but just want to print it at home on photo paper. Here's how you get started with this one:

From the dialog box, you choose your folder or specific file. Where the menu says "Document," choose your paper size. If you click on the Layout drop down box, you will see TONS of options. I happened to choose (4) 3.5x5.5s. Photoshop then takes my picture and resizes them all to fit on one sheet of paper for easy printing. There are lots of other options, just play around with it. You can do 8x10s, 5x7s, wallets, all kinds of sizes. This would be a quick option for people who like to print their pictures at home.

The last Automation tool I sometimes use is Web Photo Gallery. Now I have to say up front, we very rarely use this at RHD because I think it looks somewhat amateur and so you won't see these very often on RHD client web sites. But this is a great option for families who may have their own web site and want to share pictures from different events. This is one that you just have to play around with and find out what you like best. Once you get into this option, there are tons of choices. Photoshop offers about 20 different templates for the layout, ranging from flash transitions to very simple thumbnails. You can see these examples below under the very first option under "Styles"

This automation works exactly the same was as the other automations mentioned above. You choose the folder on your computer where all of your photos are saved. Then you choose the destination folder of where you want Photoshop to save the files (like your web site folder).  Also pay attention about mid-ways down the box for the OPTIONS drop down box.  There are several options available here like a headline, how big you want the images to be, custom colors, and more. You can even add background music through this automated feature.

In the 12 years I've been using Photoshop, I find that there is almost something new I can learn every day. I just went over a very basic overview of these automated features, however they are very powerful and dramatically can speed up your workflow. There is no limit to the way you can use these in combination with each other, just like we use Actions, then Batches together. They are great for saving time and speeding up lots of the legwork we have to do, which frees up time for the fun creative stuff...DESIGNING!

Louisville News: First Class Bred Heifer Sale

Over the next few days we'll be posting some blogs with interesting news or updates from clients we visited with during Louisville. The first one is about the First Class Bred Heifer Sale, which is hosted by three of our long-time RHD clients and good friends Wade Rodgers, Nick Reimann and Brad Smith. These guys not only do a "first class" job with their sale, Wade & Kaylene, Nick & Kyrstin, and Brad are just "first class" all around.

I ran into Nick and Wade in the barns and had a chance to get the low down on their upcoming "First Class Bred Heifer Sale". This year's sale will be held Saturday, December 11, 2010 at Dunlap Livestock Auction, Dunlap, IA. They are selling 80 powerful females, 10 donors, 60 bred heifers, 5 bulls and semen and embryos.

One new thing for this year is that catalogs will be mailed by request only. Nick says that if you have purchased in previous first class sales, you will already be on the list. Others who would like a catalog will need to sign up at Nick's web site, here.

The catalog should be available online this week, and we will blast it out on email when it is posted. If you would like to be notified when it goes up, you can sign up for the RHD email blasts by clicking here then scrolling to the bottom of the page then inputting your email address. Look in the bottom right corner of the screen where it says "Join our Mailing List". YOu can also join through our RHD facebook page.

If you'd like more info about this sale, call either one of these guys:
Nick Reimann - 605-871-3642 • Wade Rodgers - 515-480-6896 • Brad Smith - 712-209-1500

And you can also visit these web sites done by RHD....
http://reimannranches.com/
http://rodgerscattleco.com/

Here's a pic of me and Nick at Louisville this year, wow, he looks so tall!

Time for Holiday Cards

Ahh, if you're like me you just LOVE Christmas time. I could seriously send out 20 different Christmas cards because I have such a hard time choosing which is my favorite. As it gets closer to the holidays, we're going to start showing off a few of our favorite holiday cards from RHD Invitation's partnership with Tiny Prints Holiday Collection.

Now our favorites range from all different styles and price levels. To start out, you can select from their StudioBasics, starting at just 69 cents a piece.  Here are a few that I like from that collection.

Now if you have a little more expensive taste, you can choose from the regular collection which is priced around $1 each. There are TONS here that I love. Click here to begin shopping!

An awesome tri-fold card:


A totally cool flip-out photo card:

Another neat card for only 0.99 cents:

So again, check out the Tiny Prints Holiday Collection.  Browse away til your heart is content. With this easy online ordering system you just upload your photos and you're done. You can do all sorts of fun things like change your photos to black and white, sepia, change font colors, etc. Here come the holidays!

What our pets do while we're at work

Here's a pic of Stacey Forgason's pet, looks like we know what she does all day while Stacey's here at RHD.