Real Photo TV

The WPPI conference is coming up in February, (love going to Vegas for inspiration and more knowledge) and 24 photographers in the USA recently taped "reality TV" type podcast. You can check out some of these photographer's seminars at WPPI 2009.

Here's the first episode:





Check out Ron Dawson's "F-Stop Beyond" series, it's a behind the scenes look at the more personal side of photographers around the nation.

Thanks 2008

I can't believe it is over! 2008 came and went so fast. And with it it brought so many amazing things, people, places and events. And none of it would have been possible without my ever-so-amazing clients, fellow photographers, and you the reader.

I want to thank everyone who had me be a part of their event, hired me for a photoshoot, who read this blog, who emailed me about my work, who put a link to my blog on their blog, who talked to someone about my work. Thank you for getting behind what I put so much effort into.

Thanks to all my assistants Jaymi, Sherry, Jared, Lisa, Becky, and Jodee that second shot and helped at all our weddings this year. Great work and hope to continue working with you in the new year.

Most importantly, thank you to my amazing wife Heather. She does not make it on this blog much as she does not like having the camera pointed at her but I publicly want to thank her for her undying love and support and believing in me and my vision. She is nothing less than super woman.

Merry Christmas

I just wanted to take a quick second to wish everyone a very MERRY CHRISTMAS! Let's relax, eat, and laugh and eat some more. Because that's my bag baby! I hope you have a fantastic day with your friends and family and I wish you all the best!

Merry Christmas!

Do you know what your money is doing?

Great article by Sy Harding:

The $50 billion Bernard Madoff investor fraud situation has a number of lessons for investors painted on a large enough canvas that they should sink in.

I've been appalled by the number of intelligent and successful people, trust funds, foundations, and charities that had a huge percentage of their investment portfolio, in some cases all of it, in Madoff's fund, without even understanding what his strategy was supposed to be (if he had bothered to actually make the investments rather than just using new incoming money to pay a return on earlier money, in a classic Ponzi scheme). No thoughts of diversified holdings?

I'm guessing that a very high percentage of investors using a money manager also make the choice based on no more than that he is a member of their church or country club who seems like a nice guy, or was recommended by someone in their church or country club who say he is a nice guy. Almost no one does any actual due diligence before turning over their money.

It's surprising that such sophisticated people, even other hedge funds and banks that put money in Madoff's fund, loved the 'smooth' annual return every year, and were not suspicious even though they could not come close to producing a steady 12% annual return themselves.

Without doing any investigation or thinking about how they have seen the market act, that is the normal expectation of investors managing their own money, that the market makes 12% a year, and they should be able to do at least as well. It is also the standard promise investors believe has been made to them when they are told by a prospective money-manager that the market's average annual return for the last 100 years has been 12% or whatever. Of course, the devil is in the details, in that word 'average'.

In some years, as in 1998 and 1999, the return might be 26% or 28%. (The Nasdaq gained 85.6% in 1999 alone). But in other years it will be down 20%, or on rare occasions like this year, be down 30% to 50%. Yet it will average a gain of 12% a year over the long-term.

Yet no one seemed to question Madoff's fund returning 12% or whatever it was every year, even through the bear markets of 2000-2002 and this year, as well as in the bull market years when the market gained 25% or so. Impossible.

The only way you can avoid the large losses while still making most of the big gains is through market-timing. Yet even in a successful market-timing strategy the gains will not be smooth.

Ikea, in Winnipeg?

Sweet fancy moses! Could this actually be true? Save your pennies boys and girls... maybe one less trip a year to Minneapolis is in the cards for the Dueck house hold.

CBC News

The governments of Manitoba and Winnipeg will fast-track widening a regional thoroughfare to accommodate a new retail outlet by furniture maker Ikea.

Premier Gary Doer and Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz said Tuesday the two governments would accelerate widening Kenaston Boulevard and Sterling Lyon Parkway to accommodate the new retailer, long rumored to be locating to Winnipeg.

"I'm thrilled to see this major retail project transform from talk to action," said Katz. "The city has worked diligently to create an 'open for business' environment," he said. "By accelerating existing infrastructure plans we are encouraging smart, responsible development."

Ikea, which was founded in Sweden and now has its headquarters in the Netherlands, confirmed Tuesday it plans to open a new store in Winnipeg sometime between late 2011 and early 2013.

The company said it had signed an agreement to acquire the land for a 350,000 square-foot location after eyeing Winnipeg for some time.

"We are continually reviewing expansion opportunities in Canada and have for a long time considered Winnipeg as a key market for expansion," said Ikea Canada president Kerry Molinaro.