If I ever had a reason to bust out the happy dance

I like to joke around a lot about having a “happy dance.” You know, for those occasions where I’m feeling SUPER joyous. I’m not sure I’d ever demonstrate these moves in public (only my husband has REALLY seen me do this). But let’s just put it this way: I’m pretty sure I could give Carlton a run for his money.

So earlier today, I might have broken out the happy dance not once, but TWICE. The first was when my friend and fellow photographer Lynn sent me a note to let me know my Web site was featured on the Show It Sites blog. WHAAAA???!!!!!! But sure it enough, when I snuck a peek, there it was:

To those unfamiliar, Show It Sites (SIS) is the Web publishing software created by phenom-photographer-turned-phenom-entrepreneur David Jay. I first became a believer of DJ’s products when I started using his slideshow software. Then I got a chance to hear him speak last summer in Chicago and was impressed by how much he was doing to help better the lives of other photographers, one jazzy product at a time. So as he spoke about developing Web publishing software for photographers, I paid attention.

Earlier this year, when I decided to finally build the Web site that’d been mapping itself out in my brain for so long, I knew SIS was the route I wanted to go. And folks, I’ve drank the SIS Kool-Aid. Count me in as a member of its cult Because my experience using this product to create www.gailwernerphoto.com has been amazing. I remember in college, trying to build an online portfolio for a senior thesis project and feeling like I had to bribe my Flash guru classmates into helping me figure out how to transfer everything into HTML pages. It was beyond frustrating … So this time around, when I downloaded SIS and realized this VERY PRODUCT would allow me to do the VERY THING I wanted to do when I was in college, I MIGHT have done a happy dance then too!

And then there was the happy dance that commenced when I connected with Jefferson Todd (JT) from MokaDesign Studio. I hired JT a few weeks ago to help me get my site running more smoothly. While I had built everything, it turns out that just because I knew what I wanted design-wise didn’t necessarily mean I was the best programmer! So JT lent a hand in getting all the galleries to run smoothly and I have to give him a big shout-out for his awesomeness and his patience in dealing with me and my OCD tendencies.

Now back to that second happy dance of the afternoon — it came when I saw that David Jay had posted a an entry about me on his personal blog. And — are you ready for this — HE CALLED ME A PHOTOGRAPHER TO WATCH.

Me. ‘Lil ‘ol me. A PHOTOGRAPHER TO WATCH. Umm… if I would have been drinking something when I read that, I totally would have done a spit-take. As it happened, I broke out with (you guessed it) another happy dance. So DJ, thank you again for being such a great example of the type of entrepreneur we should all aim to be — someone who goes out of his or her way to make clients feel loved. And thank you, too, for helping me get my exercise today because this gal has been ONE DANCING MACHINE

PS – For any photogs out there with questions about SIS, drop me a line and maybe I could help (or at least tell you more about my experience/give you some tips.) If you can’t tell, I’m a pretty big fan