Never did I image one of my random thoughts would become such a great success. If you follow my facebook page at all you will know that I currently have a contest going on called “Do You Have What it Takes.”  My email has filled up with questions like, “how do you come up with these ideas?” “Are all of the ideas you come up with really yours?” and “how do you know anyone will want to fulfill the idea you are looking for?” Well here is how it works, or at least how this one worked. Most ideas that I come up with, happen very much like this.

About a month ago I was in my p.js lying on the couch with my man, watching my favourite show…Americas Next Top Model. Yes cliché right. A photographer whos favourite show is about modeling. Go figure! I love it. Anyway, I was laying on my husband’s lap when I jumped up and said, “ I need to do this!” right away, Shawn knowing how my mind works, said, “ya you should do a shoot like this.” He was referring to the theme they were doing on that episode. Nope, not me, I was talking about the whole thing. I thought how cool would it be to do a contest just like this. I didn’t know exactly how it would work, but I knew that with how excited I was about it, it had to be successful right?

So I put up an advertisement that I was looking for 10 girls in the Edmonton area to be part of something great. In 1 day I had 90 beautiful girls wanting to enter the contest. Thanks for making my job extremely hard ladies. I was in no way picking between all of them. So I picked a good 20 or 30 of them and left the hard part to my man. I told him all I wanted was for everyone to be very different. Shawn went through them all, picked blondes, brunettes and red heads. He also made a point to pick people that I haven’t worked with yet or that I didn’t personally know. He did a great job.

I started making plans, brought my hair stylist (Hair by Miranda) and makeup artist (Marija with Lipstick n Lashes) on board and the plans were in the making. Each week is a new theme, with a new set of girls. When we all met last week for the first shoot, it was beyond perfect. Everyone so different, yet everyone got along so great. What makes it all worthwhile for me, is to see the girls voting and commenting on each others pictures. Now that’s what I call friendly competition.

Now one question I get often is, “why do you do give aways?” Well the first reason is obvious…to gain fans. Facebook is a huge marketing network. It is and has been awesome. Now, you know there are its good and bad but for the most part it is great for word of mouth and getting your name out there. But there are a bunch more reasons for my give aways. One reason is to interact with my fans. I love when everyone gets involved. The first week of voting on this contest alone brought in over 1000 votes. As if that isn’t something to make you smile. I was completely shocked at how huge this was and how great it turned out. And second, I love to give back. Without facebook and without the fans and their word of mouth, I wouldn’t be where I am today. Every time I get an inquiry for anything, I always ask how they found me. It is usually from facebook. I even did a poll on how people found me and my site and it came back 90% from facebook. And third, I will never forgot how I got started…and that is doing things because I love them. I picked up my camera, and shot everything that landed in front of it. The free shoots are almost the most fun…no pressure!

So for all of you that asked, where this idea came from and if my ideas are all mine. ABSOLUTELY! There is inspiration everywhere you look; you just have to looking through photographers eyes!

~N~