Thursday, February 14, 2008


61 Mentors
450 Registered Bidders

$33,546.55

10,500 LIVES!!!!

I am so proud of my photo community in the wedding and portrait industry! The support that has been shown to Thirst Relief International from some of the most influential photographers in the world has left me near speechless! All I can say is THANK YOU!

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

The bids are going back up as I type, they will be up for another day, closing in 15 minute increments one at a time starting on Thursday morning. Find the mentor you want to win the most, bid your MAXIMUM amount the first time if you can (the auction site will only bid you on proxy, meaning it will only up your bid if your being challenged, therefore you will not pay any more than you have to.) Try not to constantly refresh, revisit etc. (I know this takes a ton of fun out of it, but we don't want another crash.)

Happy bidding and enjoy. We are already looking for other host options for next year's auction.
Thanks so much for your patience and support, we are so thrilled at the generousity and support of both the mentors and those bidding!

BID HERE

Together with you saving lives and changing the world.

Thirst Relief International

Friday, February 08, 2008


If you would like to bid on us as mentors CLICK HERE, then click on the Thirst Relief logo at fotoverite, register as a new user and start bidding! Auction goes live Feb. 9th.

The Mentor Time is to be held at WPPI in Vegas but could be done here too.

This is our profile on the auction site. Happy Bidding. I must say, the mentor times we've done in the past have been amazing! We've seen couples cry, we've prayed for them and then watched their businesses thrive as they headed to a new level.

"For Jim and Lara Davis-Hicks, the combination of pro photography and global charity is a dream come true!

Jim and Lara Davis-Hicks live a life of interesting contrasts. One day, Jim might be floating down the Amazon River, bringing life-saving water filtration systems to remote villages. The next, he’s floating rubber duckies in the bathtub with his kids back in Ohio. He could be shooting documentary images in Sub-Saharan Africa on Tuesday and wedding photos in Columbus on Saturday. While these may seem like wildly different worlds, to the Davis-Hicks team it’s all part of the big picture that is their life.

Jim and Lara form the team that is known as Davis Photography http://www.davisphotographer.com/ but they’re also the founders of Thirst Relief International. Together they capture compelling wedding and portrait imagery and together with the help of an amazing team they lead a global effort to save lives and change the world.

The highest bidder will receive a 90 minute one-on-one session with Jim and Lara and a free copy of the BEST TIME SAVING TOOL you can imagine, it’s called ActionRunner ($199.00, free trial at www.davistools.com) created by the Davis-Hicks team so they could live the dream mentioned above without losing their precious family in the midst of it! (They have two sons 5 and 4 and a daughter 5 months.)

Jim and Lara’s images have been published nationally, most notably the cover of Studio Photography and they host workshops helping photographers to take their businesses to the next level or even just get started. In less than 5 years they took their business from their first $300 commission to as much as $15,000.00 per commission.

Though they live their dream, Jim and Lara are both known for their willingness to share honestly about the very real struggles of raising a family, maintaining a marriage and trying to run a home based studio and non-profit.

Jim and Lara both give credit to God for the abundant blessings in their life!"





Thursday, February 07, 2008

I just read this from another email. It is thought provoking and true. I like it because it points to the truth without speaking in a derogatory way towards others. Are we not all guilty if we are passive and peace loving at the same? Like someone said "Evil prevails when good men do nothing!"

Read on and consider the issues that face our security as a nation.


A German's point of view on Islam"
by Dr. Emanual Tanay, Psychiatrist

A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to
World War ll owned a number of large industries and
estates. When asked how many German people were
true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our
attitude toward fanaticism.
'Very few people were true Nazis 'he said,' but many
enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more
were too busy to care. I was one of those who just
thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the
majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then,
before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost
control, and the end of the world had come. My
family lost everything. I ended up in a
concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my
factories.'
We are told again and again by 'experts' and
'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace,
and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to
live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion
may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is
meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and
meant to somehow diminish the spectra of fanatics
rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this
moment in history.
It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics
who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It
is the fanatics who systematically slaughter
Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are
gradually taking over the entire continent in an
Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead,
murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take
over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who
zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape
victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact
is that the 'peaceful majority', the 'silent
majority', is cowed and extraneous.
Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just
wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists
were responsible for the murder of about 20 million
people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant.
China's huge population was peaceful as well, but
Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70
million people.
The average Japanese individual prior to World War
ll was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan
murdered and slaughtered its way across South East
Asia in an orgy of killing that included the
systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians;
most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.
And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into
butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of
Rwandans were 'peace loving'?
History lessons are often incredibly simple and
blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often
miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:
Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by
their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our
enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend
from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that
the fanatics own them, and the end of their world
will have begun.
Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians,
Rwandans, Serbs, Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians,
Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have
died because the peaceful majority did not speak up
until it was too late.
As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay
attention to the only group that counts: the
fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Lastly, at the risk of offending, anyone who doubts
that the issue is serious and just deletes this
email without sending it on, is contributing to the
passiveness that allows the problems to expand. So,
extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and
on! Let us hope that thousands, world wide, read
this - think about it - and send it on.

Emanuel Tanay, M.D.
Ann Arbor, MI

Tuesday, February 05, 2008


This year once again we'll be participating in one of the best fund raisers of the year! It's the WPPI Thirst Relief Mentor Benefit Auction! Last year over $25,000.00 was raised to help bring clean water to those around the world who otherwise would not have access to it!
Most people don't realize it but 1.1 billion people don't have access to clean water, 2.5 million people die annually because of water related disease and 90% of those are children under the age of five!
Most people also don't realize that $5 can save a life!!!!!! We can provide a long term, sustainable source of clean water for one person for less than $5!!!!!!!!!!!! It's really true. Visit http://www.thirstrelief.org/ to find out how.
Now, the details. On Feb. 9-12 we'll be auctioning a 90 minute one-on-one mentor time to the highest bidder! We'll also throw in a free copy of our ActionRunner software for free ($199.00 price but priceless time saver!) The mentor time is supposed to be at WPPI but if your not going to WPPI this year we'll be happy to do it here too.
Bidding begins on Feb 9th CLICK HERE to visit the auction site, the Thirst logo will be present but the auction is being set up and will be live on the 9th:
Note: Davina Fear has once again run with this incredibe fundraiser and we are so grateful for it!
Fotoverite.com has been so kind to host the auction again this year for free, but do note that the bidding will continue so long as bids come in, meaning, the highest bid wins, not the last bid before midnight on the 12th. So bid away, pay what your really willing to and let us all go to bed a little earlier this year!!! :) last year the bids continued on until 3:00 a.m. when Becker finally ended the war by saying he'd do two sessions! He brought in more with his two bids combined than Gary Fong did with his big $6k bid! It was so fun!