Brayden, my almost 3 year old son fell asleep in his grandpa horsey's arms (he calls him that cause he had horses, but it's grandpa hicks, my dad) while he was riding four wheelers through the woods at our cabin! What a fun day.

What's crazy is that he is the most difficult child at nap and bed time! He fights it sooooo bad but so desperately needs it or he's really crabby. And yet he'll fall asleep like this as we are riding over hills and creeks etc. so funny.

One of my favorite things to do (when it's not demanded of me) is to lay down with him at nap time and tell him a story about Jesus and then pray for him. So I'm laying there praying the other day and I say "Lord, draw us near to you." He say's "daddy, daddy why you pray for John Deere?" His grandpa would have been proud. He must be a country boy at heart!

God bless you all and I pray you/we have eyes to see all of our blessings for what they really are and we are not so caught up in the things that so easily distract us from what really counts!

And for anyone who can't believe I'd take my child on a fourwheeler, we go really, really slow and are very careful while we ride around with the little guys.

It's amazing how much little notes of encouragment make a difference in your day.

I just received this note from a groom to be in 2007. I'm shooting he and Amy's wedding in May, their whole family is awesome! I shot Amy's sister's wedding a couple years ago.

Thanks James, you and Amy rock!

Jim,I hope this email finds you and your family doing well. I wanted to express my sincerist gratitude for the excellent job you've done with Amy and my engagment session...it was so cold that day, but you can't tell it through the photos. I'm sure you're exceptionally busy right now but your efforts to push our proofs through your workflow, so we could have them to show friends and family for the holidays is something I'm extremely grateful for. Being able to view and share the set on Pictage has been an added convenience, with both sets of parents having laughed and cried while viewing the set. I'm sure this is one of many emails you have recieved in relation to your exceptional customer service and even more so your talent with a camera. Thank you again! James Laine

My most sincere appologies to all of you who have run into problems with the PC version of ActionRunner.

An error occurred with my tech guys when they bundled the last version together.

Two ways to solve the problem:

1. Go into Photoshop and rename the "Davis Tools ActionRunner" action set to "Davis Tools Actions".

2. Or go to http://www.davistools.com/ and download the updated version for free. The same password can be used to get in if you've previously been given a password.

I really do appreciate your patience and I sincerely hope that you'll be willing to try this amazing tool again now that the problem has been remedied.

Sincerely,
Jim Davis-Hicks
http://www.davistools.com/


If you have not requested your free 60 day trial version of ActionRunner and would like to receive a copy please e-mail me at info@davistools.com and I'll send you a password to access the download site and a password to activate your trial version.




Jeff Laplante "I just edited a wedding today using ActionRunner and I am amazed at the amount of time I saved using this incredible tool."

I must say that I'm shocked that someone who approves of partial birth abortion would be put into office to lead the state of Ohio!

Did you know that every single day in the USA there are more children killed through abortion than total soldiers killed in the war in Iraq?

I'm not saying I agree with all of what has happened in Iraq, I feel a far more aggressive attack upon the rebel forces there would be far more affective, but that's not my call. What I am saying is that I am sickened that people are more concerned about a current seemingly poor economy and the status of the war than they are about the thousands that murdered daily just cause they are an incovenience.

"America is great because America is good." We are more benevelant than any other country in the history of the world.

"America will cease to be great when it ceases to be good." How can we be good if we could care less about babies than to just dispose of them even if their hearts are beating loud and clear as early as 8 weeks? They beat before that, that's just when we hear them.

Last and most significant of my thoughts, (in my opinion) When does a human become valuable? Is it after someone else would miss them if they were gone? Is it after they've been invested in or received an education? When???? Any answer less than "The moment they are conceived!" puts others at the center, it puts the mother, the father, the friends, the institutions and people that that human life affects at the center. How selfish is that? I don't take pure water to folks in Zambia and Brazil because somehow my life is affected or I'll miss them if they suffer and die! I do it because all humans are created equal, valuable, worthy of life and worthy of our joy or our inconvenience! Either a human is valuable or it's not. Who are we to decide when they become valuable? If grandpa is old and a burden to take care of should we give him a shot to let him "pass away?" No, that's murder.

Get out and VOTE!

As a Christian and a concerned citizen I take our responsibility and privilege to vote very seriously!

When we went to vote at our old precinct we were turned away because we had moved!
So, it wasn't really convenient but we located our new precinct, got some utility bills to prove our new address and took the boys out and voted. I explained to the boys about how many places bullies rule and we have no say who upholds the Laws and rules that govern our country etc. I'm not sure if it was too advanced but I tried to lower the bar as far as I could.

Anyway, here is a quote about Christians and voting that I thought was really good! Enjoy.

"Christians should vote as a tangible demonstration of our love and concern for our neighbor. Many of the policies instituted by those in elected office will affect our loved ones and those around us in very real ways. Christians are not simply another narrow special-interest group, pushing only for those issues that directly impact us. Rather, just as God 'causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends the rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matthew 5:45), so should our concern be ensuring justice and liberty for all." -Dr. James Dobson

So how hard does your heart have to be to steal these little cuties pumpkins?

Today we went outside to do some fall leaves clean up and realized our pumpkins had been stolen off of our porch! Can you believe it? Four really big pumpkins, just gone! We colored them, made them pretty etc. and someone had a hard enough heart to steal them.

Anyway, you could see that little one's colored the two, a loving mom did the welcome and well the weird face it was mine. The best part is that I wrote out John 3:16 on the back of mine "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son and whoever would believe in Him will not perish but have everlasting life! Even ME!!!" making reference to the weird face on the front. I hope these thieves read it are convicted and change their ways!

The boys were so upset about it but we used it as an opportunity to pray for the robbers and asked God to bring them close to Him and change them!

I guess in that it was a really good thing. I'd rather my kids learn mercy, forgiveness and grace than have a nicely decorted front porch!

We got sooooo much candy and had soooo much fun!

What a great time to meet new neighbors, have a ton of fun, eat free chipotle and more!!!

God is good and He has so blessed me and my family!

The whole time we'd introduce ourselves by name and brayden would pipe in "No, I'm not Brayden, I'm Scooby Doo!"

Are they flippin cute or what?

Go Bucks, Whoof whoof!

p.s. today's game was wayyyyyyyyy too close, they played like they were drugged! still won, for which i am glad, but not the performance i've come to expect from #1, Oh yah! Go bucks!

did i say go bucks???? go bucks!

Just a thought.

Someone asked me how I'm doing today on e-mail.

My response started out like this "i'm doing well, really busy and just trying to keep family and God in their proper place."

As I wrote this I had to stop and consider what I was writing. Hmmm, family has a proper place, but what is God's proper place? How do you keep an all consuming fire in it's place?????

I had to stop and rewrite my response. "i'm doing well, really busy and trying not to be consumed with all that's going on, love my family properly and let God the all comsuming fire have His way with me."

If this doesn't make sense to you, then perhaps you too have tried to "put God in his proper place." God wants all of us, not just a corner of our life.

God bless you all.

jim

FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS!!!!!

For the next two weeks you can get online, buy ActionRunner 1.0 Suite or ActionRunner 1.0 only and if after READING the User Guide and actually editing a wedding or a large number of images you are not fully satisfied I'll refund your entire purchase price! (But you have to delete it from your harddrive! And you can't steal the idea etc. It's between you, the Law and God at that point!)

Here is what Jeff LaPlante has to say about ActionRunner 1.0

"Sure, you can batch process images in Photoshop/Bridge but you have to do them all one action set at a time. ActionRunner gives you a electric carving knife to cut up the bird vs. using your old dull paring knife. Simply, you can power through 1100 images in an evening unattended and end up with 10 variations on the same images for you to choose from in the morning while you're drinking your latte. THAT is the POWER of ActionRunner. Don't try to bill it as something new and great for manipulating your images. Bill it as a time saving device that saves you from editing the files yourself or paying an assistant to do it."

For real, you could pay a part time employee $10 and hour to help edit images and in two weeks time you'd pay your employee more than the $350 for ActionRunner Suite.

I promise you that if you take the time to learn this tool, use it to it's fullest and customize it to your likings you'll be SOOOOO glad you did. I LOVE this tool!

BUY IT HERE

ActionRunner 1.0 is now available at www.davistools.com

This tool will revolutionize your editing life!!!!

Enjoy,

Jim Davis-Hicks

we are sooooooo close.

hang in there to all of you who have been writing and asking when it will be ready!

for real, we should be live in the next 24-36 hours or so. i'm at the mercy of my web guys but it's sooooooo close. for real, this is the best tool i can imagine. i just edited a family session today in no time using it! it's incredible.

lastly, many of you have wondered can i use my own actions with ActionRunner??? YES! That's the best part is that you can use your own actions, others actions, create actions, add actions etc. all you have to do is add them in. Nobody, I mean nobody is beyond this tool. you might be set in your style and ways or you might be just starting out, ActionRunner is designed to make your life easier and your images better!

off to watch a show with my wife.

God bless.

jim

I just did a sr. portrait last night of this really great guy named Josh.

I took about 170 of my favorite images, put each of the 170 images into 10 different action folders, clicked ActionRunner and went to bed. I woke up to 1700 different images. I put this little slideshow together with Showit Web and some of my favorite pix from the day. You'd never guess these were captured while it was drizzling out!

Enjoy!

"Click Here" to see the show.

Davis Tools ActionRunner is about to go live!

Many of you have been asking "When????" Well we are soooo close. The user guide will be perfected and we should be live in the next 24 hours (or 36 or so, it's really up to the web guys to finalize it all.)

The user guide is really simple but we want it to be very thorough so that technical support is almost never necessary. The QuickStart guide is like 5 lines long, but the detailed deal and instructions on how to fully customize it are what we want to perfect so that even if your not a Photoshop person etc. you can use it to it's fullest ability! (This thing is sooo unbelieveably easy to use but we want it to be completely dummy proof before we release it.)

Be sure to check out www.davistools.com in the next day or so.

Also, please leave a comment. I'd love to track how far the grapevine travels in the early stages of ActionRunner.

To see the slideshow click here.

Jen and Mike,

What a joy and pleasure it was to shoot your wedding!

We had a really great time and I hope you guys really enjoy your wedding pix for years to come!

Remember when you start working on that nephew that your brother spoke about we'll be here for you!

Talk soon, God bless.

Jim and Lara

Davis Tools ActionRunner 1.0 is up and running! It's still a beta version of it and we are working out any of the quarks but it's amazing.

Hopefully at the end of next week it will be completely available for purchase and ready to run.

For real, I edited a wedding yesterday that started out with 3000+ images, narrowed them down to the top 1000 images and edited them all in less than 3.5 hours time in front of the computer. It's so amazing!

If you want to know more or be notified of when it's ready go to www.davistools.com and sign up for the mailing list.

This is a fully automated deal, it's not like other workflows.

I'm working like crazy to finalize this. Testimonies soon to come from the beta version folks.

i just received this from a client from last year. i thought it was well worth sharing about how to treat a client.


this is a bit random, but i just felt the overwhelming need to express how much we enjoyed working with you both, and how wonderfully easy going you were-- i think my appreciation quadrupled this week a whole year in retrospect, and i wish i could figure out how to better articulate it. chris' sister is getting married next week, and they are absolutely traumatized by their photographer. apparently the original price of the contract has now tripled with extras that "they absolutely have to have", and the family is just shocked, because the woman will not back down and refuses to change her agenda. it is as though she knew when they would be the most stressed out, and moved in for the kill. whereas, i still remember meeting you and walking through the contract, with you telling me straight up "what you see is what you get--no hidden costs"--and that was certainly the case. not to mention, we never felt as though you treated us with anything but the utmost respect, regardless of which package we chose or photos we purchased. at any rate, it had been a pleasure working with you from Day 1, but i certainly have a new, enhanced perspective about how fortunate we were!
best,
jen

i think we settled in in record time cause we were putting in like 18 hour days since we were kid free and we had a lot of amazing friends and family helping us with the move and painting etc. i love our new place and i am so excited to have a formal studio that is gonna rock!

anyway, i'm trying to catch up but putting in the 18 hour days made me a ringer for the flu and i caught it! :( i'm almost fully recovered but still feeling a little junky. it's amazing, every time i get sick so many things are exposed for what they really are, stuff. at the end of my life i wont care about most of what i spend my time doing but i'll so wish with all that is within me that i'd known God and my loved one's more. this year i want to really, truly seek to love God with all that I am and seek to love those around me with all I can!

i'll post some pix of the new place soon, lara has done an amazing job of making it look really sweet already! thanks to all of you who helped us and showed us how loved we really are.

i had to share this real quickly. lara and i went out and spent 9 hours picking out fans, lights, paint and more so that we can make our new home look and feel like we want it to (or at least get a start on it.) when i got home i sat down and picked out my favorite images from a wedding i recently shot, put them into my respective actions folders and clicked on my new "run actions" icon and now i am heading to bed!

what does that mean? it means that all i had to do was select the pix i like, drag and drop them into one of my 25 custom action folders and click "run actions" and now i'm heading to bed. while i sleep all 25 actions will be fully automated, any images having multiple actions applied will be renumbered so i don't lose any images and then they will be automatically placed into my almost finished folder. when i wake up in the morning i'll check to confirm that my images look exactly like i want them to, (if i want to adjust any i'll just use my micro actions that are included in the new Davis Tools EZ Editor 1.0 to edit to final perfection,) then i'll renumber and ftp them to Pictage where they'll take care of the rest!

i know i sound like a salesman but this thing is truly unbelievable. it wont be long before i'll have the beta version available online at www.davistools.com

gary at www.robintek.com is so incredible. he's the guy that does all the programming stuff i need for this project. we are working on making it pretty and working out any problems.

i never thought that editing a wedding could be so easy! if your interested in learning more about this product please go to www.davistools.com and sign up for my mailing list at the bottom of the home page.

360 payments more and it's all mine!

Praise the Lord! We've been looking to get this home for 8 months now and after a little patience, a ton of showing our current home and a big leap of faith for a bigger house payment we are going for it!

We'll be moving our home and office this Sat. Sept. 16th from 9:00 til whenever we are done.

I am really trying to tie up any loose ends for business and make sure everything transfers over as seemless as possible but please be patient if I am not quick to return emails and phone calls.

I'm so excited about this house cause it has a bunch of character as a one of a kind built in the 1800's, an incredible yard, we can walk to anywhere in uptown old westerville and it also has an old out building that we will be converting to our studio shooting space!

Keep us in your prayers as things are a bit stressful as we prepare to move!

God bless,

jim, lara, ashton and brayden

p.s. our new address will be 64 S. Vine St. Westerville, OH 43081

Here's my latest family portrait that I recently did with Brynne and Max's family.

You guys did great and I hope you enjoy these pix for years to come. They grow up so fast! I wish we could put a halt on them growing up. :) God bless you guys and your family.

jim and lara