One of my goals for this year was to save money. Who doesn’t like that goal? And one thing that stood out to me looking back was how much was spent for a credit card processor. We do a fair amount of credit transactions with the shopping cart and session fees, and there is always a monthly statement fee, an Internet gateway fee and other processing fees that go along with that.

In comes Square. From the beginning, Square was meant for everyday people. For people selling items on Craigslist to the small business who never accepted credit cards before. It was a game changer. Gone were the monthly fees and the headaches. You just plug in, swipe and process. It works with any smartphone and the free reader they send you. If you’re looking to start accepting credit cards or just a simple way to get paid on the go, look into Square.

As you can see from our recent addition to the site, we’re really into Twitter. Cyndi and I have been on Twitter for a while now and really like it. It’s a fun way to connect with other people and you can even see what celebrities are doing. It also can connect directly with and update Facebook’s status at the same time!

If you’re not on Twitter already, you should sign up and follow us (Adam & Cyndi) to see what we’re up to (we’re pretty funny most of the time!). Also, for our clients, we’re going to start offering Twitter-only discount codes for our awesome products and prints (via Adam’s updates).

It makes editing 400+ images so much quiker (get it?)! Normally, that would take us about a week of heavy work. Now we are able to knock that out in a day or two at the most.

Another thing that really helped was the album design part of the QuiKeys. We used to use some Photoshop templates and actions that would do okay, but we always had to tweak more than we liked. Now, Cyndi is able to burn through an album design very quickly. It fits our design style very nicely, letting us control everything very simply.

If you are looking to take your images to the next level, I think you need to take a look at DQ QuiKeys!

The obligatory shot…

I miss the palm trees. You don’t see these in Arkansas!!

The view from our room.

Cliff Mautner demonstrating how to shoot into the sun. It was a great seminar and made me think about shooting with the sun more.

The albums are 10×8 in size and are covered in beautiful book cloth which can vary in color and cloth type. We are even able to match the colors from your wedding. You can also get a cameo cover for your album that adds a nice touch to the cover. Our top three packages include an album, while the top package includes two 8×6 parents’ albums as well. You can view our new pricing guide here. We are also going to offer the albums for children and senior sessions (with different cover options we are still working on). Here are some photos of the new albums:

With the vertical cameo cover:

The pages are super-thick and sturdy, just like the albums we offered in the past:

Square cameo cover:

Text cameo cover:

To celebrate, every gallery that is still online is getting 50% off of every print order through the end of the month! Just use the coupon code “newcart” when you check out.