A New Year at Beyond Snapshots

Happy belated New Year to everyone! 2010 had been an amazing year for us, and we appreciate you going along for the ride. Not only did the new book take all of our time (still not done, but we handed that manuscript in proudly on December 1st), but family and life in general made it a bit crazier than expected. We thank all of you for hanging in there and being patient, while we try to juggle everything.

We don’t make New Year’s Resolutions, but we do intend to make some improvements with Beyond Snapshots for 2011. There are a lot of exciting things happening, including more Beyond Snapshots classes, advanced mentoring sessions and other events. Also our goal is to be more diligent about posting educational and interesting articles on the blog and continuing to build on the community that is already established. With all that planned, we decided we desperately needed some more help and we got it.

With a leading percentage of our readers being in the states, we felt it was essential to find someone who lived there.  We also wanted someone who was as addicted to comfortable with their computer as we are.  Meet the newest member to the Beyond Snapshots team, Meredith.

Not only is she based out of the west coast of the US, but she totally knows her way around the social media thing.  She is organized, motivated and super nice.  In fact, we are pretty sure that Meredith means “the bees knees” in Welsh.  We enjoyed having her in our Beyond Snapshots class and are thrilled that she would even consider taking this on.   She will begin by helping us out with the Beyond Snapshots community building, posting here on the blog, Facebook and Twitter.  No more, months of silence from us!

Meredith in her own words:

“I was born and raised here in Seattle.  I have two beautiful kids, Liam (6) and Ava (23 months), with my Swedish expat husband.  For the life of me I can’t remember when I found Beyond Snapshots, but I do remember there being an instant connection to Rachel as she is a mother of children close in age to mine, and I fell in love with the style of photography that both Rachel and Peta produced.

I purchased my first “adult” camera almost 3 years ago, when we went on our annual trip to Sweden and I really haven’t put it down since. I kept taking pictures and more pictures, making a lot of mistakes (which I still do) and just finding myself consumed with capturing life with my camera. It wasn’t until recently that I sort of went through some life changing events that made me realize that my corporate 9-5+ job wasn’t making me happy, and I really needed to make a change. What makes me happy is taking care of my family, taking pictures, watching movies, playing “Words with Friends” (I am so bad!), eating awesome food, drinking great wine, but most importantly building relationships. I never thought that at age 36 I would be an intern, not to mention one for a couple talented women. So I am beyond thrilled that Rachel and Peta are taking me under their wing and giving me the opportunity to help and build relationships with you. I am a big social media geek, so I welcome to find me on Twitter (@seattlemum), Facebook and Flickr. The more friends the merrier!”