By Evelyn Bonilla

“Natural and memorable”, is the best way to describe the photography of Hudson County photographer Rebecca Ferrier. Well-known for preserving the history of things that are slowly disappearing from the past; through her images she is able to awaken what once was.

In her newest exhibit “Motels”, she travels from the north to the south of New Jersey to capture the true essence of what motels once were. Once a prime place to stay, motels are slowly vanishing in the wake of large hotels. Ferrier explains, “With my photography, I like to document objects that are slowly disappearing. Some motels are changing and being renovated, while others are just fading away. Through my images, I hope to document its true meaning.”

 

 

 

 

 

A wedding photographer for several years, Ferrier has always specialized in “documentation photography”. Drawn to all things, “Americana”, through her lens she is able to preserve these images for all to see. When asked what inspires her she explained, “My grandfather was a photographer, so I saw many images, but true inspiration came when I was traveling in South Asia, there is where I realized that I liked to photograph. I became interested in the culture, the people and what was happening around me and I realized that through my camera I would be able to document what I was seeing”

Ferrierâ€s motivation is drawn from seeing the final product of her work and sharing it with others. Her future goal is to continue to document images of New Jersey, a state which she loves. She hopes to continue to travel the world documenting people, places and objects and to one day consolidate all of her images into a book.

Documenting and capturing the moment is something this talented photographer is truly good at, but the true essence of Ferrier is the ability to bring these images to life and thatâ€s what makes this Hudson County photographer truly unique.

Interested in viewing the images of Rebecca Ferrier” her exhibit “Motels” will open on Saturday, October 2nd at “The Merchant” www.themerchantnj.com  located at 279 Grove Street in downtown, Jersey City. The exhibit will open at 12:00 pm.

Interested in learning more about Rebecca Ferrier you can email her at rebeccaferrier@mac.com

 

 

The post Photography- Hudson County Photographer Rebecca Ferrier Opens Exhibit “Motels in Jersey City” on October 2nd first appeared on River View Observer.

LETTING GO

FIRST ALBUM IN SEVEN YEARS

Singer songwriter Jennifer Knapp returned from a seven-year hiatus with her new album Letting Go (Gravlin/RED), released on May 11th 2010. The Grammy nominated, Dove Award winning artist is currently on a cross-country tour, which included performances at SXSW and the re-vamped Lilith Fair.

Recorded in Nashville, Letting Go was produced by Paul Moak (Mat Kearney, Martha Wainwright, and Amy Grant) and features ten intimate folk, country-tinged rock songs showcasing her astonishing straightforwardness and spirituality. 

 
In what many would consider a controversial but brave decision, a month before the release of Letting Go, the acclaimed musician publicly came out as a lesbian. And as always, Jennifer Knapp continues to speak openly and honestly. She told Reuters “If there’s any frustration, it’s trying to politely break the yoke of being asked to be something that I just can’t be, and with all humility go: ‘Just please be kind when you discover the truth.’ It’s kinda all you can do.”

 Knapp’s impressive history includes selling over one million albums with her previous releases Kansas (her debut1998), Lay It Down (2000), and The Way I Am (2001).  The Kansas-born musician toured the globe with artists such as Jars of Clay and was featured on 1999’s Lilith Fair tour.  She received critical acclaim with The Los Angeles Times calling her “a rising star” and People Magazine describing her as “an uncommonly literate songwriter.”

Jennifer went on to win her first Dove Award in 1999 for Best New Artist, scored a Grammy nod in 2002 and another Dove nomination in 2003.  With a considerable fan base, critical and commercial successes, Knapp walked away from it all at the height of her career. She explains her choice wasn’t easy but definitely necessary, “I completely had to divorce myself from the whole thing because I never really took ownership of what music meant for me as an individual. I needed to figure that out, so I really left the music business with the idea that I may not ever do it again.” She continues to explain her decision to return, “It was hard, and the whole time I was gone, it was like I had a shadow following me. I began to return to it in my own private time, getting out my guitar, starting to play and falling in love with music again without any expectations. I just wanted to play because it meant something to me.”

 After seven years of soul searching and time spent in Australia, Knapp comes full circle with Letting Go, an album of songs about inner-conflicts, spirituality, and life lessons.

Tour Dates:

August 28: Northampton, MA: Iron Horse Music Hall
August 30: Hoboken, NJ: Maxwell’s

August 31: New York, NY: Joe’s Pub at the Public Theatre
September 1: Norfolk, CT: Infinity Hall
September 2: Boston, MA: Café 939

September 5: South Boston, VA: Bistro 1888September 15: Redondo Beach, CA: Brixton

September 16: Los Angeles, CA: The Mint
September 17: San Diego, CA: Anthology

September 19: San Juan Capistrano, CA: The Coach House
September 21: Sacramento, CA: Harlow’s Night Club
September 22: San Francisco, CA: Red Devil Lounge
September 23: Portland, OR: Peter’s Room at Roseland
September 25: Boise, ID: Knitting Factory
September 26: Seattle, WA: Hard Rock Café
October 9: Baltimore, MD: Station North Arts District
October 12: Chicago, IL: Lincoln Hall
October 26: Denver, CO: Bluebird Theatre
 
Official Bio Available Here
www.jenniferknapp.com

www.myspace.com/jenniferknapp

www.twitter.com/jennifer_knapp

www.youtube.com/user/JenniferKnappMusic

The post ACCLAIMED SINGER SONGWRITER JENNIFER KNAPP CONTINUES TOUR ACROSS THE COUNTRY -Will Play Maxwells In Hoboken first appeared on River View Observer.

3 Reasons Why Most People Will Never Earn More Money — And What You Can Do About It!

 This is a guest post by best-selling author and blogger Ramit Sethi.

For years, the most requested topic on my site, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, has been earning more money. Yet I intentionally stayed away because it’s almost always sleazy, attracting a ton of losers who simply want a silver bullet instead of actually working hard to earn money.

But if you’ve read my stuff, you know that I don’t spend much time on frugality, which I mostly consider a waste of time. Instead, I encourage people to focus on the Big Wins – automation, investing, negotiating, and understanding the psychology of money.

Source: TrenttheSimpleDollar.com & Manvs.Debt.com -  thanks to Jeffery Fry for the term Wantreprenuer

 




 

Iâ€ve always said that you canâ€t out-frugal your way to being rich. So after nonstop requests for posts addressing earning more, I decided to make 2010 the Year of Earning More. The past 7 months have been dedicated to helping people earn more money by earning more on the side, and the response so far has been massive. Hundreds of thousands of people read, commented, and Tweeted and otherwise chimed in on earning more. Everyone wants to make more money.

Great enthusiasm – but there’s just one thing wrong with this…

Most people who say they WANT to earn more… never will.

Many of the same people who say they want to earn more also say they want to lose weight…only they focus on the “I wish I could lose weight” part instead of the “I’m going to go the gym 3x/week and eat 25% fewer calories.” They’re delusionally goal-oriented, focusing on the end result instead of how to actually get there.

As much as everyone says they want to earn more – and sure, they’d try it if only they could – most people will never earn a single dollar beyond their regular 9-to-5 paycheck. Fewer still will ramp that one dollar up to $1,000, or more, in side income. The pattern is always the same:

• ‘Earning more’ is sexy, so they get motivated, “$1,000 extra dollars on the side? I want that!”
• They get started with the actual work of generating an idea, and figuring out their target market, but quickly realize things aren’t as easy as they thought, “How come nobody wants to pay me $500 a month to manage their Twitter account??” (The worst is: ‘I’m good at writing grants. Maybe non-profits will pay me to write grants for them!’ No, they won’t.)
• They alternate between chasing a million things, and taking no action at all.
• They eventually give up, putting off earning more until they have “the right idea” (i.e. never).

Enthusiasm and motivation are VERY powerful ways to get started, but they don’t carry you through to your first $1,000.

What does? A system that helps you identify ideas, test them for profitability, and then scale up your marketing. Compare this to most people, who think that earning more is about finding a magical idea that will somehow urinate money on them from heaven.

Why so much emphasis on that first $1,000? In my experience helping people to earn their first rounds of side income, I’ve noticed that $1,000 is the key earning threshold. Earning $100 is good, but it could be a fluke. Earning $500 is a better signal that you’re on the right track. After you hit $1,000, you know that you’re doing something right. After that, you can implement something I call The Tuner Strategy to “tune” your revenue up as much as you want – from $1,000 to $3,000 to $5,000/month, and more.

Interestingly, for many people who do reach the key-earning threshold, going from $0 on the side to $1,000 is harder than going from $1,000 to $5,000. But the biggest hurdle to get past is that first $1,000.

3 reasons why MOST people never get past the $1,000 hurdle

…and how you CAN earn more money.

Excuse #1. “But my situation is different.” Maybe their skillset (“But I’m not a programmer!”) or their background (“But I didn’t go to STANFORD!”) or the other demands in their lives (“But I have a full time job and a partner/kids!”) or ANYTHING (“But I have special motivation problems because my parents didn’t push me hard enough,” “But I get sick easily,” “I’m too young, too old, not smart enough, etc.”) It goes on and on, and it always starts with a “But…” and ends with the person doing nothing.

It’s natural to make excuses about our circumstances because it’s usually far easier than actually doing something about them.

The truth is, our problems are almost never unique. There are a litany of excuses we use to justify not earning more, but every day, someone is out there solving the same problems you’re facing now. So the next time you’re tempted to make an excuse, try an exercise I call Be the Adviser. ALL of the most successful CEOs and leaders around the world have key advisers helping them to problem-solve their way out of the toughest situations. Today, you are your own adviser. What is the first thing you say? What are the specific takeaways that you want your client (in this case, yourself) to walk away with? What are the results that would mean you did your job well as an adviser?

Excuses are us looking at our barriers from one standpoint – ours. Being your own adviser is a way of looking at – and tearing down – our barriers from an alternate standpoint.

This is like when you listen to a radio show and you hear a girl call in, saying her boyfriend has no job, is a slob, and drinks with his friends all day. “LEAVE HIM!!” we all scream. But when it happens to us, we’re not sure what to do.

We’re not unique.

Be The Adviser to yourself and see what concrete steps you could take today to change your situation, or simply ignore it long enough to earn more.

Excuse #2. “I’m still working on the perfect idea.” Are you really ‘working’ on it? Or are you waiting around with no plan, simply hoping that you’ll stumble across a magical idea?

Here’s an easy way to tell: In the last week, what have you done to find and refine your idea? If the answer is nothing, you’re not “working” on an idea, you’re being lazy and doing nothing.

Yes, your idea is important – to an extent. It enables you to get started, but the most successful people – the ones earning incomes to dwarf even fat corporate paychecks – NEVER stop at their first idea. Instead, that first idea is just a tiny launch-point for an ongoing process of refining and improving their service offerings, understanding and marketing to their audience, and scaling up their business. This is how you turn your skills into income.

Your goal is to make it to that initial $1,000 – NOT start the next Google.

Here’s a quick exercise that should get you going in about 10 minutes: Brainstorm a list of ideas, pick your favorite and start with that. If it doesn’t work, either improve it, or cross it off the list and move on to the next one.

If you don’t have any ideas at all, look around at the marketplace. You don’t need to be unique to make money, and you don’t even need to be the best (another HUGE misconception about freelancing and earning more). You do, however, need to be consistent and persistent, and laser-focused on just one goal…

Your only goal with freelancing and earning more is to get 3 paying clients. With freelancing, 3 is the magic number – you’ll know it’s not a fluke, and you’ll have a client base that’s significant enough to show you what you need to do to improve your offering for maximum impact. Even if the rates aren’t high (don’t worry about that just yet), you’ll learn invaluable insights that you’d never otherwise have gained.

It’s not sexy to say, but it only takes an average idea with above-average execution to win.

Excuse #3. “Should I set up a Facebook page??” and other worthless tasks that replace making money. People tend to treat starting a business like they’re packing for a vacation – you pick out all the fun (or unchallenging) stuff first. “Social media profiles, check. Business cards with fancy logo, check. SEO-optimized blog, check.” What ends up happening is they spend all their energy STARTING a business and never actually DOING business.

YOU DO NOT NEED SOCIAL MEDIA TO EARN MONEY ON THE SIDE. Let me say that again. I recently paid someone over $50,000 for a few months of work. He has no website. He has no significant social-media profile. What he IS good at is understanding my problems and solving them. He makes over $10k/month from me now.

Please listen closely because this is one of the most pernicious myths around right now. Virtually every “expert” is telling you you MUST have a full complement of social media profiles, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blog, etc. That’s complete BS.

How will Twitter get you paying clients? This is when people start hedging and coming up with ridiculous answers like “It will help me engage…and be a brand.” Your goal isn’t to build a brand. It’s to get 3 paying clients. Anything else is a waste of time.

There’s absolutely nothing inherently wrong with business cards or starting a blog or managing a Facebook profile, but be honest with yourself. Is that task mission-critical, or are you using it as a stand-in for talking to a real, potentially paying, client?

Key Takeaway: When you’re starting to earn money on the side, you only have one goal – get 3 paying clients. If you can do that, then you’ve proven not only your idea, but your execution, and you’ll be thousands of dollars ahead of today.
Free Preview of Ramit Sethi’s course * * *
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The post Business -Are you a “Wantreprenuer?” first appeared on River View Observer.

Now Hudson County residents have a good reason to watch CBS’s Hit The Good Wife one of their own residents will be appearing this fall in the second season.

According to the Ausiello File it has been annoucned that Emmy -Award Wining Hudson County Actress Tammy Blanchard will will join the cast for the up -coming  season of  the “Good Wife.”

Blanchard will appear as a confidante to Cary (Matt Czuchryone of Glen Childs†underlings.

Described as a “fair-minded assistant stateâ€s attorney who looks more like an indie-band drummer than a lawyer,” Blanchardâ€s character — who will likely recur — befriends the departmentâ€s newest employee, Cary (who joined Childs†camp after getting pink-slipped by Will and Diane in the finale)

To read more about this visit Ausiello File

Source Ausiello File /Michael Ausiello

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New Jersey – March 22, 2010 – The combination of bar hopping and gym-going can often be a double-edged sword. While everyone enjoys a great night out, the next day results in a sluggish, slow day that seems to negate the effects of frequent gym visits. Enter Andrew Adelman and Devotion Vodka. A fitness and nightlife enthusiast himself, Adelman felt the spirits market was lacking a product that could coincide with customers’ goals. So Devotion Vodka was born, the first premium vodka infused with Casein. Casein is a protein that prevents the breakdown of muscle and actually helps build it. The patented proprietary solution found only in Devotion Vodka is quickly transforming the cocktail in San Francisco (where it launched in November), while also defining a new generation of vodka aficionados who devote themselves fully to everything they do in life. The new 80-proof, triple-distilled vodka hits Adelman’s native New Jersey today, in a state where he says, “the people aren’t afraid to stand out and take charge; we’ve always worked hard and played harder.  That is the mantra of the Devotion brand.”

 Not only has Devotion Vodka been successful in the nightlife arena, but the brand was also just recognized by the Radius Beverage Trends Report. This report provides an overview of key new product launches and movements across the beverage industry, highlighting the most interesting, stylish and innovative new brands and products from around the world. “Ultimately, you must deliver great taste, extreme clarity and excellent mouth feel,” says Bob Jones, VP of Devotion Spirits, Inc. “With Devotion Vodka Infused with Casein, we believe we have delivered on every front.” Devotion Vodka has been introduced in a 750-milliliter bottle at a suggested retail price of $28.99. The custom designed bottle is not only distinctive, it is transformational. The frosted glass bottle with the iconic logo and recognizable red cap has further distinguished the brand and lifestyle that is unique to Devotion Vodka Infused with Casein.www.devotionvodka.com

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Facebook confirmed that it does not send such e-mails and that it is warning users to alert others of the pending danger in the virus-laden e-mails. Facebook users may represent a very vulnerable demographic for virus spreaders and hackers, as they are often unconcerned with the security of their online activity. People often engage in Facebook, Instant Messaging and e-mailing simultaneously, rapidly clicking on everything that’s flying in and out of their screens. It’s easy to imagine millions of Facebook users “accidentally” clicking on an e-mail attachment they believe is from Facebook without ever thinking about it.

By Buzzle Staff and Agencies
Published: 3/19/2010

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2010 May Yield a Bonanza of Opportunities

According to Trendwatching.com- 2010 may yield a bonanza of opportunities.  If the Global Recession has ended what trends will we see this coming year that could bring a host of recession-proof opportunities.

 

Number one on their list is –BUSINESS AS USUALL- see what else made the list.

Source: TRENDWATCHING.COM

Do you agree with these trends-can you add something not mentioned ?

We welcome your comments

The post 10 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2010 first appeared on River View Observer.

The style is everywhere from Hollywood to Bollywood and all over the world women are opting for the one-shoulder dress.  A throwback to an 80s style dress which has become popular today, especially on the party scene.

Photo by Inf

From Maxi-to Mini, Preen to Versace these dresses are easy to wear, and are very adaptable, they can be worn as dresses or tops teamed with denims or even as gowns.

And perhaps what makes them so popular with designers and celebrities alike is that the cut of the dress allows some skin to show and are asymmetrical. The exposed shoulder and back can be very sexy and at the same time the cut can have a slimming effect. And no matter your body type or personal style, this angled look works for everyone. 

 According to fashion industry experts one -shoulder dresses are flying off the racks for the approaching Holiday party scene.

Would you wear this dress?

To find one- shoulder dresses and more visit: babiesnewpinkandblue.com

Photo Source: from Extra

The post Fashion – The One Shoulder Dress -Falls Hottest Trend first appeared on River View Observer.