Psst… wanna win some awesome design and photography related FREE STUFF worth over a $200 combined value?

Although we’ve been selling royalty-free stock imagery and graphics for almost 7 years now, this is the first year we launched our own private storefront offering all of our professional stock photos at affordable prices.  We look forward to serving the needs of image buyers for the years to come.  We’ll be adding hundreds of fresh stock photos in batches throughout the upcoming years, so be sure to bookmark us and tell your friends.  Thanks again for a great first year! It’s almost a new one, so before the date turns over to 1/1/2012 we wanted to do something special.  Here are the details of our first big giveaway:

Big Kahuna First Prize Package:

- Free 2012 Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post wall calendar courtesy of PromosOnline

- Free one month subscription to ArenaCreative (a $50 value) good for up to 25 high-res stock photos, which you can use for any of your marketing, publishing, or design needs.

- Free full copy of the Trick Photography and Special Effects 2.0 E-Book + Video Course (a $97 value) – it has tons of creative photography and post processing techniques that I love – read my review.

- Free $25 discount coupon good for Lightroom Presets, Aperture Presets or Photoshop Templates from XposurePro

Here’s how easy it is to enter the contest:

Score 1 entry
for following us on twitter @arenacreative and for every time you tweet this message on twitter (the hashtag #arenacreativecontest is important, so that it counts and we can track your entry). Triple click to select and copy this bold text:

I’m entered! RT to win tons of FREE #design related prizes at http://bit.ly/vTiEr9 @arenacreative #arenacreativecontest

For every tweet, you get an additional entry!

Score 5 entries
by signing up for our newsletter mailing list between now and the last seconds of 2011.  We only send out email blasts once every great while, usually quarterly – chock full of  blog post highlights, tutorials, coupon codes, and newly featured stock images.

Score 10 entries
for any stock imagery purchase you make at Arena Creative between now and the last seconds of 2011.  Every cart order = 10 entries.  If you need some affordable stock images for your website, blog, or the latest piece you’re planning on designing, that’s our specialty. (Hint: be sure to use coupon code FRIENDSFAMILY25 for an extra 25% off your shopping cart, valid through the end of 2011.)

Score 20 entries
for a quality blog post or website review written about your experience with Arena Creative Stock Imagery and what we offer, linking back.  If you haven’t ever purchased anything from us, you can simply write a brief review about what we’re all about in your own words.  Feel free to use any of our watermarked images or thumbnails to glam up the post.  We’ll just need either a trackback url sent, or an email via our contact form to verify these entries.  This would be a huge help to us spreading the word about our brand.  If you’ve already written a review about us, and we’re just not aware of it – let us know!

but wait, there’s another way to win!

Comment Contest Prize Package:

- Free $15 discount coupon good at ArenaCreative.com on any royalty-free stock photo order.

- Free $10 discount coupon good for Lightroom Presets, Aperture Presets or Photoshop Templates from XposurePro

Just post a simple comment at the end of this blog post – it doesn’t have to be long.  Tell us why you want to win, or whatever it on your mind.  Say hello!  This contest is separate, only for those that comment on this blog post.

A special thanks goes out to Promos Online, XposurePro, and Evan Sharboneau with the Trick Photography and Special Effects ebook for helping us sweeten the pot of our 2011 giveaway.

Promos Online has been serving businesses for years, in producing custom branded merchandise for all of their clients’ marketing and giveaway needs.  Some of the larger clients they have served include Facebook, Google, Volkswagon, Cedar Point, and the list goes on.  You can order custom printed promotional items with any logo or design on them, at great prices.  They are great for your business and branding needs (of course), schools, clubs, leagues, houses of worship, family events and more. 

The winner will be notified via email and announced here in this blog post in the first week of January 2012 and will then have to provide their mailing address info to receive their prize.  Please be sure to share this contest with all of your friends and colleagues via the social buttons above or below. Oh, and while you’re here – do you see our social icons at the upper right hand corner of this page?  Please hook up with us in the social media world.  We’d love to chat with you about anything, whether it’s dogs, kitty cats, how much you love/hate your job, or even what you think about global warming.

Here are some more images and info about the prizes:

Norman Rockwell Calendar

In this visually stunning color photos and pad calendar, Norman Rockwell, the master of Americana, goes back to a simpler time with this nostalgic collection of thirteen illustrations. Straight from the covers of the beloved Saturday Evening Post magazine, these scenes of Americana will keep you smiling all year long. Each monthly illustration includes its own charming description. Runs from December to December. Can be combined with other themes, minimum of 100 per theme, all with same binding type.

XposurePro Presets & Photoshop Templates

Creative presets and templates to make your photos jump out from the rest of the pack, without having to spend hours in Photoshop.

Trick Photography and Special Effects E-Book and Video Course

It boasts over 270 pages of instruction and over 300 creative photographs made by some of the most talented artists around the globe.  Even if you never even use what you will learn how to do in this educational package, you will no doubt benefit from the inspiration you receive from it.

ArenaCreative Stock Photos

A unique collection of stock imagery that focuses on personality, diversity, and most importantly creativity. Our portfolio is constantly growing. You’re probably sick and tired of browsing through the same old boring stuff all of the time. That’s why we try to produce stock photos with spunk; imagery that will get your projects noticed.  At the moment, there are well over 7000 royalty-free stock images to choose from.  Here is a sample of the collection.  For more, browse the entire collection by clicking on our logo at the top of the page.

If you are interested in giving away a product or service in order to promote your website or business, and you think we would be a good fit for your target audience (business, marketing, graphic design, photography), feel free to contact us with the details.

Update 1/1/12: Contest winners have been announced!  Scroll to the top of this post to view them.

Here were the icons I found useful, and you might also note that I created one more for the Behance Network, which was missing (in case anyone needs it).

This an online seminar I’ve been looking forward to. #CreativeLIVE has been broadcasting some free live workshops (available for purchase after the original airdate) for a while now. I just thought it was worth mentioning that today was going to be Jeremy Cowart’s turn, offering a workshop on Experimental Portraiture. Jeremy is a dude you might be familiar with. He is the photographer that started Help Portrait. Watching his live interview the other day with Chase Jarvis on Chase Jarvis Live, we learned about how he has a background in graphic design, later making the switch to full time photography (I can definitely relate to that). Pass this along to a friend – I’m sure they would appreciate it. The live broadcast starts at 10:00 am PST.

Creative Live really is a great resource for creatives of all kinds.  They cover classes on photography, Photoshop techniques, web development, application development, and more.  Check out the course calendar and make sure you enroll for the upcoming classes you’re interested in.  If you don’t work for yourself, then you might just be able to convince you boss to let you get away from your daily workload in the office.  Once they hear that it’s free, how can they say no!?

Sometime I just let these play in the background, and I listen is as I work.  You just might pick up a few new ideas or tidbits that you will find helpful to apply in your own stuff.

UPDATE: Be sure to also “tune in” today, 12/03/10 for part 2 of the workshop.  Yesterday Jeremy did a lot of experimental studio portraiture, some Q&A, and plenty of critiques.  You can also chat about what is going on with all of the other viewers, which is pretty cool.  It lets you interact live with what is going on, and even possibly allows you to get a question in for Jeremy to answer live.

Here’s a fun and challenging little color hue game that any graphic designer or photographer will get a kick out of.  I took the Munsell hue test as fast as I possibly could, and my score was a 4.  Not perfect, but close enough I guess.  The closer to zero you can get, the better.  This is also a good test to see how well your monitor is calibrated.

Feel free to post your score in the comments below!

http://twitter.com/arenacreative

TWITTER CONTEST!

Graphic designers, art directors, and anyone that want’s a free stock photo or high res wallpaper…Please retweet this message on twitter in order to enter to win 3 free high res stock photos or vector illustrations of your choice from arenacreative.com Spread the word to your friends!  A winner will be chosen at random sometimes tomorrow, 09-03-09.

Please RT: @arenacreative CONTEST! 3 arenacreative.com stock photos to a designer that follows & RTs this – winner picked 9-4-09

This first contest is a test run.  If we get a good response, this will become a regular thing and the prize package will only get better.  Make sure you share this with your followers so that you have a chance to win between now and tomorrow!

Aren’t you sick and tired of sticking your usb thumb drive in your computer to transfer files over to another machine?  Or are you sick of having to email attachments all of the time, or host files on sites like rapidshare, imageshack, or yousendit?  Then Dropbox is for you.

I wouldn’t host your entire stock photography portfolio on this service, or anything else that is private…but for quick transfers back and forth this seems pretty secure.

A fellow microstocker told me about this service, and I’m thankful for that – thanks Andres!  This is a really cool free service. 

Click here to sign up and give it a spin.

Here is one of mine from my last NYC business themed stock photo shoot: