Today’s post is actually by one of our associates, John Van Den Brandt. John asked if he could use my blog space to talk a bit about a project he’s pretty passionate about!

-klt

I’m John Van Den Brandt. By day, I’m a Senior National Account Manager at 4imprint. Any other time, I’m a wildlife photographer, spending long hours in the field waiting to capture that  one perfect,  heart-stopping moment of wildlife action.

When a typical employer learns of your passion for anything outside your job, the likely response is ‘Fine, just don’t let it interfere with your work’. But 4imprint is not a typical  employer. Here, the thinking was ‘How can we utilize John’s talent to the benefit of our  customers?’ That’s how the 4imprint Exclusive Wildlife Calendar was born. (Can you begin to  see why 4imprint just made the list of America’s Best Places to Work for the third straight  year?)

The calendar’s been a hit – in addition to the wildlife images, customers seem to like the brief “stories” that I write about how I captured each month’s image. In fact, at the beginning of each month I often receive e mails from customers throughout the country complimenting me on that month’s image, asking questions or encouraging my work. One customer said that we’ve saved him a lot of money on story books because his child will only go to sleep if he can first page through our calendar and name all the wildlife. He won’t accept any substitute!

I hope you won’t accept any substitute either. If you’re looking for a unique calendar that uses real wildlife images (not game farm models), a gift that will keep your logo front and center all year long, check out our wildlife calendar. The 2011 edition is our fifth and I believe our best ever.

Thanks to 4imprint for supporting my dream and thanks to you, our customers for making it come true.

Click here to view all the images in the 2011 calendar.

A few years back we had the idea of creating an exclusive calendar out of the breathtaking wildlife photos taken by one of our associates, John Van Den Brandt. John has a genuine passion for wildlife photography and it shows. The shots he shares with us are amazing, as are the stories about what it took to get those shots.

I think this year’s calendar is the best ever.  The zebra photo is honestly one of the best I’ve ever seen. As always each month includes a small ‘story’ that John writes about each shot – it’s truly a unique calendar.

So, if you’re looking to make sure your logo gets seen for an entire year, and you’re looking for something that’s high-quality and very unique, check out our 2011 Wildlife Calendar.

One of the things we’ve done for years is include our folks in much of our marketing efforts. We hope it gives you a chance to put 4imprint faces to names and realize you’re buying from real people!

Of course this means lots of photo shoots.

We’re lucky we have such a great (and patient!) photography team. They make everyone look good – even when there isn’t much to work with, as in these photos from one of my recent shoots.

Thank goodness for digital photography. At the ratio of ‘usable-to-unusable’ shown above we’d have to shoot rolls and rolls of film just to get something we could use.  And that’s before all the work getting the photo into Photoshop so someone can get rid of that bad hair thing on the upper right side of my noggin.

Looking at these photos I’m lucky our associates are such good sports about becoming models. Although I’ll bet if we used these photos sales of promotional blindfolds would skyrocket.