Category: Announcements

Your Voice Is Beautiful!! (and I want to hear it)

Chris MarquardtHey you wonderful bunch! Chris here.

As many of you will know, I’ll be traveling during most of January. I’m going to pre-record episodes for that time. And guess what, I’d love to hear YOUR voice on the show! Get your questions answered, tell a fun photo-related story, almost anything goes as long as it’s remotely related to photography.

And the by far best way to get your question on the show is if you record it. Don’t worry, I’ll make you sound good.

Here are the two most simple and best methods to get your question on one of the January episodes:

(Note: the old voicemail phone number is out of service)

Method 1: fire up any voice memo app on your smart phone, record your question and send it via email to [email protected] (best to start it with your name and where you’re from, like “Hey, this is Nancy from New York and I was wondering…”)

Method 2: go to www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com and click/tap the orange bar on the right, then follow the instructions

I’m looking forward to hearing from you!
Chris

PS: don’t use the US voice mail box for now, it seems to have a few issues lately.

Nepal Earthquake Fundraiser Crosses $10,000 – Update 2015-05-04

Yes, I know this is the Tips from the Top Floor podcast and blog. Please accept my apologies for hijacking this blog for the People of the Himalaya fundraiser. But as I’ve frequently talked about Nepal here on the show, and the site gets more visibility than most of my other sites, it was a logical choice. I promise to bring you a new episode of Tips from the Top Floor this week to make up for it.

Crumbled house in Nepal
The house of Krishna’s parents after the big Nepal earthquake.

With that out of the way, here’s an exciting update: our fundraiser has just crossed the $10,000 line. We are simply blown away and quite honestly speechless. What a community you are! We asked for your help and you came through beyond our wildes dreams.

We have direct access to about $7000 of these funds right now (the part that came through via PayPal, the rest are credit card payments which take a week) – We are happy to say that yesterday we have sent another $2000 to mayasherpaproject.org.

After a phone call with VISA (repeatedly sending money to Nepal apparently triggers their fraud prevention systems and blocks your card), we have also sent 30,000 Nepalese Rupees (approx. € 267) to our friend Krishna, who will use some of it to help his parents rebuild their house in their mountain village and buy some supplies for them. He also injured his hand in the earthquake and is getting some medical attention in one of the hospitals.

Update: Krishna has spent the last days up in the village to help his parents. He just sent some new pictures. He has his arm in a sling because he fell during the earthquake and injured himself.

Krishna Parbat Giri
Our friend Krishna Parbat Giri in front of his parents’ house, his arm in a sling from an injury during the earthquake
The house of Krishna's parents. They live in a shelter for now.
The house of Krishna’s parents. They live in a shelter for now.
Krishna's mother in front of their massively damaged house
Krishna’s mother in front of their massively damaged house

Over the weekend we have also verified with both dzi.org and mayasherpaproject.org that their funds in Nepal are highly unlikely to be affected by the Nepali government.

Thanks for your continued support, buying our Nepal earthquake fundraiser photo book People of the Himalayas.

FUNDRAISER: Update 2015-05-01

Here are some current stats:

We have just crossed the $6000 line, coming from 182 sales of the People in the Himalayas photo ebook. That’s an average of over $30 per ebook sale.

The payments come in through two main channels: PayPal and Stripe (that’s what we use to handle credit card payments), depending on what the customer chose in our online shop.

PayPal is the quickest path and the bulk of whatever we receive through that channel goes out with as little delay as possible. So far we have donated $3000 to dzi.org and $1000 to mayasherpaproject.org from this bucket. We have also made two direct payments to people in need, you can read more on that here and here.

The credit card payments through Stripe will come in with a delay (it’s a 7 day sliding window), so we don’t have access to those funds just yet. We will donate those as they become available and keep updating you here.

Thanks again for your continued support, we are humbled by your help!