Jules and Bryan pig out at Z-Tejas |
I'm back at Little City on a late Sunday morning.
I just got back from brunch at Z-tejas. I met with Jules, my former assistant, her son Ben, and his fiancé Emily. Ben and Emily are getting married in November, and Jules hit me up to be the wedding photographer.
I gave everyone fair warning that I am not a brilliant “Events” photographer, but they are on a tight budget, and I guess I agreed to do it for free,. I don't plan to give em what they pay for.
I guess I did an ok job shooting Joanne and Brent's wedding, though it's pretty hard to take an awful photo while posing above the Grand Canyon at sunset.
Ben and Emily |
Jules is still looking for steady work. She's doing a few short term gigs, and she has a great idea for a children's cave conservation project. Right now she keeps getting requests from schools to go visit a cave and do educational tours. No one is setup to do that. She's looking for someone to help fund the project, and I think she's got some help coming here way.
Jules is a total go getter, dynamic and full of energy. Love working with her. We ate at Z-tejas, and she had scouted out a waiter there who had model potential. I brought a card for him and he said he would call. He sure did have some great eyes. He is Irish, and they are a cool piercing blue. Jules scored on this one.
The guy was all excited cuz his wife was due to have her baby that day, so he was poised to head to the hospital at any moment. He seemed real interested in doing the photos, which makes me happy cuz Jules gets a referral fee. I'd love to throw work her way (she helped with the overhaul of the Bio4ms area) but everything has pretty much settled into the grind.
We had a good meeting. I'm a little worried about their expectations. Weddings are tough gigs. I know wedding photographers get paid a lot, and I know why. It's stressful. Shooting Joanne's wedding was fun cuz they had a photographer there, so I could be backup and just chill and take photos I wanted. Sounds like Ben and Emily do want the “Works”
Thankfully I have backup cameras and equipment, so I don't have to fret about technical difficulties. When did this all happen? Oh yeah, my credit card bill.
As I was leaving Z-tejas, I couldn't believe how beautiful it was outside. It must be in the mid 80's with a crisp dryness to the air. Almost like Fall. I had my laptop with me so I decided to come on over to Little City and work on the journal.
I love it!
I know I have gone on and on about wireless and notebook computers, but it's so great to work AND go enjoy the outside world. Not to be trapped in my little office.
I also finally got my Electrovaya battery to work, so now I can work on my laptop for about 6-8 hours without having to scramble for a power outlet. No more fighting for an outlet at the airport! Yeah!
The garage "studio" gets a little face lift |
Bill Gets Settled
Bill's life finally arrived on Thursday. They moved everything in, and there were quite a few large boxes. They broke his desk…as they were pulling it out of the truck, which is a major bummer and totally ironic.
Bill works like a friggen dog. He is so so so perfect as a roommate. I swear he is long lost family. He cleans and keeps busy like a true Ockert. He reminds me of my mom..well..the rest of the family, in that we never stop moving. And giant gulps of work get done in a tornadic frenzy of task completion.
I come home and I ask, “So what ya do today?”
“Well, I got up and cleaned the house, (I ran and got a new mop, yours was horrible!) then I mowed the yard, I put that extra desk together in the studio, I got a shower door, can you help me get it up the stairs? Oh yeah, I moved all the gym equipment to the shed, and cleaned the junk drawer too. I washed the sheets on the guest bed- do you want gray or white ones put back on? And I made chili for us to eat all week.” All the while wiping up crumbs from my after school snack.
I used to think I was running circles around people but Bill is running octagons! I love it!
You can tell his theory on moving in is “The sun should never set on boxed items.” After only a couple days he has seamlessly merged his homeworld into mine.
Cam News
I feel like I am playing musical cams. After much deliberation, I had decided to take the cams down, mostly cuz of bandwidth issues.
As soon as I shut it all down, a guy named Jeff who runs cams for a several companies offered me some server space and some bandwidth. Thus taking the load off my current hosts.
He totally helped out getting me setup, and he helped take some extra measures so the cam image wouldn't get stolen by other sites, creating a heavier load on bandwidth from “illegal” sources.
I've also re-thought where and how I want the cams. I've decided to just do what I did when I first had the cams. Have one connected to my computer in my office, so I can easily turn it on and off, aim it, and actually see what you all see on cam. With the house all wired, I would constantly have to go over to the cam server, aim the camera, make sure the focus was right, etc. Tiresome.
Now I can just turn it on when I want and feel like it, and really end up feeling more connected to the whole process.
I am also going to change the front page of the site to bring more ME into play. That seems to be the biggest complaint of the new site. I guess I have my own fans, despite me trying to redirect everyone's attention to hunky models.
Ya know, this site has morphed quite a bit over time, and even though it SEEMS like the site is less me, I can't help but say that this site is MORE me than ever.
Sure, it's no longer some gay guy living in marital bliss in suburban hell. Living the stereotypic dream of gay coupledom setting up house with a white picket fence, shouting, “Look at us! We're normal too!”
Baaah.
That stuff didn't make me happy. This really makes me happy. The photography stuff is more than a hobby. It's what I want to do and be. And this site as it is now has my interests steeped into every corner- therefore it IS me. Does that make sense?
So I totally feel one with the site, and I think long time fans can see that, but over all, I'm not conveying that. So I need to tweak it a little bit.
10 Percent/VillageLigthhouse.com?
I don't want to jinx this, but 10percent emailed me twice (the first one I must have deleted as spam) asking if I would be interested in licensing images for calendars, cards, magnets and their ilk.
I was pretty excited by this prospect. They are top dogs, and they have the most exposure.
I read the letter real quickly and headed over to the gym. I worked out while my mind was racing with possibilities.
When I came back home, I re-read the letter. Now I get the feeling they have asked tons of photographers to just submit their work, and maybe they will use some of the images on a calendar (so prolly not my own calendar) or for greeting cards. So it's likely I will just get lost in the shuffle.
But hey, they asked, and I will certainly submit a bunch of images. Be a little extra money too, and having a few greeting cards as samples will sure impress model potentials.
I'm gonna call them this week and get the full scoop. Could be big, could be nothing.
I have a very good fan who asked me to submit my stuff to Blue Magazine. They did write me last year wanting to get into my membership area, but they never got back to me. I do have some good shots these days that might look good in the magazine..and its is kind of a cool story how all this happened.
So if you routinely send letters of encouragement to magazines, send Blue a letter telling them to grab me while I am a rising star..hehe..
Model Release
This week was a good week for Bill to move in officially. I was plagued by models flaking out on me. They would schedule then not show up. I would call them 10 minutes after we were scheduled to start and they'd saying something like “Oh dude, I'm on my way to Houston.” ?!?!?
So I have had a lot more free time to get on top of things, and to help out a little with Bill's transition (Very little as he does most everything himself). I am still considering taking some vacation time to just punch through a bunch of work.
I'm pretty much ahead of schedule on having plenty of models photographed for the next couple months, so I'm looking at it as a blessing. Just don't want the dry spell to last too long. I have piles of photos to go through to catalog, re-touch, and create galleries.
I also got some time to go see a movie. Aliens VS. Predators. The video game rocked, but geeeeeeeeeez…can they stop shoving the same formula down our throats? Added to my irritation with the movie was it was so dark you couldn't see any of the action. I closed my eyes several times just trying to imagine what was happening to avoid the frustration. I didn't care in the first place, cuz it was just a body count anyway.
Next time turn on some lights when you shoot a movie. Dim is scarry, but dark is dumb. (Note to the Director: Uh..the cast landed in a giant pyramid that was so hot with energy and light that it showed up on satellite- Perhaps the aliens turned the lights on?!?)
Boo.
And when they did have the lights on, some of the special effects were down lame. There was one scene at the beginning where a scientist is seen in front of a sprawling pyramid dig. That backdrop is so dang fake it was laughable.
Wouldn't it be cool if like 5 characters walked away ALIVE in a movie like this?!?
Boo I say again.
Now…The Incredibles…that's just around the corner. That's gotta be good!?
Well..that's it. Gonna head out.
CYAIN7
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