Tag: photography

BIG NEWS!

The Somnambulist by Jonathan BarnesHoly crap! My stock agency e-mailed me this morning to tell me I’d sold a few photographs. I was surprised, considering I hadn’t actually sold anything through them before, and I was feeling kinda dejected about the whole stock thing, to tell you the truth. I was beginning to think my stuff was not worthy of publication outside my own little realm, which consists mainly of Etsy and smaller, independent art magazines that can’t afford to pay.

Thinking it would be $50 or so, I opened the attached statement and was shocked (quite literally–I nearly screamed out loud) to discover a payment amount exceeding $1200. That includes payment for two book covers (!) and four smaller European publications.

Book covers! I’m on book covers! Actually, my brother is on book covers, to be more accurate. Both books used images of him from the impromptu photo shoot we did in December of 2003. One of the books hasn’t been released yet, but the cover looks just as fantastic as this one, which was designed by Ervin Sorranno (the bottom photo is by Dennis Cohadon). I’m very impressed with the way they used the work. The overall effect is wonderfully eerie.

I’m floored. I’ve been walking around all day in a giddy fog. I have no idea what we’ll do with the money yet. Most likely it will have to go back into my business in some form or another. I have been eying a new iMac! Or we may include my office as part of our upcoming home renovations and re-do the floors in there, such that a portion of the cost will qualify as business expenses. The Scrooge in me is screaming to put it into savings and leave it there. I just don’t know!

What’s really funny? Tim saw this book reviewed several days ago on one of his favorite blogs, and didn’t recognize the photo. Silly goose!

This actually isn’t the surprise I was telling you about in my last entry, but it’s pretty damn good as far as surprises go.

squee!

the forgotten bride 2 I hadn’t even intended to post today (because I’m a bad, bad NaBloPoMo-er, and because I’m buried in work and a new Web design) but I had to unbury myself for a moment to brag: I have a photo in a recent Etsy Storque article about the Handmade Wedding series!

And how fitting… I don’t know about you guys, but I know that the idea of planning a wedding certainly makes me want to stick my head in the dryer. Hence, why our teeny  wedding ceremony was planned, organized, and over within 3 weeks.

(Many thanks to the lovely talented Jamie for pointing this out to me! I’m so behind on my blog reading that I never would have noticed otherwise. :))

it was a good weekend

thrift store finds NaBloPoWhat? OH, right. That thing I said I was going to do back in February and totally forgot about. Oops!

I’m getting a late start, but here’s a list for your reading pleasure, entitled “Last Saturday”:

  • Farking snow
  • Farking snow!!
  • Danielle!
  • Portland
  • Food
  • More food
  • platterEven more food
  • OMG stuffed
  • Zzzzzzzzzzz

That pretty much sums it up! Alas, the Etsy Meet-up was canceled due to the weather (see the part about “farking snow”), but Danielle and I braved the storm and went to Portland anyway.

On Friday I went thrift shopping with Susan, and found lots of goodies:

  • Brother Charger 651 sewing machine in robin’s egg blue, $5
  • 2 funky serving platters with a neat mod design, $11
  • Yet another clock to add to my growing collection, $3

I was especially pleased with the sewing machine, as I’ve been looking for one to use as a photo prop for a long time (and I couldn’t argue with that price!). This one is exactly what I wanted. It doesn’t seem to work, though, so I may have it serviced at some point in the future. It would be nice to have a functional sewing machine that I could practice with!

preeents

prints! Stock–I has it! Yesterday I got this huge order of over 125 prints, so I spent the evening signing them and putting them into clear bags with my business card. I had quite a bit of help from Danielle, who not only helped me pack some of these up, but also cooked us a lovely dinner. Thank you, Danielle!

Very Exciting: I ran out of business cards while I was putting these together. This means I get to buy new business cards! Squee! (I can’t be the only person who gets excited about new business cards, right?) I’m trying a new design for Sixhours Photography this time, and I also had a separate design printed for Calobee Doodles. The glossy finish was free, and I splurged for rounded corners. Now I can’t wait for them to get here!

feh is a noun AND a verb

apple of my eyeShop-related announcement: I’m finally going to start keeping a selection of prints in stock, which means faster shipping times for my customers! To start with, most prints in 4×6 or 5×7 sizes will ship the next day (and this applies to both shops, calobee and sixhours). Pretty soon I’ll have larger sizes ready to go as well.

I’m not feeling particularly inspired lately, in the way of blogging or anything else. I’ve been bombarded with projects at work, T & I are researching some exciting home renovations (new floors!), and I’m otherwise absorbed in friends and books and trying to ignore the fact that it’s still winter. A particularly emphatic “FEH” to that last part.

I set up a quick still life shoot yesterday, just to say I’ve done something in the way of photography this month. I still have yet to play with the clocks, but I’d like to pick up some new photo shoot clothes first… this means thrift shopping, which means going out in the cold, and see the part above, about FEH? Yeah. Feh.

What’s even more feh is that, at some point in the last few days, I bit my tongue really hard, and I don’t even remember doing it! All I know is, two days ago I woke up with an incredibly sore and swollen tongue with a bite mark on it that hurts any time it grazes my teeth (which, as you can probably guess, is quite often! Being that they’re both in the same general vicinity of my mouth!).

Eating? Not so enjoyable. Talking? Even worse (and when I do, I’m forced to lisp). So between turning down offers of chocolate and making a concentrated effort not to talk too much, Tim is wondering who abducted his real wife and put this strange, lisping alien in her place.

Despite the amount of feh I’m experiencing right now, I’m quite excited about the Maine Etsy meet-up in Portland next weekend! I’m looking forward to meeting some of my fellow Maine Etsians in person, and as a bonus, I get to spend time with Danielle and Susan. The three of us are making a mini road trip of it. I’m also doing trades with a couple people, and bringing some prints along to show off… it should be a fun time!

sixhours photography shop has moved!

clocks 3 That’s right – after thinking about it, and whining about it, and groaning about all the work I’d have to do to make it work, I have a new Etsy shop:

http://sixhours.etsy.com is the new home of my photography prints.
http://calobee.etsy.com will continue to function as a shop for doodles/custom illustration.

This change makes sense for a few reasons. First and foremost, it’s better branding for my shop name to match my Etsy username. I’ve known this all along, but didn’t want to admit it, because of the amount of work involved in moving everything to a new shop (not to mention the loss of feedback and listing fees and–if I can be so lame as to admit it–hearts).

Second, now each shop has a singular, cohesive look and feel. Cutesy drawings + dark photography sharing the same space didn’t sit well with me, as I feel my target audiences for each are somewhat different. This way one medium and style won’t get lost in the other.

I hope this won’t be too confusing to buyers (or to me!) but I think it’s a change for the better. I have to give some credit to eighty8words for making the point that brand recognition is a good thing, no matter how bad the carpal tunnel aftermath. Yeow!

too lazy, even, to think up a title

rock The weekend was mahhhvelous, simply mahhhvelous.

I had the pleasure of meeting jewelry artist and fellow Etsian Susan, aka yellowplum of Yellowplum Beads, on Sunday. She makes beautiful, intricate beaded jewelry, and is incredibly friendly and so easy to talk to. I’m really glad she suggested we meet up (I am far too shy to make the first move in most social situations) because now I have a new friend! That’s two this month, which I’m sure is some kind of record for hermits.

I also spent some time working on a new custom banner for Brianna of The Crochet Side fame. I would point you directly to the artwork, but I believe she’s waiting with baited breath to unveil a super-secret project relating to said banner, so I will keep my mouth shut and let her do the talking.

I have a photo shoot coming up sometime this month, exact date and time yet to be determined. I have a stash of smaller vintage clocks to work with, and over the weekend I bought yet another vintage clock (found via JennSki’s blog) on impulse. This one is so fracking adorable that I will probably put it up in my office when it has outlived its usefulness as a photo prop.

In fact, I’d really like to make some kind of wall art with all these pretty old clocks I have laying about, but I’m not sure how to go about doing so. Most of them are thick and heavy and wouldn’t hang on a wall easily, and as I may have mentioned before, I am engineering-challenged. This may be a job for the resident super-genius-engineery-type-person, Mr. Tim.

I had such grand ambitions for this evening: to make a baked ziti for dinner, take some photos, maybe even work on a new Web site layout. Then I realized that I’d forgotten to run the dishwasher last night, hence no clean dishes with which to cook (and it should go without saying that I am too lazy to do them by hand). So then I figured I’d take photos while I was waiting for the dishes to finish, until I discovered I’d left my camera’s switch in the “On” position (for about two weeks, no less), hence no battery power. And quite frankly, I am just too tired to wrangle with HTML/CSS/PHP code right now.

So, all grand ambitions have been postponed in favor of sitting on my butt and writing this blog post. Aren’t you lucky?

and the winner is…

we want to fly I have the coolest parents in the world. They read and comment on my blog, they’re my fans on Facebook, they play World of Warcraft… they’re hip. They’re happenin’. They’re all-around good folks, and I love them dearly. So I suppose it’s only fitting that, when I went to draw the winners for my birthday contest (with help from random.org, the true random number generator–accept no substitutes!), guess whose comment number came up?

That’s right–congratulations B Moore, aka Mom! You most certainly deserve it, especially after all those hours of hard labor, the diapers, the cooking of separate meals for certain picky eaters (ahem), and (who could forget? Because I will certainly never live it down) the Great Blue Milk Incident of 1988! Who knew that you’d still be sticking my scribbles on your fridge long after I turned 7?

Let it never be said that good parenting doesn’t win you any prizes. 🙂

Then I thought… hmm, the good people of Blogland are an understanding bunch, but they might find it a tad convenient that the winner of the contest also happens to be directly related to me.

Well, that’s easy enough to fix. I decided to draw a second winner, and that lucky person is Pia Jane Bijkerk, a stylist who writes a beautiful blog with gorgeous photos. Congratulations, Pia! Your cupcake prints will be sent out tomorrow. 🙂

Thanks to everyone who participated! I had a lot of fun watching the entries roll in, and found a lot of new blogs to read in the process, and I had such a great response that I will definitely do another contest soon–perhaps for my one-year Etsy anniversary, coming up in March. Stay tuned!

stuff with a little stuff on the side

stroller Booyah! Back from Boston and feeling surprisingly energized. Maybe a vacation from the day job was exactly what I needed.

While I was away, celebrating my birthday and figuring out how to use MBTA public transportation (with the help of my friends, of course), my photography was featured on Artist a Day! Yay! I find it a bit odd that the show pieces they chose were from 2004 and not something more recent, but whatever. The extra link-age was a nice birthday gift.

I’ve got another custom doodle to tackle tonight. My shop has done exceptionally well this month–in fact, it’s been my best month for sales yet, so pardon while I brag a little. 🙂 If you don’t want to watch my head swell, you should check out some of these links instead: