Potential clients

This morning I checked my email for the first time since mid day yesterday. Sitting there was an email from a name that I know, but I don’t recall ever exchanging via email. Turns out that he had seen some of my design work and wanted some assistance in that area.

I couldn’t really believe my eyes. Someone had taken the time to track down my contact (not overly hard) & was requesting a design service. A service that I don’t actually advertise doing.  (Ok it turns out I do have a single page on my “main” website, which I put up in hopes of getting accepted by a printing press for an account. Not sure if it was required or not, but I got the account after another company turned me away. But the site itself definitely doesn’t scream “hire me to design things, like this amazing website” – given sarcasm can be hard to detect at the best of times, it’ll be best for me to clarify, my website is pretty rubbish, I threw it together in a weekend about 4 years ago & haven’t touched it since. Luckily my skills that improved over this time).

The next challenge….answering the question “how much would you charge?”. I have no idea, I generally get contracted to do a large site, and the web design is a side component, this was the other way round, “here’s a design project, plus a landing page for web”.

It has taken me all day to think of a reply for the email. There’s always an inner battle for me around quoting. I want to quote for the best possible outcome for both parties. Ideally you want to quote the clients budget, plus $10. But sometimes you have no idea what their budget is. (Chase Jarvis and Gary V talk about it in an interview). There is nothing worse than to quote too low, and then get stuck doing 100 revisions. In my mind I fell it’s like a taxi meter in reverse. The quote gets accepted and that’s like adding credit to the taxi meter and then as work is done the meter winds down, and the first revision it starts to go into the negative space, and by the 20th email of changes the meter is half of the quote. Sometimes you can go back to the client (particularly if there is some paper work) and say “hey this is getting ridiculous” other times I just wear it. Unfortunately what I find can start to happen is that bitterness creeps in around the project and the client. Which then can start to have a negative effect on the work. It’s a vicious cycle.

But at last I bite the bullet, sent off a figure with some options. Let’s see what they say when they come back. At the end of the day, it goes back to this weeks theme of pointing your toes in the direction you want to go.

Consumer culture and the desire to buy things on sale

What is it about a sale, or the concept of getting a bargain that motivates us as humans to pull out our wallet and buy things, sometimes even buying things we don’t actually need, nor ever will need?

There must be a science to it, otherwise years of infocommercial broadcasts have just been a waste of time and money. But if they didn’t work, people would stop advertising through them. 

This idea comes about after I just spent $55 on SD memory cards on eBay, that I kinda needed, but they weren’t a burning desire to have. I just noticed recently that I was low on cards, and after shooting more video, I thought it best to get some higher capacity ones. But the only real reason I fokes out the cash today, other than any other day was eBay is having a “hump month” sale and have been running the 20% coupon code CLICK20. So I managed to save a few pound. 

I’m all for saving money, but I found my actions leading upto the purchase interesting. I looked around for other things that I may or may of have wanted to buy. Looking at pages of items, that I didn’t need. If I needed them, I would have probably already gone and brought them. 

The list was a little odd, but it went something like this:

Ooo lets just check out drones, Kogan has a DJI with 20% off, that’s cool. What about an Xrite colour calibrator? Nope no one has one of those. A new camera body that shots 4K could be nice. 

Then I had a look at GoPro mounts to HDMI cables. Just lots of cheap little things that I’d be saving at most $1 on.

The time, is possibly better spent actually working on a project, or resting, or hanging out and playing with friends.

Maybe I need a new rule, no hunting though sales, unless I can make back the time I spent, in the savings. 

Stories

I have never fully understood stories. I knew that they were there, and that some people felt touched by them, but I didn’t really understand stories. 

I heard a sermon once by a guy who shared some stories about his local neighbourhood, they weren’t amazing awesome hyped stories, instead they were good stories. He and his family live amoung a rough neighbourhood and they live amoung the people that they are trying to help and support. I can’t remember exactly what his stories were about, but I do remember the concept of good stories. 

Lately I’ve been listening and exploring story telling. I’m not sure what has triggered my interest in stories, whether it is in part, this project of daily blogging which requires me to be open and listen closely throughout the day, or just getting more mature (whatever that means). Two days ago I blogged about episode 99 of the Rob Cast, a story that was quite moving, I recently watched a movie on Netflix called “The Eichmann Show”, if you haven’t seen it, go watch it, but be prepared to be shocked if it you don’t know the story. Following this, I gave the film “A Girl Like Her”, a documentary style film about the bullying of a young girl and the story telling of both sides of the story. 

These stories have been having an impact on me. I’m loving the beauty of the telling a story with a camera, and makes me want to pursue the path of becoming a film maker. I need a project around this.

Just point your toes in the right direction 

I was listening to Episode 99 of the Rob Cast this morning in my commute to the office. Now I’m not one to get teary at a movie, or a book or song, but gee listening to Leith McHugh share her story really touched a nerve deep down inside of me somewhere. I’m not going to try to retell it, go and listen for yourself. But gosh some foke have a tough time. 

So after her tough experience she finds herself on the other side, and after a couple of years she doesn’t really know exactly what she wants to do, but the advice that she is given is 

Just point your toes in the right direction 

That quote just feels so liberating. There’s no need to have the next 20 steps planned, or the next 2. When your starting, orientate yourself in the direction you wish to travel and take it a step at a time.

Photography review

Yesterday I wrote about starting my biggest creative project to date. Here is my review on the day of photographing. Just a heads up, it’s pretty dry & lifeless, you might want to skip along to another post.

What worked?

  • The concept of getting a large group of people involved was daunting, but we managed to create enough interest. I was hoping for 40 people to get involved. I’m yet to do a final count, but I think it was around double that. Win – win.
  • Having a production plan. It made having a goal very easy, and whenever there was doubt of what to do, any of us could refer back to the plan.

What didn’t work?

  • We didn’t have an flow to the system, there wasn’t a defined “here is the line to get a photograph”, and thus I felt people slipped through the cracks.
  • After session 2 I adapted one of the poses, to give us more options in post.
  • I didn’t have a tick up my sleeve for making people smile.
  • I didn’t communicate with a couple of people after the server meltdown saga of last week. Had I followed them up, things could have moved along a little smoother.
  • I grabbed someone who was camera shy for my lighting test. She wasn’t comfortable & I was trying to talk to her and sort out the lighting, which was a challenge. At the same time, one of the lens fogged up, this also through me, it was like photographing with a smoke machine.

What did I learn?

  • Planning is key.
  • Leave enough time to setup and get things working.
  • My HD600 stobe is a bit of a work horse, easily handling the 1100 photos at 1/8 power.
  • It’s ok to work in a team. I do not have to do everything, all the time.

The next phase will be post and editing into the final concept before it goes to print.

The biggest creative project yet

Today I started working on my biggest creative project yet.

Today saw the public start of the biggest creative project I’ve ever undertaken. It turns out big projects, actually have a lot of planning behind them. I was inspired for the concept of this project back in April while getting lost down the rabbit holes known as Pinterest. I saw a magazine cover and thought that I’ll file that one away.

Last Sunday I got word that we were a go for this project, and the concept was approved on Monday. The downside is that I need to get the artwork to the printers in two weeks time. So today was the only time that really suited the photography side of things.

To put the project in perspective, it’s a church based topic that runs for term 3 called “Better Together”, and what better way to inspire and rally a community around a theme, than to put the faces of the community on the promotional material. The vision was to do a Humans of New York crossed with a fashion photoshot, photoshot. Lights, camera, action, the works.

I realised early on that I didn’t want to be the one pressing the shutter all day. Instead, I wanted a team of people, a camera operator, an assistant, an admin assistant handling release forms, a recruiter to gather and inspire people. I knew it was impossible to fore fill all of those roles at once, I would just fail at all and the project would fall down around my ears. Instead I wanted to have the role of “Art Director” and manage the project from a high level and make sure that it’s heading towards the creative vision. I set out to recruit people, and to get people to recruit others. Now to be honest this didn’t exactly go to plan, how I’d like it to have gone. First thing this morning hit and I felt so lonely, like it was just me and a camera. I had failed to successfully recruit the other talent required to pull off this job, although we are jumping ahead.

If multiple people were going to be involved in this project, I better be sure of the artistic direction and know exactly what photos we want, complete with poses, expressions, props, etc. So I wrote a document to plan out the direction of where I was taking the project, and what we needed to make it work. This included camera angles, how much of the frame should be filled by the subject, the facial expression of the subject, etc. In the end I had 3 photos of each subject that I wanted to take.

After all this planning, and preparing, finally came the day to take a photo. After spending an hour setting up the basic “2 light” setup, I was ready to take the first picture. But hang on, it’s not working very well. Panic started to set in, I’m running out of time and the plan in my head, and the little experimentation that I did is starting to fall down. I’m a failure before I even started. Turns out, it was just a couple of technical issues that compounded together to throw me off what was happening.

In the end, the day felt like a real success, over 1100 frames taken. I’m yet to filter that down, into something more manageable. The goal is to create a collage of faces.

Thanks to the fokes who helped out today, Sally, Buzz, Kev, Katie & Sarah. Your assistance allowed me to focus on the other tasks at hand, instead of trying to juggle everything. Cheers guys and girls!

To be continued….

Slowing down

Constaint running since 3:30pm Thursday trying to fix a server has a negative health effect as I blogged about yesterday. Today when I was ready to pull the pin on the old box and drop in a new one (I had started setting up the new box last night) & what do you know, the old one finally sparked up. 

It was time to stop. 11am Saturday.

How do you suddenly stop after running at 110% for days?

It turns out, I can’t. I just changed projects and went a bit slower. But I still didn’t “stop”.

Instead I did some creating. This time with wood. Turns out a benifit of owning your own place is that no one can tell you off for doing a woodwork project on the kitchen table. Armed with a saw I created a prop for a photoshop tomorrow. 

I setup things, I went shopping, I chatted on the phone, Ihad Netflix and Pestro* on in the background, I wrote on my blog. But I haven’t yet fully stopped.

Changing rthymn is difficult.
*Has anyone actually paid for Pestro? Turns out with the Pestro Coupon Code: TELTTV6 gives you 6 months free. Not sure how long it lasts. 

A big failure 

Apple foke tend to update their software all the time. PC guys, not so much, partly because it’s easy to get burned in the process.

What started as a humble driver update, has turned into 30 plus hours of server hell. Trying to get a server back online and it doesn’t want to play ball. I don’t want to bore you with the details, but I will reflect on its effect on me.

At first the problem wasn’t a big deal, until it grew and grew in size. Then I had a dinner date, I was half able to put the problem aside for 2 hours while I ate with my friends, but upon returning home I spent the next 3 hrs focused on the problem. During those hours I realised I had been a bit snappy at my friends. 

A typical case of burning the candle at both ends, I went to sleep late and arose early to try and the server back online. Total time in bed < 6 hrs. To which I spent an her working on remotely before heading to the office. I’m not sure when the pounding headache started, I think it was around 8am, just like someone slowly increasing their grip on my head. I’m not sure whether it’s the underlying pressure knowing that numerous staff are unable to fully, effectively work, or poor posture sitting at a laptop, or something completely different causing this sensation in my head.

I spent another 4 hours banging away at the keyboard, trying to solve the problem this way and that way. Nothing seeming to work. I had to force myself to take a break for an hour by leaving the office and going down the street for lunch.

Another hour and bit later and my thoughts were interrupted as my phone went off, reminding me of my physio appointment for that afternoon “bugger”. I headed off to the appointment and as I sat in the waiting room, still trying to process the answer of the all consuming problem. 

The physio asked me “it looks like you’ve got something on your mind?” I was physically showing signs of this issue. I returned from the physio where I have spent another 5 hours thinking and processing the problem.

Unfortunately there isn’t an easy answer (or at least I can’t find one). 

So at this stage it looks like I’ll be going with plan M (A through to L have failed me), a complete rebuild. Just the way I wanted to spend my day off.

I’m physically worn out, I have a shocking head ache and all over a simple computer update that went wrong. 

It amazing how work can weigh so heavily on us. Like really, all I do is type and click, how can that get this heavy? Sometimes things are too heavy, because we are trying to lift more than we can manage. The thought going through my head tonight is “I’m never going to make a career out of being a cheap system admin, it’s just not worth it.” It was a fun challenge for a season, but that season has passed.