Photographic Paraphenalia

Posted: Sat 16 December, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Own Business, Photography | Leave a comment »

This week, I’ve sorted out the last semi-major purchase of photo gear this year. It’s already just over a year since I bought the EOS20D, and I’m still really pleased with it – although I’ve known there was extra stuff I needed to buy.

So this week I’ve been able to get the 100mm f2.8 Macro lens (which is bloody huge) plus lens hood, a Speedlite 580EX flashgun, and a small home-studio thing so I can start taking some specific photos of stuff that Herself has been working on – which will also be one of the websites for developing very soon now.

As such, I’ve now got pretty much all the stuff I want right now, and the set-up I’ve got is capable of wide-angle landscapes, macro, portrait, flash, and all the general types of photography I’m currently interested in.

I just don’t want to think about just how much it’s all cost, or what the value of the gear is!

Paperwork and Bureaucracy

Posted: Sun 10 December, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Own Business, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

There’s always one downside of moving – sorting out changing the address details on everything.

Hell, even my poxy bank won’t let me change my address on-line. My credit card will. My bank won’t. “We’re working on it. Maybe next year” Yeah, right. Bunch of cunts. Hell, they even fucked it up when I had to do it by phone.

I think we’re now pretty much done on the changes, so we’re now officially here.

And I’ve got a little business idea…

Refunded

Posted: Tue 5 December, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Getting Organised, Own Business, Work-related | 3 Comments »

A while back, I changed my account with 34sp to a ‘reseller‘ account, rather than the numerous individual accounts I had for the various websites I own/run/manage/whatever. It also means I pay £15 per month flat rate, instead of norking about with bits and bobs all over the place.

For me, it means that I can now administrate manage (and bollocks to you both, Jann and Gordon *grin*) all my sites (including D4D™) from one place, it costs me a lot less money, and just generally makes life slightly more organised, professional, and easy.

Anyway, as part of the “costs me less money”, once the sites had been copied over to the new server (reseller accounts are hosted in a different location to ‘normal’ accounts) I cancelled the personal hosting accounts for the individual sites. That particular part was a minor nightmare – but eventually got fixed on Thursday. And all the stuff I’d paid for, but not used (i.e. I’d paid for a year’s hosting, but only used six months, that kind of thing), was refunded to my reseller account, so I can use that credit to pay off those £15 per month amounts.

The amount I was refunded? £165. So my reseller stuff is paid for over the next 11 months – which I’d say was a pretty good deal!

Reseller

Posted: Sun 19 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Geeky, Getting Organised, Own Business | Leave a comment »

Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to be doing a fair amount of work on my various sites.

I’ve recently (i.e. in the last week) moved over to 34sp‘s reseller account, which basically means that all the sites I run will move to one server (when I move them, rather than when someone else tells me to) and all be able to be managed and maintained with one log-in rather than the 15 I currently have.

It also means I have 750Mb of webspace and 15Gb of monthly bandwidth to play with, which I can spread around the 15 sites. Some sites I handle need more bandwidth than others, but all the same, it should keep me going for a while.

At the same time, I get to save some money, and move some sites around from where they’ve been costing me more than they should. In fact, in the course of the first year, I stand to save more than I’ve actually paid out, due to getting refunded any remaining time on the existing hosting agreements, and also to save myself on one particular piece of hosting that’s proved to be remarkably optimistic – and thus unnecessary right at this moment.

So all told it’s going to be an interesting little project, and I’m quite looking forward to it, actually.

Resolutions – A New Year

Posted: Sun 5 November, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Own Business, Photography, Work-related | Leave a comment »

While I still intend to keep up a kind of ‘to-do list’ of resolutions, I think I’m going to change the time of year that I decide them at. (I know, that sentence is teetering on the edge of ungrammatical. Live with it) So, rather than going for the entirely arbitrary – if traditional – January 1st, instead I’m going to go for the equally arbitrary (and in some ways more sensible) November 5th. Which also, conveniently, happens to be a personal anniversary, so it makes sense on that score too.

The resolutions I had for this year (i.e. 2006 in general) have worked out pretty well once I got my finger properly extracted, so I’m hoping that the same will be true for the new set. And also it’s the start of the five-year plan I’ve been looking at for a while, so there’s some stuff that’ll relate to that as well.

Anyway, the list for 2006/7 is going to be as follows…

  • Photography
    1. Get a Macro Lens
    2. Get a Wide-Angle Lens
    3. Finish the Portfolio website
    4. Sell/Publish some stuff
    5. Join a local club
  • Writing
    1. Finish at least one piece of writing
    2. When a piece is finished submit it to the right people
    3. Just see how things go
    4. Write more on d4d™? Maybe.
  • Work / Websites
    1. Keep on going with Where’s Good
    2. Build and work on the other ideas I’ve got in my head
    3. Work (as always) on smaller sites, and do as many as possible
    4. Sort out permanent job for the first part of ’07 while we’re house-buying etc.
    5. Redesign d4d™? It’s about time…
  • Education
    1. Sign up with Open University – initially for a refresher course, and work from there
    2. Look at an official course/qualification in Photography?
  • Other
    1. Restart the Archery once we’ve moved
    2. Complete the move to Norfolk – first a rental, then the house-buying

To PhotoBlog or not?

Posted: Tue 17 October, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: Own Business, Photography, Resolutions, Thoughts | 3 Comments »

I’ve been doing some more thinking about the site for my photography that I was writing about yesterday.

Basically, the question that came up was this : Do I make it into a photoblog like Chromasia, DDOI et al, or do I have it as a simple portfolio site, just to show off what I can do, along with contact details, etc.?

I can’t deny, I’ve always kind of liked the idea of a photoblog (I hate that word, but can’t come up with a better one at the moment. Hey Ho) although it does have the potential downside of not updating every day, or – to my mind even worse – the intention of adding a new shot every day, but never quite managing to do so. Combined with that is the part of me that worries about diluting “the brand”, or similarly of diluting the strength of some of the images by just having one every day, so some are great and others merely so-so.

As for having it as “just” a portfolio, that quite appeals too. It’d certainly be simpler, and (in theory at least) a lot less work than a constantly updated site with new photos all the time. This is of particular relevance at the moment, where I can’t deny that my motivation is pretty rock-bottom and merely ticking over, and also where I’m away from home for four nights a week. While this should give me the time to get a lot of stuff done, I can’t deny that at the moment it’s leaving me a bit numb, and slightly “CBA” about the entire thing.

So I think that for now it’s likely I’ll leave the site as “just” a portfolio site, where a selection of my better/favourite photos can be viewed, rather than doing stuff for it every day.

Although, of course, that doesn’t mean that at some point in the future I won’t add in a PhotoBlog section…

Another New Site

Posted: Mon 16 October, 2006 | Author: | Filed under: 2006 Resolutions, Getting Organised, Own Business, Photography, Work-related | 1 Comment »

Semi-linked to the post about buying a macro lens for the camera, and also to the infamous resolutions for the year, I’m also still working on putting together a “portfolio” of sorts.

When we went to the Autumn Fair at the NEC, one of my main things for the event was to find some of the publishers that were at the show, and find out both what kind of thing they were looking for, and also how one goes about submitting work to them. And to a man, they said “Well, we find it’s best now to have a website that shows off what you do – if we like it, we’ll be in touch”

So that’s one of the things I’m working on. I’ve managed to get a decent .com domain name, and it’s also one that combines with my normal “self-employed” company name stuff, which makes things a lot easier. I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but it means I can keep some form of “branding” between the two entities, if I should decide to do so, and it also means that it’s an identifiable link. Which, in general, is fine with me.

I’ve got some ideas for the site, but I think I may also need to plunder some people for design ideas as well, as design is most definitely my weak-spot when it comes to websites and, well, anything else, too.

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