jeliza

So, having someone from a legitimate licensing company asking to license a random work from a website is one of those things that I thought never happened anymore, and certainly didn't expect to happen to me, but, well, holy crap.

And it's a piece that only appeared on my blog once on a page I don't think even works anymore. And I was gutted because my only file of it was in the catastrophic data loss that wiped out pretty much the vast majority of my photography career, and it was a weird photogram experiment that I expected to had faded into nothingness even if had kept said random pile of monoprints.

I found the prints, They are still intact, from being stacked in a dark place in twenty-fucking-ten.

Given that I've sold pretty much nothing, especially not via licensing, in several years, it feels a nudge from the universe that I shouldn't just give up on art and become a office assistant.

Current Mood: happy

The external drive that has all my photography on it has gone walkabout, and the cloud backup expires after a month, so I have been downloading the entire drive from backblaze to a new one. In the process of checking file integrity, it has become obvious that I have massive quantities of reasonably salable photography I've never properly processed and sent up to the stock agency -- particularly from every trip I've taken since, um, 2010? Possibly earlier, 2007-2009 are still downloading, and I do know that the 2006 had a lot of stuff that went up. This is linked to the not getting a payment of any size from my agency for a couple years. The glorious thing about stock, though, is the "set it and forget it". Once it's up there, I don't have to do any promotion or printing or anything and then sometimes checks float in. (My favorite, though not particularly lucrative, sale was at some point a British newspaper used a small pic of Olivia in her stroller at the SPAM Museum.)

And while I do not consider landscape photography to be a strength, I clearly can make salable images, possibly because I was mostly shooting with an eye to using things in my own composites so maybe they are adaptable to graphic designers uses better than the spectacular "frame and put on your wall" landscape photography I only rarely achieve.

I have three rush and two normal album clients right now (!) after having almost none for months which is both nice and really ill-timed. At least I'm done with big shows for a couple of months, because one of the rush jobs is only in rush now because I didn't have enough brain while in 5 shows in 6 weeks mode and messed a bunch of stuff up. (Okay, technically Confluence is next weekend, but I had to mail it out over a week ago, so it counts as "done" from my perspective.)

Of course, finding time to actually process is not easy, but during the times where I start having a panic attack in front the computer and get trapped in obsessively refreshing twitter and LJ, if I can make myself do that instead it would be an improvement.

Current Music: Caro Emerald - That Man
Crossposts: http://jeliza.livejournal.com/1039488.html

Both my SLR bodies are currently non-functional, and I haven't been able to make it down to Ballard to get a repair quote, but previous experience tells me that it will be $200 minimum to get both repaired, and likely more. A random tweet directed me to the knowledge that the successor to the nicer of those bodies (so with HD video and eye-fi) is currently $300. Which is... hmmm.

(Also, this is probably a Get Off My Lawn moment, but I wish standard camera kits were still body+fastish 50mm lens, instead of body+slow 18-55 zoom lens. Use your feet to zoom, that's how to learn, damnit.)

I have far less need for an SLR these days, but would like to have the capability to return to nicer product photos than my point-and-shoot can handle, and you know, some times I still want to go make photos of things besides the children. (Not that I've even edited the photos I took last spring at Long Beach. Gaaaaah.)

I don't know if my thinking is being unduly influenced by the appearance of my tax refund, which I should probably just apply to debt. I didn't really want to spend any more money on equipment this year....

ETA: I have been convinced it is a good idea, especially because shooting videos is definintely a thing I need to start. It was only $15 extra for red, so wheeee!

Current Music: Massive Attack - Karmacoma

I got out the (black) photo velvet for the first time in ... 6 years? (thank you, 2009 me, for deviating from your normal practice and storing the photo velvet somewhere that would still be logical 6 years later. The color checker card, though, still eludes me.)

Pushkin (the orange cat) was down from wherever he was upstairs to come try and sit on it within a minute.

(And there is a pet door to my room, so I can't actually keep him out. Which is usually a good thing.)

I have now booked two actual vacations, one for the family and one JUST FOR ME.

I will leave my cave! It will be glorious! I will be spending four days in cold, windy, stormy coastal Washington in February (the fun I had at

joedecker's landscape photography workshop many moons ago influenced this decision.). I will bring many layers and my camera. There is a hot tub. Hell, I might just sleep the whole time.

It will be glorious, I tell you.

Next weekend, I am taking a workshop on Encaustic and Photography from Nichole DeMent at my alma mater. Yes, I have done multiple workshops on this topic (Encausticamp and other), but practice-with-expert-guidance is a way I learn well and also I like her work and can't figure out how she made it.

But we have to bring to class several prints to use, made on washi or with laser. Which I already have all the materials to do for once , yay .... but now I have to plow through my archives (because I have been shooting less and less over the past few years) and try to find photos that are:

interesting to me to work with in a mixed-media context

that I don't think suck

This turns out to be really difficult, and the longer it takes to find something the more I get to the familiar-imposter-syndrome place of "Ohmigod I suck I have no business calling myself an artist blah blah blah."

Maybe I should just start with 2003, I always end up back there anyway --- which is to say, the photos that were the foundation of my thesis show when I graduated. But going back to PCNW to work with the photos I made there ten years ago? Ow.

Current Music: Sertab - The One

Originally published at pixels, light and hot wax. You can comment here or there.

I am in a take-a-breath moment in the holiday album design onslaught at the moment, and when I was putting some client albums up on blurb, I saw (clever them) a little popup about how they were doing notebooks now. I tend to have 2-3 notebook/sketchbooks going at any one time, and it bums me out that the only ones I can usually find with gridded pages are moleskine, which aren’t the right size and aren’t pretty.

So I made one. It took maybe 10 minutes, and that’s NOT my book design expertise talking. I am pleased. It’s mostly photos from the Oregon coast landscape photography workshop from 2009 because well, my camera and I don’t talk too much lately with all the busy.

The default layout has a picture every 7ish pages, and all the rest grid. On uncoated paper that can be written on. Yay!

(Yeah, that is an affiliate link, because I don’t mark up the blurb books I make, but I send them lots of business, so one of my colleagues pointed out that a bonus for me that doesn’t cost my customers anything is a good thing. And while I’ve got the business hat on, if you wanna go gonzo and make your own, HOLIDAYTHANKS gets you 25% off through ”cyber monday” on books you make, and MERRY will work on other people’s books.)

And that is just a little something on top of this big gorgeous thing:

I started carrying a new kind of flush album; it’s really stripped down as flush albums go, with superthin pages, limited cover design choices, mostly things you only notice if you make a lot of albums, really, and all streamlining rather than quality reduction. And the pricing is amazing as such things go, right in the range a lot of my more “budget” clients are aiming for. (Budget being a relative term when you are talking about custom designed, handmade photo-page books.) So I needed samples, stat, but I was in love with the 12×12, and I didn’t have any 20 page 12×12 designs hanging out that I could use. But, well, I did have a set of really awesome photos that are intended to be seen only REALLY LARGE and this thing is 2 feet wide when open, so …. I made myself a super luxe artist portfolio. That I totally got the studio sample discount on because I really am going to use it to show wedding album clients.

(Pictures are craptastic because it is raining and I haven’t fetched my lights back from the person I lent them to yet.)

12x12 skinny basic flush with black linen and cover inset, abstract botanical portfolio

12x12 portfolio open to purple tulip

for scale, that’s my cell phone:

Isn’t it pretty? I want to pet it. (You can see the whole design here if you like). The photos are smaller than they are when I show them as framed prints, but still big enough to get the right SO MUCH BIGGER THAN LIFESIZE effect.

(Sorry if this sounds super-promotey, but you have to understand, BOOKS! that I get to KEEP and USE instead of mailing away! It’s like working in a chocolate shop and never getting to eat any to do what I do normally. )

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OMG.

time to put that iron back in the fire, maybe

cameras are trouble

this is why cats and studios don't mix

run away!

I hate this part

gee, maybe I should make some books for me…

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March 2025

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