Fun and games and no fun and no games.
Double jobbing today. As well as my night gig I spend the day travelling all over Galway County taking pictures of naked men hiding their modesty as well as some of the girls of El Paradis club for a Calender in aid of the National Council for the Blind. I'd love to show off some of the photos but not until the Calendar is published.
After shooting the gentlemen and before the ladies, my phone disappeared. I reckon it fell in the car. I went back later but couldn't find it. I retraced my steps but no sign of it even though it was ringing. When I was driving home I noticed that there was a gap in the driver door. Someone had tried to break into the car. They may have succeeded but I've no way of knowing. If they were after the phone and it was in the car then they got it, but other than nothing seems missing. Although now that I'm thinking about it there was a jackect there. I'll check tomorrow. I rang the Garda and they had me come back in to do a report. I'm back in town for 11am to shoot more Calender shots. Night!
SWPP
I've finally got on the Winners list with the SWPP Print Competition, with a studio shot of Barry, in the Monochrome. you can see the shot on the bottom of
this page. I've been entering for a bit and although I've been happy with my entries, this one is the first to score over 80 to get me onto the winners page and into Professional Imagemaker magazine. You can see a larger version of the picture on
Random Panderings.
Book
After a trip to the Saltees in the middle of June, I took the opportunity to create a book of my favourite images from there. Being a seabird sanctuary it is a book of seabird photos. Guillemots, Razorbills, Shags, Puffins and Gannets feature with the odd moth and Oystercatcher visible too. This was my first introduction to PoD (Print on Demand) publishing. Relatively speaking it was painless. Download a Microsoft Word template, populate it with pictures (this was tedious, but not hard). Then upload it for conversion to PDF. Proof it, create a cover and then order a print copy. There are quite a few online PoD suppliers, I used
lulu.com. My finished book (a vanity print really) arrived today. The actual photo print quality is reasonable, in fact compared to last months National Geographic, it's pretty good. However this came through lulu's new Spanish printer Publidisa and there have been numerous complaints about their books on lulu's forums. My book is the norm here unfortunately. There are lines on maybe 10 of the 100 pages marring the look of the photos. It's obvious that the ink has been lifted off from running through the printing presses. Pages are not exactly aligned either but this is not an issue for this book, but might be for others (if I want a double page spread for example). I was planning on releasing the book to the public for sale, but now I'll wait and see how lulu respond to my issues. If it all works out I will be putting together a book of People pictures, Landscapes, maybe a book on the last 4 Salthill Airshows, and a variety of others, possibly including a Tattoo book. It was worth doing simply for the experience but for anyone interested in getting their art out there, be it photos, paintings, drawing or writing, this could be a good avenue to look into.
Still at it
My mother reckons my car starting issue could be a timing realted thing. It nearly freaked me this evening when it evenually started (3rd time). After being a bit jerky (as if I had let the clutch out too much) it suddenly sped off and then got jerky again. Bearing in mind I park near the local Garda (police) station, with a few Gardai about, I had reason to be nervous. Not that I was in the wrong, just the less contact the better! Once the car is going she'd fine..
