Now I know I haven’t finished with the second half of the stag weekend posts so forgive me, but I wanted to write this now before I go away.
I’m heading back from Scott and Jess’ wedding this weekend. They had a handfasting ceremony and asked me to do their photos for them. While I was, of course, honoured that they would ask me and trust me to shoot such an important event, I was more than a little nervous. While I’m comfortable shooting live events and theatre, I had actually never previously shot a wedding. Wedding photography is not something that I have ever really wanted to get into, but I have known Scott since we were very young and Jess a few years now, so I agreed on the understanding that they know my style and they knew what they were getting.
I travelled up on Friday morning and stayed with my dad for the weekend. (I’m not sure how long I will have that luxuary now my mum has started her new job. Their house is up for sale and I guess it all depends on how long that takes to sell.) [read more]
So that’s it, it’s all over. It’s been hard work, but great fun. I’ve met a great bunch of people, and never seen such a dedicated group of young people working towards a common goal before. If anyone feels the need to do down young people I’d invite them to spend the week at one of the ISTA festivals and then re-evaluate their opinion.
I did discover one thing though – I’m no good at networking. This causes something of a problem in my industry.
There are a few things I’ve done in my life which I hate while I’m doing it, but keep coming back for more. One was the sporting results website I ran while at university — for one long weekend every year I’d work 24 hours a day on the site, collating results, piecing things together, and doing some statistical analysis to predict what might happen, as well as being involved with the radio station, and even doing some overnight broadcasts. I’d finish the weekend and collapse into bed for a few days swearing I’d never do it again. Yet come the next year there I’d be there to do it all over again. In the last year or so I thought about it and came to a conclusion: I must enjoy it, even if I didn’t realise it, because otherwise I wouldn’t keep going back.
And I think sometimes it’s the same with my photography.
The following weekend saw the annual Chinese New Year celebrations in London and another day out with my camera. This one proved to be much more successful and significantly less painful.
I was trying to sneak this in before the end of February so as to have posted something in February, but I failed. I’ll have to make do with having started it last month, even if I only managed to finish it this month. I was going to blame my lack of updates on a quiet month, but in actual fact there have been a few things I’ve mean to post about and just never got around to. In fact I’m still a blog post missing from Christmas: I had started writing something about Chrismas in Windows Live Writer — the offline editor I sometimes use when writing on the train — but that seems to have gone missing so I’ll have to start again. I think I’ll make an effort to write a load of stuff this week. But enough of excuses, let’s write something worthwhile!
I was approached yesterday by one of my clients (for whom I’m shooting this year’s Relentless Boardmasters festival in Cornwall this August) asking if I would be willing to shoot some sets for a new website he is producing. Now, I’m not totally sure of the details of what he is looking for — the details will be worked out if I choose to accept the job — but basically he’s looking for glamour / softcore erotic photographs.
This obviously throws up a few issues, both morally and technically. [read more]