Been an action packed day today- I have 2 friends coming to visit Tuesday night thru Friday, and I finally got the spare room sorted (wow it is very small though) and my office at about 95% done, which was fantastic. We've got friends visiting Tuesday, and since G isn't back till Monday (and Z is in Cornwall at a wedding this weekend) I had to do it all single handed...I had to dope myself up on espresso mocha coffee to increase the productivity though, seeing as I had to haul 2 mattresses out of the car and upstairs all on my own, and I moved a wardrobe, suitcases, crates, and who knows what else. I picked up the mattresses from Emmaus this morning, went into town to foto the StAG Women's Conference, hung out with the ch staff guys who were hiding upstairs (their offices are in the chch building which was taken over by the women's conference) and then did a bit of shopping, then back home to rearrange the upstairs. Whew. :) I even went through my closet, cleared it out, got rid of loads of stuff, and put all my clothes away. Like I said, it's been a productive day!
Did I ever mention that I love adventures? In chatting with my life coach about dealing with difficult people, we talked about what are sort of called supervalues- the things that are valuable to people that are at the root of people's choices. Because despite the catchy title "dealing with difficult people" the fact is that people are only difficult because we are all different from each other. :) One of the reasons we find it hard to get on with people is that their supervalues are different from ours. Let me give an example. :) I discovered that variety is a supervalue of mine. You're all probably thinking "no duh!" I love trying new things, learning new things, going new places, meeting new people, making new friends, shifting and changing my life and the adventure of it all. Life feels like a gigantic adventure to me, flying around, catching thermals, diving, with JC as my anchor to be sure I don't go launching myself into outer space. :)
I can get along with most people- probably 95% of people, no problem. 5% I may feel an instant dislike for, but for sort of 2% I can with persistence and positive working learn to really love and respect them. But that missing 3% is the tricky bit. It turns out that the people I find the absolutely most difficult to deal with tend to be people who deeply value certainty- which is of course the opposite of variety. :) Everyone values certainty to some degree, but these 3% value certainty the way I value variety, which puts us at polar opposites. I could just try to avoid these people, which I've tried in the past, but as a business person I can't always do that. Meeting with a life coach has been really good in that I've learned a lot about myself, about other people, and how to deal with people who are different from me. The funny thing is that those 3% of people must find me totally intolerable and be wanting to avoid me too! :) While they are trying to keep things certain, calm, and under control, I'm zooming along trying to drag them out of certainty into massive changes.
Actually I'm thankful that Gd created me this way- its fantastic for making new friends and telling them the good news about JC. Besides there's not much I can do about it anyway- at least I don't get into too much trouble. :) ha my mom was a genius and sent extra school work with me or arranged for extra work to do my whole school career (thanks mom!) to keep me interested and occupied, I feel sure I would have been hell on wheels if she hadn't, and that trained me to find more work for myself when I was feeling bored, which was pretty much all the time. :) So now when I feel bored, I generate some "extra" work for myself- could be gardening, photographing, learning a new language, skill, or taking a trip.
I have a few more things I need to do tonight- the time changes tonight for us, so it's sort of 10pm here now. Tomorrow I'm out at the Abbey helping prep for the Easter event, photographing tree planting, and going to an allotments meeting. Hope you all have a blessed weekend!
Saturday, 27 March 2010
Sunday, 21 March 2010
March 21, 2010
I usually try to update this at least every Saturday, but yesterday was such a long day that it didn't happen! I was out photographing our group of friends from StAG (that's our ch here) and then processing those photos, then on to a little post Paintball social...I love to photograph events, and I'm always looking for new things to photograph. I hope it might lead to some business from the paintball company- we'll see.
These past 2 weeks I've been doing a lot of photographing with 2 friends from the camera club, Andy and Sarah. They are both older than me by about 10 years, married with children under 10, but both have jobs that allow them to go out and photo during the week. Sarah is a pilot for EasyJet, and I have no idea what her husband does. Andy is a Chemical Engineer for a big firm here, but he is off on disability due to some sort of cancer that he has. He's been on chemo for about 5 years it seems- but he's not allowed to do official work, and like most engineers has lots of energy and enthusiam, which he's put into photography. Sarah interestingly is into gliding, and sails a yacht- talk about posh friends! ;) It has been fantastic to go out shooting with other people- I've been out doing hawks and eagles at a raptor center, I've taken them out to do snowdrops at the abbey, and it's been great fun. All 3 of us have enjoyed it- we put our photos up onto Picasa and then comment back and forth on them. Neither of them follow JC, so pr that I'd have the chance to share with them.
The new website is coming along- I hope it'll be done by May. Groups will start coming out to the Abbey the 3rd week of April, and there's a huge Easter event on that I'm helping with Easter weekend. And friends are coming March 30th to visit from Morocco- can't wait to see them!
G is making his way back to Michigan tomorrow, after the conference in Pittsburgh and visiting a close friend in Boston. Z and I are having lots of girly time which is also very good fun. :) Tonight we had an iHUB (that's our bbl study for internationals) discussion about different rlgns and whether they a) all do lead to the same place and b) are just parts of a bigger picture. Those are both untrue, but it was useful to look at especially as some of our friends there aren't followers of JC and are curious about the truth. Pr for K, a friend from Hong Kong who is really curious about things. Also for D, a mom I'll be meeting with in the coming weeks to study the bbl.
That's my week in a nutshell- it's spring here, really enjoying the flowers and wildlife. Hope all is well in MI, and keep holding out as spring is nearly here! :)
These past 2 weeks I've been doing a lot of photographing with 2 friends from the camera club, Andy and Sarah. They are both older than me by about 10 years, married with children under 10, but both have jobs that allow them to go out and photo during the week. Sarah is a pilot for EasyJet, and I have no idea what her husband does. Andy is a Chemical Engineer for a big firm here, but he is off on disability due to some sort of cancer that he has. He's been on chemo for about 5 years it seems- but he's not allowed to do official work, and like most engineers has lots of energy and enthusiam, which he's put into photography. Sarah interestingly is into gliding, and sails a yacht- talk about posh friends! ;) It has been fantastic to go out shooting with other people- I've been out doing hawks and eagles at a raptor center, I've taken them out to do snowdrops at the abbey, and it's been great fun. All 3 of us have enjoyed it- we put our photos up onto Picasa and then comment back and forth on them. Neither of them follow JC, so pr that I'd have the chance to share with them.
The new website is coming along- I hope it'll be done by May. Groups will start coming out to the Abbey the 3rd week of April, and there's a huge Easter event on that I'm helping with Easter weekend. And friends are coming March 30th to visit from Morocco- can't wait to see them!
G is making his way back to Michigan tomorrow, after the conference in Pittsburgh and visiting a close friend in Boston. Z and I are having lots of girly time which is also very good fun. :) Tonight we had an iHUB (that's our bbl study for internationals) discussion about different rlgns and whether they a) all do lead to the same place and b) are just parts of a bigger picture. Those are both untrue, but it was useful to look at especially as some of our friends there aren't followers of JC and are curious about the truth. Pr for K, a friend from Hong Kong who is really curious about things. Also for D, a mom I'll be meeting with in the coming weeks to study the bbl.
That's my week in a nutshell- it's spring here, really enjoying the flowers and wildlife. Hope all is well in MI, and keep holding out as spring is nearly here! :)
Saturday, 13 March 2010
March 13, 2010
I've picked up whatever cold it was that G had at the beginning of the week, but feeling a bit better tonight anyway. I just drove down to meet with a couple whose wedding I'm photographing in May- very nice couple, sounds like we have the same idea about photography so it should be an easy shoot. Excellent. :) G's heading back Tuesday and I've asked him to bring back some power tools for me- I've had my eye on a DeWalt dc 989 for ages but I can't afford one here, so here's hoping I'll win the ebay auction because I'm desperate for a drill- the walls here are ridiculously hard, you need a construction drill to drill through them. They don't use gypsum board due to the damp, everything has to be a sort of concrete type stuff. Anyway looking forward to the new drill. :) G has a conference in Pittsburgh, this is the one he's a committee chair for, so he gets to run the sessions. Very cool indeed. Good thing he likes to travel (and I don't mind him being gone- especially as he brings me back drills and gadgets) because he has yet another conference called Xen Summit at the end of April in California. He's bringing in lots of money for his company so it's worth it for him to be zooming around everywhere. I'm so thankful to have a housemate, so I don't feel too lonely while he's away. Z is an absolute godsend, we're so blessed to have her living with us!
Not much else has been going on here-web site is a growing, wedding business is growing, which means I need to revamp my current website once the new one is done so I can target that market. I'm essentially going to run 2 fronts- KD Photography for weddings, and 361 Photography, which will be commercial stuff only. I'm not quite sure how to manage the transition, I think I'm going to need a PR agent to help me. I have an excellent PR agent friend who will give me a hand though, so it'll be good. Maybe I'll have a little launch party or something once the website is done. Would be very good fun. :)
I think it's early to bed for me tonight, this cough is no fun and I need to rest up. G's off to play games with some coworkers tonight- those guys really love games, and they would have had it here except I haven't been feeling well. And why spread it? Hope you're getting some spring back home! :)
Not much else has been going on here-web site is a growing, wedding business is growing, which means I need to revamp my current website once the new one is done so I can target that market. I'm essentially going to run 2 fronts- KD Photography for weddings, and 361 Photography, which will be commercial stuff only. I'm not quite sure how to manage the transition, I think I'm going to need a PR agent to help me. I have an excellent PR agent friend who will give me a hand though, so it'll be good. Maybe I'll have a little launch party or something once the website is done. Would be very good fun. :)
I think it's early to bed for me tonight, this cough is no fun and I need to rest up. G's off to play games with some coworkers tonight- those guys really love games, and they would have had it here except I haven't been feeling well. And why spread it? Hope you're getting some spring back home! :)
Thursday, 11 March 2010
361 Photography!
I've been chatting with my web designer a lot this week- the website homepage is in full swing, and I can hardly wait for it to be done!! This big pillar project is going to bring in enough to pay well over half of the cost for the new site in one fell swoop, which is fantastic. The conservation guy didn't even flinch at the cost- I should have charged him double. ;) (See dad you taught me well! ) He did ask me to do some more things today than were in the original estimate, so we will probably go a bit over budget, but I'm going to requote for him. I hope this will lead to more conservation type jobs in the future.
But back to the new website- here is my official new logo!
The black one is how it'll look on my website and business cards, and the white one will be for letterhead and invoicing stuff. What do you think?
But back to the new website- here is my official new logo!
The black one is how it'll look on my website and business cards, and the white one will be for letterhead and invoicing stuff. What do you think?
March 11, 2010
Today I met up with the head conservation officer for East of England National Trust region (ok so I might have made that job title up- you get the idea tho) to talk about the state of the dining room pillars in the Abbey. I did some sample photos so we could have a look at what level of detail is required for them to have a good record of the pillars themselves. I'm going to get full use out of all 21 MP of my camera for this project!
Oops- before I go any farther let me tell you what the National Trust is. I may have done this before, but I don't think I did. Since I spend so much time on a Trust property, you must be wondering about the organization that I'm volunteering for. The National Trust is a massive charity that owns quite a lot of the enormous manor houses here in England. During The War (which is what British people call WWII as it's still very fresh in the memory of people here) taxes were raised, and many of the wealthiest families were paying 80% or 90% tax. Which is a bit much I think. Quite a few couldn't afford it, so they gave their houses to the government in payment of the tax. Which didn't really help the government. Anyway the National Trust got the idea that these houses are part of our history and should be preserved. Often the government simply gave them the properties because they couldn't afford the upkeep. But after the war many older members of these families were concerned that the houses would be run down or trashed by younger generations, or they wanted to preserve a record of their way of life, so they donated them to the NT. Anglesey Abbey was donated by a very wealthy old bachelor, Lord Fairhaven, upon his death in 1966. Now the Trust owns tons of coastline, open land, and other sorts of things which are being preserved by them for everyone. Their motto is Forever, for Everyone.
Now, back to Anglesey Abbey and the problem we're having with our 2 disintegrating dining room pillars. :) Because there's still a big hole in the floor around the South pillar (they dug up the flooring to see if the problem was being caused by damp), the public is wondering what's going on, and the ever vigilant house volunteers are up to the task of questions from the public. But today we found something very interesting thanks to one of the older house stewards. As I was showing the conservation guy the photos on my laptop and zooming in really close, I realized a small crowd had gathered around to look on. One of the stewards said "did you know there are some older photographs than the ones from the 1920s? I saw them one time on display." And we were all like "What?!" We managed to locate these said photos, which were even better, they were photos of drawings done in the 1810s. We took said drawings into the dining room and stood there determining which part of the room they were of, and we discovered something very interesting indeed. Namely, that the pillars which are in the room now don't look the same as the ones that are in the drawing. Everyone assumed that the pillars were the same age as the room, that they were there when the monks were some 900 years ago. But actually, in the drawings we could see that the pillars were much bigger, and made from cut stones (like bricks but bigger). What we have now is some sort of stone (I forget what).
I've had the opportunity to get really close to the pillars and to see them on a granular level- I can almost count the grains of "sand" that are falling off the things. So as an engineer I found a few things interesting- if these are solid pillars made of one type of stone, why does the inner part of the pillar look like cement with big chunks of rocks in it? The outside of the pillars is not the same consistency as the inside, which you can easily tell from the photo, and the inside and outside are decaying differently. Also, why has one pillar decayed more rapidly than the other one? They've decided to send off the sandy bits to be analysed- I'm curious to know what they'll discover.
Fortunately we all agreed that photographing the pillars when the house is open would be interesting to the public, but would drive me absolutely mad as I'd have to answer every question about what I'm doing. :) I barely get within 5 feet of the pillars as it is without being questioned about them- either by room stewards or the public. :) I enjoy working with the public, which is why I was appointed as a community warden in the first place. But being questioned makes photography difficult, especially if you happen to be lying on the floor or looking ridiculous. :) I was banging on about the pillars to a group today, when a random member of the public today suggested we should contact R Abbey- apparently she went to school there, it was bought by English Heritage blah blah blah...when I asked her why we should contact them, she told me they had painted their medieval undercroft mustard color. I thought... Uh, thanks for that- what on earth does that have to do with my pillars turning to sand?! I don't think I could deal with that all day for 2 weeks straight. :)
Will keep you all posted as the pillar photos progress- if you find me hard to reach Mondays and Tuesdays it'll be because I'm in the undercroft photographing pillars. :) And as everyone seems to have a suggestion or theory about the cause of the disintegration, post yours here and let's see how we get on. :)
Oops- before I go any farther let me tell you what the National Trust is. I may have done this before, but I don't think I did. Since I spend so much time on a Trust property, you must be wondering about the organization that I'm volunteering for. The National Trust is a massive charity that owns quite a lot of the enormous manor houses here in England. During The War (which is what British people call WWII as it's still very fresh in the memory of people here) taxes were raised, and many of the wealthiest families were paying 80% or 90% tax. Which is a bit much I think. Quite a few couldn't afford it, so they gave their houses to the government in payment of the tax. Which didn't really help the government. Anyway the National Trust got the idea that these houses are part of our history and should be preserved. Often the government simply gave them the properties because they couldn't afford the upkeep. But after the war many older members of these families were concerned that the houses would be run down or trashed by younger generations, or they wanted to preserve a record of their way of life, so they donated them to the NT. Anglesey Abbey was donated by a very wealthy old bachelor, Lord Fairhaven, upon his death in 1966. Now the Trust owns tons of coastline, open land, and other sorts of things which are being preserved by them for everyone. Their motto is Forever, for Everyone.
Now, back to Anglesey Abbey and the problem we're having with our 2 disintegrating dining room pillars. :) Because there's still a big hole in the floor around the South pillar (they dug up the flooring to see if the problem was being caused by damp), the public is wondering what's going on, and the ever vigilant house volunteers are up to the task of questions from the public. But today we found something very interesting thanks to one of the older house stewards. As I was showing the conservation guy the photos on my laptop and zooming in really close, I realized a small crowd had gathered around to look on. One of the stewards said "did you know there are some older photographs than the ones from the 1920s? I saw them one time on display." And we were all like "What?!" We managed to locate these said photos, which were even better, they were photos of drawings done in the 1810s. We took said drawings into the dining room and stood there determining which part of the room they were of, and we discovered something very interesting indeed. Namely, that the pillars which are in the room now don't look the same as the ones that are in the drawing. Everyone assumed that the pillars were the same age as the room, that they were there when the monks were some 900 years ago. But actually, in the drawings we could see that the pillars were much bigger, and made from cut stones (like bricks but bigger). What we have now is some sort of stone (I forget what).
Fortunately we all agreed that photographing the pillars when the house is open would be interesting to the public, but would drive me absolutely mad as I'd have to answer every question about what I'm doing. :) I barely get within 5 feet of the pillars as it is without being questioned about them- either by room stewards or the public. :) I enjoy working with the public, which is why I was appointed as a community warden in the first place. But being questioned makes photography difficult, especially if you happen to be lying on the floor or looking ridiculous. :) I was banging on about the pillars to a group today, when a random member of the public today suggested we should contact R Abbey- apparently she went to school there, it was bought by English Heritage blah blah blah...when I asked her why we should contact them, she told me they had painted their medieval undercroft mustard color. I thought... Uh, thanks for that- what on earth does that have to do with my pillars turning to sand?! I don't think I could deal with that all day for 2 weeks straight. :)
Will keep you all posted as the pillar photos progress- if you find me hard to reach Mondays and Tuesdays it'll be because I'm in the undercroft photographing pillars. :) And as everyone seems to have a suggestion or theory about the cause of the disintegration, post yours here and let's see how we get on. :)
Sunday, 7 March 2010
March 7, 2010
Keeping busy the last few days, various jobs, photo processing, and still moving the random office bits around. It's been sunny here which is very nice! :) It's been a fairly quiet weekend, catching up on processing and getting ready for the coming week. I don't have too many shoots this next week but lots of meeting with people. And suddenly what I was going to write about in this blog has entirely left my mind. :) Try again later! ;)
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
March 2, 2010
The past 2 days have somehow been the longest days I've had in ages- I feel like I've packed weeks worth of work into each of these 2 days! Today alone I had a 6am breakfast meeting, followed by fotoing our BNI plumber next to his van outside and chatting with the electrician, tire fitter, and carpenter in the parking lot about tires and car stuff (which of course never seems odd to me in the least). Then I had to run back in for a quick meeting about an event job coming up in June, back home to head out to Swavesey for my favorite client's bottle shoot, then back again to swap clothes and out to foto snowdrops at Anglesey Abbey with a camera club friend...then off to the frameshop with my digital frame and chat with those guys, and only then at around 7pm did I come home to stay for a few hours. ;) Monday was similar- March came in with a huge gust business wise that's for sure, and since I have a very expensive new website to start paying for in big chunks over the next 4 months, I'm glad to have a few busy productive days. The rest of the week is very tame, so that will be a good break.
My new website is officially in the works now- it is a major investment in my business, but well worth it and it'll pay for itself within the year that's for sure. It was a bit of a risk, seeing as 3600 pounds is no small sum, but I've already brought in this month enough business to pay my first invoice (it's split into 4 month payments) so I feel quite good about the investment and the direction my business is going. Given all that it's easy to run on adrenaline for a day or 2. :)
It's nearing midnight, past my bed time, so I'm off to sleep. Here are a few photos of my shoot today.
My new website is officially in the works now- it is a major investment in my business, but well worth it and it'll pay for itself within the year that's for sure. It was a bit of a risk, seeing as 3600 pounds is no small sum, but I've already brought in this month enough business to pay my first invoice (it's split into 4 month payments) so I feel quite good about the investment and the direction my business is going. Given all that it's easy to run on adrenaline for a day or 2. :)
It's nearing midnight, past my bed time, so I'm off to sleep. Here are a few photos of my shoot today.
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