It’s true - bad sweaters! Many of them!
The set is now on flickr, and so am I! It’s true! It is almost 2009 and despite being a full time photographer, I am just getting around to joining now.
Woo! Come be my friend!
It is the end of November, and the end of NaBloPoMo!
I have successfully written something each day this month, although I’ll be the first to admit that I had planned for much more actual content rather than the must-write-something-so-this-will-do that seemed to take hold.
This month has been extremely busy and hectic for us with many projects on the go and timelines and deadlines and so on, all of which made carving out actual blogging time difficult.
It’s also crazy how quickly time goes and I’m in basically overall disbelief that its actually *December*. Wow.
Today we headed out before 8 to pick up Josh for a day of Whistler adventures. Reilly and Josh have declared the first run of the season a positive one, and I hung out in the village and enjoyed a walk and some valuable coffee shop time working on some stuff for Indie on my laptop.
Josh is off picking up Shan and then I think there was talk of some sort of nourishment, then tomorrow it is back to work for a hectic week of clearing old things off our plate, another full day shoot on Wednesday, new project work, and then a wedding on Saturday.
Happy December, everyone! May you all have an amazing month… I’ll be back as soon as I’ve got something real to say 
Spending an entire day lounging around on the couch with cute cats, a cute boy, and cheezy TV is entirely awesome. Yay for an actual day off!
Whistler tomorrow!
I’ve written *something* at least every day so far this month, damned if I very nearly completely forgot today, 2 days to the end mark…
I am excited about the end of the month mostly because it will mean that Reilly will be able to shave and will no longer look like an unkept street hobo for movember, and this is good. It also means that Christmas is soon and I’m really looking forward to going home for a few days, so that is also exciting.
I finally met with the super knee surgeon this week and it wasn’t all that overly optimistic. I don’t really want to talk about it. Essentially I can have surgery, it will be grueling and painful and many months of recovery and I’ll need a second surgery after that one is done, and at the end the chance of a fully functional knee is basically zero and the best I can hope for is some improved stability and a lifetime wearing a very complex knee brace. I’m rapidly trying to change my outlook from “temporarily broken” to “permanently broken” while maintaining overall cheerfullness. It may take me a little while, but I’m trying not to dwell on it.
I’m shooting my first wedding since being broken next weekend, and I’m really looking forward to it. Tracey will be my shooting sidekick for the day and Reilly too of course so that is all good, and super good friends are the videographers and we’re friends with the planner as well and the couple is awesome, so it’s a great bunch of people. I’ve been shooting portrait sessions and such and that is all fine, the shooting part shouldn’t be a problem, I just can’t run or crawl or do stairs quickly. I figure that the girls are all in heels with big dresses though, and it’s not like they’re ever going anywhere too fast, so I’m not likely to be slower than them. I will let you know how it all goes.
There are no plans for tomorrow, which is nice. Reilly is going to Whistler for early snowboard season on Sunday and I plan to go with him and hang out with my laptop in a coffee shop somewhere which should be good.
All I managed to do work wise today was add to my to do list - it just gets longer and longer, and I’m now maintaining 3 lists - current Blue Olive work, current Indie I Do work, and New Business work which includes the portrait and headshot studios as well as a couple of other projects we have on the go. So many to-do items!
OK, I’m out for the night. 2 more updates then I will return to my less frequent but hopefully much more informative and entertaining irregular posting schedule
After all of the polapremium waiting and the polapremium rumours, the countdown finally hit zero a few minutes ago
For those not in the know, Polaroid stopped production some time ago on the last of their films, including most recently the type 600 instant film most people think of when they think of polaroid (although, compared to the pack films and time zero, definitely not the coolest of the bunch)
Lots of people have been begging for Polaroid not to do it or to make it so someone else could pick up the slack but loopholes upon loopholes and patents and grumpy chemical engineers and execs in jail and expensive equipment and yada yada, it wasn’t sounding promising.
Until…
Well, the page is live, and to me at least it hasn’t done what we needed it to do.
You can hit up the site here for all the details… essentially they’ve got a large stockpile of expired films of all types, last production run stuff, and even some cool sounding new time zero manipulateable film (that was one of the first films to go a few years ago and expired stocks have long run out for most people).
As expected everything is a touch pricey, but that’s what you get for this kind of thing.
So, while it’s nice to know there is a place to get some of this stuff for a while anyways, the whole thing to me was a bit of a setup. What any of us really wanted to hear was that *something* *anything* was going into new production… meaning that the film would be secured long into the future. That, at least so far, hasn’t happened. Heck, I still have expired 84 and 87 in my fridge that I’m still shooting, and those films aren’t even represented here.
The rumour mill keeps talking about what *might* still be coming, but with no confirmation and a huge setup and let down today, I’m no longer holding my breath
Today I woke up, said hello to the gaggle of models and stylists and fashiony people who are in the studio for a 2 day catalogue shoot with Reilly of their spring line, and promptly got to work catching up on recent shoots and weddings.
For 9 hours, I sat at my computer and carefully worked through apx. 17 000 photos, getting rid of the duds of course but mostly making decisions like this one is better than that one or this one and this is a better photo of the mother in law than the one earlier in the day so let’s keep this one and scrap that one.
This works out to working through over 30 images per minute for each of the 540 minutes that fell between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm.
I’d say that if I never saw another photo again I would be happy, but tomorrow I have a similar number to work through, nevermind it’s actually my job and I mostly love it.
Procrastination is bad, yo. Let my pain be a lesson to you!
Life is a continuous stream of projects and work and plans right now
I keep staying up really late trying to catch up and get more done, but apparently if you stay up until 5 am working you still end up sleeping the same 7 hours you would have if you went to sleep at midnight like a normal person, and I am no further ahead. Huh.
Currently I am attempting to balance the panic and uncertainty that I have with the work and plans and go go go. I live and thrive on plans and the plans can change a hundred times if they need to between here and there, but I need plans. The unknown knee surgery date (dates?) and the generally terrifying economic situation do not fit into my plans and I have a hard time dealing with that. If you told me that I will have knee surgery in 2020 and no one would ever book another wedding then I could make a plan for that and it would be all fine, really. I can plan for that.
What is harder to plan for however is maybe I’m having knee surgery in 3 weeks from now and maybe we’ll book 50 weddings for next summer and if so on either count then what I’m doing now and for the next few months looks very different compared to what I’d be doing if I knew that those things weren’t happening.
Of course the logical thing is to plan for both outcomes but then you’re only ever doing things half best - half best if it goes one way and half best if it goes another and half half half.
And so, when trying to plan for many eventualities, I run out of time and I stay up until 5 but sleep until noon and get no further ahead!
I like order and I like logic and on the business side I trend things and I can tell you how it was last year and the year before and the year before that and I can make a good prediction about how it will be this year and next year and so on and there are contingencies and such but you have a good idea. Except this year, I don’t, and you don’t, and everything has been absolutely *fine* but the media tells you to *panic* and if we’re all being told to *panic* then we think we shouldn’t spend and then we don’t and then did the problem happen because it was a real problem or because we were all told there was so we made one?
So you spend lots of time on those contingencies and you do what you do best and for me that is build my business and make it even more amazing and even more strong and even more diverse.
And you drink a glass of wine because you deserve it, while writing out more plans, of course.
Both my house and my computer are eating things and regurgitating them later when I no longer need them, causing lost time and general frustration.
Dear house and computer:
Please stop. Give me my things when I am looking for them!
Thank you
Miranda
I still can’t look at the photo of him. Never before has he ever born any resemblance to his brother - until this photo.
Wow.
What better way to spend a Saturday night than with loads of fondue, 10 close friends, and a plan for bad, 80’s inspired family christmas photos?
Oh yes, we did. Blue eyeshadow and all.
More photos in the next couple of days! Sleep now, then early breakfast, Etsy craft show, and a stint hitting up the eastside culture crawl
