Monthly Archives: October 2005

A very wet Friday

Most of the day spent finishing the flush mount album design that I’ve been working on this week.

Charged all the batteries in preparation for Stuart and Karen’s wedding at Bryngarw House that I’m photographing tomorrow, I hope the weather is drier than today!

My youngest son David telephoned to say his car had packed in on Penarth Road in Cardiff. A trip to Cardiff to get him going again – it had run out of petrol, he didn’t have his spare can in the boot!

“The camera can photograph thought”. – Dirk Bogarde

Mainly dry Thursday

Continued with the design of the flush mount album, it’s now very close to completion. The majority of the images have been added and pages designed.

Another delivery of Jorgensen albums today, I have one order outstanding due to slow customs clearance but that will be here next week.

Evening shopping at Tesco.

“A good snapshot stops a moment from running away”. – Eudora Welty

A damp Wednesday

Continued working on an album design today, it’s getting very close to completion.

Welsh class (Dosbarth Nos) this evening, no class next week as it’s half term (already!) but a little homework to complete instead.

“Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art”. – Ambrose Bierce

Another damp and dreary Tuesday

The day has been spent mainly working on album designs, apart from a brief period spent helping my youngest son David, change the spark plugs on his car.

“When you photograph people in color, you are photographing their clothes. When you photograph them in B&W, you photograph their souls”. –Ted Grant, a famous Canadian photographer as taken from the Sept 2002 Photographer’s Forum magazine.

A mixed Monday

A fairly relaxed day. Another trip to the bank to pay in cheques.

Wasted more time trying to make some open source client management software work!

Met with Neil and Michelle, gave them the DVD slideshow of their wedding, they love the images.

“Now very often events are set up for photographers … The weddings are orchestrated about the photographers taking the picture, because if it hasn’t been photographed it doesn’t really exist.” – Eliott Erwitt, in an interview

A relaxing Sunday

Lunch at the Hollybush once more today! Julie (my Welsh tutor), her mum and aunt were also there. They were serving home-made apple pie and custard, it was delicious.

Upgraded the PHP version on my local Apache server, not very exciting!

Neil and Michelle have arranged to come and see me tomorrow evening to talk about the photographs for their wedding album.

Neil and Michelle

“Pictures hold life’s experiences. And I feel that with every experience you learn something. Therefore, you learn something with every picture you take.” –Anonymous

A lovely Saturday

It’s a warm sunny day today.

I’ve changed the oil, oil filter and air filter on the second BMW, the 525i. They are super easy cars to service, you don’t need to jack the car up to change the oil and the filters are easily accessible, no adjustments needed on the engine as its all handled by the Bosch Motronic engine management system. All car maintenance is now up to date.

“It’s not the camera, but who’s behind the camera.” – Anonymous

A quiet Friday

Received a print delivery from the lab this morning ready for the next batch of albums as soon as they arrive from Australia.

Called in to see my mum on the way to the bank.

Spoke with a very nice person from the Inland Revenue apologising that they hadn’t replied to a fax I sent them last month!

I’m also currently having a dialogue with Royal Mail over my local Post Office’s reluctance to accept (and guarantee) next day Special Delivery items where the postage has been paid using Royal Mail’s SmartStamp system!

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary. – David Bailey

A lovely sunny Thursday

A beautiful day today, what a nice change after the last couple of days.

I’ve been using the SmartStamp system from the Royal Mail for a while to print my own postage stamps, it works really well and minimises trips to the local Post Office and I don’t run out of stamps. I’m not too sure about the logic of paying Royal Mail a monthly fee for being able to use the system. It seems to me that as I’m printing my own stamps this is a lower cost option for them anyway!

I’m fully up to date with all album production, just waiting for further deliveries of albums and prints from the lab before I have a few more to make up. I’m still working on a couple of album design for composite albums, hoping to have them completed today or tomorrow for approval by the customers.

“Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph”. – Matt Hardy

An even darker Wednesday

An amazing amount of rain last night “bwrw hen wragedd a fyn” the Welsh for “raining cats and dogs”, literal translation is “raining old ladies and sticks”. A number of areas in west and north Wales have experienced flooding.

It’s a fact of modern life that computers require frequent maintenance and housekeeping. I’ve just downloaded the October critical update patches from Microsoft for Windows XP, these cure a number of recently discovered vulnerabilities in the operating system. My fax sending software has recently started to hang my machine when sending faxes so that has been re-installed and is now working properly again. I’m also archiving off a number of old files to DVD. All critical folders are synchronised automatically between the two main computers using a very nice piece of software SyncBack. All the hard drives on the main computers are also automatically backed up to high capacity external drives. All my photographic images are burned to DVD after downloading the cards from the cameras and the files are also copied a second time after completion of the job, we also keep the CDs that are sent to the lab, you can’t have too many back ups!

I’ve just purchased and downloaded a Photoshop CS2 script that will simplify my processing of proof prints by automating a number of the tasks that are currently carried out manually. This is a snapshot processed through the script of my son David with Tiegan (she really likes David).

David and Tiegan

Just been to my Welsh class in Church Village, we’re still struggling on numbers but hope a few more people will come along to make the class viable.

“Every man who is high up loves to think that he has done it all himself; and the wife smiles, and lets it go at that.” – David Bailey