Category Archives: Daily Life

A Saturday without a wedding!

Daily Life

The current ‘wedding season’ is slowly starting to come to an end and today I don’t have a wedding to photograph. 🙁

Like a lot of photographers when they don’t have a wedding it always involves a double check of the diary just to make absolutely sure! 🙂

My new web site is working fine so I’m hoping to have a relatively computer free day, although I’m trying to post something to this blog most days.

I’m sometimes asked where the name Camelot Photography came from, well it’s fairly straightforward. When I first started as a professional photograper in 1992 I thought long and hard about what to call myself. I didn’t really like Stephen Brennan Photography and as we were living at that time off Camelot Way in Thornhill, Cardiff I decided Camelot Photography would be a good name.

Changed the rear brake disks on the Passat this morning, silent braking has been restored! I still have to carry out a major service on the second BMW and then all the car maintenance tasks will be up to date.

Early evening shopping at Tesco, really quite a quiet day today!

“Never boss people around. It’s more important to click with people than to click the shutter.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt, “Collector’s edition of Life, the Eisie Issue ” . Spring 1998, page: 18

Fourth day of my blog!

Daily Life

Most of the day has been spent sorting out the transfer of my web site to a new web host. It’s been a relatively painless process that has involved changing the domain name server entries to point to the new host and amending my email settings so that I can send and receive email. A few changes to some of the code on the new web site to incorporate some structural changes and setting some directory and file permissions. I’ve run a number of tests on the on-line viewing galleries and everything appears to be working. With the MySQL database set up I can now publish this blog live on my web site!

Spoke to Stuart this morning, he and Karen are getting married at Bryngarw House in a couple of weeks and we’ve arranged to get together on Sunday afternoon to go through all the final details.

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

Third day of my blog!

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Decided to change hosts for my web site, waited in the phone queue for ages to get through to customer services at my current hosting company. At last a person in place of the music! All my queries answered within a couple of minutes. Now to sign up with a new hosting company and start the tedious process of uploading all my files and configuring the new site.

Drove to Newport to the BMW dealer to collect some parts I’d ordered last week, a much more pleasant experience than the previous week when there had been a nasty accident just past junction 28 on the M4 and it took over an hour to get from junction 32 at Cardiff to junction 28 at Tredegar Park.

Had a telephone call to say that the bride who was coming to see me this evening would have to rearrange as her car was in the garage.

I’ve now managed to copy all my files to the new web host, we just need to amend the name server entries and then we’ll be live on our new site – the web site should be continuously available while all this is going on as it will be a major inconvenience to me and my customers if it isn’t!

Had an email from Andrew and Elaine to confirm that they’re happy with their album design and I can go ahead and order the album.

Here’s a small overview of the album design

Andrew and Elaine's Album

“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.” – Diane Arbus

Second day of my blog!

Daily Life

Started early today by 7:45 am I’d checked my emails and had a quick surf on the professional photography forums, they are really great for keeping in touch with other photographers around the world, keeping up to speed on the latest techniques and trends and helping each other out with technical and business queries. I guess as I work from home they’ve become my ‘virtual water cooler’, the place where in a conventional office job you have a brief chat with colleagues as you grab a drink. Many of these ‘virtual’ colleagues around the world have become close personal friends over the years. It’s been some time since I worked in a conventional office environment. I spent many years working in IT for major corporates and really enjoyed the challenges of the various roles from project management through to technical support but being self employed and doing a job that I really love is priceless! I still manage to keep in touch with a number of my former work friends, it’s amazing the different things that some of them are doing these days as an example Dee and her family are now in Spain running a cafe and holiday accomodation and Sue recently emigrated to Canada with her family.

A nice cheque in the post from Lloyds TSB, half year share dividend – a bit like Monopoly but with real money!

Trip to the bank before lunch to pay in a batch of business cheques, a lot of customers now pay by debit or credit card but some still pay by cheque, the only down side of cheque payments for me is that I have to drive to the not so local bank to pay them in – but it gets me away from ‘real work’ for a little while!

Received a text message from Julie (my Welsh tutor) to say that she’s suffering with a cold so the Welsh Class this evening has been cancelled.

Made up a pair of Jorgensen Parent Albums for one of my customers, the finished albums look great – instant job satisfaction for me!

“I never have taken a picture I’ve intended. They’re always better or worse.” – Diane Arbus

My first day as a blogger!

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Well I’ve read a few other blogs so I thought I’d create one myself, the aim is to give you an insight into my life and work – I hope I succeed with it and you find some things of interest here.

I had a phone call from a lovely couple, Andrew & Natalie, who came to see me on Sunday to discuss photography for their wedding next year, they rang to let me know they were booking me and would call around later with the contract and reservation fee. As I’m mentioning Sunday, we went to the Hollybush in Church Village for lunch, loads of meat complete with real gravy! the apple pie and custard was also yummy.

The engine on my BMW 520i recently stopped and refused to restart at a really convenient spot – in the outside lane of the traffic lights in Tonteg. Fortunately a couple of passers by helped me push it around the corner – BMWs aren’t supposed to break down! It took an hour or so with an oscilloscope to diagnose that one of the relays supplying power to the engine management unit had failed! A trip to the main dealer to lighten my wallet and obtain a new relay. I’ve just fitted the new relay and I’m really pleased that the car is now running again. The brake disks on the Volkswagen Passat are badly scored and the next little job will be to replace them a major service on the other BMW (525i) should get all the car maintenance up to date – the joys of motoring!

I spent the afternoon making up some Jorgensen wedding albums, they are really lovely albums but as the pages are pre-bound you have to be so careful when mounting the prints and mats – any mistake could mean a new album from Australia. They look really lovely I know my customers will be delighted when they collect them.

I did some more work on the album design for Andrew & Elaine who were married at the Heritage Park Hotel on the 6th of August, they’re delighted with it so far.

Andrew & Elaine

Andrew (Andrew & Natalie) called around with the paper work for their wedding photography, they’re really excited to be having a modern Jorgensen E album to showcase the story of their special day.

Visited the Rhondda Rebels web site they are playing Sheffield at home on Saturday, I haven’t been to a game in ages, it should be a great match.

“Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding.” – Diane Arbus