In that light, here’s a little look at what I’ve done lately:

Baby photography! In an attempt to build an interesting and diverse portfolio, and perhaps find work in one of the local studios, I’ve been trying to do as many kinds of photography as I possibly can. I’m especially interested in portraits (of all styles), and super especially interested in maternity, newborn and baby photography.

There isn’t anyone local to me who provides that sort of service, and despite not being anywhere near professional standards, I’ve already had people interested in my work. I’m amazed that there’s such a huge gap in the market, I know that locally there are at least 30 professional wedding photographers (although professional doesn’t mean there are 30 GOOD wedding photographers), and I think there are 4 studios in my small town alone, so goodness knows there isn’t a dearth of people able to wield a camera. The only thing I can think of is that maternity photography isn’t as lucrative as wedding photography. At least, it wouldn’t be if there were as many maternity photographers as there are wedding photographers in this area.

I was hired to take some engagement shots, but since the clients requested I don’t put their pictures on the internet (and I’m inclined to honour that request), there are no sneaky peeks for you! They’ve also hired me to shoot their wedding, which was surprising to me because I didn’t feel like I was doing so well with the engagement shoot. Apparently, though, they loved the finished images, and want their wedding shot in the same style. Hooray!

In an attempt to better understand how to use my camera, and how to make beautiful photographs, I’ve been experimenting with various compositional techniques, and attempting to capture interesting images of things I wouldn’t normally photograph. Here are some of those images!

Insects are something I generally avoid thinking about. The idea that there are thousands of times more insects in the world than humans is something I find slightly creepy. Macro images of insects, though, I suddenly find fascinating. I think because we don’t, for the most pat, get to see details like the hairs on the legs of insects, or their weird eyes, or the intricate markings on them that we sort of… dismiss them as not really real, and uninteresting. They’re full of weird little details, though, and as you get closer and closer they get more and more strange and brilliant to look at.

Flowery macros! Until recently, I assumed that in order to take extremely close-up, or true macro images, one was required to buy extremely expensive lenses. Not so! Apparently, just reversing your lenses can make for the most gorgeous pictures.

All of those images were taken using the technique I linked to. The first is a piece of popcorn, the second, another fuchsia and the third is a collection of tablets.

As well as photography, I’ve been trying my hand at some graphic design. I wasn’t sure I was doing very well with it, but with some encouragement and advice from people far more talented than me, I managed to produce something both I and my client were happy with. I can’t show you images just now, because the piece I designed isn’t even in publication yet, but as soon as I get the go-ahead, I’ll pop it up here. 

That’s the general summary of things I’ve been doing since my last update. Next time, I’ll be talking about why “professional” doesn’t mean good, an upcoming maternity shoot, and knitting hats for newborns. Hooray!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/little-who/sets/72157604786855906/

Do you remember how yesterday I was complaining about how inelegant and time-wasting the Etsy upload interface was? Well, regardless of that, I spent an age listing new items.  Hoorah!  Here are some links, and also some pictures for you to follow

Cards!

Letters!

Prints!

My favourite card is the “You disgust me” one. I think it’s because it’s the card I’ve most often wished I had a copy of.

In completely unrelated news: I’m looking for life models. Of the nude kind *gasp*! Are you a person? Is all of you covered with skin? Are none of your internal organs on display? (actually, if they are, get in contact, it sounds interesting) Then you could be a model for me! I can’t really pay you money, but I do make an excellent cake, and I will let you have all the tea that you like. I’ll even put the heating on so that you’re not too cold! How does that sound to you? Also, I promise not to be a lecherous weirdo, and also this is not a euphemism for “I’m making porn”. Also also free copies of the prints for you! It’s a very good deal, you should definitely think about it.

This is at the cost of good quality natural daylight, though. I need that daylight to take pictures of the things I’ve made, since I don’t have any fancy studio lighting, nor the software to process my digital images so that it looks like I did.  With that in mind, theoretical readers, I present you with the following Things Which I Have Made (and will soon be selling on Etsy).

In other news: last night, Miss K and I went for a drive (ostensibly, to find Ikea, but also to take pictures of pretty lights. I did some more experimenting with bokeh, and here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/little-who/4051272756/ is what I came up with.  Those cards, and prints of some of my recent pictures will soon be available in my etsy shop.

Also: hello to my  influx of readers from The Fluent Self : )

Today I have mostly been thinking about shaped bokeh. Bokeh is the name for the bits outside of focus in a photograph, for example: A blurry background. Sometimes (in fact, often), you can see circles, or hexagons forming the blur. This is because the apature is circular, or hexagonal (or octagonal, or any other number of agonal). With magic camera trickery, you can make those blurry bits in the background take on a shape. I tried hearts (because I am just that twee), and this was the result:

Tonight I’m off out with Miss K, for various photographic adventures, and I think I’ll try to get something more defined. A google search for “heart shaped bokeh” shows hundreds of gorgeous images of extremely well defined hearts.

In other news; Etsy! I have some things on Etsy! I will soon have more. You can find them at http://decline.etsy.com/ and you should find them. They’re very excellent things
A slight gripe, however, with Etsy: Their uploading process is painfully slow. It takes the best part of ten minutes for me to get one item in my shop, and I don’t think it needs to. If I could sort out all of the information on one page, it’d be a ton easier. Or if there was a third party uploading application, that’d be nice too. Especially since a lot of my products are very similar, and share pictures. Uploading the same 4 pictures each time I want to add an item to my shop seem like a waste of resources.

I have also considered putting some of my things on Folksy, but they have very strict rules about what is and isn’t mature and/or vulgar, and I’m afraid that all of my things tend to fall in to one catagory or the other.

A friend suggested to me, this weekend, that perhaps I should just take my cards to a card shop, and see if they want to sell them. It seems like a good idea in theory, and I think that perhaps a slightly progressive card shop might want to stock them, but I don’t think that I have the confidence to just brazenly wander up to someone who owns a store, and demand they stock my produce. I also wonder if a shop would require me to produce n x item, and have them all be the same, before they’d be willing to carry them.

It occurs to me that here would be an excellent place to tell people where they can buy my shiny, shiny things from. Here is where!

The process of adding things to my shop in Etsy is painfully slow, so there’re only a few things in it for the moment, but there will be more, just as soon as I go through the process again.

Here are some pictures of things I will be adding to my shop very soon. There are also lots others just like it.

Hoorah!

In other news:  I’ve been working on a line of evil greetings cards, and pre-written letters, as well as the usual photographic arty pursuits.

Here’s a shiny picture that I took with the new camera: http://www.flickr.com/photos/little-who/4034676217/

And here:

pre-written letters

are some of the letters I’ve been working on.

Hopefully soon I’ll get myself moving a little quicker, and have information about where these things can be purchased.

Hoorah!