Well I’m obviously not very good at this blogging thing. Oh well, nothing more to say on that subject so we’ll carry on.

I finally finished my photography coursebook- it was a bit late but there wasn’t actually a deadline for it, I just wanted to get it done a lot longer ago. I was quite pleased with it but there are always things you think of later that you’ve forgotten or you realise how you could have done them better. I’m just glad to get it out of the way so I can carry on with the second module I’m doing, which is more digital stuff- image manipulation and photoshop. The kind of thing I’ve done so far I don’t really see that I’ll ever realistically use, but saying that, I know that some of the things I’ve learned on the way will definitely be very useful. I guess it’s more showing me how to do things in photoshop that I’ve wondered about, by getting me to do things like photomontage, HDR (HD euuuurgh!) and other manipulation that I’d never really use in the way I’m doing them but it’s handy to have the skills.

I haven’t really done a great deal of photography recently because I’ve finally decided that I can’t keep on taking photos of bands that I don’t want to see! Well, there’s more to it than that. I’ve seen so many great bands and I’m really grateful to all the promoters in Cardiff who have let me in to take photos, but now I’m getting up at 6a.m. three days a week I can’t keep doing it. Also, if it’s assumed that you’ll do it for free then you’ve automatically put yourself in a position where you’ll get taken advantage of. It doesn’t happen all the time, but one or two promoters seem to get offended if you don’t go to their gigs after they’ve offered to let you in for free. What a lot of these people don’t understand is that it’s not just going to a gig and taking photos, it’s transfering them to your computer, doing any post processing,  converting to jpegs then uploading or emailing them. It’s rare that anything comes from it financially. I blame my marketing and PR staff. I’ll have to sack them. I guess when I first started taking my camera to gigs it was exciting, but when you do 90 in a year then you do go through phases of feeling a bit underappreciated. Again, totally my own fault for putting myself in that situation.

So where am I now? Well, I still love taking photos, and I feel like I’ve found my own style where I’m comfortable, especially with the gig photos, though that’ll surely change again. But I want to get out and do other things, portraits, band photos/ promo shots… I love taking photos of people mainly, and I guess I prefer to take gigs (and sport- not that I’ve done it for years) partly because you don’t have to boss people about and you can create images as things unfold in front of you, but I need to get out there and do more. I need to force myself to do it, otherwise how else will I get anywhere? I may as well give up and get another full time job.

Thankfully, I’ve had a bit of interest recently for a couple of weddings, whether anything will come of this I don’t yet know, I hope so as I’ve really enjoyed doing the ones I’ve done so far. I’ve really studied wedding photography the last year and a half after being asked to do my first one a year ago (anniversary on Saturday I believe), so I’ve learned a lot. Not a day has gone by since then that I haven’t read or looked at something to do with wedding photography, and I’ve seen from this that there are a lot of people out there who are BAD at photography and are charging ridiculous amounts for wedding photos. And it’s pretty amazing the people who can make an average photo worse by their poor use of photo editing. We all do it at some point, but when people are paying you… well I guess you get what you pay for. Most of the time.

Anyway, I’ve rambled long enough. There’s more football to be watched…