Progress. It's what's for dinner.

or Progress. The other white meat. I couldn't decide.

I hate having to push the picture of Erin-in-the-hood down the page, but life moves on. And so does this blog. Albeit at a much slower pace. But hey! Tomorrow is that thing. The Second Saturday Event at Mather Golf Course that has been ruining my life for the past month and a half. Besides adding the rest of the price tags to the prints, finding my folding chair in the garage, withdrawing cash from the bank for change (which I better well need!), and packing the rest of my stuff – I am done. I think.

I talked to Sharon yesterday afternoon. Told her that at this point in time, I no longer feel the need to cause her physical pain. Although, Chris might, when he goes to balance the checkbook and sees how much money I have spent on this affair! And then I told her that while I was not necessarily looking forward to Saturday, I wasn’t dreading it either. Yup, that’s as much as I was willing to give her. She who finagled-tricked-hoodwinked me into this gig. And she’s already talking about next month! Um, lets wait and see how tomorrow goes first eh?

Hmm. All this brings me back to thoughts of trying to sell prints on-line. I was toying with the idea at the beginning of the year and doing some research into Etsy.com. Going that route, I would post the items for sale, and do the printing and shipping myself. Another option is Imagekind. For them, I would create a gallery (up to 24 images) and they would handle the rest; printing, shipping even framing. Which seems like a no-brainer. Except it’s not. The big problem is aspect ratios. Good god how I hate the whole concept of aspect ratios. The skinny is that my camera’s sensor creates a picture that has the same aspect ratio of a 4x6 print. Now if you go and make an 8x10 print of that file, you are cropping off A LOT of the picture as I had intended it to be! Because I frame my shots in camera. So, using Imagekind puts my photos at risk of unwanted cropping whenever someone orders an innocent 8x10 print. 99% of my photographs do not work at 8x10inchs. The stuff that would be cropped off needs to be there! Ugh. Now I want to hurt someone again. Maybe a mathematician (or Chris). I knew I was correct in blaming math for all my woes.

Oh. I apologize. I spoke too soon. In going to their website to create the above link, I found out that Imagekind “will never change the aspect ratio of your image (the ratio between height and width) or arbitrarily crop your images.” Well, that changes everything. I’ll probably start there and save Etsy for a later date. Depends on how many prints I end up bringing back home tomorrow afternoon.

And I’m not going to edit the above paragraph about Imagekind and aspect ratios because that rant about aspect ratios has been a long time coming! That is why I had to cut so many damn custom mats for tomorrow’s event. When the hell are the mat-makers that supply Michael’s and Aaron Bros going to get on the 3:2 aspect ratio band-wagon?! Half the world is shooting with cameras that have this size image sensor. Make us mats that fit our pictures! Must I do all the work?!

Damn.

Lidsville - Street Punk Edition

If you encounter this baby in a dark alley - run the other way. That baby will mess you up! At the very least, she'll steal your hat.*

This hat used to be mine. I bought it in Fort Bragg several years ago. I gave it to Kyle last year to take camping. At some point Erin got her hands on it and won't give it back. That's cool. I'm not gonna try and take it away from her - have you heard her scream?! I've got another hat.

I took these photos on a Saturday morning - this is how the baby kicks it around the casa.

So, I was going to tell you about Sharon and why she should pay for my suffering. Well, somehow she managed to get me to agree to be a vendor at Mather Golf Course's Second Saturday Event on March 14th. omfg. How did that happen? I don't drink, so I wasn't drunk. Why would I agree to such a thing? Selling my photographers? Sure, it sounds so simple. Wrong. It is a major pain in my ass! And it will probably be the death of me. Or a small part of me. Hey, I'm definitely losing sleep over it! I'm not even going to tell you about the traumas I am having over printing these photos. Then there are the logistics of displaying the prints. And at some point I'm going to have to figure out pricing! I am so going to kick Sharon in the shin the next time I see her. Damn it! She was just here on Saturday and not only did I NOT kick her, we fed her abalone, and then I took photos of her (106!) so she would have a new profile pic for freakin' Facebook! Ugh. Now, I'm really mad. I made her look good, and I'm sitting here having heart palipitations while some Canon bigwig is buying another Mercedes on my dime!

Ok, maybe it is time for a little yoga break. While I go stand on my head, you can ponder the cuteness of the Bean. In this shot she looks just like Chris!

* She's also been known to sticky-finger a cell-phone out of a purse without anyone noticing. Next up: Mug shots!