It was a year ago today that I posted the following:

The good bits:

I was given an impromptu day off at 9:30.
I went for a lovely bike ride.
I went to see my mum and stepdad for a cup of tea at 10am.
I had a lovely phone call from my favourite lady in the world.
I realised how special that lady is.
I saw some lovely friends.
I realised how lovely and caring those friends are.
I had a phone call from Birmingham saying the wedding rings are ready.
I picked up those wedding rings. They’re fantastic!
I have time to visit the gym each morning and get fit and healthy.
I have time to find good ingredients and cook exquisite food.
The world has become my oyster… I can do anything I like.

The downside:

I don’t have a job.

Worse than that:

The TEABAGS RAN OUT! I could NEARLY DIE!

Well, it’s been a tough year. But I’ve heard of at least a couple of people who went on the same day who still haven’t found anything. I pretty much saw that coming, looking at the position I was in, specialist employer, a little behind the times in some technical respects (in my position, anyway), my age – I’m not exactly using a zimmer frame, but I’m no young bright graduate either.

I think it was day 2 of my redundancy when another of the chaps invited me to lunch and I turned him down… “I have things to do today”. I think that was the day I built the first incarnation of my website (which was not very good), got some business cards ordered (their backs are now used for shopping lists because they’re not very good) and that sort of thing. I can’t imagine waking up in the morning with nothing to do. And I count phoning useless agencies as ‘nothing to do’ because you may as well sit with your feet up and a cold beer than phone agencies I’ve found.

But I didn’t need agencies because they weren’t going to find me a job, I was going to make a job.

Sure, I stayed on the books, went to a couple of interviews (failed one probably because I sat in the interview technical test thinking ‘why the flipping blip would I want to do this with my time?’) and another nominally because my ex-boss’s’sboss-type-person was, I quote, ‘reluctant to give a reference’. Oh and another because I was completely unsuitable before I even turned up (but electronic bladder scanning is not the most glamorous job in the world). So with nothing turning up, the photography ramped up.

To begin with, I felt like a fraud. Seriously. I joined the BIPP and went to their meetings and felt like I shouldn’t be there. I wasn’t a professional photographer – I hadn’t even done any commissioned work. But I stuck with it. I am not going to pretend the year has been easy – it has been a living nightmare at times – but it has had hope and reward in roughly equal measure.

Through the BIPP mentoring programme, I have specialised, focussed and educated myself. Here’s the first portfolio panel I presented them with in February this year (it’s very small, but you get the idea – online display of photos isn’t my strong point har har!):

Comments were generally good. There were photos my mentor didn’t like, but could offer constructive advice to improve. The most important thing is that he said I had an eye, could ’see the light’ and had potential.

But I still felt like a fraud.

The last panel I submitted for mentoring (in July) appears below. The creativity has dropped a little, but I realised I was running before I’d learnt to walk in a straight line. What is present is consistency. Correct exposures every time. Composition of groups and so on. When the creativity is allowed back, built on this foundation, I believe there will be some really high quality work coming up…

Even that looks out-dated to me now. I’ve done so much since July that’s better! I must get my new panel together and hopefully qualify with it in the next round of assessments!

So anyway… tough year, major shock on the day, best thing that ever happened to me. And the support from my most lovely lady who trusted me while being absolutely scared stiff of what was going on (my estimation – scaredness level may go up or down) has been crucial. Thanks H, you’re a star! And friends and family, you’re all stars, too!

Anyone who has one of my ‘early’ signed prints would do well to look after it carefully. Just in case…

Keywords are a nightmare! To place well in google (other search engines are available) rankings, you need relevant keywords with links to your site from external sources. Pretty much. But they need to be written in natural language so that you don’t alienate readers. So my rank on Leicestershire Photographer is very good because I can say I’m a Leicestershire Photographer and so on in natural language. However, when searching google, more people type “Photographer Leicestershire” most likely because they first search for ‘photographer’ and realise there are millions of irrelevant entries so then go back and add ‘Leicestershire’ to their search. I’m only on page 5 for that search (which in itself is not bad – I was unlisted until I went to a course run by a very good Leicestershire web design company).

So how do I get “Photographer Leicestershire” into natural language? I wonder if it ignores punctuation, so “I am a photographer, Leicestershire based” would be ok? Who knows? It’s a black art, but one I’m learning to get good at!

It’s not all photography, you know!

So after a weekend of zooming around Kent (chiefly to visit a most lovely wedding venue where I’ll be doing a spot of wedding photography next summer) we returned to it being our turn to entertain on our usual Monday night let’s not do the pub quiz and go round each others’ houses for dinner and games night. A lovely evening as always.

Tuesday gave me just a little moment to catch my breath (while dealing with the enquiries that had come in over the weekend and processing photos for a couple of clients) before I headed off to the BIPP for a talk by Marko Dutka (the link goes to one of his better galleries – he said his website is in the middle of an overhaul which is good because it really doesn’t do justice to the amazing stuff I saw on Tuesday). So anyway, back home for 11:30pm to bed and up again in the morning for a Financial Planning course. That was one of those experiences where everything they tell you is absolutely obvious – but only once they’ve pointed it out. So that was numbers between 10:30am and 4pm.

Then, having had my wrist slapped (literally not figuratively) in the course, I moseyed on down to the bank to open a business account. I’d always been advised that a business account cost you money for every transaction while not giving any benefits. This is incorrect and there are lots of benefits. So that’s now open.

And so back home in time to go out for my Japanese class where I am still expected to be Japanese. As I arrived there was a bag out in the corridor, so on entering (first there, only teach present), I explained “Anata no kaban wa doa no soto ni aru to omoimasu”. We then had about 15 minutes of teaching including the complicated “So that X doesn’t happen, please do Y” before the class even started.

At least Merlin, recorded from Saturday, wasn’t particularly complicated.

So now my brain is full and it is time to breathe again. One good thing from the Financial Planning workshop was the time-management section. It is, apparantly, perfectly reasonable to write unscheduled time into your diary so that when you’re not being a Leicestershire Photographer you don’t burst. I’ll be doing that, I think!

It’s a good job I’m not running the Tuesday challenge any more… what a busy week it’s been.

Anyway, in case you haven’t been keeping up (thought it seems many of you have), the Tuesday Challenge which didn’t run on Tuesdays is now run by Jonathan and does run on Tuesdays but is no longer called the Tuesday Challege. It’s called Photo Challenge.

This week:

And so on to our second Photo Challenge. The theme is home.

You can interpret this however you wish. Maybe the picture could actually be of your home or something inside it; perhaps if you’ve moved away from your family roots it could something that reminds you of home in some way. I’m sure there are broader interpretations still. See what you can come up with!

It’s over here! Go and take part NOW!

Did I mention that I have a Leicestershire Photography business yet? I can’t remember.

I was looking through some old photos and found one of the rat’s nest of a machine room I used to have to occasionally make sense of…

Rat's Nest

Rat's Nest

My current IT requirements are a desktop, a server and a laptop. Much easier.

The Tuesday Challenge (which Jonathan has kindly taken over under the name of Photo Challenge) was about stretching my boundaries. Each week, I attempted to set a task that was something I needed to expand in my own repertoire. I don’t know if you remember the food challenge? I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it was handy because I was shooting the signature dishes of a local Indian restaurant tonight…

Prawns

The composition/white background were the client’s choice – they’re going to be ruthlessly cropped with no distractions. Otherwise I would have placed breads, glasses, cutlery or other items around the scene.

Do you know how hungry you get when it’s around tea time and you’re photographing delicious-looking and wonderful-smelling food? I’ll tell you. It’s very hungry. Luckily my client let me have a little nibble but it didn’t stop me wolfing down the egg and chips made for me on my return by my favourite lady. Nomnomnomnomnomnroffflgroffflnom.

So this week was about stopping and thinking. Making improvements to your picture before pressing the shutter.

There were three entries!

Thanks to everyone who entered! But I think now is the time to bash the challenge on the head. It has been a fun 36 challenges, but out of the last 12, only two have reached double figures of entrants. And I’m very very very busy these days. So apologies for all who enjoy the challenge – but so long, and thanks for all the fish!

Yowsah!

Every Wednesday evening, I take Japanese class. I think we’re on about week 8 now and after week 30 we’re taking a GCSE. This is a pretty tall order for everyone concerned – I have self-studied for 12 years, spent two weeks immersed in Japan and had 2 years of evening classes, and I’m apprehensive.

Just to add a little excitement, last night the teacher asked for two volunteers (while looking intently at Paul – another of his 2-year students) and I. He stated… “ima kara, nihonjin desu. eigo wo wakarimasu kedo nihongo wo hanatte hoshii desu”. This roughly translates to “From now, you are Japanese people. You can understand English, but you can only speak Japanese.”

We were assigned interpreters (the next-most-confident members of the class) who would explain what we were saying to anyone who didn’t understand. I think it was exceedingly hard work for all concerned and brought back memories of my trip to Japan. During that trip, I spoke solely in Japanese for the first 10 days, but on day 11 through complete and utter exhaustion declared it to be an English-only day. Day 12 onwards were 100% Japanese again, but I had definitely needed the break. Interestingly, on the English-only day while my brain had a much needed rest, getting anything useful done was significantly harder!

There were a couple of side-effects to this new way of working in class… firstly, when looking up the Kanji (chinese character) for “nomu” – “to drink”, I opened my English to Japanese dictionary and had huge problems finding it. The dictionary only lists one way translations – from English, and it took a good while to realise I was looking under n-o-m-. It then took a little longer to work out what the English word was that I needed. Immersion is great for the brain.

Secondly, on arriving home, it took about 5 minutes to switch out of Japanese and back to English. Luckily H understands such phrases as “kon ban wa” – “good evening” and “ogenki desuka?” – “are you well?” and responded appropriately… it was only when I said “ima kara, nihonjin desu” that she made Ken Tanaka style noises – but did understand that I was purporting to be a Japanese person and told me that no I am not actually.

So anyway… for two hours each Wednesday night, I am now a Japanese person. とても難しいですよ!