fireworks over southill

fireworks over southill

Well I’m glad to report I’m finally feeling like I’ve beaten the horrible flu like symptoms which seem to have been dogging me for the last few weeks. This has really improved my mood and my outlook on everything happening around me. Don’t get me wrong I’m still basically a grumpy sod but being grumpy and being able to breathe at the same time is a much more enjoyable experience.

The dreaded SAP project go-live date is fast approaching at work and it looks like I’m going to be a very very busy individual for the next few weeks and months dealing with the huge piles of support issues around roles & authorisations which will come my way when our 9000 users start logging in next week. In some ways I feel much happier about this as we get closer to the go-live date. Putting off the inevitable support nightmares and stressing about them in advance is in many ways much worse than just getting your head down and enduring them, although I reserve the right to retract that statement over the next few weeks.

It’s also been a busy and exciting week on the photography front. Those who’ve stalked me for a while will know that a couple of months ago myself and my best friend Darren launched our own commercial photography venture (Weymouth Photography). To be honest we started with very humble ambitions and were keen to take things slowly and make sure we could fit this part-time venture around our existing work and family commitments. We assumed this would be easy as in a competitive market we would have to work very hard and put in lots of effort over the first few months to get any work at all. What has actually happened is almost the complete reverse of that! Since the website went live we have had repeated enquiries and requests for our services across the whole range of our chosen areas of expertise without us putting in any extra effort at all. In fact (and quite embarrassingly) at the time of writing this blog post we still haven’t had our business cards printed!! This is obviously all really good news but with with me being very busy on the SAP project at work and Darren moving house we’ve frustratingly actually had to turn work down. This conflict of commitments though is only a short-term problem and once work pressures lapse slightyand Christmas is behind us we’ll be able to put much more effort in and who knows what we’ll be able to achieve then! Last weekend we met our first set of wedding clients for an initial meeting and it just felt great to get the ball moving on what is hopefully the first of many face to face client meetings and without trying to sound corny it was really cool to be doing that with my best mate sat beside me.

I’m also quite smug about the fact that all of this work has come directly from a web site that I designed and built myself. I’ve always been passionate about web design and geeking out over content management systems and usability etc but putting that into action and getting some really good leads in a short space of time from our portfolio and the general vibe & design we’ve put out there for our own venture (rather than building sites for others) is really very satisfying.

On top of all this I’ve also had a quite successful month selling some of my old images on Getty and also had a German magazine approach me to purchase a license to use one of my images in a publication going out in January. It’s all very exciting stuff and has only slightly tarnished by the fact I haven’t heard back from Martin Parr’s people about the image they wanted to use in a book project he has been involved in but I still hold out hope that I’ll hear something on that front soon.

Things are looking up and the future seems bright. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that this good stuff  continues to develop but at the moment I have quite a warm and fuzzy feeling that 2010 is going to be a brilliant year for me and my family for many different reasons. What are you most looking forward to in 2010?