A if for Alphabet Weekly

So I’ve been struggling lately to find a creative reason to pick up my camera. Many of you will know how this feels…work, family and other projects and other jobs are all very important but sometimes they get in the way of creating something purely for the joy of creating rather than because you’re getting paid to do it.

Life is much busier than when I took part in the 365 days project and I’d be staring down the barrel of a divorce and a straight jacket if I tried doing that again. I also want to do something that doesn’t have to involve my ugly mug. 100 strangers is good but quite organic in the way of timescales (i.e it’s gonna take me forever to complete! lol). I wanted to give myself quite a rigid timeline to force me to create rather than allow me to get lazy and let other things get in the way…..thus Alphabet Weekly was born. I’m going to take and post a shot every week for the next 26 weeks which will relate to the letters of the alphabet (in order). I’m sure there are probably groups on flickr for this type of thing (it’s hardly original) but I haven’t looked yet. I may even start my own group if other people want to get involved. let me know in the comments if you do wanna join me….it could be fun!

edit: you can now join the flickr group here

stop and listen for a while

I’ve been wanting to try podcasting for a looong time. So here is the first attempt. I’m joined for this experiment by the totally awesome Simon Pollock of gtvone.com. We cover a huge range of topics from facebook, social networking, the iPad, SEO for photographers, Music, Gowalla, Openscreen.tv, Bands, The Panasonic DMC-TS2, The Nikon Coolpix s8000, Lecia Lenses blessed by kitten love and a whole host of other topics. We basically rattle on for an hour and a half for your listening pleasure. I hope you find the audio quality passable (considering its via skype and my first attempt). I’d love to have some feedback in the comments on either the topics covered, whether you found it useful/entertaining and more importantly if I should do more? Enjoy!

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Download link here. Subscribe using iTunes!

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!! (more…)

(clicky click to enlarge)

This week I got out with Darren and shot the final shot of my series relating to sleep apnoea. You’ll recall if you’ve been following the posts that I originally planned and sketched 4 shots. You’ll also remember back a few posts when I said we’d been moved on from shooting the second location….well that’s why this shot doesn’t match any of the sketches. (more…)

Well as it’s been quiet on the project front this week I’ve invested some time in making some of my other photography available to buy in various formats. I’ve decided to make some of my landscape, nature and abstract photography available through redbubble.com. They offer prints, laminated prints, greeting cards, canvas and framed prints in various sizes. Prices are reasonable for what is a quality print product and an original piece of art. The prices also include a small percentage which goes to me (the struggling artist) to help me cover costs and invest in new equipment.

So don’t delay go and take a look and invest in a gorgeous piece of art for your office wall. If you’ve seen work of mine before which is not currently available from me on redbubble then drop me a line with details and we can sort something out! I’ve posted a few of my favourite shots that are available below but there are lots more so clicky the linky below.

Stuart Mackenzie on RedBubble.com