Revisiting Morocco for Getty

Time for a quick blog post with this lovely Treasury from Masaoms who bought one of my 2010 Calendars last week, so a double thanks to her in lovely Barcelona! I have no idea which song she's referring to which could inspire a picture of a bicycle, a chalk board and a beautiful big green ring, so I'd better do a bit of research.

Inspired by Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johanssen Song
by Masaoms

I'm causing all sorts of glitches on my computer by uploading massive scanned Holga images to the Flickr/Getty site. Out of my latest sumbissions from September and October they are interested in 48 of the pictures which is great. I've no idea what sort of numbers others are having accepted, but I'm very pleased. There are a few which require property releases which I'm never going to be able to acquire now, which is a shame as they're nice images, but there are plenty which don't need anything other than some details and in the case of the Holgas I feel that my 3mb images aren't big enough (they were fine for Flickr which is where Getty found them) so I've had to go back to my scanned TIFFS which are rather meaty, the Volubilis Triumphial Arch was a massive size at 14,0000 px square and I couldn't export it so I reduced it to a more sensible 7,000 px square and re-tweaked it and cleaned it up a bit more.

The Essaouira Fishing Boats needed to be flipped as the film rebate and the numbers on the boats were reading back to front (oops!) so I need to change my print template and listing details too.



The upload process is slooooow for these big pics so here I am having a minor blog moment.

Dr Who Treasury and New Camera.

It's been one of those fallow Treasury phases for a while now, so I was very relieved to see this nice nerdy number this morning with my Dalek print along with more cool Dr Who stuff. We watched the watery episode the other night and it has whetted my appetite for the Christmas special where David Tennant's Dr will disappear forever......

Dr WhoooOOooo..HEY! Dr Who.
By K C Burk

I'm off to the gym in a minute and I've decided to have my first 'run' for months, I hope I survive it. I'll only be on the treadmill where I can be suitably cautious and I'm quite looking forward to it as I have missed it, the crosstrainer, while being fun and a great calorie burner just doesn't have the same satisfaction value.

I finally got my act together and bought my happy-snappy camera and here it is - the Panasonic Lumix FX60, it's a cute little thing with a lovely satin finish, far too many daft pre-set scene options (with a rather cool pin-hole one), and all sorts of bits and pieces I'm sure I won't use, but it's spec is good and I'll be looking forward to having a camera on hand at all times again as I've missed many opportunites in the recent past. My Birthday Banners collection has particularly suffered and I'm pleased that the next time I see one somewhere vaguely accessable, I'll be able to get a snap of it.

What a happy sight!

....A pile of five desk calenders in cases all printed, cut, made up, wrapped and ready to go!

I've sold one to Barcelona, one to Finland and four to my mum (which still counts!).

When I started to make them I realised that I had really messed up the sizes - precision never was my strong point! I faffed around trying to make it better, but it just got worse and worse and trimming each individual page by hand just wasn't fun. So I did what I should have done in the first place and set up a proper Master Page and started from scratch. Then it worked perfectly and I was happy and my printer was churning out sheets of Super A3 as fast as it could and my super sharp scalpel skimmed over my crop marks and we were done. Wrapped, packed and two posted.

The flat is, yet again, resembling a bomb site as loads of stuff which we'd been storing at mum's has now come back here to torment us. It's everywhere, boxes and boxes of stuff, my old school trunk, clothes which I don't wear but don't want to chuck out (Ebay is calling), my long ignored violin and even my lacrosse stick. And we have people coming for supper and here I am blogging with about 40 minutes to arrival. The Chinese red braised lamb shanks are slowly turning suculent and sticky in the oven and smelling divine, the spuds are in a big pot of water waiting to be turned to smooth and creamy mash, there's a pile of green veg to be plunged into a pan of boiling water, then we're ready to go. To start we've a spicy prawn cocktail with a coconut dressing and to finish, I'm admitting to a cheat and serving a Gu Torte, which is far better than anything I could have managed in my super busy day today, so I shall not feel guilty.

It's the Etsy Made in Manchester meeting tomorrow morning, there will only be three of us but we have decided to go ahead and have a gossip and lots of tea, it's always nice to have a catch up. Then there's a lunch at Al Faisal's with various friends and then I have every intention to get to Jacobs to purchase a new happy-snappy camera as I really don't like not having one on me all the time and I am convinced that I have missed hundreds of shots in my happy-snappyless time.

Then there's a birthday party in the evening, then on Sunday lunch at mum's for the first time in her temporary for six months flat. I hope she's worked out how to use the oven, dad's up for a few days too.

Print your own 2010 Eyeshoot Calendar.

After much faffing and putting aside of the whole thing, I've finally finished and listed the Print Your Own version of my 2010 calendar. I've still not sold one yet, which is slightly offputting, but there you go. Hopefully this will change all of that!

I've made the layout so that it can be printed on both A4 and nice and conveniently on US Letter for my lovely American customers. I wonder what the standard paper size is across Europe, I've never thought about it.

The images are exactly the same as for the main calendar which comes in the case and I really hope that someone likes it.....

Print your own Eyeshoot 2010 Calendar - A bargain $10

Click here to buy without going to Etsy.

Up Periscope - Vintage Banksy Graffiti Made into a Print

I've had this lovely Banksy snap knocking around in my archives for a while but hadn't really done anything with it up to a few days ago when I cropped and re-sized it for my secret new project which is in the pipeline. As I'd tweaked it to look much better than it had previously I decided to add it to my little shop. I wonder if it actually exists on the streets of London any more, I know these things don't last forever and I did shoot it some time ago.

Up Periscope - From Eyeshoot $35

This deserves to be on Etsy's Front Page!

Here's a stunning Treasury which features my Path Through Moss print, and many other beautiful items:

Ode to Oscar the Grouch
by Haut Totes

Lincoln Cathedral and some new kit.

After much reading on websites about remote shutter release devices for my D300 and getting very confused, I decided to phone Calumet who have always advised me well in the past. I settled on a very reasonably priced own label set up which has a radio trigger kit and an adapter for my Nikon camera. One half of the trigger kit is attached to the camera by Velcro or a metal clip (I was hoping for a hot shoe fitting which would be nice and neat, but that wasn't to be.) and the other half if a little do-dah with a button which fires off the shutter. I had a very quick play yesterday and it works which is a good start, but I'll have to have a proper session with the camera on the tripod and set up in Live View Mode which is how I'll be using this new arrangement on my next shoot for Balfour Beatty.

I also got around to sorting through my pictures from Lincoln Cathedral and here's a taster:

Now available as coasters!

In an exciting new development, a selection of my photographs are being made into waterproof ceramic coasters by Bill at House of Six Cats, he's using a range of images from members of the Photographers of Etsy Team of which he is one of the co-leaders.

The coasters are printed using an Epson R2880 Exhibition quality printer, on a state of the art material that is water-proof, smudge-proof, and stain resistant. The material is also self adhesive so it creates a permanent bond with the tile, and this means there is virtually no transitional lip from print to tile. Each tile measures 4.25” x 4.25" and is backed with black foam that ensure against table abrasion and sliding. They can also be used as back-splashes in the kitchen or bathroom which could look rather amazing!

Here's a shot of the four finished tiles, I think they look rather lovely.

Four Ceramic Coasters - $20 with free postage

One set has already sold out of Bill's shop which is great for both of us, and they are also available from my shop. He has artwork for two more sets using my images, one set of four different graffiti pictures and one using my Crosby Steps photo which will be printed over all four so that they fit together to make one big image. They're not available yet, but hopefully it won't be long.

I've made another sale on RedBubble which is one of those selling sites that I tend to forget about as it runs so smoothly and doesn't bombard me with messages and newsletters that I don't really bother with it, but with the notification that someone has bought a framed print of The Ministry of Silly Walks I remembered that they also offer calenders. As I have made my own calendar I thought I may as well offer a similar range of images there, so this morning, I have made one brand new one with a few clicks of the mouse and it's there in my shop looking lovely. If fact it was so simple that I totally edited and redesigned one which I had made ages ago.

I've got a meeting this morning about some exciting new goings on which I'll write about in more detail when I know for sure what's happening......

And to finish off and to add another picture, here's a Treasury:

Simply Morocco
by Vintage Bess