On display

There's rather a nice deli down the road from home which sprung up less than a year ago and despite all good intentions we never quite managed to pop in as it was always closed when we walked past. Eventually we did pop in for lunch one day and were pleasantly surprised. Mum had mushroom soup which was as good as you'd get in a restaurant, my lentily soup wasn't as good as that, but still a good lunch. We had some chunks of fantastic wholemeal bread which was cut especially for us. Peter had something vegetably and cheesy which was delicious. While we were there I noticed that they had alarmingly empty walls and feeling full of beans (literally) I very bravely (or so I thought) asked them if they would be interested in displaying some rather nice foodie photography. Basically they said "yes" and after showing them some samples of my work as paper prints we've agreed on ten 12" square canvas prints. The very first one is being printed as a test tonight and I'll be heading off to the printers very soon to have a look at his range of materials etc. I've had nothing to do with canvas prints at all, and haven't really even given them much attention in shops and so on, but they are much less expensive to produce than lovely framed pieces and much easier to cart around and less likely to break as I am a bit of a klutz!

Obviously I plan to sell the pictures to the general deli visiting public, I haven't decided on the prices yet, or how exactly it will work, but I'm really hoping that it could be a good way to make some money and to start to get my name around a bit.

I've chosen five foodie pictures and five non-foodie as I appreciate that not everyone wants to have pictures of grub, however pretty on their living room walls. I'll also get some cards made to sell either as sets or individually.

The owners seemed very positive about the venture and they have a florist shop not to far away and suggested that I take photos there and make a display. I haven't really thought any more about that yet, but I love floral photography so once I get my mind round to it, I'm sure I'll think of a nice angle for that opportunity too.

These are some of the images I'll be showing at the deli

Big Ideas Need Big Spaces

., originally uploaded by multum in parvo.

Could this stencil graffiti have been amongst a more perfect arrangement of elements.

I think I'll turn it into a print.

Print Club and the power of Tags

Etsy Finds has featured shops with subscriptions. Now I have a subscription offer too, but it didn't get a mention as my Tags were lousy. It may have been because they thought it wasn't a good enough item to feature, but I reckon it's just because they didn't know it exists! I've gone an edited my Tags and left a comment in the Finds section with a link hoping that they might add it in, or at lease someone might read the comments.

Here's the deal, it's $100 a year for a print of my choice for a month. Sounds pretty good to me.

Clicky here to see the listing.

I'm in a Treasury for the first time!

I was wondering why my Hearts were shooting up! I don't usually check them too often, but I suppose it was a good job that I'm at home and can enjoy watching the drama unfold!

My bit is The Ministry of Silly Walks in the top right hand corner. I've been an avid collector of graffiti for years and years and this is one of my all time favourites. I've sold one print of it since it came into my shop, which made me very happy!

One more try before I sulk

I had a good hint from a helpful person in the Etsy forums about posting the html from Flickr directly into the post dialogue box, rather than via the 'add image' icon. So here I'm going to post two pictures try to get them next to each other.....


I think it did work as they were side by side in the Preview, but I think that my middle column is too narrow for them to be side by side.....I'll try using two really tiny pictures as yet one more test.



Edit - Hurrah it worked! And they link back to Flickr too.....

Trying to get my pictures to display exactly as I want them.

" target="_blank"> " target="_blank">


In Preview in Semagic the images are side by side, but it's done exactly the same as Blogger with Flickr images which is that it rather bizarrely posts two of the same image with the text " target="_blank"> inbetween the identical images. It always does this and it's seriously irritating. Whan you post images from Flickr onto an external site you are obliged by the user agreement to use the code which links back to Flickr. I'm very happy to do this (it works perfectly on Live Journal) but it never ever works on Blogger. I thought that using Semagic might make a difference. But it seems not. Unless the weird formatting disaperars as if by magic by the time the post arrives in Blogger.

Here goes again.

Edit - and yet again, it looks crap. I might have to consider moving this blog somewhere else as this just isn't satisfactory. I mean it is supposed to be a photo blog.

Posting to Blogger using Semagic

I've been using Semagic for years to post to my Live Journal and it's been brilliant. I love the way you can put your photos where you want them and it just seems like second nature to me. I've just discovered that it works for Blogger and as I've been so frustrated by the awful image management here that I am keeping all of my fingers crossed as I try to insert a few pictures in a block which is how I like them. Here goes.



It's still not perfect, there are superfluous bits of text which seem to get in the way that I delete just like when I try to post from within Blogger using Flickr links. It's not good that it doesn't work well. But at lease I can post two pictures next to each other now.

Edit - as you can see they are not next to each other.....I'll try again with two smaller images, perhaps it's just the size which is the problem once the post actually arrives here.

Experiment - new technology

This post is coming to you from the new BlogIt application on Facebook which allows you to post to any number of blogs at the same time which I think is a great idea! It will be an even better idea if it works from my iPhone....so this is sending the same post to my much abandoned Live Journal (I'd decided last night to start using it again, there's no particular reason why I've given up on it, I just found new things to do!) and to Blogger which is primarily my Etsy and photo blog.

So here goes

Edit from Blogger - It worked then!!

New Card Set

I decided to make a set of note cards using the flower pictures from my previous post. I'd bought some fabulous new double sided matte paper earlier in the week for just that purpose and these bright and jolly pictures seemed just the thing that people would want to write a thank you or a friendly note on.

I redesigned my card backs as well, and also added a title to the front, space for a signature and a drop shadow which I'm really pleased with! Even the pictures I took of them for Etsy look nice and this is, I'm ashamed to say, the job I dislike the most.

Floral print set for sale

I've decided to sell some print sets of 10x15cm glossy photographs which work together on a theme. The second one I've listed is using some of my old favourite flower shots which a made using a lightbox.

I think they are really pretty photos and there's something really appealing about the 10x15cm size for some reason. Perhaps it's because they remind me of postcards which are always such fun to receive?

A discovery

I've been doing a bit of blog browsing this afternoon and on Scott Bulger's I found a handy tutorial for digitally framing images. It's a bit of a performance, but I suspect that it all becomes second nature once you get into the habit of doing it.

Here's my first attempt.

New things!

As we're going to have to do a major clear out when mum moves in with us sort of Julyish, and many of the things which will have to go are books, magazines and other printed stuff including my massive collection of children's Christmas comic annuals, Snoopy and Mad books I've decided to try to reuse as much as possible.

I'm not known for my green credentials I'm afraid, but my new project might get me a few green points. I'm going to use the books etc to cover and make notebooks and journals. Mainly covering, so I won't exactly be using much recycled material, but it's a start!
I bought a few cheap A6 hardback notebooks and covered my first one today with a page from a street atlas of Manchester which I thought was appropriate. It took rather a long time, but I thing it's worked well! I bought some clear glaze to protect the paper and I'm doing a test on another book making project from a few months ago. It's smelly and drying at the moment.

I used regular white craft glue which for a non-making person like myself is a nice non-threatening material! The paper in the notebooks is rather thin and the glue rather wet, which isn't the best combination in the world, so the first and last pages of the books seem a bit wrinkly to me. I'm not quite sure how to stop the thin pages from going like this. Also the most tricky part of the process was working out how to get the paper wrapped over the top of the spine and sort of wrapped back inside the spin. It's not worked terribly well, certainly not well enough to sell. Yet. I'll end up with mountains of slightly crappy little notebooks all over the place while I try to find a solution!

Three Textures

., originally uploaded by multum in parvo.

I've been playing with the new Lightroom 2 Beta this evening. There are some nice new toys included now.

I chose to import a random folder of pictures from my Morocco trip from last year, and there are plenty which I've done nothing with yet, so I'll have a great time sorting through them.

That's the nice thing about a massive amount of photos taken on one outing - you inevitabley get bored with them at some point, then you have the pleasure of rediscovering them.

New Item in Shop!

I'm very pleased with the way that my new white frame turned out.

I'm selling it for $40 which I'm hoping is okay.

Sales!

I've made two sales this morning! Huzzah!

One was a set of Moroccan words on walls postcards and another my Liberty and Friends print which I wrote about last week. I'll have to remake the postcards in a different way as I need to put my new logo on the back, as these still have the old one and my brilliant new printer for some reason prints in a rather smeary way on the backing card I've been using for the postcards. I'll need to have a bit of a play around to see if I can find a solution for that, I made a whole new and lovely set of postcards on Wednesday and had to turn them into greetings cards as the backs smudged. I've learned from that little mistake!

I'm very pleased indeed.

I bought a nice little square white metal frame at the weekend as I thought I'd see if I have any interest in small framed prints. The image is only 3" which is really sweet. I made one (in a different frame) for a friend's birthday last week and she really liked it and said that she was going to commission me to make one for a friend of hers. So I'm hoping that I might be on to a good thing. The frame is glazed with acrylic which obviously makes it lighter and safer for postage and it will need much less packaging than if it were glass which will keep the shipping costs down. I'll be wrapping a mock-up parcel later and going to visit the nice ladies at the Post Office to ask them for the price to various places, then I'll know that I'm not overcharging my lovely customers.

Disappointing day's work

I went to see my friend in Anglsesy today, he's an artist and I always take pictures in his studio which is one of my favourite locations. I thought it would be a good place to play with my new TTV contraption.....I took a batch of photos with Peter's old Panasonic Lumix which is a very good compact digital camera, but looking at the pictures in Lightroom, every single one is out of focus. I'm really disappointed. I did expect much better. The pictures I took on the freezing cold and seriously windy beach were even worse. I'll be able to make some nice fake TTV like the one below, but I really want to crack this technique. It can't be that hard can it? There are enough people doing them, unless they're all cheating too!

New Graffiti Images in Etsy Shop

Liberty and Friends.



Ministry of Silly Walks



I had an unexpected few hours at home on Tuesday morning and was surprisingly motivated to make some new prints and to get them listed. I've been photographing graffiti for years now, ever since my first digital camera which is what really got me going! I've never really done anything with the pictures before despite being very fond of the collection. I thought I'd try some on Etsy to see if the world would like them.

I'd sold one of the Ministry of Silly Walks by the end of the day! I'm hoping that sale is the start of a mad rush. Or at least a slow trickle of sales......

First Class Males

I went on the Manchester Flickr Groups jolly to the wonderful Victoria Baths on Sunday. The Victoria Baths are a work in progress. There are three pools, one for First Class Males, then for Second Class Males and finally the Women get a place for a dip. There were also little cubicles on the galleries above the three pools where you could rent a bath and hot water for you and your grubby family to have a wash as your house wouldn't have had a bathroom.

The Baths won the BBCs very first Restoration competition a few years ago which got the much needed restorative work under way and the don't seem to have stopped since. It's a really impressive place and we were very lucky to have a private tour for about one (very cold) hour and we were just left alone to wander where we wanted and take as many pictures as our memory cards could cope with. I'll definitely go back in six months or so to see if any new parts have been uncovered (some warmer weather would be welcome too). I'd particularly like to see the Turkish baths which are being worked on at the moment.

Kodak Duaflex

After losing out on the Duaflex last week, I did well and won one tonight for £26 including postage!

I put my starting bid of £15 in early in the week and was the first to bid, then it was just me all week until about six hours ago. I was organized and set a timer for about four minutes before the end of the auction and then sat hitting the reload button and upping my bid to £25. I actually won it for the bizarre amount of £22.11.

I can't wait to start using it - I hope it's not too much of a fiddle. I'll be making Russ Morris' contraption for which he has kindly made a downloadable template for the great photographing public to use to their own ends. It is specifically designed for this camera which is great as my own contraption for my Rolliecord was a real pain in the arse to make. I used masses of foam from a Chanel Number 5 gift box from Xmas, it was a massive box of smellies and there was masses of lovely dense grey foam to play with, but it was far too big to be portable and so I never really used it other than at home and on one shoot in a friends garden.

Watch this space!

Through the Viewfinder - again

Bugger - outbid at £21.....I really don't think it's worth going any higher.

Through the Viewfinder - again

I really enjoyed messing around with my fake TTV images, and after yet another try with my beautiful Rolleicord, I have decided to persevere in making the images in the 'correct way'. I also decided that the Rolleicord isn't suitable for the job, firstly because it's really heavy and to juggle that with a contraption and another camera on top is a recipe for lens blur if ever there's been one and secondly, the front and side flaps are a pain and just get in the way. I know I could butcher it and remove the flaps, but that would be a great shame as the camera still works with film.

So I've gone back to the beginning and just bid on a Kodak Duaflex on good old Ebay, the Duaflex is the camera of choice for all the cool kids who seem to rattle their stunning TTV pics out at an alarming rate of knots. My bid's in at £15 which I think is reasonable and it's the highest bid by about £5 so far. I don't think I want to go much higher. If I don't get this one, there are two more with end dates of 6th April, but I'm inpatient and 'my one' ends in six hours, so I'll be standing on my head in yoga at the critical moment which is shame, but it will stop me spending too much!

Fingers crossed for me please!

Trunkt Showcases

I've just discovered that my work has been featured in three showcases on Trunkt. There's a lot on that site that I've not really explored, I find it a bit confusing. I think that there is some excellent work on there, but have spent very little time making the most of it.

Here are screen shots of the showcases with my work:

Lizzie's Kitchen

Lizzie's Kitchen, originally uploaded by multum in parvo.

I've resurrected my Roadside Cafe project on a recent trip to Bristol with mum. It's something I'm finding really interesting although it does require rather a lot of Photoshopping which I'm not so keen on, but the images really do need more tweaking than most I take.

To see the whole set, click on Lizzie - I'm sure she won't mind.

I've got a trip to Dorset and Hampshire next week which could be three days, so fingers crossed for lots of new additions to the collection!

I think it's all okay now

I think that my Firefox/Etsy drama is resolved now. Firefox suddenly quit on me and when it asked, I cleared my private data - again.

When it restarted Etsy was there just as it should be, and worked perfectly all day.

Support didn't get back to me after the first very fast response, which I suspect was a stock reply for people who don't know how to upload pictures to the site. I wonder if they will ever reply again. I bet not.

Anyway, alls well that ends well and I'm happy again!

Re: Etsy Hates Me

I've just tried viewing Etsy in Safari and it works perfectly....

The plot thickens.

At least I can get on with my Etsy work tomorrow.

Etsy hates me

The pathetic picture you see above is how my Etsy shop looks to me at the moment.

I don't know if that's how it looks to the rest of the world or if it's just me.

I can't see any of my pictures in my Etsy shop or for that matter anywhere on Etsy which does not make me happy. I can see them from my PC at work but from my lovely iMac at home nothing. I also can't see my Etsy Mini here on my blog or anyone else's pictures from Etsy wherever they are.

I have my 'photo day' tomorrow which is my Wednesday day off which isn't going to be too handy if I can't see what I'm doing!

I've emailed the folks at the HQ and I got a very fast reply which was very impressive but they totally misunderstood my problem and thought that I was confused about uploading pictures which I cracked months ago! Perhaps they couldn't see the screenshot which I attached.

The saga continues.

On a nicer note, the views of my Blurb book have rocketed today. This morning the views for this week were a paltry six and now they are a whopping 260! The only reason I can think is from my PlugBoard plugging which I did this afternoon. Still only one sale though.

flashing!

Okay, I appreciate that I'm not going to win any awards for my animation skills just yet, but my first ever attempts at gif dodahs aren't too bad. They are the only two plugs on my rather bare looking plugboard. There's one for my book and one for my Etsy shop. It took me a while to work out the animation software (a free version of Jasc Animation Shop) but as I only wanted something very simple, it wasn't too bad. Not really. I'll have to have another go later and see if I can come up with something a little more polished. I've been adding my plugs to a few Plugboards I've come across and a few from this long list.

Jumping on the Plugboard bandwaggon.

The Plugboard thing sounds quite interesting and I like the multi-coloured flashiness of a full one....I've added a board on this blog (top left column) but so far, all I have in it is my sad looking test plug which I found on some kind persons blog. I have yet to work out how to make nice flashing ones for myself.

I'm too hungry to think about that now, so I'm off for some soup and a bit of a read and then I'll yet again put off doing any (real) work and mess around in and have a play.

A big fat waste of time.

I'm on the Storque Showcase today.

I haven't had one single view of my shop.

Was it really worth it?

First Sale

I sold a book!

My book on Burb has just made it's first sale, what a lovely surprise for me when I got home!

So I'll just plug it again in case the buyer came from here!

Blue.

Capturing the blues...

By Sarah Franklin

Book Preview

New image on Imagekind

I've just had my first FTP upload accepted and put in place at Imagekind, it's one of my Through the Viewfinder images, I think it's rather nice!

I think I'll add it to Etsy so it's there for my Showcase tomorrow.

Self promotion today

Being rather dispirited about my lack of sales I decided to jump in to an Etsy Showcase and have signed up for the main Storque showcase on this Wednesday (the 5th March), I've tweaked my prices to what I think is reasonable but am still concerned that they are too high for Etsy as most members seem to sell their lovely work for stupidly low prices.
This is my pricing:
Matted A4 prints $35 which is only £17.60
Unmatted A4 prints $30 - £15.00
Notecard set of four $10 - £5
A5 print unmatted - $5 - £2.50
Crane Museo 100% cotton rag cards - $5 - £2.50
Print Club - $100 - £50 (for one print a month for a year)

I've also filled in the Etsy Cafe interview which sounds like a good bit of self promotion.

I'm very intrigued to see if the Storque Showcase has any effect on my sales.

Peter's also designing me a new logo as I think the existing eyeshoot one is a little to harsh for my taste these days, so hopefully that will be done by the showcase day of Wednesday and I can have it in place and looking lovely.