61 posts tagged “photography”

Originally published at sixhours photography by caroline moore :: blog. You can comment here or there.

I listed my photographs at Artfire.com this weekend, in the interest of finding a promising alternative to Etsy and just generally trying to get my name out there... and I'm off to a really "fiery" start! Someone posted my "roast" print on a popular scrapbooking forum, and just a few short hours after launching, my brand new Artfire shop has almost 400 hits and 1500 item views. Wow!

Unfortunately, most of the comments toward my photos are negative, and some of them are downright mean (who knew scrapbookers were such a grumpy bunch?), but hey, exposure is exposure. Calobee Doodles is getting some positive attention as a result of all the extra traffic, so I can't complain!

It will be interesting to see how the Artfire shop does given its unique start. I'm always surprised by what appeals to people (and what doesn't). My photography gets much more attention at Etsy--in the form of treasuries and front page features--than my doodles... but I've sold equal amounts of each type. I suppose there's something to be said for making art that appeals to two drastically different audiences.

Speaking of which, I'm in the process of redesigning sixhours.net to add my illustration. I'm not doing much photography right now (unless adorable baby portraiture counts) and it seems silly to keep sixhours exclusively for photography when the portfolio hasn't been updated in over a year. At least it will look somewhat current with the illustration included. Now I'll be lucky if I can find the time to sit down and code it.

Originally published at sixhours photography by caroline moore :: blog. You can comment here or there.

Where the hell have I been, right? Blog? Whatsablog?

I am hard at work on a new and exciting project that I would just love to reveal, but alas, it must wait a little while yet. Of course, this means all I want to talk about is said new and exciting project. Conundrum! (I love that word, conundrum!) Patience is not one of my greater virtues, so in the meantime, Tim gets to listen to me yammer on about this and that and the other. Lucky boy!

I haven't worked on a photo shoot in so long, I'm starting to feel itchy. We're already into May (!) and I haven't made a dent in the 2008 portfolio yet. Ouch. So! I need to get working on some ideas. I have new props and dresses and things from my earlier thrifty endeavors, and the weather is perfect for outdoor shoots, so it's just a matter of setting things up.

I'm also days (weeks) behind on my blog reading, writing, and commenting. But I thought I'd peek in here to say that all is well and I am still here. :) What's new with you?

Originally published at sixhours photography by caroline moore :: blog. You can comment here or there.

The other day I took all that extra energy and went out in the woods to play with my camera a bit. You can see more photos at my Flickr! I picked up this Gunne Sax dress at the Goodwill on Friday when I was out with Susan... I have a feeling it will get a lot of use over the coming months. Spring has inspired me!

This evening I spent some time under the deck, sorting through my garden stuff so I'll be ready to plant flower pots in a few weeks. Yes, She of the Black Thumb will attempt to grow flowers this summer. I managed to do it a few years ago without many problems, and this year I have lots more space to work with.

I've been so caught up in other things this week that I almost didn't realize that between my two shops, I made my 100th sale today! Yay!

Originally published at sixhours photography by caroline moore :: blog. You can comment here or there.

Busy weekend! A three-day weekend, even! Hurrah for Patriot's Day! Note the ample use of exclamation points! (And you thought I was exaggerating?)

Three-day breaks are wonderful, although I've reached the point where I've done almost everything on my to-do list (save for cleaning, but eh, it's cleaning) and I have a whole day left to kill. We have no Netflix, I'm between custom orders, and I didn't arrange for any photo shoots this weekend (d'oh) so I'm kinda floating and trying to figure out what I want to do next. The strange free-ness of time! I'm not used to it! Someone, quick! Give her a stopwatch and a schedule before she hyperventilates!

I hung out with Susan on Friday night for more thrifty good-ness and Mexican food. Have I mentioned how nice it is to have friends? Friends who you can even go out with and talk and stuff? I know it seems I've been living under a rock when I say that, but occasionally us rock-people have epiphanies of the obvious sort, and I'm particularly enjoying this one.

On Saturday the weather was so nice that T & I decided to take a day trip to the Ellsworth area for some sun and tasty food at Jordan's snack bar. They had fresh crab (!) so I got a crab roll that was delicious. It was so tasty that I couldn't stop thinking about it for the rest of the night (seriously--I went to bed drooling), so the next day we went grocery shopping and I splurged* on some fresh Maine crab meat. Then I got really brave and tried my hand at homemade crabcakes. The verdict: Tasty! Even better: Mr. Tim does not eat seafood, so they were allll mine! Muwahahahaha!

* Does the word "splurge" conjure up gross mental images for anyone else? Because whenever I hear it, or see it written, I think about puke.  And in current context, that's just unbelievably wrong.

Originally published at sixhours photography by caroline moore :: blog. You can comment here or there.

I finally have a chance to catch up with my favorite blogs and get down to business! The business of blog-writin', that is.

I've been working on a lot of projects lately, and each one requires me to shift gears a little. Programming, design, photography... all distinctly different processes that have me feeling like a Jack (Jaqueline?) of all trades; but it's a very competent feeling. That's good to have when one is swamped with work!

The photo to the right is part of the recent product photography I've done for Allison Strine Designs. Allison is an incredibly talented artist--I adore her work, and was honored when she accepted my bid. I've had a lot of fun working with her and I've enjoyed working with her products, so much so that I had to keep a pendant and a magnet for my very own.

Last weekend's EtsyMaineTeam meet-up was wonderful! It was great to put faces to names, to network a bit, and learn more about what the artists in our state are doing. I had the pleasure of meeting our team leaders, Becky and Jennifer, as well as Ms. Jamie, whom I've known online for years but had never met in person. She came with her crafty family to boot! She and her husband and sister just opened Sweetland Retreat, an artists' bed & breakfast in Manchester, Maine.

I also did some trading while I was there. I made out like a bandit, and my prints were well-received. I will have pictures of my new treasures soon. You can also look forward to reading my posts every Friday on the new EtsyMaineTeam blog! Double the me, double the fun, right? I thought so!

Originally published at sixhours photography by caroline moore :: blog. You can comment here or there.

I've been up to my neck in custom work lately, which is why I've been absent for the last couple days (also absent-minded, but that's the typical state of affairs no matter what I'm working on). I don't know if it was the Real Simple blog feature a few days ago or what, but Calobee Doodles has been overrun by custom requests. Not that I'm complaining... quite the opposite! :)

And today I found one of my photographs featured as an "Etsy Find" in the Storque! Yay! I'm having a good day, indeed.

T & I took a much-needed break last night to go out to dinner and a movie, as it's been eons since we've done a "date night." Of course, we didn't bother to read any movie reviews before we selected our movie of choice for the evening. We stuck to the synopsis, which sounded good in theory... but was bad--very bad--in practice. Always read the reviews; always. It will save you the trauma of spending good money to watch a rotten tomato like Doomsday.

Wow. Just... wow. One minute you're in the midst of a 28-Days-Later-esque scenario in London, and the next you're thrown into a society of punk-ish anarchy in barricaded Scotland. Ten minutes later, you're whisked away (by train, of course) to a distinctly medieval society ruled by a crazy mad scientist king, where you discover that the "cure" is not so much a cure, but a rather obvious matter of genetics. And then, oh, I don't know, let's throw in a gratuitous car chase! Just for the hell of it!

All the while I'm trying to figure out whether I've just missed something or if this is a "Choose Your Own Adventure" movie... where the plot can take a 180 degree turn at any minute! No cohesion necessary! And the cinematography, if you can even call it that... urgh. I actually had to close my eyes and cover my ears at one point to get my bearings. I wanted to be sick, but I don't know if that was because of the jumpy transitions or the terrible acting. Quite possibly both.

But that's par for the course for us. Tim and I have a bad habit of picking the absolute worst movies to see in the theater. If you told me I had a choice between a movie with substance, plot, and good acting and something horrible with Colin Farrel and bad dialog, I'd pick the latter nine times out of ten. I'm a glutton for punishment, I guess. :)

It must be my lucky day! I won not just one prize, but two! Both from the Moo egg hunt, which most of you are probably familiar with by now, but if you're not, here's the crash course: Moo.com, printers of those ingenious mini cards, hosted an egg hunt around the world. Forty eggs were hidden in various sites on the Web, and several more were distributed (in the form of stickers) to major cities in the U.S., Canada, Europe, China, and more! Moo posted clues and hints at their blog and on Flickr each day, and the first people to decipher the clues and report the eggs' locations were guaranteed a prize. For the benefit of those of us who are not that quick, several other winners were chosen at random to receive various prizes from different sponsors, including Flickr, Etsy, Moo, Picnik, Timbuk2, etc.

Well, I wasn't first to find an egg, but apparently I was one of the other random winners in two different drawings. I'm thinking I should go out and buy myself a lottery ticket tonight!

The spoils: a Flickr Pro account and a Picnik Pro account. The Flickr account extends my current pro service for a year, so it won't expire until 2010. And I'd never heard of Picnik until now, but it looks like a handy Web site for quick, on-the-go image editing, right in your browser (no Photoshop required). It also integrates with Flickr and other similar photo-hosting services for convenient access to edit your photos wherever you are. And with the Picnik Firefox Add-on, I can take screen shots of full pages and save them to my Flickr account in two clicks. No more "print screen" for me! The technology is impressive, and I'm having fun playing with my new "toy."

To the right is a Picnik'd version of the waiting hour 2--cross-processed with rounded-corners. Nifty!

Moo is also having a special mini-challenge: write a poem about Moo or the egg hunt and be entered to win a prize! Here is my contribution (limerick style for St. Patty's Day, of course):

There once was a comp’ny called Moo
Who’s egg-hunt was known by a few
They hid eggs ’round the world
With bright colors unfurled
But alas, I found none–oh, boohoo!

In the spirit of the egg hunt, there is also a secret message to the Moo team hidden in the poem. It's not hard to find if you look closely. ;)

Originally published at sixhours photography by caroline moore :: blog. You can comment here or there.

Danielle and I had some impromptu photo shoot good-ness yesterday evening, in what little light there was left for the day. We didn't get to do much for that reason, but we're going to do another shoot tomorrow. I particularly like this shot because it creeps me out, like something from a Stephen King novel. I keep expecting her to turn around and have no eyes or something.

And the dress! I love the dress. It was a recent thrifty find--I've had really good luck with those lately! You can get a better sense of it in this photo.

(Danielle also started her own Etsy shop for photography, so go see! My personal favorite is "in the doghouse."

In other news, it's been an upsy downsy kinda week, and I'm quite glad that it's the weekend, finally! Is there anything better than a lazy Friday night?

Originally published at sixhours photography by caroline moore :: blog. You can comment here or there.

I've been doing a bit of market research, and I think I may be changing my prices soon... raising them a little bit to be more in line with other artists with a similar level of skill. Most of the people I've talked to about this have told me I'm under-priced, but I can't tell if they're just being nice or if they're serious.

Pricing has always been a tricky point for me. I never intended to make a living at photography, so I've always priced my work closer to the hobbyist end of the scale. At the same time, I don't want to sell myself short. Confidence in my abilities plays a huge part... I have a tendency to underestimate my strengths, and I think my current prices reflect that.

So I'm turning to you, dear Internets. I put up a poll on my blog and I'd appreciate it if you'd take a couple minutes and answer it. It's a very informal survey, obviously, but I'm curious to know what my audience here thinks. You can get a good sense of my prices at my regular shop or my Etsy shop (I'm not including Calobee Doodles in this decision, because I'm still a novice in that area!)

You can also leave a comment if you feel like expounding on your answer.

Thank you!

Originally published at sixhours photography by caroline moore :: blog. You can comment here or there.

My spare time over the last three days has been nothing but Web site, Web site, Web site. I'm trying to crank out a new design, and a surprise!... Which will debut very soon. Hopefully tomorrow, provided my eyeballs don't fall out of my head from all the extra computer time. It's a good thing I enjoy doing this stuff or I'd be pretty irate by now.

This evening I took a short walk after work. You have no idea how happy this makes me--that it was warm enough ("warm" is a relative term, of course--40 degrees is a veritable heat wave) to comfortably walk outside in a light jacket for more than ten minutes without risking frostbite. Spring is slowly creeping into the air, and this makes me ridiculously gleeful.

(And yes, I just used the word "gleeful." I do love me some glee. There's no better way to describe this feeling, except possibly "manic," but that sounds vaguely unhealthy... so, "gleeful" it is!)

And even better, when I got home, my new business cards were waiting for me! You can also see the Calobee Doodles design here. They are so smooth and shiny and pretty that I kind of want to... lick them. Is this weird? Hmm. I suppose that might be a turn-off for potential future contacts, so I probably shouldn't lick them. Or at least... not all of them...