What a Week!

Those of you who know me will know I haven't been producing many photographs lately, I haven't been feeling overly inspired and the little work I have produced hasn't been of a great standard.  And last week I was nearly thinking of packing it in and deleting my account... not great for someone who's just set up a photography business!

I should warn you, this journal will be full of complaining... and probably swearing

First of all, I had my first unpleasant comment last week.  You'll all know that I believe in constructive criticism and will defend any of my friends who get abuse.  This wasn't abuse, just useless criticism, on this photo:

All they said was "Such poor quality " so I asked how I could improve and they continued to tell me the photo was sh*t and that I shouldn't be using iso 1600.  Well, I know iso 1600 isn't desirable but under the circumstances I had no choice as I didn't have a tripod.  I looked at the guy's gallery and honestly I didn't think much of his work but I wasn't going to get personal.  So I agreed with some of the points he made, it definitely isn't one of my best pieces but told him I thought he was being harsh and I hoped he at least had something nice to say about the rest of my gallery.  And that got it sorted, in fact he added one of my other photos to his s.  Problem solved.

That was fine but it added to my paranoia that my work is sh*t.  Recently I reduced my gallery to about half the size, dumping all the shots I don't like into Scraps.  Then on Friday, came the news that my application for a Licentiateship with the Royal Photographic Society had been rejected.  I'm still pretty upset about this as I have seen some portfolios that have got in that were a pile of crap.  Also, the RPS gives out Licentiateships free to photography degree students - to think that if I lived in England I could do a degree in photography and get in no matter how crap my shots were, whereas living here there is only one uni that does the degree, I can't afford to do it and my hard work was rejected.
This is my portfolio:



I now also realise that a series of shots that flow well would've been better than just selecting my best work.  Will I re-apply?  I don't know but I'm thinking no.  I'll see what the sheet from the judges says and perhaps come up with a series using my images from Canada but knowing a bit more about the LRPS I now realise they've de-valued it by offering it for free.


And finally... we were meant to go to Rathlin Island at the weekend to take photos and see the puffins.  I've been having trouble with my bank lately, they've been charging me overdraft fees when I haven't been overdrawn and they've ballsed up our rent payment for the studio several times.  First they took the money (£220!) out of someone else's account in April, then they completely messed up the payment for May.  So I've ended up making 3 rent payments for April, May and June in the space of 3 weeks.  Having thought the payments were taken care of, I was quite lax with my money and it now turns out I'm going to be overdrawn and most likely, the cheque I had to write for the May payment will bounce   This is just my personal account.  We applied for a business account 7 or 8 weeks ago and with one thing and another it's still not open.  We have 2 cheques from jobs that we can't lodge, therefore we have no money   So that's why we couldn't go to Rathlin, but we will go in July hopefully.
For now, here are some other nice pictures from there by NI artist younghappy:


Enough complaining for now   Any advice on re-inspiring myself?

~~~

My partner in crime:



Admin for:



Member of:


_{The above clubs all have permission to display my deviations.}

:thumb59870529: :thumb51507251: :thumb43152345:

Thanks to Karma021 for the Journal CSS

`