One Crazy Weekend

Friday morning I drove 6 hours to Fort Wayne, Indiana. Spent an AMAZING weekend with photographers from a group I belong to that came from Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and me of course, from Missouri. Various levels of experience and in business too. I learned a good deal of things and enjoyed meeting up with people that I have known from online. You feel as if you already know them so the greetings are so quick and you just begin chatter per usual. Fun times.

I have a lot of images that I took that I'll probably be sharing over at the Pink Gnome blog when I'm done, but I working on last minute orders for clients for the holidays and am finishing up my processing of those images so stay tuned - poor Pink Gnome Blog is being neglected.

I can't express how much happier I am focusing on my photography. I have visions of a beautiful studio some day. I know that as long as that vision stays in my heart and mind it will happen. Financially, it's not doable right now, but I know that I can work hard to make that happen. I would love to be able to convert our garage into something for a year or two - it's perfect because there isn't much work that would need to be done other than removing the garage door, painting, running electrical and we already have an outside door that clients could use so they wouldn't be in my home. Just no bathroom option. Anyone have money they want to donate? I am quite proud that I have been able to pay cash for practically everything in my business. My credit card debt for the company is well under $1000. Probably closer to $600. You can't beat that and I don't intend to change it. Some day, I may have to borrow money to really grow my business but for now, I work with what I have and I let my customers pay for my equipment through each session and print order. It seems to be working, but I am an impatient person!

I drove home late Sunday night - dark, rainy, plenty of roadkill, yuck. A couple Starbuck stops and I was so excited to see this:

Okay, so driving through the ever rough Interstate 70 through East St. Louis into my city is not the best way to snap a picture with your camera phone. But, you get the idea! HOME! So nice to cross the river and realize it's just a short hop, skip and a jump away till I pull up in my driveway.

Some of my WEAK attempts at iMovie this weekend using my cheapy video camera - bitmappy, but still fun.

If you're a photographer, you'll get the "chimp" sound byte  in the latter. I have another one to make from my remainder of clips and will work on later.