the sound of green

The end has come, of sorts, to the year already. By the time this afternoon draws to a close, I will have sent off the last of my pages for our final magazine edition for the year, and the bulk of the work will be behind me. Sure, there will still be proofing and other fiddly bits to follow up on tomorrow and Friday, but the majority of the hard slog is done. I can coast from here on in.

It’s peculiar to be faced with a month with little-to-no responsibility. December doesn’t see us produce a mag, as we don’t run a January edition – too many of our contributors and readers are away on holidays; churches shut down over parts or all of the break, and my editor and I both need to have holidays at some point. There will be work to do throughout December (planning for the coming year’s edition, sorting advertising rates and locking in our major advertisers, etc), but there’s no hassle of sourcing articles, booking in shoots with contributors, laying out columns, articles and pages, and no ads to design and fit into pages. It’s a somewhat freeing thought.

I’ve got plans of how I want next year to run. I’ve already started to map out a possible new timeline of how each edition could run, how our workflow could be improved, and how I can actually start to tie in photos with the articles and their content. It’s exciting to stare down a month’s worth of time and space to try and make these thoughts and plans a reality.

My personal work is oddly mirroring my Monday-to-Friday work as this year draws to a close. December is currently empty (much to my relief) with nothing but a possible client meeting or two. And I’m very excited of the time that it will allow me. Time to start pursuing some of the things I’ve had planned for a while.

My creative direct has been lacking of late – that much has become obvious to me over the past month or so. Tying into my previous post about writing, my creative direction has all of a sudden decided to re-emerge, and rear is (sometimes) ugly head. Once more I’m starting to actually see images I want to make. I’m starting to plan shoots in my head. I’m beginning to no longer struggle for ideas, no longer staring at my bag sitting next to my desk and wondering why it gets no use outside of work or client hours. My hand is itching to hold my camera again, and this is an infinitely good thing.

The problem with the sudden reappearance of creativity led to a clash between the want, the need, and the ability to both find the time and space to make any of those images a reality. I had these ideas I wanted to shoot, but was either in one of the two deadline weeks I live in each month, or flat out working for other clients. Holidays were in there as well, which did limit some ideas – but that time lying by the water at the beach and pool were both instrumental in gaining some clarity of what to do with my rediscovered muse. December affords me the time and space outside of work, as well as the lack of stress from major publication and distribution deadlines hanging over my head like Damocles’ upward glance revealed. All going to plan, the coming month (and especially having the lovely Christmas present from work of 10 days off) will be a chance to realise some of the plans that have been flying around my head at a million klicks.

I’m not going to say anything relating to what those plans are, just yet. I want to sit down and nut through a lot more of this with Beth first, and get a plan of action so that this month doesn’t waste away like so many have before. But I’m looking forward to December with baited breath.

It’s a lame attempt at a post, but I’ve been bugged for them, and when approaching two months with no traffic, it’s better than nothing.

The slew of computer issues is how (hopefully) over. And what a slew they were!

To start with, the battery on my MacBook Pro had swollen, to the point where it would cut out randomly, and the whole computer could not sit flat on a desk. It was annoying, though hardly prevented me from working – most of the time I’m at my desk, so there wasn’t much issue with running plugged in. I finally got sick of it, and headed into the local Apple Service Centre to swap it out under warranty – only to find that Apple is well aware that their batteries swell, and consider it “normal operation” and wouldn’t replace it under warranty. Disappointing.

The solution was a new $200 battery that work was kind enough to purchase (it is, afterall, a work machine), which meant I no longer had to remain tethered within two metres of a power point to work, and could once more enjoy the freedom of sitting on a couch. Or the bed. Or in a cafe. That was Friday week ago I picked up the new battery – and things were fine and dandy.

The following Tuesday evening, I had the laptop plugged into the TV, and was packing up for the night. Positive I’d unpluged both cables connecting sleek, aluminium laptop to hulking, ugly plastic behemoth, I started to pull the laptop away from the TV. Only to find one of the cables hadn’t detached, and subsequently ripped the laptop from my hands and pulled it upside down onto the ground. Which would have been fine – the harddrive had locked like it was supposed to, preventing major issues, and everything was working fine.

Except a split second later, the other end of the cable pulled the TV down on top of the laptop.

Annoyingly, the TV was fine – nothing wrong with it. I picked it back up, set it down right way up, and everything worked fine. The laptop, on the other hand, did not fare so well. The new battery took the brunt of the damage (and now has a 1cm deep dint in it), but the weight of the TV combined with the force of the impact did manage to bend the whole chassis, as well as completely smash the screen. Sheepishly, the next morning I had to front work and show them the damage, but as I (as well as a number of other staff) work from home regularly, everything was all fine.

Now, I type this on a brand new MacBook Pro – one of the shiny aluminium unibody ones. It’s rather nice, the battery life is freaking brilliant, but there are a few things i’m still getting used to. We’ll see how they go as things go on – and when my MiniDisplay Port adaptor finally arrives. I mean seriously. Why don’t they ship with the adaptors anymore?!

I’ve held of mentioning this at all, because there was a chance that it wasn’t going to happen today. But after using my own gear for a year, work finally bought a some gear for me to use – a Nikon D700, a Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, two SB-900 flashes, and a bag to fit it all.

At lunchtime I made the call to find out the payment had gone through, and dropped into the city to pick it up – and have spent the rest of the afternoon since playing with it all! I’ll post a full review of it sometime soon, but for now, you can enjoy the pictures (unfortunately captured on my old body) of how unpacking it all went!

theage(melbourne)magazine. It come out once a month, on the final Friday of each month. I usually grab it on a Friday afternoon, after I’ve finished work, and put it on the dining room table. There it sits, untouched until the following morning when I’m (most usually) awake before my wife, and it’s slowly consumed over breakfast and coffee – sometimes stretching to a second coffee.

There’s something about the magazine, that has me inextricably caught up in waiting for it each month. The profile pieces on Melbourne identities are always eloquently written, showing a real insight into the lives of their subjects, and the photography that accompanies the articles always has me looking studiously over the images, determining the lighting setups, and working out how to incorporate those ideas into my own work. But even beyond the said quality of the magazine, there’s something about the actual physical feel of the magazine. It’s weighty, it’s glossy, and it looks beautiful.

While I know in my head that the budget of the two magazines can in no way be compared to the to, I can’t help but wish the Witness could one day become such a magazine – in the physical sense. I’d love to be able to print our mag on at least coated stock, if not the full gloss that The Age can afford. I’d love to be able to explore the bigger tonal range that could be conveyed in my photography, if we weren’t printing on an uncoated stock. But I know that for who we are, and the number of us that work at it, we do put out a high quality product, coated or not.

Today I somewhat belatedly enjoyed my monthly pleasure, as I’d left the mag sitting on my desk at work last Monday, and haven’t been in the office since. So even though it meant a trip into the office on a rather quiet Sunday morning (and besides, I did have a couple of other things that needed to be done in the office), I was more than happy to put in the effort, and then sit back and enjoy the read over a coffee. And dream of glossy magazines.

… the subordinates steal the supervisor’s hardware.

He’s away on paternity leave, being the proud father of a new baby girl. And I figured he didn’t need his cinema display while he’s at home.

It makes me feel considerably more apple.

Monday was supposed to be a nice, laid back day in the office. Monday was supposed to be quiet, catching up on things in the lull after the big project passed. Monday was supposed to be a bridging day between Sunday and two more days off.

Monday was pure madness.

I knew I had one trip out of the office to make – returning hired camera gear from Sunday’s filming. I was quite fine with that fact – it was shaping up to be a nice day for a drive, and there’s nothing better than  drive on a nice day. Yet, before I’d even had a chance to settle in for the day, emails and phone calls came in that turned the day on its head.

I headed off to drop off the gear, contemplating dropping in on a someone who’d twittered their location that happened to be all of about 50m off my route. Yet, when I looked at the clock on the return journey, I realised I was in trouble. It was 11:50am, I was still 15 minutes from the office, and had to leave again at 12:20pm for an assignment. I got there in time to bolt some lunch down, before shooting off to the assignment (no pun intended). I snapped frames quickly in a boardroom, before heading back to the office. Realising again my predicament, I fired off two more emails, and then headed out again for yet another assignment. I made that one in time to get there, shoot, get release forms signed, and head back to the office for all of 20 minutes before the day was over.

It wasn’t even deadline week, yet all these assignments appeared out of nowhere. And it took it’s toll – Beth found me asleep on the bed at 5:30pm.

Good thing today was a day off.

Today was supposed to be purely filled with finishing a project on our website, and making sure it’s ready to go live next week.

Today our website goes down, and the lovely people who host and manage it seem to be either dragging their feet or encountering problems getting it back up. Either would be equally possible.

And so, I’ll go back to sitting here, finding little tasks to fill my time, with the knowledge that I was only 30 minutes away from having it all finished.

Wednesday saw me scratching my head. For some reason, I was getting a handful of phonecalls both from my regular printers, and some cold calls from new ones. For those of you not entirely in the loop (or those I’ve never bothered properly explaining my job to), part of my job is to coordinate all of the print work for our organisation. That means any time any of the ministries or departments have something their promoting, something they want to send out to people, it comes across my (somewhat messy) desk.

Now, this isn’t a hugely busy time of the year for printing for us. We’ve got a couple of jobs on the go (a bookmark, an A5 journal that just came back from print, and the ever-present 200-odd-page Yearbook looming on the horizon), but nothing that was making us insanely busy – and I couldn’t figure out why I was getting the calls.

Thursday came and went with yet more calls from printers. There were even voicemail messages from printers who had rang after we’d left for the day. Still puzzled, I couldn’t figure out a reason.

This morning it clicked. After taking a call from one of my regulars, he mentioned that it was leading up into their “busy season” – it all made sense. They were all trying to drum up more work. Usually when I get these kinds of calls from printers, it irks me somewhat – I have to try and be nice to them so that they’ll do their best to give me good quotes, yet at the same time I don’t have much to offer them in terms of regular work. In fact, the most regular work we do is the Yearbook each year – that’s pretty much the only guaranteed each year. But it is a nice big carrot to dangle.

I do have the advantage now, that I’m heading into Yearbook season, and having finally got details for it, I can start asking for the printers to prepare their quotes. They can all assemble their gifts to lay at my feet, until the time where I deign to decide who will be my favoured subjects for the December print season.

Yes, I get a small power trip from this all.

As a continuation of the ongoing search for answers for Beth’s migraines, the doctors suggested getting off all codeine-based painkillers in an effort to avoid migraines being compounded with Chronic Daily Headache. Which would not be fun for all involved. To that end, Beth took this week off work, knowing that the withdrawal symptoms could be harsh, and enabling her to sleep them away.

Me on the other hand, didn’t really need to sleep all day. And while we’d contemplated me taking the week off work as well, the kind people at work gave me the go ahead to work the week from home. They may just have, however, made me somewhat unwilling to return to the office.

This week so far has been an eye-opener. Always slightly jealous of my home-working counterpart, I’d wondered whether I’d be the kind of person who could make it working from home. At times I struggle to self-motivate myself, a problem that was the bane of my University experience. I wasn’t sure how I’d go with a full week at home, with both a wife and a puppy to distract me (trust me, both are serious distractions). Yet this week has been a good week – work has gotten done before play time, and it’s only been a good situation of being able to get up, and be in the office five steps later. Cuts out all the driving, parking, working out both what to wear and eat.

Besides, they don’t let me wear thongs in summer or ugg boots in winter at work. I think I’m staying put.