The Annual Gap

This gap between Christmas and New Year’s is always a weird kinda time. I often have to work but I admit it is very half-hearted. Family time and new things are calling my attention away and that is a good thing. Ms Lugs gave me a book on Pigeons for Christmas. Who knew that they would be such interesting creatures? Not I, that’s for sure. I haven’t read a book in ages but it was super today to just curl up on the couch for a few hours and read. My thoughts of work were fleeting and rare. Not so tomorrow, though. I have to get back to it then... but today was a nice break.

It’s not the work you remember but the other stuff

One of the things that bugs me is that during the busy times, the work gobbles up all available time. It chews up all the time that would be given over to doing the fun stuff with family, reading books, seeing movies, things like that. Look back on that time and all you’ll see is a big hole in your life because I don’t think you remember the work. Sure, you remember the resulting image. As an illustrator, if I like it enough I’ll stick it up on the wall and probably look at it almost every day at some point in later months, years. I forget the amount of work that it took to get there, but I know I am missing the memories of the time I could have been spending during that period doing the fun stuff I listed earlier. Well, I guess I’ll never know.

First day back

First day back after the Christmas break and I am feeling a little sluggish. Plenty of issues to deal with. There are the usual issues: Too many thing to do, not enough time in which to do them. A list of things to do that resides entirely in my head and the ever present fear that if I write it down it will get bigger. Add to these all the holiday related issues: the holiday was so good I have a hard time remembering what I do for a living. Having a hard time focusing, that sort of thing and I think this "working-during-the-holidays-when-everyone-else-is-off" is a recipe for disaster. So, I am going to make a very specific list of the things I want to do this afternoon. Just the key things and I am going to make sure that I accomplish them at the very least. Yes, that's what I am going to do. Just watch me.

Winter festival scene done, on to the next

In the run up to the holidays things have gotten pretty sluggish in the blogging department That’s not to say we have been idle in Studio Lugs. Quite the contrary. We’ve have been very busy. So busy, in fact, we even had to miss a Seasonal Party or two. The icon project continues sporadically and the series of four illustrations we were engaged to produce has occupied this illustrator's every waking moment practically. The results have been great though. Here’s a portion of the winter festival scene we have been working on lately. It is a massive image and this bit is just a very small part of it. The full image is out pending client final approval approval.

This is bugging me

The Lugs family had been to the cottage for the weekend. Upon our return Ms Lugs found a suspicious 3mm long "creature" attached to the top of our dog Nuala's head. It looked as though it had burrowed in partly under the skin. (sorry for the details there) Nuala was taken to the vet where the tick (for so it was) got to be extracted and sent away for testing to see if it carried Lyme Disease.

Two days later Ms Lugs was stroking Nuala and she found ANOTHER tick near the site of the first one. I looked at it and tried pulling it out. It relinquished Naula's scalp with a large clicking sound. For some reason that sound really grossed me out. On closer inspection I found yet another but considerably smaller tick at the same site. He wasn't trying to dig in but was just ambling around instead. He too was removed and put into a sealed container.

Later, Ms Lugs called me from the Jeep with what has to be the funniest call I have had in ages. She said "I can't believe I am driving a tick and his little buddy to the vet today!" That might have sounded good as a tweet.

Winter scene done, onto the next

The winter scene we were working on is now complete. As soon as I have seen that it has been published I will upload the full image. In the meantime I can let you see just a part of it. But this will give you an idea of the paint style. No rest for the wicked though. The moment this job is in the client’s hands we turn our attention toward the production of the next one. This next one will be the second in a series of four. The first was done a couple of years ago and this second one is an image of the same event as that picutred in the first. I am really looking to get back this scene. It should be cool to produce another image of the same event, but from different angle. I’ll be using a different set of models this time as it is suposed to be in a slightly different location.

The funny thing is that I do these scenes in photo studios and 3D programs and elsewhere on the computer and then, sometime toward the end of the illustration my mind starts believing that the event or scene actually occurred. Strange what the mind will do.

If a torpedo hits the water, does it make a sound?

Here’s a little graphic we did for the Canadian Acoustics Magazine cover. I have been doing the covers for that magazine since I was quite a young lad. They are never really spectacular... how nifty can you make sound wave look? It is an ever present problem with that magazine. The covers are always a challenge. Well, on this one the challenge was to illustrate two concepts and make them look like they belonged together: an audio file retrieving system and an article on methods of tracking the progress of a torpedo moving toward the device that is tracking it. This was our solution. I did the 3D bits and Assistant Lugs did the rest.

The march of progress

We picked up a new printer for Studio Lugs the other day. Well, I picked it up, Assistant Lugs held open the doors, cheerily enquiring of the store owner how much delivery would have been.

The printer is great, it does all sorts of things; scans, copies and prints, reads from SD cards, all that stuff. All for $200. Maybe I am dating myself here but my first laser printer (the Apple LaserWriter) cost me over $10,000.00. That was only 300 dpi, black and white and certainly didn’t make photocopies.

While some things (the price of housing, for example) continue their slow rise into the stratosphere, other things defy logic. For half the price you can get something that weighs half the weight and does twice as much than a similar machine did two years ago. Now that kind of progress I can get used to.

Making an early winter scene

We are taking pictures of people today. Reference for a winter scene illustration. Part of the image reference will be created in a 3D program and the people will be shot as photographs with similar lighting and then dropped in. The image will then be used as reference for the final painting which will have a higher contrast and more saturation probably but will generally look the same. The benefit of doing it this way is that the art director can give the go ahead on the painting and know that it won't look too different in the final from the thing he approved. That's important on crazy deadline jobs like this one. Crazy deadlines also generate other problems too. There is no time to do anything twice so we have lined up twice the number of models we need for the shoot. That'll cover for any that don't show up and also give the art director some extra leeway in his selection of the ones that he wants to use. I'll post some of the shots after the shoot.

What happened to the calm before the storm?

Here in Studio Lugs we are getting ready for a huge onslaught of work. We were already pretty busy but now we are likely to be doing another four big illustrations before Christmas. In the normal run of things each one of these would take two to three weeks. It is going to make for a very busy, but productive time. I am excited by it but with a fair amount of trepidation. Still maybe that dash of panic makes the final work all the more vital. Anyway, we’ll know in the next couple of days whether we really are going to be that busy or not, but it seems pretty likely. Once again we won’t be able to show you the results until published but we might be able to show you little parts of the jobs as we go.

Riding can be heaven or hell

It gives me great pleasure to have a little digital camera in my backpack. You never know what you are gong to see cycling to and from work. Take this scene I shot on my way home from work recently... I liked how there was this glorious sunset going on able the distillery district and yet it seemed as fit the area had its own business to attend to. Lights were just coming on and businesses were setting up for the evening with no thought to what was going on overhead.

I have often wondered about having a video camera on board. Not just to record the trip but to also have some record of what actually happened during some of the random yet inevitable altercations that seem to occur when bikes meet cars. Like this evening for example. There I was riding along the bike lane, minding my own business, when an owner of a car parked next to the bike lane opened his driver side door to get in right in front of me while I rang me bell. "Watch your car door please" I yelled. He looked up at me as if I wasn’t there "What? Didn’t you see me?" I said pointing to my twin headlights as I passed. "No" I heard him call after me. Yet, moments later, his car practically touched me as he swerved into the bike lane to show me how clever he could be behind the wheel of his big ugly lump of steel and rubber. Maybe he did that to teach me a lesson... and the lesson is that he’s an idiot! I hate people who use their cars as weapons. I could have done with a record shot of his license plate.

Therr’s a prolbem here smeowhere

Can your fingers grow longer after you pass, 20, 30, 40, 50? I am wondering this because as I get older I become more keyboardishly dyslexic. The word “from” now always goes in as “form”, to becomes ot, some becomes smoe. I think of my fingers have grown and this accounts for the errors. Or perhaps my mind has started to speed up ad now works at a rate far in excess of what my fingers can achieve. Hence the error. Maybe, the Mac now has a system to detect these keyboarding errors but there is an error in the software and, because I am not making the mistakes any more, the computer is messing things up. Notice how all my suggestions (exuses) for the problems appear to be based on improvements at my end?

Hmm. See you aonther tmie.

P.S. Yikes, Grandmomma Lugs who loves to draw my attention to every typo I have ever made is going to freak if she sees this post.

Making it real

Woah!... the days are getting crisp. Just spent the weekend at the cottage. trying to finish off a third bedroom. It is nice to turn from tablets and screens to plaster and sand paper for a change. The room is pretty well done now, just needs painting and something covering the floor. This weekend I built a box to hide the electircial panel. There is something immensely satisfying about using tools to create something real. some edifice (even if it is only a box). The other work I do is so ephemeral I don’t think it is real. It is only real when it gets printed and you walk past a poster of it as you enter a store or drive past a billboard with the image on it. So, there is a definite pleasure in creating something real, something you can grab on to.

Casting envious eyes

Assistant Lugs is doing some small paintings for an art show and I am extremely envious. For once it would be neat to wallow in traditional media and all the spontaneous unplanned things that happen as paint hits canvas. When you are working on the computer pretty well everything you do happens because you plan it to happen. There aren't too many things that happen all by themselves on computers and yet IRL* that’s what you are working with all the time: the texture of the media, the viscosity of the paint, the temperature of the environment. And the smell, remember the smell of the inks? The computer only smells twice; when it is brand new and when it's about time to toss it out.

* IRL = in real life, I mean

Digger chain

Cycling in to work this morning I saw this interesting sight. A hole so deep that the diggers had to form a chain just to get the buckets of dirt out. Actually only two diggers were involved in the chain, the lowest one of the three had a jack hammer on the end to break of chunks of the shale, rock or whatever it was. Whatever it was it hadn’t seen the light in several million years I’ll bet. After that initial exposure it was pushed rudely out of its bed, scraped up into a bucket, transferred to another bucket and then unceremoniously dumped into a truck, with hardly a moment to enjoy the sights and sounds of twenty first century downtown Toronto. The truck then hauled it off to join other bucketfuls in some massive pile out of town somewhere I suppose. It can't be easy being a chunk of rock.

Look deep into my eyes

Remember I said I was going to have my eyes checked a couple of weeks ago? Well, it happened and while I was in there they took some digital shots of my retina. Here they are. Now, I know all you armchair optometrists are thinking "Crikey Loppy, you've got a serious case of 'cross-eyed-itis' going there. We'd better get you under the knife to separate those two puppies as soon as possible." Well, actually I think they are supposed to look like that. The veins there are the vessels at the back of the eye. I may have the scans swapped around.. but who but a professional really knows?

Anyway, thought you might like to see... apparently it's not only designers, photographers and illustrators that produce cool images.

A work-free weekend, yeay!

To look at this blog one would be forgiven for thinking that the Lugster had dropped off the face of the earth, but no, I'm still here. Working feverishly. "Team Lugs" are currently engaged on a relatively large project for a large agency on behalf of a large client. That's about as close as I can get with my description except to say that it involves us doing a lot of drawings. The project has been going for a couple of months now but only now is it cranking up. It will be good once it is done but right now we are only in the early stages of it. Can't show you anything until it is done and published, of course.

This weekend though, no work for a change, so it was all about the forthcoming Halloween, carving pumpkins, cleaning out the garage so we can decorate it for Wednesday... and building a storage unit in the basement, that sort of thing. I'll leave you to decide which Lug family member carved which pumpkin.

On drips and newspapers

Last week the major project was turning some rainwater droplets in a stock shot into paint drips for a trade show booth. Assistant Lugs was plugging away at the Jazz newsletter. She finished the rough layout, had it approved and started refining it on a page by page basis. She also helped me on the drips. Drawing path selections for over a thousand drips is quite time consuming. The job happened quite quickly. I uploaded the final art to an ftp site and then they send it off to the States to be turned in to the backdrop for a display booth.

Toward the end of the week I was doing many newspaper separations of whisky bottles, drinks and mood shots for a newspaper insert. These images are always a challenge, largely because they are often dark but also because it is very difficult to achieve the rich colours of some of the drinks with only a maximum ink density of 240. You have to be creative with it. Even though doing newspaper separations might seem boring, the challenge of making it look as good as possible is enjoyable.

It will still look like crap when it hits the newspaper, no matter what you do. But it will be good crap, or at least better than what might have been had you not tinkered with it.

Canadian Thanksgiving

This past weekend was a treat. It was a treat to get away for one thing. We went down to our little cottage in Prince Edward County. The County is a rather large island that sits in the eastern end of Lake Ontario. It's a place of vineyards, farms, coastlines and beautiful scenery. The type of place that after spending 2.5 hours on the road from Toronto you stop the car, turn off the engine, and all you can hear are birds. It's also rather isolated. Treat #2: no internet or even phone. Well, we have the cell phones but service is sporadic to say the least. We're "doing up" the place and I spent a fair amount of time sanding and plastering the third bedroom. We are trying to make the place cosy and serviceable enough that we can rent it out. This time out though, the place became family-oriented as family visited and Ms Lugs cooked a fine Thanksgiving dinner that left us all holding our bellies. That was treat #3. Came back to Toronto on Monday to spend much of the remaining day setting up the new imac I bought for home. That monitor is much bigger than I thought it was in the store. Another treat. Unfortunately I couldn't get the old mac to properly hook up to the new machine so all the settings and user information had to be transfered manually, and let me tell you, that was and still is, no treat.

Dental work

Well if this isn’t the week for a full human tune-up. Went to the dentist yesterday. After a filling I had one of my wisdom teeth pulled. Should have had them out years ago but couldn’t afford it. Well, one of them was in the standing way for the second filling this morning so I had it yanked. We’ll get to the actual filling in a couple of weeks. The doctor had it out before I realized he was doing it. I think that is because the tooth was above the surface and it had relatively short roots. So, now there’s a hole in my mouth and I feel as though I have been punched. Hey I never said I was going to talk about important stuff on this blog.

On the work front... a job that was supposed to happen was considerably reduced in scope, so, with all this spare time, we are archiving like mad bunnies here in anticipation of a busy week next week.

Eyes checked

I went and had my eyes checked yesterday. You’d think that for a person who makes his living from what his eyes tell him he’d be having his eyes checked more frequently than every four years. Well, maybe this was a turning point. Perhaps I’ll start going every year or two. It would probably make sense... not that I am known for my sensibility.

Anyway, the doctor sat me down and determined with all that fancy equipment what my prescription would be and then she dropped the pupil dilating drops in my eyes. Once they were large they took photos of my eyes (copies of which i will upload here when they become available). Then it was back to the doctors equipment-heavy room to check the health of my eyes. She was nice and it was all very painless. One or two things struck me as odd. The business cards that they give out are almost illegible. Perhaps that is to ensure that their customers realise they need help in the visual department. The type was small and it had a very low contrast with its background colour. It was only by using a magnifying glass that I was able to determine the spelling of the name of the doctor I had just seen.

Well, $120 bucks later, I left with a slip of paper indicating the new prescription for glasses I needed. I am looking forward to getting new glasses because when she had me wear the test glasses that matched the new prescription everything looked so crisp it practically jumped out at me. It’s amazing how your peepers can change over just 4 years.

"That time of the month" is over

It’s the middle of the week and now we are back to doing artwork. Assistant Lugs has started to put together the latest newsletter for a Canadian Jazz organization and I am turning my attention toward doing the retouching for some wine ads for a newspaper. It is a welcome change... I suspect I will whine interminably in this blog about how I hate doing administration at the beginning of every month. This month will be no exception.

I hate administration... I am always losing $3000 dollars, only to find it tucked away where it is supposed to be an hour later. Or I am ready to send out an invoice but it just needs one more P.O. number before I can send it and no-one can tell me what that number is. The wrinkles in billing, quoting and accounting are endless and I am impressed by those that can deal with it all the time. Every time I spend a couple of days at it every month, I think “Wow, how do those suits do it?” It’s a skill I don’t have and probably never will. I procrastinate on the billing issue and thus just make it worse for myself. Still I have dropped the invoices in the mail for all the jobs completed during September and I can now turn my attention back to what I really love to do: working with images.

Smile, you're in Timmys

Stop into any Tim Hortons coffee shop across the country this week and I suspect you will see many iterations of the smile cookie I painted for their agency a couple of years ago. At both my local Timmy's I saw window clings and small size posters. The t shirts the staff were wearing had it on them and it was also on the in-store television monitors.

I remember it was a fun job to do. I had to buy a lot of cookies to use for my "research", yeah, let's call it research. Funny how so many of the cookies ended up in my belly after I had finished researching them.

No, I don't think that having these images up all over the place makes me famous (Little Lugs always wants to know "Does that mean you're famous daddy?") but it is a blast to see it up and being used. Unfortunately, to put up the smile cookie window clings they had to take down one of my other illustrations of a park for an anti-litter campaign. Win some, lose some.

A great setting

Sunday afternoon saw family Lugs heading out to Kleinburg to visit the McMichael Canadian Collection art gallery. There can be few settings as gorgeous as this one in Canada for the enjoyment of Canadiana art. The log and stone gallery sits nestled in pine trees on a knoll overlooking a lovely river flood plain. The trails around the property are magnificent. Originally designed to house works by the Group of Seven the gallery seems to have diverged from its origninal direction since the McMichaels ceded the place to the government. It was to see one of thes divergences that we went to the gallery on this lovely fall day.

They were having a show of works by the great Canadian naturalist painter Robert Bateman. It was a superb collection of pieces and I particularly enjoyed the personal notes from the artist that accompanied practically every piece. There were pieces from every era of his career. Interestingly, I had seen several of them in books and magazines but in real life the painting were quite different. You could see brush strokes and they were the type of brush stroke one wouldn’t think when laid over the top of one another they would add up to the magnificent whole, but they did. He never really uses black yet, in all the books I had seen the tonal range always went right to black. Well, it was a wonderful show and I was quite moved by several of the pieces, particularly those dealing with clear cut logging and driftnet fishing. We left the gallery quite inspired on a number of levels.

Out with the old

Our street had a street sale this Saturday. An ad in the newspaper and some mention on the web brought out the crowds. It was neat to see the neighbours on the street engaged in a different actvity to those we normally see each other... most often we meet shoveling snow or tipping back a beer during the annual street party in the summer.

We kept a lot of stuff from going into the landfill on Saturday. It is amazing what people can find a use for. I suppose there is a time and place for everything and so many things on the tressles outiside our garage were no longer appropriate to our current time. Little Lugs has grown up and much of the stuff we sold was perfectly good but no longer used my him.

I saw a city vehicle driving up and I joked aloud that the city was here to check on our permit.... well, you don’t need a permit but we did learn from the driver of that city vehicle that we are only allowed to have 2 garage sales a year. Huh! As if we’d have that much junk!

Collision!

I first started riding to and from work (about 20 km/day) about 12 years ago. In the early days I had a few accidents. There were no bike lanes on my route in those days... I just had to ride at the side of the rode and, as inevitably happens when you put bicycles and motor vehicles together, there were occasional collisions. I never had any big injuries but it was scary nonetheless. For the past few years it has been accident free for me since the city started installing edge of road bike lanes and exclusive bike paths along my route to and from work.

The other night I was coming home from work at around 10:30pm. Minding my own business when I saw something stealthily coming toward me out from the corner of my eye. It was another cyclist whipping out of a side road, failing see whether anything was coming before he whipped between two parked vehicles into the bike lane. No lights, bell or yelling warned me of his approach. His pedal caught my back wheel and, like two jets colliding over an airfield, our debris paths followed our independent trajectories. As I went down I was less concerned for my bike than the hard drive in my backpack (mind you, it had been backed up just 15 minutes before) I had a few cuts and scrapes but I think he was worse off, in spite of the alcohol of which he reeked. He was one of the immortals... he wore no helmet. I figure those people either know they are going to live forever or assume there is nothing of value inside the skull that a helmet would protect. Anyway, because of the alcohol and his twisted knee, it kinda deflated my anger at his having caused the incident. His bike would need some fixing but mine seemed to be okay. We parted to go lick our wounds at our respective homes. First thing I did when I got home was to plug in my hard drive: it purred like a kitten.

One for the price of two

Maybe I should write two blogs. One would be the blog I planned to write and the other would be the blog that actually gets written. It is a curious thing with me that I never actually write what I sit down to write. Somewhere between the idea and the reality of writing I get sidetracked. So, rather than running out of ideas I accumulate them at twice the rate of my output. Fortunately for anyone reading I only have time for one.

It has ever been this way. Some years ago I wrote articles about using computers for illustration for Step By Step Graphics magazine. I would blithely put a proposal for an article together for the editor and get it approved. A few weeks later I would submit something quite different something that had only the vaguest connection to what I had proposed originally. It was in the process of writing that the article evolved. The original outline might have made a good piece but I always felt quite strongly about the piece that I actually submitted.

The best laid plans

Well, I had intended to do nothing bbut billing today... attend to some of that administrational stuff without which I'd be "skint" as they say in GB. Well that plan seemed to go down the tubes after a couple of calls from clients. Still, if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be able to do this. I should keep in touch with that thought. I still feel thwarted.

New week, new list of "Things to do"

Hah... list of things to do. It is mostly stuff that, even though it's on the list, just gets moved to the next week's list come Friday. Still, having a list gives me the semblance of efficiency, if not the reality. This week I dive back into a massive project in which I am creating a bunch of GUI navigation icons. You'll hear more about it over the coming weeks I expect.

This Wednesday I have an assistant starting with me to help chip away at that to do list. In addition, this icon thing is so big that I need someone to help with all the things that I can't get to. It should be good to have help. I seriously need to do some billing in the next couple of days. If I don't well there won't be any point in continuing in business because there won't be any. Business, that is.

Sometimes I wish it were all free. I suspect my customers feel that way too. Sorry peeps. Not going to happen.

Elf is now done

Often, my September labours are Christmas and holiday related. This one is no exception. I finished the elf illustration today. There's a quietness that goes with working on a weekend. You can really focus on things. I like it, no one is around. No interruptions. Don't need the headphones, you can just crank up the tunes regardless of anyone else because you are the only one around. I like that. Though I am sure I could go crazy if it was like that all the time. Okay. Here's part of what I was working on... I'll upload the full image once the job has been published.

You might notice a distinct similarity between this elf and Little Lugs... yes it was he that posed for me originally, and, judging by the length of his nose he might have told a fib just before the reference shot was taken!

Ever changing, never changing

Some jobs are like a moving target. You think you know all there is to know about them and then they change. Well, that is generally short lived and easy to handle on a small project but on the big ones the change can be massive. That's the way it is on one big job I am working on. It keeps changing over time. Right now it bears little resemblance to what we originally talked about.

That's okay... that's often the way it is in advertising but it is a bit frustrating because the entitiy you think you know and need to plan for is never really the way you think it is. Often, it has already moved on to something else. As if advertising wasn't ephemeral enough already. Hah!

AC is off

The AC is off (they are doing work on the roof). I am painting on my Wacom monitor which I have on my lap and the monitor is very hot. Sweat drips from me and makes my hand slip on the tablet. Need to get these illustrations finished tomorrow though so I am going to have to sweat my way through it. No one said it would be easy.

Power outage

Big excitement here today in Toronto. At 11:50 am the entire downtown core lost power. Most people stumbled around with a bewildered look on their faces staring enviously at the laptop users continuing to work. The atmosphere switched from "studious" to "party" as people realised they couldn’t really do anything. Then the laptop users became the envious ones. Eventually they too ran out of power and people started to go home.

Not me, I just unplugged my hard drive from my Quad tower and switched operations over to my laptop. Things moved a lot slower on that little screen but at least I was able to continue to work and I tried to save the power as much as I could. Actually, I didn’t even need to call on my backup battery... which was a good thing because I think it has drained to just 50% power sitting there in the case. Backups aren’t much good unless you keep them primed and current.

It is 1:00pm now and power has been restored in spite of the rumour that it would be out for three to five hours. The phones are working but there is no internet service yet. Oh, there it goes, it’s up now.... blogging!

The problem with quotes

I have so many quotes out there right now, floating around in client land. Several things might happen:

• I won't get any of them... which will be okay for a while because I have so much work at the moment
• I might get one or two of them... this scenario will also be fine because it'll keep the old machine going.
• I get awarded all of them. Big problem. It has happened before... it's likely to happen again.

The thing is, I send out the quote thinkiung "Phew! There's something else I have gotten off my desk...!" Unfortunately it is like removing the trunk of an elephant from your desk. Sure the elephant might leave and go someplace else, but it usually happens that he only disappears for a short while and then comes back to take up residence right in the centre of my list of things to do. I know, freelancers should not complain about having too much work. It is a nice problem to have. Ok, I'll stop whining right now.

Closecuts, closecuts and yet more closecuts

Thought for the day: If I am on a retainer, that’s good.... but if I need a retainer that’s going to be uncomfortable.

Little lugs is visiting the studio this afternoon. I can hear the sounds of hundreds of electronic bugs being retired through the tinny speakers of my laptop behind me. It's his first day with a retainer (installed by the dentist this morning) and we are off to a Blue Jays baseball game tonight at Skydome... or whatever they call our dome stadium now. I have now closecut 30 of the images shot on the weekend... and I would have accomplished a lot more today had I not had to do irritating stuff like quotes, billing, accounts and all that. Well, if I didn't do them the business of freelancing would grind to a halt for sure... still doesn't mean I have to like it.
Just a few of my closecut images

Weekend Work Continued

So Little Lug's team made it to today's playoffs. I missed the final thinking there'd be another game after it. I arrived to see the team collecting their soccer trophies from across the field. I even forgot the camera. (That's like a plumber ignoring a leaky faucet)

Still close cutting the 50-70 shots... and a this rate it's going to be going on for a while. Still, all in all, progress has been good.

Weekend work

Big soccer day for Little Lugs. He played several games, most of which they won so they are in the play offs tomorrow. More trophies to find space for. I missed the first few games though because I was working. Continuing with the shooting of 50-70 products in our "home studio"... this is work that Ms Lugs started during the week. The job is an image that contains these products in a kind of mosaic... should look cool once I am done. As usual, I won't be able to show you it though until it has been published.

I started the closecutting (removing the backgrounds from the images) this evening and on this old mac, which was state of the art 10 years ago, the work is going slowly. I bought a brand new 2.8 mHz imac last saturday to replace it but they have to make it because it is the top end one... guess they don't get too many calls for that little puppy. Anyway, unfortunately, it's going to be another week before it is ready. I could really do with it NOW!

Where did that week go?

Last Monday the coming week seemed so rich and fat. Plenty of opportunities for completing projects and starting new ones. The promise of it seemed almost limitless. Friday's here and it ended up being like all the other weeks. Not so much accomplished but what I did do moved all the projects forward a little bit. It all ended up being a bit more messy than it appeared to be on Monday. Who knew jobs that I thought were gone would come back for yet more revisions. Or that a customer would want me to dig into the archives to resurrect some long lost file so they can use it again. Such unlooked for labours rarely figure in one's Monday plans yet when you look at them from the standpoint of Friday the week was littered with them. I'm not a lawyer so it is difficult to charge for many of these things. Freelancers should not have to suck those things up though. Perhaps I take on too much.

I will look on the bright side; a few jobs did leave my desk this week, never to return or be referred to again except only on an invoice. Yeay, money.

Uh oh, there goes summer

I have cycled to and from my little studio in the city for about 12 years now. I love it, mostly. It's a 10 km ride each way and I do it all year. I am such a wimp that I have to have some firm rules as to when I can "take the day off" and go via public transit.

1. I don't need to during a snowstorm (that's dangerous)
2. I don't need to cycle when I'm sick
3. I don't need to go if the bike's broken

That's it, just 3 rules. The rest of the time I ride, no matter what the weather.

This morning I had to ditch the biking short for the first time since the end of spring. It's getting chilly.

Lots to do, no time to do it

Shot the elf last night. He was a better model than last time we did it. I took a variety of poses and then stitched about 8 shots together for the final.

In to work this morning and my email is not working... well, no email since yesterday morning. I switched over to my yahoo account and replied to some phone calls that way and then the regular email started trickling in... where had it been? Today's email was overtaking it. I have visions of these two little emails from yesterday sitting on the beach in Tahiti saying things like "Hey Bert, what are you doing here?"
"Who, me? oh I'm just taking a break. There's no law says I have to be there in 10 seconds or less you know, I can take my time if I want."
"Huh," says the other email, "sounds good to me... I am only a request for a quote. He's already got enough work, I can take my time too."
"Oh look over there, there's a bunch of Viagra spam, what are they doing?
"Dunno, but they don't look too flexible!"

So, work today is to finish off the rough for the elf and do second rev cycle on the Band Aid... which they liked, apparently. They just need a few small changes and it is off my plate.

Band aids

I have to paint a band aid today. Who would have thought they'd be so complicated. All those little bumps and dips. It's midday now and I think I have it figured out... good job too because I obnly have a few hours to pull this off. That's one of things I like about this job; you get to learn all about the strangest things.

For another job, I'll pick up the elf costume this aternoon. Plan on doing the shoot tonight... I am having my 10 year old son do the modeling. He likes to be in my images but he can be a bit of a pain to work with sometimes, maybe because the photographer is his dad. Anyone else and he'd be as good as gold I'll bet.

Not really a diary

The last time I kept a diary was in my teens. Hah... well, that was different, vastly different to what this will be. I have no purpose for it but to be a container for that entity which is Loppylugs. Another part of me that exists mostly on the web.