Support the Artists to Support the Arts - The Consortium

Last weekend I took two days to go hang out with some extended family from the Dallas area for a family reunion. I talked to several people about the Consortium, I got a blog post written in spite of the distractions, and I spent some time studying a major competitor’s product (but more on that later).

For the most part, I hung out, I caught up, and I chilled in the pool with my kids and nephews and nieces. It was quiet and relaxing.

Then, of course, on Monday I got back to work. And on Tuesday I headed to the first class in my new Master’s program. It’s pretty apparent there’s not going to be a whole lot of “quiet and relaxing” in my future. [Read more →]

I’m about four days away from going back to school, for the first time in nearly a decade. I’m looking forward to it with a nervous anticipation.

Most of the nervousness is schedule-related. I have no idea how I’m going to find the time to attend classes, let alone actually perform my coursework. There’s no way I’m letting that stop me, though, because the opportunities here are incredible. [Read more →]

The last week has been all about education and self-improvement — for me, anyway. I’ve been focusing on ways I can become more, and ways I can help other people do the same.

Oh! And on a more concrete level, I’ve also been working aggressively on the upcoming publication of Gods Tomorrow. I’m totally faking the surprised recollection there, too. This is pretty much all I’ve been thinking about for the last month. [Read more →]

It’s been a thrilling week! My niece had a birthday, my daughter learned to read three new words, and I doubled my knowledge of VBA scripting, bought a videogame, and devoured the nearly-final-draft of my friend Becca’s novel Flawed: The Empath.

And, of course, that doesn’t even touch on the exciting things going on with the Consortium. Let’s take a look: [Read more →]

(Baby) Julie is very serious about her chocolate milk

Family Photos

Shooting photos of kids is such a fun experience. This weekend family from Oklahoma came to visit and we got to take photos of our beautiful nieces. They absolutely love having photos taken, so it was no difficult task!

Website Development

Other than that, it has been another week filled primarily with website development. There is so much work to be done with it! We could easily have had a functioning site up complete with all the standard pages one usually sees, but we are making a concentrated effort to create a site that stands out from the competition, not because it’s flashy and cool (those are a dime a dozen), but because it draws the potential client in. It tells them that we understand how they feel, the anxieties they might have about hiring a photographer and doing a photo session. It gives them a very good feel for who we are and how we run our business…and how we’re different. It convinces them that a portrait session by Julie V. Photography is a wonderful experience that they want to have.

Our site is the third partner in the business. It advertises for us, it sells, it communicates with customers, it solves problems, it provides customer service, it builds a brand and a reputation. Few photographers realize how powerful a site can be, and put minimal effort into it.

We are carefully creating, writing, scrapping, revising, rewriting, redesigning, publishing and republishing to perfect each page. To make each page motivate the visitor to take some kind of action, whether that’s clicking through to another page, signing up for our email list, friending us on Facebook, or signing up for a portrait session with their new favorite Topeka photographer.

So we’ve put the nose to the grindstone this week in developing our site. We have established a template for our session information pages that should work very well for us and we will have the first of these up and published this week.

Further behind the scenes we are working on developing the foundation of our permanent, fully designed site. Details will come in the future as this develops, but for now we’re focusing first on writing permanent content that will carry over to the future, spiffy design and work hard for us all day every day.

This week I stepped out of my expertise and pretended to be a businessman. I started out playing manager at Sunday’s Webserver Setup Meeting (the one I mentioned last week), but that mostly consisted of waiting until all my programmers were there and then running up to the store to buy some refreshments.

That still left us with a handful of critical services in need of configuration, so we spent much of this week following up and dividing up our technical projects. It wasn’t easy, but it’s got us rolling again, and I’m looking forward to all the things we’ll make happen out of it. [Read more →]

One submission to the Topeka Photowalk contest

This week I have felt the need for the Consortium to be a fully-operating organization quite heavily.

Julie and I, against considerable odds have accomplished some significant, gritty work in establishing our photography business, but through all of it we strained against limitations imposed against us by my demanding full-time job and unpredictable life circumstances like a baby nephew going to the emergency room and staying up all night to help his mother, and Julie having some sick days afterward.

Practicing and improving our photography received only a sliver of Julie’s time and none of mine. Instead we spent our time communicating with potential clients, building web pages during lunch breaks, and trying our inexperienced hands at graphic design. It’s been quite a full week! [Read more →]

Painting

About six weeks ago, I began painting what was to be a three-piece series of unconventional self-portraits as a challenge to my own artistic skill. Oil painting is one of my great joys in life; still, my written art usually takes precedence over my visual art, so I suppose I’m slow (by some standards) in completing a visual piece. When Aaron sent me the detailed description of the first painting he’s commissioning from me, I was about 1/3 finished with my first self-portrait.

Since I had promised Aaron that his cover art would be one of my main summer projects, and since I made that promise before embarking upon my adventures in self-portraiture, I am putting the portrait project on hold until further notice. This past week, I completed my painting-in-progress, thereby freeing my easel to receive the canvas upon which Aaron’s Taming Fire cover art will find its visual expression. [Read more →]

Programming is a master craft. Videogames are works of art. I understand that’s an argument that will have to be made, but I’m prepared to make.

Oh, don’t worry. “Prepared to make it,” I said — not “about to make it.” I’ll save that for another time.

The Consortium is all about making and distributing works of art…but that’s still a long way away. Right now we’re in the building stage, and we’re building it on our crafts. And this week my programmers have been superstars. [Read more →]

thwart

(thwôrt) tr.v. thwart·ed , thwart·ing , thwarts To prevent the occurrence, realization, or attainment of: They thwarted her plans. To oppose and defeat the efforts, plans, or ambitions of. [Middle English thwerten , from thwert , across , from Old Norse thvert , neuter of thverr , transverse ; see terk w - in Indo-European roots.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

In perusing the preceding definition of the word “thwart,” you will, perhaps, notice the example sentence contained therein:  “They thwarted her plans.”  Indeed, they did.  And she isn’t very pleased about it. [Read more →]