Down by the Riverside – 41/820

I, apparently, should work harder. I spent most of last week doing admin and logging all the hours I spent on my business last year and I could account for 820 hours.

Those hours include doing shoots (obviously), editing photos, writing and editing interviews, writing press releases and invitations, blogging, networking via email and social networks, business meetings, admin hours, updating and maintaining my websites and doing research on copyright laws in the NL and SA. And that’s it, I think.

 

Those hours don’t include time spent traveling (50 hours on planes alone) to and from jobs, going to gallery openings, phone calls and browsing the net or books for inspiration. I split the time when business meetings moved into social meetings. So without any creative book-keeping I got to 820 hours. The thing is that if one spends 1,255 hours on one’s own business you can get great tax breaks and refunds but, and here’s the real catch, those tax breaks only apply to the profit you made but hey I made non so it actually doesn’t even matter…

 

I worked for 41 weeks out of 52. I had visitors over for 5 weeks during which I did work a little but then again I logged 4 sick days so they level each other out, was out of it for 2 weeks due to an operation, spent 4 weeks abroad in Namibia and the Netherlands.

 

When I worked at the design office we worked 8 hour days but only had to properly book 5 hours a day on projects. Out of those 8 hours about 1.5 were spent on lunch and coffee, it was fine to book an hour a day browsing the net or looking at magazines and books for inspiration without being able to book it on a project which comes down to about 5.5 hours a day. So I pretty much worked about the same  and traded an income, social security, an apartment and “stuff” for what? For experience. And even if I feel like I have to justify what I did in the past year, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. In fact, I’m going back for seconds:-)

 

820 hours…. 41 weeks of work. I have to do more. I will do more. And it will be awesome. Can’t wait:-)

Listening to  ‘L’Oncle Soul’ by French musician Ben. He covers ‘Seven Nation Army’ by the White Stripes… sacrilege? Oh well…  I still love this song by Danish singer Agnes Obel…

Advertisement

C’mon Billy

I have two more weeks to finish. I have more time but I am trying to finish everything before my family comes out for a visit. That is, the parts that I have control over. Finish all the edits, write the press release, make sure the banner has been sent to Overtone, send out all invitations, send files to Orms, set up interviews with the press etc etc.

I am a bit in two minds as to what to do with the invitations. On the one I think it is good to send them out 3 weeks in advance but on the other I think a lot of people, especially those that don’t know me but who are interested in photography or in any of the artists taking part, may just decide a week or so in advance. I know that’s what I do. You check the current events calendars and see if you have time. Or you’re simply in the mood for free drinks, socializing and some art. Unless somebody tells that there will be an Anton Corbijn exhibition or Robert Capa one or something like that cause then I’ll book and make sure I’m there. Sigh, if only. It’s so odd to me that the World Press Photo doesn’t travel to Cape Town. Why not actually? That would almost be a dream job. Set it up over here and do my own work at the same time…

 

I saw Tim Burton’s ‘Big Fish’ again last night. Love, love, love that movie. Albert Finney and Jessica Lange. Wow. Love the colors, the imagination behind it, and who wouldn’t want an Edward Bloom day once a year where everything is just fabulous and magical? And I totally want someone who’ll climb into the bath with me when I’m old and sick. 

 

It’s funny eh how some images influence you or stay with you for a long time. I think the photo below of Bob Dylan by Barry Feinstein is such an image. It’s such a fantastic image, so well composed, such awesome black&white tones and sums up feelings of isolation, adoration, estrangement, intrusion, boredom, ouside world vs inner world, trying to just do your thing… Or like the first image above, by Edward Hopper ‘Excursions in Philosophy’.  He has such an awesome sense of composition and light, often using light as a way of showing revelation and casting long, symbolic shadows and depicting scenes of extreme loneliness, regret and maybe even estrangement within the American rural and urban landscape.

There are so many inspiring portrait and music photographers out there but being a Dutchie and growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, I grew up with images taken by Anton Corbijn, Niels van Iperen and Charles Peterson. When Anton Corbijn still had his one page in music magazine OOR a gazillion years ago, I would buy the magazine just for that. I would always be a little jealous while looking at his work. I’m jealous in any case of people who are being paid to travel, who get to see the world and meet people for a living. I know you can say the same thing f.e. about flight attendants but it’s not quite the same:-)

 

I have a photo shoot with a young ADFA graduate trying to make it as a director this afternoon. Should be interesting:-) Will talk about it later.

Listening to Agnes Obel ‘Philharmonic’, The Sore Losers self titled album and still Mark Ronson and the Business Intl’s ‘Record Collection’ and bang bang bang is still my favorite:-)

left: PJ Harvey by Anton Corbijn.

And yes, the title is a P.J. Harvey song:-)