christina's journal

I’m definitely going to have to put photography on the back burner for a while. It’s taken up a lot of time in the past month for very little return. With 150 new images this year I’ve had nine sales from them. Most of what I sell is older stuff. Anyway, no time for a while.

I’ve made $99.60 on istock this month. Even if I don’t get the last forty cents I’m happy. This is a real milestone. I guess the next one is $100 per week. I don’t know if I’ll make that this year, but I’ll certainly work towards it.

I will be very busy with work this year however. Lots of course development to do for some electives we may be offering next year, and also for our joint project with AMES in New Zealand. Very open-ended, so no doubt it will take up a lot of time.

9.15pm  Well, just got back from the supermarket to find another 2 dls, for $7.00. Can’t complain about that.

I was hoping that Feb would be my best month yet for normal sales on istock, but so far it’s been a quiet end of month. I’ve been very tired lately as well, so not doing much apart from necessary work. I think the weather is making me so tired. Can’t wait for summer to end.

After writing course notes for an hour this morning I decided to get up off my bum for a while, to honour my decision to be a little less sedentary. I decided to go on a mission. I greatly admire the photography in Donna Hayes cook books, and saw a great photo in one of them of tuna carpaccio. Just the thing for lunch. But – raw tuna. A trip to Vic market needed. Naturally I walked. Picked up a couple of other necessities too, and a couple of less necessities such as a nice camphor laurel cutting board at a market stall and a dish of just the right shape and size in London and American supply store. And a nicely shaped white bowl at Minh Phat. I was pretty tired by the time I got home. Nothing like a mission to get some exercise.

Later – the dish tasted great, but wasn’t worth photographing. I just couldn’t find decent looking rocket anywhere, and what I did end up buying just did not look good on the plate. I’ll do that dish again sometime, but might wait ’til I find some decent rocket first. Meanwhile, a short siesta and then back to work.

It’s been hard to keep off my bum, but I have been a bit more active than in the recent past, and have lost a kilo since I started this.

I spent quite a lot of time doing tutorials on InDesign last week and have started to publish my course materials in a more professional looking manner. I’m fairly happy with the result. This year I’ll try to keep up with detailed notes, quizzes and video tutorials of course – haven’t done any more of those yet. Meanwhile I have two cats to mind for a week. Preventing them from escaping will be my main challenge I think.

Had my first classes for the year yesterday. I think they went OK – two subjects with the same group of students. It’s a biggish group but fortunately not as big as it could have been. There are more students enrolled than can fit in a PC lab.

I think it will take a few days to get totally back into the swing of things. I’ve got another group today that I’ll be teaching two subjects to, and haven’t decided which one to teach today. Guess I had better sort that out by lunchtime. It might depend on what else they’rd doing today. I’d prefer they don’t have to learn two programming languages on the same day – could be a bit confusing.

I’ve finally managed to start actually producing some more illustrations. Must keep up the momentum. This one represents the concept Getting Dressed.

At last I’ve sold one of my recent food shots. I have sold the occasional food shot in the past, but the last hundred or so images I’ve uploaded have been food because I’ve decided to concentrate on that for a while. Nice to get a result.

The temperature has finally dropped a bit and I’m feeling half-human once again. Maybe I’ll even get some work done.