Boat in the harbour in Honfleur, France

Boat in the harbour in Honfleur, France, originally uploaded by Photomike07.

Kind of a departure from my usual style of upload here. Not that it really matters, but I think I was experimenting with Corel Painter (for all you digital darkroom cats out there). I say that cause its been hanging out in the upload file for a while...too long actually. I don't really love it, but its a nice soothing image for me as about 15 minutes ago, I was wondering what the PC desktop would have looked like had I actually dropped in out the window from the 6th floor condo that I live in. Yeah, that hard drive was spinning, gurgling, skeegan, and whining, while doing only God knows what. I mean, all I wanted to do was turn it off! Sometimes I look over and look at that read/write light blinking and wonder "what in the f**k are you doing!!!" I must say, its nice to come into the other room to the Mac. It never seems to be off doing some other "computing" that I didn't ask it to. Its always just there for ya and ready to rock!

Geeeeeeez, what kinda tangent was that? Good grief!

Anyway, this image is just another example of what can be done in post with the arsenal of tools at our disposal. Corel Painter, indeed, a program I hope to experiment with a bit more in the future. (on my trusty and dependable little Macbook Pro and Wacom tablet of course!)

Three trucks at the dock - used to see this more often

Outside of the extremely overdone processing, this image would normally portray a fairly realistic portrait of my shop in the season. Two or three trucks at the dock on an average weekend (used to be for about half the year) usually meant were in season and kicking ass on events. To me, this capture from this year was a rarity.

This season, I can count on one hand the amount of times our loading dock had this much activity. Hard to pin in on anyone thing in particular......corporate cutbacks, over sensitive non profit groups, scared consumers, Madoff and his other selfish bastards......too many factors to name just one.

An average Friday or Saturday evening for me used to mean focusing a light or 2 just before doors, slamming lighting console buttons to the music on a cool event, popping between parties on the island just to check in with my clients and crew, and having WAY too much fun at it all! The fact that I am home this evening on a Friday night in season not only has me feeling like a fish out of water (and realizing that I need to work on my social life a bit!), but has me just a bit concerned about where all this is going and how difficult its going to be to ride out the storm. I am positive, absolutely positive, that things are going to get better. What is it going to take to get there? A better sky is up ahead, but how far up ahead. Its just so damn difficult to see it clearly now.

There has got to be a silver lining in one of those damn clouds. Let me know if you see it!

In the meantime, enjoy the colors. I know its a bit over down and looks like Walt Disney thru up all over it, but hey, I got a bit carried away :)

Enjoy the weekend folks!

Off to battle

This quick imageless post (more like a twitter tweet I guess) finds me walking out the door in a second......like a lamb to the slaughter! How close are these hotels and planners going to book events back to back before one is severely jeopardized? My god, a 5 hour window to reset from a general session to a full on party for 2000 people! I am sure my next post will be reporting a total success....it always goes that way, but I still can't help but think I am walking into an olympic pool sized blood bath. More on all of this later!