This month’s episode of The Circle of Confusion went live this morning.
There’s loads in it. Some of it is even sensible.
You can listen to the podcast and view the photographs and video that go with it here: The Circle of Confusion with Peter and Roger, Episode 9.
And, yes, I really did call another photographer an idiot.
Seriously, though, I was provoked.
This has been my busiest January. I sensed it would be. Nevertheless the volume of pre-existing work fortified with some unforeseen commissions has hit me like a freight train and left me reeling. And it will keep on trundling over me for the next fortnight.
Here’s my schedule for the next two weeks, if you’re interested. If not (and who could blame you?), please move on directly to the final paragraph.
Monday 24th: Commercial shoot and business review session with Paul O’Mahony.
Tuesday 25th: Travel day (Aer Lingus booked, duplicate Ryanair flights booked just in case industrial action at Aer Lingus escalates. God I hope I don’t have to fly Ryanair).
Wednesday 26th: London annual report shoot and return home.
Thursday 27th: Recording of “The Circle of Confusion with Peter and Roger” and evening shoot at Fota Island Resort.
Friday 28th: London shoot post-production and wedding album design.
Saturday 29th: IPPA Happy Faces lighting video shoot with Vinnie O’Byrne in Dublin.
Sunday 30th: Corporate shoot, Fota Island Resort.
Monday 31st: Post-production Fota Island shoots and finalize recent wedding. Best send out some invoices too.
Tuesday 1st: Corporate shoot, EMC firewalk.
Wednesday 2nd: EMC firewalk post-production. Launch of the IPPA blog. Evening speaking engagement at Clonakilty Camera Club.
That will all be followed by two days of post-production that will clear my wedding backlog completely, after which I’ll start work on the edit of the IPPA Happy Faces video. That’ll take me up to about 9th February.
Dotted in between all of this will be some smaller projects such as further populating the IPPA blog, establishing the Dutch version of this blog, adding Dutch pages to my website, and getting a long-term personal project underway with John Tait, who produces pure Angus beef.
I’m tired already.
Still, I mustn’t complain. It is all of my own doing and it is all positive.
That said, my commitments for the next 14 days mean that updates here will be sparse and more than likely brief. Not that I’m chasing you away. I’m just saying don’t expect too much over the next couple of weeks if you do drop by. I will be tweeting and recording AudioBoos though.
I’ll leave you for now with a single image that came out of post-production today. It captures beautifully my life at the moment.
(c) Roger Overall 2010
Peter setting up his latest gear acquisition. He has a baby boy now, so it'll be the last one for quite a while - nappies costing what they do. (c) Roger Overall 2010
Even though our diaries seemed to be working against us, Peter Cox and I managed to find time to record episode 8 of The Circle of Confusion.
It was a symbolic moment when he pulled up outside my house in his red Defender on the day of the recording last week. The last time I had seen him was for the recording session of episode 7. A lot happened between the two sessions, not least of which was the birth of Peter’s son. Standing before me was a new Peter. Peter the father. That transition only happens once to a man, so it was special to see him again.
He also had a new bit of kit to show off, which is always fun.
You can listen to us talk rubbish for over an hour here: The Circle Of Confusion With Peter And Roger – Episode 8.
Peter Cox has two of the biggest dogs you have ever met. The kind of big that would give a charging rhinoceros pause for thought. Big enough, at any rate, to force an abandonment of the recording of episode 7 of The Circle of Confusion.
Well, I wasn't going to tell them to get off the sofa.
See what I mean?
Fortunately, Peter has two houses to choose from until the end of the month, so we were able to find an alternative venue for the recording. You can hear the result over on The Circle of Confusion blog.
Driving past the local petrol station yesterday evening, I noticed the counter just below the mileometer on my dashboard roll over to “000″.
Normally, I reset it to “000″ every time I fill the tank. I know that I can drive around 350 miles on a full tank – likely more, but I’ve never had the nerve to run the petrol tank down to empty. However, on this occasion, I’d left the counter untouched to see how many miles I’d be driving over a busy four-day period covering this route: Cork-Dublin-Cork-Waterford-Dublin-Cork-Dublin-Cork.
Two miles from my house yesterday, I got my answer: 1,000.
During those miles, I drove the Cork-Dublin motorway five times, photographed a wedding, caught a ferry twice, rode in my car under Croke Park, discovered the joys of the iPhone as a navigational tool, met other photographers, photographed a corporate assignment, spoke to brides, discussed two exciting documentary projects with companies, and watched the mileometer tick over 88,888 miles.
Now, I appreciate that for some 1,000 miles over four days is nothing more than standard operating procedure. For me, it’s a lot, especially as the miles book-ended very long and busy hours in meetings or shooting.
It got me to thinking: “Is this what we need to do as professional photographers to keep ahead of the game – a sign of the times?”
I don’t know the answer, but I do know that it will only take one wedding or corporate commission to come from the miles to make it worthwhile for me. It’s made me realize that I’m prepared to go a long way to get the clients I want to work with and the projects I want.
It’s also made me realize that I’m starting to take my health for granted. I think many professional photographers are guilty of the same thing. I sense a blog post coming on over at The Circle of Confusion.
Talking of the podcast, episode 6 went live earlier today. Please have a listen and let us know what you think.
Episode 4 of The Circle of Confusion went live earlier today, along with a blog post that contains pictures and a bonus track.
Shh! (c) Roger Overall 2010
As it’s the last Wednesday of the month, the usual mid-week PictureBoo makes way for a plug for the latest episode of the Circle of Confusion.
We’ve tweaked a few things by adding more news items to the show and we’ve upped the tempo a bit.
We received a couple of emails about the volume level being too low on Episode 2. We were very conscious of volume for this episode and did playbacks on a number of machines, which all sounded okay. Hopefully that’ll be your experience too.
Producing the podcast has been a tremendous experience so far. It’s a steep learning curve, but we’re starting to settle into a rhythm. The recording and initial edit of the launch episode took, I think, about 8 to 10 hours – though a lot of that time was given over to eating an apple pie. Episode 3 took just over half that. It would have been shorter but for another apple tart.
Much of the time saved is due to Peter and me getting more used to chatting in front of a microphone. Our best conversations tend to happen off air, during editorial meetings or chats on the phone. We’d like to bring the feel and flow of those exchanges into the podcast. I think episode 3 is a step forward in that respect, though I for one find it hard to get past the Rode Podcaster microphone. It’s a big piece of kit and visually daunting with a spit guard attached, I can tell you.
See what I mean about the gear getting in the way of a conversation? (c) Roger Overall 2010
We’re very grateful to everyone who’s taken the time to listen. We’re conscious that you don’t have limitless time, so we appreciate any you choose to spend in our company. We’re also thankful for the comments we receive on the blog, which we hope will become a focal point for discussion about our profession. Lastly, we’d like to thank those of you who have taken the trouble to give feedback about the show – unless you were mean, in which case your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries.
Episode 3 of The Circle of Confusion with Peter and Roger.
The Circle of Confusion with Peter and Roger
No PictureBoo today. Instead it’s time to be confused.
Episode 2 of The Circle of Confusion with Peter and Roger is available.
It’s starts promisingly, gathers momentum, and falls flat as soon as I open my mouth.
We talk Zeus, slugs, lost car keys and personal projects.
Hear about Peter’s bucketful of awards.
Hear how I got a haircut.
Hear leading wedding photographer Paul Callaghan speak a lot of sense.
Wednesday is audio day on the blog. Normally, this takes the shape of a PictureBoo. Today is different. Today is special. Today is the day I get to pull the wraps off another audio project that has been in the works for the past six weeks.
OK, when I say “pull the wraps off”, I’m using “pull the wraps off” in the Canon sense of the phrase. As in “tell absolutely everyone you know about your super-secret product, and then go ahead with the launch as if nobody knew it were coming”. That kind of “pull the wraps off”.
So here it is [***FANFARE***]:
The Circle of Confusion with Peter and Roger.
I could tell you the story of how it came into being, but quite honestly it’s a boring tale of “Photographer has idea – Photographer meets other photographer – Other photographer likes idea – Other photographer does all the hard technical stuff – First photographer does very little other than design a logo and buy apple pie – First photographer and other photographer eat tortilla chips while talking nonsense and trading insults – Iceland bans both from entering the country – Other photographer edits out the swearing and does something clever with iTunes involving XML or some such thing that first photographer couldn’t even begin to describe even if you threatened to take his apple pie away – Other photographer does more clever technical stuff and sets up a Facebook page – First photographer told by doctor to eat less apple pie – The Circle of Confusion with Peter and Roger goes live”. And how many times have we heard that one? So, I won’t bother.
If you want to shorten your life by 39-and-a-bit minutes, please have a listen.
If you’d like to comment on anything in the podcast, please send an email to malebag sorry, mailbag@circleofconfusion.ie or .eu, they should both work. Or you can leave a comment on the podcast blog.
And if you are in any way offended/shocked/horrified/insulted by what you hear in the podcast, it was all the other photographer’s fault.
"And another thing..."
The Circle of Confusion with Peter and Roger - Episode 1 goes live tomorrow at 09.30
Would you like to know why I will NEVER be allowed into Iceland?
Would you like to know what the Stalin Button is in Photoshop CS5?
Would you like to hear some robust discussion about the Revenue?
Would you like to hear me talk myself out of the IPPA?
And back in again?
Would you like to hear Peter Cox say Eyjaeff… Eyedytydy… Effinjolly… Icelandic volcano?
Or would you simply like to waste 40 minutes of your life?
Tune in tomorrow at 09.30.
