New Year New Ideas New Life

A friend of mine gave me this sign as a gift and I just love it.  I’ve always been a fan of New Year, almost more than of Christmas.  While I realize that I’m writing this seven days into this new year, it’s not for lack of the new ideas and other new things I’ve experienced and begun to execute in the past seven days. 

Our Christmas this was year one of new technology (a Kindle Fire for me and an iPad 2 for my daughter – hooray!).  Of course that brings with it a learning curve, and since I love learning new things, it was a great opportunity to dive right in.  I downloaded my first two book that very night. 

Our Christmas vacation, the first of its kind for us, was lazy-lounging-foody-restful and actually made me anxious to go back to work in a way.  Other than entertaining my sister and her boyfriend on New Year’s Eve and staying up past midnight (I think this was a first for my asleep-on-the-couch-by-8:30 husband) and one big event I’ll get to in a minute, it was a Christmas vacation of gluttony and sloth.  I loved it. 

In a recent post I mentioned that our cat, Ocho, who was 4 ½ years old, was hit by a car and died.  It happened just before Thanksgiving.  We all cried about this.  He was a huge member of the family and we missed him like crazy.  After some time had passed, I began to think about a new cat.  We missed having that life in the house, someone to greet you when you got home, someone to race up the stairs after coming in from the rain and jump on you in bed – with a mouse in his mouth.  Now that’s love. 

So the big event I mentioned before is that after I had mourned the death of our beloved Ocho, and as part of the healing process, I believe, I began to research Maine Coon Cat breeders in the state.  Although Ocho was a stray, we fiercely believe that he was part Maine coon.  His personality, that more of a dog in a cat’s body, his desire to “help” with everything we did, his “hanging out” with us around the house, was not typical cat, but it was typical Maine Coon behavior.  They’re even known to retain their “clowny” kitten playfulness throughout their lives. 

So to honor the first, we got two.  A male and a female.  The male was what we sought out and the female was just too pretty to not take her.  Her name is Belle and his name has yet to be decided.  I gave my daughter the naming rights on the girl and she’s been studying French and was looking for something that meant “pretty” so “Belle.  The naming rights for the boy go to my husband, for whom this was a surprise.  He hasn’t made the call yet.  Now we have these two little beings in our lives.  Fuzzy, rambunctious, purring little beings. 

On to the new ideas section of this post; these are some of the goals I wish to accomplish this year:

1. Develop a new website for my photography work – one that targets a more commercial, more fine art market to sell my work on a larger scale.
2. Learn how to create mixed media art using my photography, collage material, paint, whatever is on hand and works, and bring my artistic development up a notch.
3. Create a cohesive, intentional marketing effort to get my work out there. 
4. Get back in shape and feel better about myself – yeah, I know, everyone does this at this time of year – but I mean it . . .
5. Make this a year of art shows and person to person sales.
6. Put more effort into my Etsy and Ebay outlets to sell my work. 
7. Go to 7 places I’ve never been; 3 outside of the state of Maine.
8. Publish an article – in print – and get paid for it.
9. Create an email marketing plan and write regular newsletters.
10. Invest in new equipment, mainly upgrade my computer, but also consider getting a new lens and perhaps an iPad for presentational purposes.

To this goal, I like to create some incentives, something I can go back to to be inspired to move on, to refresh my brain.  I like doing collages.  I clip inspirational sayings, words, photos from all kinds of sources and create a spread that highlights the direction I want to move.  Earlier this year I did one with words that flowed from the present space I was in into the end result I was hoping for.  Recently, with the new year, I did one with the words and images of the goals I have for the year.  The above photo and below are some of the parts. 

Check back here often;  I will continue to post examples of this and the other work I’m doing as well as updates on how these kittens are faring in our home.  By the looks of them in this photo, they’re doing pretty well so far.  

Christmas Stalking

The little trick or treaters had barely been nestled into their beds when I heard it.


The first jingle of the holiday sales season.

Marketers so focused on one of the three big kid holidays of the year quickly shifted gears and ads went from orange and black to green and red. Pumpkins into snowmen. Autumn leaves into snow flakes. Red ribbons on boxes and that silvery sparkle everywhere.


The seasonal queues not so subtly slide into place.

This brings me to the topic of Christmas stalking. Really, Christmas stock, as in stock photography. I just like to create that visual of the holiday lurking and haunting us as it does. Part of the ability of the advertising world to be able to send us those little hints of the impending demands of this time of year comes from their access to seasonal stock photography. By that I mean the photographs that are used just about everywhere you look, if you know that you’re looking at them.







It’s the sparkly Christmas tree branches, the smiling kids with snowballs in their hands, the happy family in new pajamas sitting by the fire, the pretty boxes stacked up in an unnerving tower being carried by a smartly dressed woman who appears to have it all under control.

Seasonal. Holiday. Christmas. Those are the keywords that click.

So I have to admit that it was months ago when I started thinking about holiday stock. I bought a few props at the dollar store and created scenarios to photograph for stock. This image is pretty simple: a cup, some fake holly berries, and the idea that it would imply a relaxing tea in a busy time.

Last year as I began to put away the ornaments, I found the contrast of the freshly fallen snow and the brightly colored Christmas balls impossible to resist. I tossed them out to see where they’d land. With a tangle of red raffia, they disbursed into these images.

The decorative pine cone on the snow. (I shot this sometime in March.)

The carefully and colorfully wrapped presents. (I wrapped these in September.)

The smiling little girl hugging her presents. (ok, this was shot in December, a few weeks before Christmas, and the presents are fake and she's a good actress.)

The point is that the images you’re seeing everywhere are often shot by people like me. And people like me think about stock photos all year round. I’ve become accustomed to the potential for any combination of items to, at certain times of the year, evoke certain emotional responses.




In order for the advertising folks to be able to access the images they need for any particular holiday or time of year, the stock photographer has to be thinking ahead.



At the end of the school year, take a few photos of the busses and kids with book packs so the shots are up on stock sites by the time back-to-school advertising begins, say somewhere around the middle of July. A big fan of the summer months, it really bugs me that the flip flops and swimsuits leave the store racks so soon. But that’s when the power of economic psychology begins its work on the mass market.


We seem doomed to mental battle with the forces of the media’s marketing monster. I’m just as vulnerable. And I know better. Sort of. I know that the jingle I heard on Halloween night was heard by zillions of people who didn’t think “oh god, they are starting with the bells already?”. They thought “hmm, maybe my dad would like that scarf.”

Despite my feelings about winter and the rushing of the season, I benefit from it. People who create these ads, somewhere in their air conditioned offices back in August was developing a Christmas ad campaign to sell whatever it is and started looking for “holiday ornaments” or “twinkling lights” or even “relaxing cup of tea with holly berries” and click, selected my image from the stock photography website, and click, I benefited from the holiday rush and the commercialism of Christmas.


In turn, like a circle of life thing, I took the pennies I made on the sale of that photo and added it to the pennies I made on the sale of “holiday ornaments in the snow” and “pinecone” and went shopping.

Maybe my dad would like that scarf . . .