Tag: photography

Posted on

3.14 And A Piece of A Pie

Everything is in there, somewhere

Job – as expected, I haven’t gotten jack shit from the yearly review, but it’s mostly because I’ve been there less than a year. So no hard feelings. I’d say the good outweigh the bad still in this situation. There will be a real talk next year and it’s probably going to be “make it or break it” kind of a deal

Entertainment – watched the first season of Happy! – damn, that was one funny shit they’ve made. Pretty hardcore with dark humor and poking fun at almost everything – from Die Hard to My Little Pony. Loved the show.

Next thing I watched was the Triple Frontier – a Netflix movie. Honestly – I wasn’t impressed. I don’t know why, but the whole movie just didn’t strike the chord with me. It’s not that there’s nothing happening, it’s just not the stuff that’s happening doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t add up in my head. And with the cast – I sort of expected better characters, less cardboard, and more meat and bones.

Photography – hasn’t shot anything new yet, but edited the fuck out of previous shoot I’ve done. Also, started sorting through the shoots I didn’t edit last year, so there’s more material coming up. The thing is now instead of one or two images per look I am picking several – and that takes a lot of time to edit. I almost feel like I am pushing myself to shoot better images out of camera, to save time on edits. Let’s see how this Sunday’s going to pan out.

As I was figuring out the phpBB for communities I’ve been testing Facebook integration. Unfortunately, phpBB isn’t going to cut it – the FB integration is very rudimentary and probably isn’t going to work in the long run. I mean – I am still pretty good with technology and I still couldn’t figure out how to log in. I am pretty sure the target audience would be at a loss. With that said – a VERY NSFW picture.

don’t even try… ah, who am i kidding
Posted on

Sunday, Monday – Who Cares

When it’s almost 3 AM – which day is it, really?

Job – so it’s been a weekend and I was doing something else. In the meantime, the company is “trimming fat”, so I guess it should start exercising 🙂

Interesting read from one of the guys I have been following. He’s not bad and he’s preaching some smart stuff, but as all the people who have something to sell, he’s selling too hard. I understand, he has to – and should probably learn from him. However, the point he’s making is that the overall economy is moving towards selling cheap shit on Amazon and doesn’t benefit anyone except Amazon. While I agree that selling on Amazon does benefit Amazon alone, I doubt we’re already reaching the point where everyone’s a Besos slave.

However, he’s making a good point on cheap labor markets are stealing and copying shit. He states: “Anything that could be stolen and faked – will be stolen and faked”. 99% of the shit that is being faked is luxury items where you’re not paying for quality or craftsmanship – you’re paying for brand that represents quality and craftsmanship from far away past. So I am not worried about that.

He then arrives (via a couple of logical steps) at the point that virtual “world” or “virtual reality” has a larger capacity then the actual real world. I am not arguing with this point, however, I am not sure what kind of economy would exist in the world where every single provider would want to print their own money. Also, see – lootboxes. Good luck with creating economy there.

Life Drama – I had about an hour of spare time today, so I went back to chat people up on Facebook. Some of the groups refreshed some of the members, so it was fun. Old farts showed up in a couple of topics, but I happened not to clash with anyone – which was surprising. But it did get me back to the feeling of wasted time and constant interruptions. So I’ll probably stay away from it for a while longer.

Photography – almost caught up with the latest shoot (damn, I had a lot of material from it) and forced myself to work on a pinup poster from June last year. Yeah, that whole “asshole of the year” award. Surprisingly the model was extremely nice about it, so I feel even worse. Usually they just lash out at me and I shut them off, but this one was the exact opposite. So I guess I’ll have to finish them all soon.

Absolutely safe for everyone
Posted on

It’s Almost Wednesday, So It’s A Post

Start on Tuesday, so the title is legit

Job – things are progressing in a weird and uncomfortable way. Should probably start looking around for a spell, at least I’ll know where I stand. Too bad I’d have to start going to some office or something – kinda like this working from home thing.

On the other hand, I don’t think I have time to have my own career to stagnate for another couple of years. I mean – it’ll probably recover at some point, but we’ll see where we stand way sooner.

Life Drama – not much is happening there. I kind of started recovering from all the shit that was happening between 2015 and 2019, so that’s a good thing. Start noticing this when you have time and desire to do little personal projects or just fix things around or do some exploration. Should start reading them books, I guess.

Photography – also, drama. One model thought another model thought wrong, so she have her a piece of mind. Which the other one returned. And I almost ended in the middle of it. Thankfully, that shit wrapped up real quick and I was able to avoid participation. We’ll see if this comes back in any way, but for now – it’s over. In the meantime, I am slowly editing some images here and there and actually enjoying it again.

Posted another shibari picture on Reddit and got a couple of responses from people wanting to do the scene. Not sure how I feel about it.

But i feel good about this picture
Posted on

Random Wednesday Wake Up

Because I was too busy yesterday. And day before. And before…

Job – things are churning on, as always. Demo, calls, emails. Calls, emails, demo. Occasional talking-to to little old me, because why not.

An interesting thing is that now I am starting to see and understand how so many startups got underway so quickly – and why they were so easy to catch on. I knew why it happened, I didn’t have a chance to actually experience that “a-ha!” moment until recently. Basically, it’s that well-known fact that large companies are too big to innovate and smaller and more agile (in a common sense of the word) player comes in and – kaboom! – disruption. It’s actually a very healthy fun to see how exactly these large companies cannot innovate because they’re so large. Also, apparently I’ve been living under a rock and didn’t hear about Disney buying Fox until yesterday. So what I think is happening now is companies willingly turn themselves into these huge dinosaurs, slow and easy to prey on.

What would be interesting (to draw technology analogy here) is if companies go the way of micro-services. A company willingly chop itself up into small pieces, fast and agile enough to compete with disruptors at every step of the way. Now, this would be interesting. Globalization resulting in micro-segregation. That’s an interesting concept.

The Works – Moved the 12 posts from 2001 (or something) and dumped iDoWriting. Now it redirects here. I don’t care about that old concept anymore, it’s been fucking 18 years.

Also, testing the forum (phpBB for now) to see if I can completely segregate the users to one category/forum. I know the functionality is there, just want to make sure I know how to do it. The goal is to replace the FB groups with something off-FB so that their rules would not apply.

Photography – back to doing shoots. But this feeling of one-night-stand is fucking exhausting. I want people I can rely on. I want people I could trust and do some complex concepts with without wondering if they’re going to ghost me at the last moment. I know I want too much, but still – I want that damn piece of mind.

Rated NC-17
Posted on

Friday – I’m In Love

Back to the writing

Job – I’ve got not just one, not event two, but three emails from my boss saying he liked the shit I am doing. I was worried there for a bit until I remembered that during one of the meetings he mentioned that he doesn’t feel well and is on antibiotics. While I do want him to feel better (he’s a good human and a smart guy), I figured this explains the emails. Oh, well, let’s see what the next week will bring.

Stargate Atlantis Rewatch – I still firmly believe that wraith are an evolved version of vegans from Milky Way galaxy. Convince me otherwise!

Photography – editing through the backlog. Posted a couple of updates to Zealus Media – my main photography web site. Almost immediately got this shit from Tumblr:

So, basically, fuck you, Tumblr – says I and deletes the account. Bye, Felicia. Where there is no trust – there is no safety. See the image I posted below, there’s more here.

FUCK YOU TUMBLR
Posted on

Sh*t, It’s Monday Again

Okay, so daily thing isn’t really working out yet. But at least it’s a weekly thing, so there’s that.

Job – last week was busy. Went for quarterly business review with one of the BUs, prepared the new deck for account managers, revised some stuff, did the sales pipeline. Waiting for feedback on my BU visit, apparently, I am so far from good graces I ought to start looking again. On the other hand – got some good stuff done, someone got a new idea into my head. So things are in motion. Also, I’ve been a good boy and filed away all my expenses in Concur in less than a month. That never happened to me before. One of the feedbacks I so painfully crafted was marked as “Very Useful”. Have no idea what it means to me.

Got a certificate for my product management training I had attended 2 weeks ago. I passed, but the level wasn’t high enough to go into being an instructor. Oh, well, something else will come along. In the meantime I’ve got a five-second satisfaction ping by updating my Linkedin.

Public – got to serve on jury duty today. Unlike last time I was asked to participate in juror selection but it looked like the lawyers had some issues with my impartiality. Honestly, I had those issues too, so they let me free. Which means free for the next 8 years or so.

Photography – trying to work through the backlog of images. For some weird reason, I want to shoot more, but I don’t want to edit. It’s weird because I used to enjoy editing as much as shooting, but now – this. Weird. But I am still chugging along, although at a miserable pace. Hopefully, I’ll be done by this summer. The good news is that I got published on a cover – again! Awesome news!

18+ as always
Posted on

Friday? Is It Friday Already?

Written Friday, January 11

Missed the Thursday update. Stargate Atlantis and Fallout 3. Need to take my mind off of things.

Did a few calls on Thursday, went interesting enough. Apparently my demo game is so on point, even my boss had nothing to complain about. Now I need to get on reacting faster to the stuff “they want” right there on the call. Yeah, enterprise sales isn’t my forte… yet 🙂

One more Thursday realization – I need to get back to editing photos soon, otherwise I will drown myself in unedited shoots again. Start with at least those I am really excited about and work my way through. Maybe use my time away next week – won’t be able to play games, so I could edit the shit out of it.

Also – 24 years since I came to US. Happy anniversary and all that.

Friday was just like Thursday, only I have finally made it to the gym. And was working until 9 PM. And my boss decided to send his chunk of updates right after midnight.

Written Saturday, January 12

And just like that – I miss posting this at the end of the day. Was so immersed in reading crap all over the internet (but mostly reddit) that I fell asleep and forgot I wanted to post it. Good job.

Outcome of the first day at the gym after holidays and being sick for a week is my back hurts from doing abs. Yep, not from weight lifting – from doing fucking abs. I’ll take it easy for the next few days now, but at least I am going back at it.

Easy morning, bacon, eggs (omelet, actually) and some easy reading. Some people on the Instagram were actually very nice to me yesterday and today. Felt really good about it too. Will have to make some adjustments to the plan I had for next week. I’ll have to set it up today and tomorrow, although it depends on whether I get around to edit more pictures or not. I feel lazy today.

Posted on

Totally Not Depressing Tuesday

I need to start coming up with less creative titles for my posts. Really.

The morning started with work, then more work, then even more work. Figured out this, talked to that, did a few phone calls, yada yada yada. Really, most of the day was just work, then slight driving here and there, then work again.

Registered for training next week – it would be cool to hear the real people talk about real product management. Not that I use any of that in my current line of work, but a good brush up on skills never hurts. And I will be in Pennsylvania for 3 days, so might as well have some fun there.

Which reminds me – I need to post a bunch of casting calls for PA. Knowing how shit usually goes down I’d be lucky if I get at least one photo shoot out of the 3 nights I’ll be spending there. Not that I would mind just spacing out for 3 evenings, but I’d rather stay productive. Also, the place has a fitness center, if it’s at least half-way working it would be nice. Yogurt and free weights, here I come.

Watched SGA: Vengeance today. Every time I rewatch this episode I can’t help but notice it’s the same place where half of the underground episodes were shot – SG-1, SGA, and even SGU. Also, Sheppard’s team really looked stupid in this episode – every time the plot required one of them just suddenly ventured into one of the rooms with steel doors. Just because. Without alerting or even prompting the rest. I mean – I am not a military person, but even I would have said something.

And to wrap it up – another image that’s not social media acceptable

Continue reading “Totally Not Depressing Tuesday”
Posted on

Monday With The Case of Mondays

Woke up early and tried to do some work in between coffee, Reddit and other shit. Didn’t finish much because distraction and procrastination. Need to cut this out, takes too much time and makes me feel tired constantly.

Got my ass chewed up again for not selling. As if my job is sales. I mean – on some higher plane of existence it is, but what about other 90% of the stuff I am supposedly qualified for. On the other hand, I should really be pushing these guys, because why not? I don’t feel much sympathy for anyone there, really, so why not. Called a few people, sent some emails, got some more useful stuff done. These ass-chewings are more demoralizing than the “scat work” I got to be doing.

Set up the Instagram schedule for this week. Will try to rethink the strategy and instead of cutting it to 3 images per week on the same concept/shoot/whatever it will be 6 images per week of the same shoot/concept/whatever. I am thinking – I am at 295 images for 2018 as of right now, only 45 of them are from the event, which leaves me with 250 total, out of which I probably posted about a third. Should suffice me for another couple of months while I will catch up on old stuff (I estimate another 50 images at least – from 12 shoots I still need to edit) and start setting up new shoots. And I can repost the old stuff easily – actually should be doing this with the stories now.

The model I’ve sent the images to yesterday has dumped half of them out to her Instagram in one day – I think as an album. I am not sure how this works, but she’s got a decent following and about 150 – 180 likes per image. I’ve got nothing, even though she credited me properly. Lesson learned – Instagram credit means shit.

Some dude on FB is setting up a new magazine for boudoir photographers. I promised a write-up about being a male boudoir photographer, but got swamped with work stuff and hadn’t had a chance to make it happen today. Was hoping to get it done at night, but this will have to wait until tomorrow now. Quite honestly, I am very doubtful the dude will survive through putting first three issues together, but we’ll see. It’s always good to have someone else do your marketing anyway.

Watched SGA:Submersion tonight. Basically similar concept as in The Return, Part 2 – first the audience are led to believe something bad is unfolding, then we “roll back” and see that it’s an elaborate (to a degree) subversion plan. I don’t remember this or SG-1 show pulling this trope ever again, which is a good thing because it gets old and a bad thing, because it’s yet another twist in a short, 43-minute episode.

As I am writing this I am contemplating the idea of adding one of the images I cannot put on social media to these posts. Fuck, why even make them if I cannot share them?

18+ more