*Me*: You look nice today.
*Her*: No. These pants barely fit me any more.

…blink…

*Me*: Ok then, you look terrible today. Especially those pants.

This is mostly a good thing because it allows me to make a little more sense out of the world and allows the world to make a little more sense out of me. It’s got a bad side too, though. There’s now one more piece of me that remains very hidden most of the time. I lost a very good friend not too long ago for expressing too much of myself because I thought I was in the clear. So, if and when this background noise should ever be allowed to the front with anyone other than myself, I’ll have to be very careful about how I do it and who I do it with.

Those of you that miss it, fear not. My regular photography posting will return soon — even sooner when I learn that people actually do miss it. I’ve got a new place to hold it all that will allow me to better express this art, and to find other like-minded people to share my work with, to support my work, and to better myself from. As soon as I unveil it, I’ll let you know.

So what do I want for my birthday this year? More than anything I want some good times to replace these bad memories. That means being surrounded by light-heartedness, happiness, friendship, flirting, respect and good old fashioned debauchery. And hopefully, along with that, a few very close friends to share it with and help me to shake these bad feelings so I can enjoy the good times.

If you don’t already have plans you can’t cancel for that evening and are interested in coming, and I really hope you are, send me an email and I’ll include you in the invite I intend to send later today.

It’s a good thing that I enjoy writing to you. Otherwise it would be nothing but pain.

More than anything, its purpose is to bring understanding about what it is that I put into each photo session, in terms of both time and money, and trying to install a sense of partnership and responsibility into the friends and acquaintances that I do choose to work with for free. As “Josh said”:http://revjim.net/2006/06/20/go-figure-consider-me/#comment-8339 I can’t expect to make any kind of money selling to only friends and family as I’m tapping a very limited resource. However, my friends and family have lots of friends and family. A limitless resource, if you will. At this point in the game, $84.04 will help a little, but bringing even one paying portrait session or a handful of fine-art purchases my way will help a lot more. Especially when I then make friends with those people and get them to bring me even more business.

Advertising is expensive and I’m willing to accept that. They way I see it, I can spend $84.04 and advertise to my friends’ friends through word of mouth, or I can spend $84.04 and take out an ad in the yellow pages.

I’ve found a tool called “Ventrillo”:http://www.ventrilo.com/ that is very interesting. It allows multiple people to speak to one another all at the same time while allowing each user to customize his experience and availability while maintaining a very high level of audio quality. If you’re into real-time audio communication, I highly recommend taking a look at it. Let me know if you do and I’ll be happy to play around with it with you.

I’m also just starting to play with “Odeo”:http://odeo.com/ as well as other forms of podcast and vlog aggregation. While real-time communcation certainly has it’s place in the world, there’s something to be said for being able to consume information on our own time.

Generally speaking, real-time communications tend to be focused at smaller, more personal audiences while information that waits for us to be ready for it is generally aimed at larger more public audiences. Of course there are some exceptions. Email and the hand-written letter are both my-time communications intended for small personal audiences.

I’m interested in exploring other personal my-time methods of communcation. For instance, we often leave voice-mail for one another. However, more often than not, we do so only because the person was unable to speak to us real-time and our message indicates little more than a request to contact us when available. What use does my-time voice communication have in the world?

To find out, I’m using a little known Odeo feature that allows you to “leave me a voice message”:http://odeo.com/sendmeamessage/jimreverend that I can then listen to at my leisure. It’s like voice-mail but without the point of asking me to call you back. So, if you have a microphone, please consider “leaving me a message”:http://odeo.com/sendmeamessage/jimreverend. It can be short, long, clean, dirty, important, or trival. If you have something to tell me that you’d normally email about, consider “leaving me a message”:http://odeo.com/sendmeamessage/jimreverend instead. Or, if you have nothing at all to say, feel free to say nothing “in a message to me”:http://odeo.com/sendmeamessage/jimreverend.

Let’s see how useful (or not useful) this can be.

Canoeing. My Dad and I intend to put in at sunrise. See… my schedule is spontaneous.

* She packed me a lunch with two apples and two oranges.
* She included a package of Curious George fruit snacks which were given to her as a treat yesterday because she knows how much a love fruit snacks.
* The bottom button on my polo shirt is button, which I always forget and she always remembers.

I love you too, Jess.

Portrait and studio photography is still very new to me and I’m still finding my place. I’ve only been doing it for about 2.5 years which may seem like quite a while to you but, to a perfectionist like me, that’s not even long enough to really get your feet wet. But this feels a lot more like where I want than most of the work I’ve done in the past. If it gets me excited then it really must be something special.