Hello.
Regular readers may or may not have noticed my absence in the last few months and even a slow-down of blog posts preceding that. In the past I’ve made moderately loud noises about the novels I have been working on and how I intend to publish these some time soon. I know it’s taking a while but I’m still on it.
The thing is, it all started with my intention to design my own book cover, including shooting the photo and touching it up to book cover quality. A family friend did a modelling course a couple of years ago and agreed to pose for the cover. So we did that back in February (I must write a post about that one day), after I loaded my brain up with as much photography knowledge as I could fit. I also took every opportunity to take photos in various environments. Mostly for practice.
I’ve set up a Facebook page, Instagram and posted what I thought were some of my better shots. To my amazement I started getting requests from people with whom I’m connected to varying degrees, to shoot for them. You know, things like, award ceremonies, milestone birthday parties, weddings, stuff like that.
Weddings! After I got back up off the floor when reading that one, I began questioning my plan. I had an idea to fix this WordPress blog of mine to resemble a website rather than a blog by sticking a front page on it, describe photography services I might provide, explicitly excluding weddings. I wasn’t that confident yet and I didn’t have all the required gear. And besides, a wedding is something you don’t want to stuff up when you’re first starting out receiving payment for what’s essentially just a serious hobby.
Then the next surprise came from my daughter’s netball club president who asked me, rather than just photographing her game, could I come down for a whole day and shoot every game of every team in the whole club. Fifteen teams, fifteen games. Yeah, no worries but I’ll have to stagger it across several weeks because, you know, battery, SD cards, other things to do besides shooting netball.
So, long story short (Oops! Too late!) This blog/website has changed “from Richard’s Ramblings” to “Richard Leonard – Words & Pictures” to reflect the writing and photography that are my two main hobbies. At the moment. This site will gradually change to support the new focus and brand. The old blog is still there under the Richard’s Ramblings menu but I might remove some irrelevant posts when I get the time.
But to anyone who is interested, the writing continues, the novel is on its way to being finished, including the cover. I just want to take some time to improve my photography and provide services to people if I can.
Onwards…
Richard Leonard - Words & Pictures 