Over the past couple of months I've been tracking my most popular photo, a close-up of a hawk, as it was chased down in the "most viewed" group by a perv-magnet picture of two girls kissing one another. It's been obvious to me for a while that the race to be first to 1000 views was going to be close, and now that it's done I'm just preserving their respective daily stats here for posterity.
In the weeks running up to the big day, the differences were: 950-876 (12 July), 970-918 (19 July), 977-950 (26 July). In the last 28 days, 73 views for the fearsome avian glare, compared to 183 for the canoodling females; didn't look good for the poor birdie, eh? But a wee spike of activity in the final weekend made all the difference, and it squeaked over the finish line just in time. Of course, the lesbian kiss will quickly and inevitably become my most viewed shot anyway, but that close-up of the hawk will always be the first to 1000.
There was something uniquely satisfying about this commission. I’ve had paid jobs before, and I’ve been published before, but this was the first instance of a customer hiring me on the basis of previous work of mine that they’d seen.
The Sentinels of Rock'n'Roll are a newly established six-/seven-piece functions band, doing covers of classic rock anthems at weddings, bar mitzvahs, christenings, funerals, circumcisions, etc. They’re led by the husband and wife team of Alan and Lindsay Fraser, the former of whom was the musical director for Rent, a show I was hired to do publicity shots for a couple of months ago.
We arranged to meet in Maryhill, and got a few moody shots of the band posing by the Kelvin Walkway. Then as per Lindsay’s suggestions, I did a bit of post-processing to desaturate everything except their blue jeans. I went into the studio with them afterwards as well, but had less success there; an ultra-wide lens and good lighting equipment were needed, and I had neither. Still, it worked out OK altogether, and when they get themselves a gig I might just troop along and take some snaps for posterity.
Aside from the two publicityshoots I did for the Pantheon Theatre company, I was also at the dress rehearsal, to try and capture a record of the show for historic purposes. I was at my trigger-happy, quantity-over-quality worst that night, going through a record-setting one and a half batteries and four and a half CF cards in the space of three hours. Pitiful keeper rate, but we'll skip past that with a nonchalant whistle.
Anyhoo, Kazza B suggested that I just put all my photos on one CD for distribution among the cast. I was a bit reticent; there were almost 2700 shots altogether, and if I was just going to dump them en masse, then I wouldn't really get a chance to tidy them up with post-processing so they'd be seeing the worst of my work, and none of my best. Still, the customer is always right, so I did as instructed.
Nevertheless, it nagged me that I hadn't put together something a little more professional for them, especially since they'd crossed my palm with silver. I eventually put together a sort of montage, by picking out the best shots and matching them to the songlist for the show. I wanted to build up a kind of slideshow, but to my surprise Google's Picasa is a bit sniffy about adding music, so after trying out a couple of other approaches, I ended up just putting everything together in Windows Movie Maker and uploading the .wmv to Vimeo. It's not ideal, but I guess it'll have to do.
Over the past couple of months I've been tracking my most popular photo, a close-up of a hawk, as it was chased down in the "most viewed" group by a perv-magnet picture of two girls kissing one another. It's been obvious to me for a while that the race to be first to 1000 views was going to be close, and now that it's done I'm just preserving their respective daily stats here for posterity.
In the weeks running up to the big day, the differences were: 950-876 (12 July), 970-918 (19 July), 977-950 (26 July). In the last 28 days, 73 views for the fearsome avian glare, compared to 183 for the canoodling females; didn't look good for the poor birdie, eh? But a wee spike of activity in the final weekend made all the difference, and it squeaked over the finish line just in time. Of course, the lesbian kiss will quickly and inevitably become my most viewed shot anyway, but that close-up of the hawk will always be the first to 1000.
