A quick blog

There is such a thing? A quick blog?

I have the morning off today, so I'm wading through housework and doing a photo restoration job I need to complete, in snatches, before Friday. I learned this week that one of the local photo printing places (not the place that charges the equivalent of US$200 per photo) has had a major promotion going for 'photo restoration'. My deal is to now undercut their prices and give better quality. Hey... if I earn 10 bucks per photo, at least it is a 10 I didn't have before, right?

I got a job in. The cleaning lady at Tat's work saw my flier and asked if it is very expensive. Of course not! ; ) The original is a tiny 2 x 3" photo, but luckily I got to scan it, so it is high resolution.

I have a couple of other photos to work on, which are actually a bit harder, as their resolution is very low, but they're doable. I just hope I can get a printable quality out of them. This is great! I am enjoying keeping busy, but I miss my friends here.

Oh, remember our infamous potholes when it rains here? This one was not in São Paulo, the city, but fairly close and still within state lines.
http://noticias.terra.com.br/transito/interna/0,,OI3578452-EI11777,00.html
Click on the top link to view a photo slide show, which will give you a good idea of what they're dealing with here. The driver was alone in the vehicle and died in the fall. That crater that opened up was over 10m (around 32 feet) deep!! Apparently, there was a water pipe below the road.

Ok, let me get back to work : )

Technorati Tags: são-paulo,photo restoration,work,crater

A quick blog

There is such a thing? A quick blog?

I have the morning off today, so I'm wading through housework and doing a photo restoration job I need to complete, in snatches, before Friday. I learned this week that one of the local photo printing places (not the place that charges the equivalent of US$200 per photo) has had a major promotion going for 'photo restoration'. My deal is to now undercut their prices and give better quality. Hey... if I earn 10 bucks per photo, at least it is a 10 I didn't have before, right?

I got a job in. The cleaning lady at Tat's work saw my flier and asked if it is very expensive. Of course not! ; ) The original is a tiny 2 x 3" photo, but luckily I got to scan it, so it is high resolution.

I have a couple of other photos to work on, which are actually a bit harder, as their resolution is very low, but they're doable. I just hope I can get a printable quality out of them. This is great! I am enjoying keeping busy, but I miss my friends here.

Oh, remember our infamous potholes when it rains here? This one was not in São Paulo, the city, but fairly close and still within state lines.
http://noticias.terra.com.br/transito/interna/0,,OI3578452-EI11777,00.html
Click on the top link to view a photo slide show, which will give you a good idea of what they're dealing with here. The driver was alone in the vehicle and died in the fall. That crater that opened up was over 10m (around 32 feet) deep!! Apparently, there was a water pipe below the road.

Ok, let me get back to work : )

Technorati Tags: são-paulo,photo restoration,work,crater

Masp

The morning dawned hot, with warnings of rain. We've had heavy downpours in the afternoon every day so far. This, to me, is typical São Paulo weather... hot as blazes, then 4pm, the heavens open, until around 6pm, at which point someone up there turns the tap off and the city drains until the next day.



Jorge headed into town with me. My plan was to go to the antiques fair on Avenida Paulista to distribute my photo restoration fliers. The antiques fair is held in the shadow of the monolithic Masp, an art gallery that I keep threatening to actually visit. Reflected in the glass in the above photo is the crafts fair that Masp looks out over. Masp is a well known landmark in São Paulo. It has two huge red 'feet' standing in ponds. The actual gallery is a couple of storeys up.

Ah... there comes the rain now. Hm... I love the smell of rain.

Delivering fliers were, as Jorge put it, like fishing. Wonder if there'll be any catches. It's too soon to tell. It turned out that we couldn't hand them out in the antiques fair itself, or security would stop us. I wanted to hand them out at least until we were stopped. I ended up handing them out in front of the fair, to passers by. The trouble with that was the jaded Paulistano's who decline fliers, politely of course. The most disheartening part was seeing one of my fliers thrown on the ground and trampled. We then crossed the road to the crafts fair where I managed to hand out a few before we gave up and headed home.

On the bus ride home, we were desperately wishing for rain... anything to cool off. As the bus meandered home, there was a church on a hill off to one side. Sliding down the grassy hill on scraps of cardboard were a group of brown skinned boys. The white-toothed grin the one presented us with as he reached the bottom made me grateful it wasn't raining. They were having so much fun.

I think we'll just have sandwiches tonight. It is far too hot to cook.

Technorati Tags: paulista,photo-restoration,masp,cl photo studios

Music to my ears

The job I mentioned on Monday was successful. The client was happy. I did it as a no-charge because he is one of our biggest suppliers of work for Jorge and one of those people it is a pleasure to do work for. The next day, he sent me this photo. Could I please make the fringes on the little girls longer, as his wife was embarrassed to show the photo. She claimed they look like Tupi (one of the Native American tribes in the region). I worked on the photo, sent it back and got:

"Obrigado Corrianne! Minha esposa perguntou quanto ficou para operar o milagre?"
"Thank you, Corrianne! My wife wants to know what it cost to achieve this miracle."

Music to my ears! Now comes the problem. All my work in the past has been for clients in Canada, USA, and Europe. I have no idea what to charge here. Jorge and I went to one of the local photo shops this morning with a print of the photo above and the one below, to get an idea of the charges. The one above, they said they could do, but it would look very unnatural. The cost would be R$400 (and here I was worrying about charging R$50!!). The photo below, they said couldn't be done, as there wasn't enough 'information' in the photo and the damage is too bad. I did that restoration years ago. It was one of the first I had tackled. My thought is that if they would charge R$400 (US$256) for the above photo, what on earth would they have charged for the one below if they could do it?

In the end, I'm still unsure what to charge, but I'll figure something out.

The weather here is so incredibly dry and apparently, we're headed into at least another two weeks of dry weather. The pollution is now very bad. There isn't even dew in the mornings. I can hang clothes out overnight and take them down in the morning, crackling dry. Our eyes, noses and throats are burning. I do hope it rains soon!

Technorati Tags: work,photo,photo-restoration

I touched history

There is a black lady working at the pub Jorge frequents. She makes the most heavenly coxinha's. She asked if I could work on a photo of hers. It had a corner torn off and was heavily finger printed, where the finger prints appeared to have removed ink. The photo was a 2 x 3 inch print. She wanted a large print out of it. For me, the challenge was a relatively unique one. This is the first black face I have worked on. I found that... well... noteworthy. What was more noteworthy though, was that this photo is of her father, one of Brazil's last slaves. He is pictured here, sitting in front of his slave hut. Now that, to me, is a unique experience, restoring a photo of a slave for his daughter. There is a whole time perspective thing going on in my head too. He looks to be around 40 here. She is 65. When I think of slavery, I think of 'very long ago', but not really if this photo is anything to go by.

Anyone here give time management lessons? This is harder than it sounds... the whole time management thing. I start my day checking mail. Someone sends me a link to look at. I open the link. Then another friend contacts me with a "What do you think of...?" and I start a reply. I remember that I wanted to post a blog on "The wisdom of flings" and open a post before I forget. Just then, I remember I haven't eaten yet, so I amble to the kitchen. I come back with a plate and Jorge will say, "Have you started on that photo of John Doe yet?" I open the photo, so I don't forget to work on it and remember the first link I was meant to be looking at. I look at the link and go to reply. While I'm replying, I see an e-mail from Someone Important. I start a reply to that e-mail because, after all, it is from Someone Important. By the time I'm into my second hour of my day, my pc desktop looks a mess and I have no idea any more what I was going to originally do. I often just end up giving up on the lot of them. How is that for productive? My off-pc activities are pretty much the same. So if you find that I'm not 100% *there*, you know why. It is because I'm not 100% *there*. Where I am.... well, that is anyone's guess ; )

 

Technorati Tags: history,photo-restoration,slave,slavery,escravo,brasil,brazil