Work Portraits

Some work Portraits I shot of Dad today after we installed a parking break on the rabbit...

Turned out pretty good!

http://evenstarphotography.com/Other/Dad/11958445_cyd7G#847189688_Y6zuH

Walks in Gowland Tod

Hey hey

Check out my pictures from walking in Gowland Tod this week. Gorgeous.

I've been having a lot of fun showing Jenny photography and the beautiful nature around Victoria. The Easter Lilies were out and blooming.

The astute amongst will notice that one picture is not from Gowland Tod. Sorry. Thetis Lake.

Cheers,

Matt

http://evenstarphotography.com/Nature/Gowland-Tod/

Starting a business

Yup that's what I'm doing....and its going to be interesting.

The big news! My photography finally has a permanent home, and a name.

Evenstar.

Which took forever to decide on. More on that later.

But for now, check it out --> http://evenstarphotography.com/ or actually http://evenstarphotography.ca/ works too if you're still feeling patriotic after the olympics. Haha.

And you can email me at matt@evenstarphotography.com if you feel like it. Cause that would be fun.

Anyway, I'm just getting started, and its already overwhelming trying to sort stuff out. I'm not enthused about tax season next year.

I've been running ads on Craiglist and Used Victoria, learning how to advertise on Facebook and Google (just made my first ever Facebook ad...we'll see if it works at all) I have it targeted at engaged people who live within 50km of Victoria, which apparently is about 5,000. I pay depending on how many people click on the ad and go to my site. Like I said. We'll see. Kinda skeptical, not gonna lie.

What else...I did Jill and Nic's

engagement pictures

which turned out really well...I'm so happy with them...I was nervous...I mean I have tons of experience with taking pictures and I studied lots and everything, but only a few experiences with the "these pictures are super important so they better be good" type of situation. And yea, I love their pictures actually. They look so cute and happy and well, beautiful, so I am pleased.

Anyway, the good news is I have the intial business investment (basically) in all the equipment that I have collected. And now I have quite a collection of good portraits etc.

The bad news is I have to work on my self promotional skills. Apparently that's what its going to be all about. Which is lame. But hey, I guess people don't just randomly know you're a good photographer. Word of mouth+time is the formula it seems.

My website rules by the way, so you can buy matted and framed prints, lots of products and everything else your heart desires. Yup rock on. Order away. Haha. I might have to make an order just to test the system.

On and I'm also in the middle of moving and trying to find a day job too while I build up some clients and a reputation for myself here in Victoria. So I am officially going Bananas. More on all this later ~Matt

Oh Job Hunting how you suck

So, I successfully made Jenny a nice cover letter and resume and sent it out to a bunch of places. Got her signed up for foodsafe since all the restaurant jobs need it. Turns out the food services company at my Mom's work needed people so she gets to be a server at Shannon Oaks.

Its really perfect cause its what she wanted to do and it should be a nice place and it pays better than all the other jobs she was looking at. So that's awesome.

Me? As you may know, what I'd really like is to make a living doing photography. As with most entrepreneurial type things I guess that takes a while.

So I have a nice new website to showcase my stuff and I suppose I have already acquired the initial business investment (the lenses etc...in which I have um, lets say more $8000 invested) I got good with the camera, I'm almost finished the professional course from New York Institute of Photography and I have a nice craigslist ad. I have everything right?

So why is nobody calling me? Start calling me already people. Haha. If only.

In second spot would be photo related jobs working for somebody else. I have a couple gigs as a second photographer in the summer.

And there was a job at Kerrisdale cameras so I applied. We'll see.

Also Sears Portrait studio too, so I applied today. We'll see.

In third spot would be teaching English again. I liked doing that in Korea. But the schools here are notoriously hard to get a job at. But they did post an ad. So I applied. We'll see. Also a five or so tutoring companies. Applied. We'll see.

Maybe I'll shorten that to AWS.

Next up, a good paying job at one of the municipalities.

Saanich who I worked for last year posted a programming job that pays awesome and they will probably fill from within. Boo. AWS

OakBay has some well paying 5 month gardening jobs that they will probably fill with people from last year. AWS.

And since starting this blog post I have applied to two more ESL schools and sent a message to another photographer about working together. Go me. Whoot.

Wish me luck.

~Matt

Finally getting around to blogging...

Finally back on the blogging horse. Sorry for the delay, and wow so much has happened. Since then I have had tearful farewells with super cute students, moved half way across the world, taken an unplanned trip to Japan, gone on a road trip to Tofino, been helping Jenny try to find her feet in a new country, and taken multiple trips to Vancouver to experience the Olympic craziness.

Oh, and gone house hunting and found the best deal in Victoria and rented it out. I have been a little busy. Just a little.

I guess I have to change my title page don't I? Ok, I'll do that. Now actually. Actually...my picture change didn't work...so we'll have to sort that out. But anyway, I will be back to blog again shortly. I promise.

My new photowebsite is paid for and almost ready to go, so you please check it out if you have a minute...

http://mattsimus.smugmug.com

A weekend in PIctures

Some snippets of my life...a picture story courtesy of my new found habit of taking my camera everywhere.

I met Jenny's brother for the first time, with Seo-Yeong too, went to the playground together.

Went wandering at night in Gangnam taking Koreanish pictures that I won't be able to take in a week or so

Went to another hockey game
Enjoy.

PS stupid slideshow refuses to align left, so I have to keep it small. If you want bigger you can follow the "weekend" link. The little yellow man in the bottom left.

The wallet returns

Hey Hey, so for anyone who didn't get to hear on facebook, my wallet made its way back to me last week! I bit slow reporting perhaps, but I was a week behind reporting its loss too, so it balances out haha. I would be remiss not mentioning a happy ending to the story I think.

Not a very exciting story to tell, but it was exciting for me! My phone rang when I was in class, and for some reason I had a feeling that it was about my wallet. So I gave the phone to my boss to answer and I was right! So I did a little dance. Several actually.

I got all my I.D. back and all my cards and everything....minus the $40 or so that was in it. Which was to be expected I suppose. I had already replaced my Korean bank cards and stuff, but I only had a hold on my Canadian ones, so I don't need to remake those after all. Yea!

Now I have 8 work days left. Crazy.

The Wallet Fiasco

So...the adventures of Mattsimus continue..and for the second consecutive time, a somewhat negative experience, only this time a little more depressing and not at all humourous.

I was coming home with Jenny from Free Zone (the best place ever, which I will write more about later, suffice it to say it has 10 Wiis, 10 Playstation 3s, arcade, air hockey, ping-pong, singing rooms (karoake), board game cafe, massage chairs, computer room (like 30 new computers that are all linked to play games with your friends) and it cost me $30 for a month) and apparently I (this is my best guess) dropped my wallet in the taxi.

No problem right? The taxi was blue so you can just call BlueBird cabs and they'll make sure you get it back...right? (Buzzer sounds) Ennhhh. Wrong.

Every taxi is one of the three same colours and nobody really displays what company they are with. I (and by me I mean Jenny) tried phoning taxi companies only to be answered with..."why are you phoning? Of course you can't get it back..." Taxi company said people don't give wallets to the drivers, they just take them. Great.

And even if someone finds it....guess what the only piece of Korean ID is that would have been in the wallet?

That's right....the ID card that the @&$#^!@* idiots at the Ski Resort still have. Even if someone wanted to return it, now they don't have the one piece of useful ID that has my work address and phone number and everything on it.

Next up, the police. Who say Koreans don't return lost wallets. Phenomenal. What kind of a messed up place doesn't return lost wallets? Anyways, that's all conjecture at this point. I may get it back yet, so I won't rip the Korean populace just yet.

Practically speaking, the only way to contact me is a) I have Korean bank cards and Credit cards, so someone can bring it to the bank or b) I have a little stub of paper with my address on it that maybe someone can find....

So, it's been a horrible couple days that have just sort of settled into an uneasy depression and wishing for my wallet back. I stopped all the credit cards. And am currently worrying about someone using every piece of ID I have to commit some sort of fraud. Birth Certificate (can those be replaced?), Drivers License, BC CareCard, Visa, Cheque from home, Winners gift card (that was a Christmas present...sigh...) .

On the upside, not in my wallet, was my SIN card (big whoop) and my Canadian Bank card (again, whoopee).

Making it all the more annoying is the fact that all my Canadian ID was not in my wallet until a couple weeks ago...I took most of it out cause I don't need it......and for some idiotic reason put it back in.

Sorry folks no happy ending..... pray for my wallet to find its way back to me? Thanks.

The Ski Fiasco (soon to be followed by the wallet fiasco)

So, our hero's friend Rene snowboards a lot at a ski mountain near here. Free shuttle from Wonju to the resort....only an hour away etc.

Our hero joined him last weekend....for some night skiing...our hero had a coupon for a $10 lift ticket....and rentals are also dirt cheap in Korea...also like $10....as long as you rent from a shop not affiliated with the resort itself.....sounds great right? $20 skiing!Super cheap, close to home right? Nope.

Starting things off on the right foot...the shuttle was packed to the gills....included packing the aisles full of skisuit-clad snowboarding carrying people who stood the whole way. The air quality was appalling. Good start.

Next up, the shuttle failed to stop at the cheap rental shops, which it usually does....and being at the back of the bus our hero couldn't exactly get off anyway....so our hero's rental price just doubled. Boo.

Following that auspicious start, OH got into the too long line of Koreans all trying 57 different credit cards to see if they get a discount by using that card...(the discount system here is a blog in itself...OH's $10 ticket was also by using my special visa card) When our hero got to the front of the line, our hero pays and the cashier is mumbling to herself about the discount only being during the day(keep in mind this is all in Korean).....she was about just give our hero the discount because she didn't want to try and explain when some idiot, I mean, nice person behind our hero decided to offer to help translate. Thanks a bunch loser. So our hero's ticket price quintupled.

Moving on to the rental shop, where apparently you can't actually rent, you have to go back to the lift ticket place and rent from them. Back to the uberlame line of discount seekers.

Next up, the skipants rental shop...where they bizarrely take your Foreigners ID card for a $5 item (this turns out to be rather key for my wallet fiasco story) . Back to the rental shop where they request your foreigners ID card even though their idiotic sister store next store already has it. How stupid are we? If you answered quite or above you are on the right track.

The rental shop plays their part perfectly, twice the price of the other shops, complete with the worst skis available and bent and rusty poles. Seriously. Our running total for the supersized serving of idiocy is now pushing $80.......

Idiocy forgotten, optimism restored, our hero heads out into the snow. The skis take about ten minutes to snap in place. Our hero notes something feels weird with the ski binding. He also notes it is like -20. Way too cold.

They head up to the top of the mountain and successfully ski a couple runs....back at the top, heading down for the third run, our hero cuts hard and randomly his right ski comes loose with no impact....sending him on a slalom ski death spiral, culminate in a 200m (at least) headfirst bumslide. Ski nowhere to be found. After shaking the snow out of his pants/jacket, our hero's ski is returned to him by a stranger. He attempts to put on said ski...but it is not possible.

Our hero begins the long descent...half walking, half sliding down on his boots.....carrying the skis. No ski patrol in sight. With more than one face flop/bum drop.Every ten minutes for sanity's sake, trying to put on the ski again. To no avail. If you've ever tried walking down

<--this in ski boots carrying skis and poles than you know how our hero feels.

After about 30mins, our hero finds his friend walking up to look for him, who assumed our hero had broken a leg or something.

Our hero makes it to the next ski lift, and asks for a lift down. First worker says "ok, ok" second worker says "nonono, you...um...walk" Of course. He would say that. How could he say otherwise on a day such as this?

All told, our none too pleased hero made it back to the lodge after an hour of walking. (for those of us keeping count...we are now at $80=ten minutes of skiing+one dangerous fall+ one hour of walking)

On closer examination by our hero's friend, who worked at a ski shop in Whistler for a season...the ski shop had made a very dangerous error, on top of the skis just plain sucking.

You see below in the picture a ski binding...both back and front pieces are adjustable to fit different sizes.

For those aspiring ski bums out there....when the maximum setting on the back piece is 275mm and your customers boots are 285mm you DON'T...that's right...DON'T just push the back part past its safety catch and hope that it works. That would be a don't. Write it down. What you should do is move the also-adjustable front piece. Wow clever.

Anyways, our hero proceed to explain to the ski shop in broken flawless Korean how bad this was, and how he almost died and how he had to walk for an hour and how skiing time was almost over. After about 30mins of haggling and ticket changing etc. our hero got good skis for free and extended his lift pass until 1am (not free). Our hero did not really want to ski that late at night....that would mean returning home at about 2am....but anyway, that was the best offer he received. Our hero also had to buy gloves because it was Soooooo cold and after all this, retiring because of cold hands would be a sad ending wouldn't it?

Anyways, skiing itself was pretty good...our hero is getting quite good at skiing now....but when our hero tried to return his pants and reclaim his ID card....the clothes shop was closed. (!??!?) With my ID card taped inside the door. Apparently every shop is independent, closes at a different time, and has zero communication. The morons at the ski desk said they couldn't open the door. Apparently never heard of a janitor?? Our hero had no choice but to write his address and leave his card behind (illegal by the way, O.H. must carry either that or his passport at all times) and run and catch the last bus to Wonju.

To add insult to injury...this place can't even do lockers right...our hero's locker number was l l P l. And yes those are all numbers. So, slightly deranged but looks like 1191 right? Wrong. After trying ever locker known to man...it turns out the number as 1091. Since when do zeros look like this --> l??????? What a joke.

One week later our hero has not received his card in the mail yet. And after the wallet fiasco is plotting the destruction of a certain ski resort. More on that later.