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