Souvenir Photo Studio, by Al Bourassa: Saturday March 28, 2020 Day 10

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Saturday March 28, 2020

Day 10 of self-quarantine isolation.

I continue to walk my 5 dog companions every morning at 5am on virtually deserted streets. We talk to no-one and touch nothing, so all is good. Most people we encounter outside are wearing the masks. I don't even own one,.. yet.

I rushed through my chores because I needed to complete poop patrol by 8:15am because the darn garbage truck has been coming extra early the last few times, instead of the usual 9:30 or later. The last time I didn't even have time to seal the bag. They didn't care.

I decided to give my Buddy a partial trim, his face, chest and legs. Boy, that is a lot of work with just scissors. I had tried the clippers before, but that is slow too and it heats up too quickly. I don't want to burn it out. It really is a bargain that we can get each dog clipped for under $7 USD.

I am getting deep into my eBook "Bulldog Drummond" and that makes the eyes drop off for the afternoon nap.

I took a few photos after lunch and am really quite pleased with them. I hope you like them too.

Facebook has its faults but it is good for connections to friends, relatives, and the past. I have recently connected with a couple of old classmates and it is cool to see where everyone has ended up. I keep trying to remember all my Grade 12 classmates, including those who didn't graduate. I don't have my grad picture or my yearbook here to ease my burden. I will have to start a list and see how good my memory is...

RedBubble, my main site for uploading my photos for sale, is proposing ridiculous changes that will completely ruin the former artist community there. I have been with them since the beginning and have over 4,000 photos on their site. Other artists are leaving in droves, with most heading to Fine Art America, where I have also been since the beginning. Honestly, sales from both sites do not even come close to covering my camera expenses, never mind the thousands of hours involved in uploading. FAA is relatively easy but has few sales. RB has always been a royal pain to use, but at least I did get some sales. These latest changes, which their braintrust insists are to improve sales, has caused sales to drop off significantly. They display our products on such things as mugs and t-shirts all the time which are rarely the best products for that purpose. None of us artists can understand their twisted logic. We want people to see our default image and then decide what product they want it on (like FAA). At the end of the month RB will be finalizing changes which will probably be the demise of most artists on there, including me. Over the years RB has continually made changes that have negated thousands of hours of my hard work. I left them for a short time then came back. Their bias to graphic designers has been so obvious since the beginning and the new changes hurt mostly us photographers.

I had checked out a few other sales sites over the years but they were mostly too difficult to deal with, and complicated. FAA is certainly the yardstick by which they are measured, very easy to use and upload, and the client chooses how to configure his end product.

One fellow mentioned another site called Society6 which I just checked out. Their requirements are just too stringent, especially with regard to file sizes. They really want mostly sizes way bigger than I have and it appears they will be as complicated as RedBubble. I just wish Fine Art America would sell more, they have, by far, the best site for artists and customers for ease of use and functionality.

I have the use of David's NetFlix tonight. I should be reaching the end of the series on El Chapo soon.

I hope you enjoy the pictures. That was the day’s excitement.

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