England Is Full of Rubbish!

Take a look at the road you are travelling on, or in a hedgerow you are walking past with your dog, and you'll undoubtedly find a piece of litter staring back at you. 

I was travelling to work 3 months ago and I was stuck in traffic on a dual carriageway approaching a roundabout. I looked out of my window at the central reservation and was appalled at the amount of coffee cups, crisp packets and general litter that was strewn across the grass. 

It is truly disgusting how filthy our countryside is and it should put us to shame. It is not just select members of the general public who through litter out of their car windows without a care, but also certain farmers who do not tidy up or take care of their land. 

Walking the dog I always see cans, plastic crates, tyres and crop insulation entangled in hedgerows, as well as old farm machinery rusting away. 

I have decided to make a little YouTube video on the rubbish in our countryside to highlight the problem, so over the next week or so I will be taking my camera out and about to go find rubbish! It shouldn't be too hard!

Making Calendars

Today I finished making the files for my calendar of Croome Court. I have been working on it for a while, but I got proofs last week and what I had made needed some tweaking.

I love smart, clean design and lord knows I have expensive taste and I think that has come across in the sleek design :)

I was thinking as I wrote this if someone had told me 3 years I would be approaching various printers for quotes and visiting them myself I would have told them nooo, that's scary. It feels good to be doing something while on the job hunt, and sure it's not a major retail venture yet, but it has the potential to go much larger in future years.

I can take samples of the calendar and show different shops who might be interested.

Working out profit margins has also been paramount and something I have enjoyed.

So yesterday I set about adding a bigger bleed area and also a crop mark for each corner where it will be cut to size. I hadn't known how to do this before, but I looked it up on YouTube and voila :) YouTube is everything to me! A way to share my work, inspire people (which I love doing), and it's a source of income.

I spent about an hour or two altering the files, and altering the day titles on the calendar too. So tomorrow I shall send them to the printer ready to be made up. Hopefully they will be ready by the beginning of next week.

I hope I will be able to sell them!

I am not one to think negatively, and I know how many I have to sell to cover my costs, and if don't sell that many I know this has taught me a lot on how to print :) I discovered DPI for printing this sort of thing should be above 300, I set it to 400 as that was what was recommended for text, and the photos look better too.

I will be proud when I have the final product in my hands :)

I had plenty of interest in them when I showed a similar one I had had made on the internet so I'm hopeful. This calendar is completely made by myself from scratch and is environmentally friendly printing double sided and using a very environmentally friendly printer whom I am very proud to use. Combining that with the quality of the photographs I think it will sell.

It gave me confidence in my photography too, as like with most things I do, I taught myself and it's my style.... I see things in different ways and am not about tourist shots, I like to get a different angle and to make the viewer appreciate things they might not have usually seen!

And to think I had never used photoshop either till 4 months ago!

Small steps :) Hopefully I'll get somewhere.

To view more photos of Croome Court go here: http://tkd-art.com/#/croome-court/4550044633