Drowning in red tape

“Skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape”

Charles Dickens

Just a quick post to let you know I haven’t forgotten you folks. I have several blog posts pending, but they’re still in long-hand form and I haven’t had time to type them up yet. Yeah, I’m a traditionalist – for a long article I write a draft on real paper with scented ink and a posh fountain pen and then type it up later – it may seem prehistoric, but it works for me (probably because I get high on the smell of the pink ink? Just a guess…)

Anyhoo, I’m still bogged under with work, I’m afraid. Alas this isn’t of the money-generating kind. Instead our beloved authorities have introduced a whole new raft of tax regulations, banking and credit card rules and oodles of new compliance requirements which have to be implemented ASAP. Failure to comply results in certain death, destruction and worse. I’ve lived through an aggressive tax inspection before. Believe me, it’s not a pleasant experience. Anyhoo, poor Rich has had to overhaul our day-job infrastructure completely, which is resulting in horrible working hours and chronic neglect of a real life, as well as all things photographic.

For most of the time Rich’s work and mine do not overlap. He’s the techie and I’m in charge of the finance side, and we take great care to stay out of each other’s business. We’re both alpha-type personalities, and our relationships (both business and personal) survive precisely because we’re great believers in personal space. The last time our business roles clashed was during the last day-job infrastructure overhaul about ten years ago, and we yelled at each other so much that divorce proceedings were pending. This time, neither of us were relishing the prospect of a rematch but it went surprisingly smoothly in the end. I guess we were united in our mutual hatred of government red tape. There’s so much of it now that it’s a bloody miracle this country functions at all. Oh wait, it doesn’t…

Following a very polite (but scary) check-up early last week by the powers-that-be, after ruminating for a bit, I have decided that it is possible to run a day-job biz, comply with all our new rules (photographic, business and governmental) and live and blog under the considerably large shadow of the censorship umbrella, providing I’m careful not to post any photographs which may possibly contravene our new laws, and under no circumstances should I mouth-off on an anti-government rant. I will therefore continue to write in a cool, calm and collected manner (don’t laugh, I know I can do it if I really try), Rich has decided to continue shooting tasteful “garden nudes” (an expression I learned from Stephen – always conjures up images of nekkid gnomes for some reason) when finances allow, and of course we will continue to comply with all our new regulations and not provoke our beloved government.

If I actually achieve this impossible feat and actually manage to behave myself, I suspect that this blog is about to become very boring indeed. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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Red Tape

KatyT on our very first (and unfortunately very purple) back-drop. Yes I had ironed it beforehand, but it was still wrinkly (the back-drop, I mean, not Katy.) She looks nicer in Dave’s bath though.

Life Behind The Suit

Hush now.

It’s 9 p.m. and I’m attending a mandatory after-work CPD (continual professional development) seminar on discretionary trusts and tax planning. I’m in a room full of dry-as-dust accountants, the tax lecturer (who bears a startling resemblance to the Swedish chef out of the Muppet Show and equally unintelligible) is droning on and on, and I am utterly bored-beyond-belief. What the hell am I doing here? Is it my ultimate destiny to be a part of this money-orientated world? I really don’t give a rat’s ass about pilot trusts or inheritance tax planning (thanks to having three rather expensive kids, I’ll doubtless die penniless anyway.)

Ye Gods! I’m an accounting drone! Another statistic, another meaningless membership number amongst the 135,000 accountants which make up my professional organisation. We’re all the same – grey suited zombies who earn our living scratching away with our quills, pushing numbers around the page, going nowhere, achieving nothing other than sucking the lifeblood out of innocent clients.

I stifle a yawn and gaze around the room. I decide the giant broad-leaved spreading pot plant would make a very nice photo if there was a nude sat in the middle of it. The long row of glass water bottles so perfectly lined up would make a mighty fine image too. The lighting is all wrong of course, although an off-camera flash would fix that nicely. Darn it! I’m thinking about photography. This is no good at all. I should be thinking about work, not pleasure. Concentrate Lin, you must CONCENTRATE!

But wait! Something catches my eye. The grey suited woman in front of me is writing furiously too, and not about tax judging by her faint smirk. On the other side of me, a mature gentleman in a grey pinstriped suit is twiddling the buckles on his black biker boots (what’s an accountant doing wearing biker boots?!) and doodling a pair of giant breasts on the side of his tax notes. My lips twitch and I drag my eyes away. My gaze drifts to the mature lady in the row in front of me, who is wearing an expensive, beautifully-tailored-but-still-grey suit, high heels, intellectual glasses…and yet, she has cheap black trashy chipped nail varnish and with the pointy tip of her expensive designer shoe she is slowly and rhythmically stroking the inner leg of the much younger guy sitting next to her, who is squirming in his seat and desperately trying to remain expressionless (wooo-ee! I bet there’s gonna be some extra-marital steamy passion there later on tonight!)

I smile. There’s just so much more going on here than a boring old tax seminar, a whole secret world behind the drone of the Swedish Muppet.

Accountants are people too. Each and every one of us is rebelling in our own small way against the dull routine and mindless duty of our utterly mundane lives. There are always chinks in our grey suits of armour, you just have to know where the weak spots are. Never think a man in a grey pinstripe uniform is soulless. Never despise the people of the grey cloth. We live, we feel, we create and we love as deeply as the rest of you, probably more. We’re just better at hiding it, that’s all.

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(Rachel T, another suit, although you'd never know it from this image, would you?)

A week in the life of…

This week has been fairly typical.

In no particular order we’ve had:

1. A model digitally alter and publish one of Rich’s (kick ass) photos of her, despite knowing she was breaking the terms of her modelling agreement, despite being expressly forbidden to modify the photograph and after she had asked Rich never to publish it (and no, he still hasn’t.)

2. Rich was called a GWC by a second model who was asking for a shoot, plus I was called a perv who liked her husband to spend time feeling up other women, all because I politely pointed out that it is our policy not to let models’ photographer-boyfriends act as chaperones (largely because they invariably rip off Rich’s work, although I didn’t say that.) The photographer-boyfriend then proceeded to spam us, constantly asking for bookings with lurid descriptions of how his girlfriend played with herself. Did he think that insulting us would somehow result in us gagging for a shoot with his girlfriend? What kind of gentleman makes his living by selling his lady in that way? The mind boggles.

3. After putting up a fairly innocent picture of myself blogging nude a week or so ago, I have been asked how many times a week I have sex with my husband, asked to describe in detail varying intimate parts of my anatomy, two photographers have sent me explicit photographs of themselves naked, and one photographer has tried to trace where I live and where my kids go to school.

And do you know what?

THIS IS A NORMAL WEEK.

At what point did we accept this as typical behaviour? At what point did we learn to accept this at all?

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The utterly fabulous Alexis Summers

Lastly, despite not putting our real surnames anywhere on this web site but thanks to Google’s sooper-dooper new search algorithms which detail everything about you including your inside leg measurement, this blog has now been discovered by some of our day-job resellers. I’m now getting lots of flirty emails with kisses attached. Not quite the marketing tactic I had in mind, but hey, times are hard and we must take what publicity we can get. I’ve decided I don’t particularly care as long as they keep buying our software.

*****Welcome, day-job resellers!*****

We love you! Please visit more often! Pretty please? I promise to put my photos back up?!!! (Actually thinking about it, maybe sales will increase if I delete them all. Whatever works, you know?)

For Love not Money

A rare post by our resident artiste...

Sooner or later all photographers go through a stage where they ask themselves what they want to do with their photography. What is their purpose? Why are they doing it? Over the last few months I have been thinking about these questions.

As you can imagine life is pretty full right now, and I have therefore decided that my photography should be about having fun and shooting what I want to shoot. I have been looking at the various aspects of photography and trying to decide what I really want to do. As with all things, sometimes it is easier to start with things you don't want to do and by a process of elimination deduce the things you do want to do!

So to this end I have decided that I won’t shoot any more private commissions. In fact, no paid work whatsoever. There are several reasons for this:

1. When I started my photography I was taken in by the view, which is often projected by the popular photography forums, that to be considered a good photographer your work must be such that people will pay you for it. Photographers who shoot to show or sell prints but have another day job are often portrayed as GWC's who are not doing it for the right reasons, and that the only valid reason to take photographs should be for payment. Only then will you be considered to have “made it” as a successful photographer. So I set out to be good enough to be paid, and then after I was paid, I realised that this was probably the worst reason to take a photograph. Photography should be an art, and art by its nature is seldom created on demand.

2. I don't get a lot of free time, so when I do shoot I want it to be for me.

3. I want to actually show the pictures I take. Private commissions are by their very nature private. I want to show my pictures on the blog and elsewhere, so these goals are mutually incompatible.

4. I want to shoot what I want to shoot. Most private commissions are about shooting what the client wants. At that point it stops being for pleasure and becomes a job, and I certainly don’t want another one of those.

So, I will sell prints, I will shoot for friends, but I won't shoot for money.

Stephen Haynes mentioned the term “dilettante.” I like this term as it represents the aspects of art that are free from commercial constraints. It is important to remember that until recent history, those who furthered the arts and sciences did not do so for pay, they were often wealthy and were only interested in their own amusement and education.

dilettante \DIL-uh-tont; dil-uh-TONT; dil-uh-TON-tee; -TANT; -TAN-tee\, noun:
1. An amateur or dabbler; especially, one who follows an art or a branch of knowledge sporadically, superficially, or for amusement only.
2. An admirer or lover of the fine arts.

That's me. Not that I’m wealthy of course, I’m not, but I do want to create art for no other reason than I love it. I will take photographs and create CGI art for no other reason than fun!

So if you would like a portfolio of beautiful photographs for free, then I'm your man, providing you don't mind me showing them on the blog! Oh, and coffee is good, I can be bribed for good coffee (is that TFC?)

Please note that this offer is subject to availability and no guarantee or warranty is implied. All offers carry the dilettante quality seal.



Pirate Maiden.

The Monster and the Flea

This week is software release week.
Our day-job software product is a direct competitor to a particular Microsoft product, but we are small fry in comparison to the mighty Gates Godzilla. So small, in fact, that we are merely a flea on the back of a rat on the back of the monster which is called Microsoft. But it’s a start.

There is a great deal riding on this software version, not least the ability to eat and pay the mortgage. It has been a tremendously stressful few years. My dearest partner has sweated 70+ hour weeks for over two-and-a-half-years to turn our company around. We have stressed, we have argued, we have come mighty close to losing everything.

Now it’s over.

Now all we can do is wait, and hope that potential customers will like our software enough to ditch the truly crappy Microsoft code and spend shiny hard CASH on this little flea.

Here is a little ditty that I wrote twelve years ago when we first started the company. It still seems apt! (although you will please note that I am definitely no poet)

An Ode to Mr Bill Gates

One day a famous man called Gates
Came knocking at my door.
“I wanna buy your company”, he said,
“I’d like a guided tour”.

I took him to my office,
He played with my groovy code.
“Richard, you’re a genius”, he said,
“This will surely cost a load.”

I took him to the kitchen.
He scoffed up all the food,
“And now let’s do a deal”, he said,
“I’m in a dealing mood.

“I must admit your product,
Has cost me an arm and leg.
How much do I have to pay today,
Or do I have to beg ?”

He offered me £50,000 UK pounds.
I turned down his offer flat.
“I see I’ve underestimated you”, he said,
“I am a silly prat !

“I’ll bring my millions tomorrow,
Just six or eight or ten”,
But then – oh bugger- I woke up,
And I was poor again.

Lilmummy, looking gorgeous in an eye-watering pose which would surely make me end-up in hospital (again).