Other ways I shamelessly exploit myself

So, I had my photo shoots. Well, two of them anyway. I have to shower and prepare myself for a third tonight (this one will be with a 50% royalty agreement on the photos - yay!). I have to say, I loved my first shoot. The photographer was open and candid, and even though I was a little nervous and unsure of myself, she helped me determine the mood we were looking for and work with it. I did end up with a splinter in my foot (OW.) but I feel confident that the images will turn out well. The second photographer was working with lighting, and did a good job setting that up, but I had trouble getting a feel for what we were aiming to accomplish in the shoot, and I felt my images didn't turn out as well with the lack of creative direction.

Looking forward to setting up more shoots this week, hopefully Wednesday, and maybe even another one on Saturday if the photographers get back to me. You know creative types though... In the meantime, I'm continuing to use other mediums to pursue extra cash. Checking in on my profile on Sitter City to try and start babysitting again (which is much harder than I remember it being in highschool). It's funny, now that I'm older and more experienced in life, people seem more scared to have my watch their children. I'll probably need to suck it up and fork over the $50 for a background check so parents will trust me, but honestly, what happened to finding sitters through word of mouth? I also created an account on Elance - I'll have to go look in on that in a minute. Yes, it's another freelancing website. Then I downloaded this app onto my phone 'We Reward'. Here's the link:
I signed up for @wereward you can earn cash for local checkins so all my foursquare addict friends start earning cash!http://we.rw/u2BhD

Basically, if you've ever used foursquare or facebooks checking in service, it's the same thing, except you get points for check ins at certain places, or activities (taking a photo with your friday's server for instance) and then can cash out. Bonus - if you refer people (like, if you click on my link and sign up) you get 10% of whatever they do. So they get 100% of their earnings, but you get 10% of their earnings added to yours. Win for everyone.

Lastly, I want to shout out and advocate BzzAgent. You don't get paid, but you get to try out things before they come to market... which I think is pretty awesome. Right now I'm testing this website, Smarterer. It tests your knowledge on anything and everything. I've enjoyed the Photoshop and Facebook quizzes (especially being in the top 50, say what?) so feel free to check that out too. And no, I don't make any money off of this one, I'm just spreading the word.

Artistic Exploration... to Deviation?

In my quest to find the elusive 'spending money' my friends speak of, I have become more serious about some of my hobbies. A big one of these, which I never thought about seriously before, was taking pictures of myself. What I always saw as boredom/vanity/creative outlet has time and again gotten my friends to chime in with 'You're so pretty!' and 'You should be a model!' after repeatedly clicking the like button. Maybe that was stretching things a tad... regardless. It led me to decide to take a stab at this 'modeling'.


1. I am not a size 0. I'm more a size 10, sometimes a 12 (sometimes an 8 too)
2. I do not believe I'm breathtakingly gorgeous
3. Besides holding up my phone and grinning, I have posed for very few photos.


So, perhaps not the best decision on my part. I started out at ModelMayhem.com. I have a few friends with profiles on the site, who do work from time to time, so I thought it was a safe bet. After carefully selecting the photos from my phone that showed me in my best light, uploading them all, measuring myself, and creating a bio, I waited for my profile to be approved.


24 hours later, I was told I had been denied. Ouch.


Luckily it was an easy fix! The reason for my denial was the low quality of my photos. Understandable, considering cell phone pictures weren't considered studio quality the last time I checked. The issue is, I have very few friends with good cameras, and even less with any skill at taking photos. Narrow it down to the ones in my area, then the ones with free time, and my options were less than skimpy. What's a naive model to do?


Craigslist. Gigs>Creative: TFP(Trade for Print) work


I degraded myself, I know, but I laid out a few ground rules. I would bring an escort to any shoots, and I would only do tasteful shoots. The response was overwhelming. Not all top quality, most definitely, but I found a few great leads. Those few great leads led to some great conversations. Spitballing ideas for shoots, locations, props, the works. And those conversations? Well those led to me scheduling not 1, but 3 photo shoot sessions so far. One of which is paid, another might be in the news soon (part of a great project  the photographer is working on), and the other? Just another experienced person well worth working with.


Now, there is a catch. You have to be open to being creative. Everyone I'm going to work with I feel comfortable trusting. Also, I will be implementing the use of contracts with my photographers. Not because they aren't wonderful trustworthy people, but because it's important to cover yourself. You don't want to end up being left not only with no pay, but with inability to use the photos you took to market yourself. So we'll see how this goes.


I know my writing has petered off here at the end, as far as quality goes. I'm sorry to my (loyal?) readers. I'm still new at this. Anyway, until next musing...


And yes, I will post <some> pictures. Just for you.