Laura and Xanthos have a special relationship. Being a young horse, he is akin to a toddler testing the limits and seeing what Mom will allow. This creates a constant give and take both on the ground and in the saddle. It's been fun to watch them grow together and learn to bring out the best in each other.

In the end, I narrowed it down to 6 photographs. This wasn't easy as there were so many great ones. But I think these tell the story the best.

While I was shooting, we talked about the profession - how she got into it, where was she trained, etc. By the time I left I was wishing I'd thought to go into that field. It was all very interesting and I swear I could see the change in the muscles as she worked on them.

Most of my shooting was Linda at work, but I also grabbed a few of another horse, Ivanhoe, while he was getting ready for a ride.

Favorites from the day:

Working out the kinks

Ivanhoe at 23:

It was a wonderful day.

I know it's there somewhere. It's just been buried for so long while I was busy raising kids and running them around to school events, swimming, and jobs, that it's been a little difficult to find it again. Sort of like looking for a paper clip in the junk drawer. Or a long lost riding crop in a messy garage - yes, I was looking for that recently - I concluded that I must have given it away. Hopefully I haven't given away my photographic vision.

Currently, while keeping my days full with Real Estate photography - which I love - I am also trying to spend some free time rediscovering my love of photographing equines. I am trying to zero in on two passions, while at the same time totally LOVING what I am doing. I can't think of anything better than spending a day at the barn, surrounded by horses, with a camera in hand. Unless I'm riding.

The first day of this project was cold and rainy. A day that would normally find me inside, huddled under a blanket watching old movies. But now I have a quest! A reason to venture outside! So, camera in hand, I headed out. With no idea of what I wanted to capture in my mind at all. Seriously. Nothing.

After arriving and informing some friends of my new project, they were all agreeable to allowing me to shoot away. First hurdle behind me, I started taking pictures. Again - with no idea of anything specific in mind. It was like writers block!

But I did find that the more I shot, the more I started to envision something I'd like to capture. Concentrating on close-ups seemed to be the way I was headed. OK, I thought, go with it. Barns are not known for being light and bright, and the weather outside was frightful, so I started to listen to my inner voice and shoot. I wanted to use natural light and learn how to deal with it instinctually. 

I didn't shoot a lot that day, but enough to learn that this will be a long-term project. I am too used to someone telling me what to do. I need to assert myself and think for myself. Which is hard for me.

Here is the favorite from that day. More to come as I venture out and try new things.

The lake was brimming with wildlife as well. If the golfers hadn't been there, I'd have snapped on my zoom and taken heron and turtle pictures all day long. 

I can think of worse ways to spend the day.

I've had an idea of what I wanted for a logo. Something I've been playing with for years, actually. Sort of like practicing your autograph for when you become rich and famous - "No, no, too easy to read and takes too long; needs to be quicker and messier." Anyway, I fired up Photoshop and started doodling with my new (and way cool) tablet pen. The tablet pen allows you to draw with a pen, rather than trying to draw with a mouse. And since I blame my ultra amazing trackball mouse for my carpal tunnel symptoms, I had to try something new. I love the tablet. Especially when editing photos. I can use more of a brushing technique with a finer control while emphasizing or muting specific areas of a photo. I highly recommend it.

But back to the logo. I came up with a logo that I liked fairly quickly, so I set about saving it in different forms for different purposes. I hadn't gotten too far when I accidentally THOUGHT I saved the original (large) psd file as it was. Then promptly changed the size to very small. And closed it. Thereby losing the original. Sigh.

But now I get to start all over again! Maybe, just maybe, fate was trying to tell me something. Maybe this one will be better than the first one.

It could happen.

Update - I was successful! I present the official logo for LAWelles.com -

I've had another site for a while, where I promote my web design skills as well as my photos, but the time has come to have a photo specific site and I think I've found it. It's been fun learning about the different features and I might not even wait until the end of my free trial to sign up for a year.

I've chosen this photo to represent my "jumping in" to a new adventure. Tally ho!

(Checking this post on the site shows that the vertical photo has been cropped horizontally. So my next challenge is to see if I can adjust that.)

It's time to announce that the website I was working on - TotalMedicalCompliance - has finally gone live! The owners report that they are getting traffic and inquiries daily and so far, all is working well and it is a rousing success.

This site involved several new areas for me - I'd never worked on a web store before. I'd never dealt with different user groups and limiting access to pages. I had to learn about OSHA laws, HIPAA laws, and all that is involved with keeping a medical or dental practice current on complying with the various rules and regulations that apply to them (trust me - it's a lot - it's a wonder an office has time to see patients, let alone keep up with records and paperwork).

I was able to fit site work in with the photography shoots, so it all worked out well timewise. I'd finish up with one job that I loved for the day and start on the other job that I loved! How cool is that?

When I joined the team, they'd had the site for almost a year, but needed help implementing their ideas and polishing it for going live. I was able to assist them in realizing their ideas for the site and finding solutions to issues with different users having access to specific areas or documents within the site.

And now it's springtime and cicadas are hatching (making it sound as if we're being invaded by a horde of low-budget 1950's SciFi UFO sound effects) and the weather is spectacular. Flowers are blooming, trees are flowering, school will be out soon, and dinners on the deck are the norm.

Life is good.

The oops part came when I first logged in - I've had a profile for a while now, just never did anything with it. Of course it reflected old information, including my place of employment. After logging in, it led me through sending emails to all contacts in my gmail account. Click happy person that I am, I gave permission (along with my password :O ) and instantly emails went to everyone in my gmail address book asking them to connect with Lynn Welles, Marketing Assistant with Prudential Carolinas Realty. And several people on the list were in the office I used to work in. Hmmmmm. I wonder if everyone did a double take and wondered what was going on.

No worries - my information is now up to date and correct. If you are reading this and received a recent invite from me  and wondered what the heck was going on, now you know.

And that's the rest of the story.

A few weeks ago, I purchased an iPad. Reasons were many, not the least of which was that it would help me with looking at photos on site, and the monthly internet access turns out to be much less than I was paying for the Crackberry. The Crackberry was costing $30/month. The iPad is $14/month for up to 250MB. If you get close to your alloted amount, the clever little iPad sends you a message asking you if you'd like to upgrade to the next level (2GB) for $24.95. So far, it's been 2.5 weeks, and I'm not going to get close to 250MB. But even if I do, I still come out paying less in the end.

I hated using my Crackberry browser. It's main function was to get email all day long. And when a photography order came through, I was unable to get to the site that has the order information (browser incompatibility of course). So it was only a glorified email alert system. The iPad that I bought has the 3G access. I started it up when I first needed it, and can cancel at any time. I have wireless at home, so it's not using up MB downloads while I'm at home, or at any other wireless location. Not bad. And there are tons of cool apps!

I decommissioned my Blackberry and activated my old phone. So far I'm thrilled with everything. I can not only pick up email all day long, wherever I may be, I can see my orders and contact agents while on the go.

Now for the name issue. Similar to turning on a new computer for the first time, you are asked to name your device. Are we ever prepared for this step? Don't we all want to come up with a cool, clever name for our new baby, even though nobody will ever know that we were so creative? No, we are never prepared. At the same time, we are too anxious to get the device up and running, so we use whatever pops into our head, and go with that. Well, when I started up the iPad (in the Apple Store, no less!), it asked me to name it, and for reasons beyond my comprehension, I named it lawelles.com. Oh, aren't I clever?

Um, no. Not clever and, as it turns out, not smart.

Recently I was unable to connect to this site. What could be the problem? It had been a while since I'd tried to log on, so I wasn't sure when it happened, but none of my browsers on my laptop could find it. Neither could the iMac find the site. Hmmmm. I called GoDaddy, who hosts the site (who are so very helpful any time that I have a question, by the way). They checked things out internally and all was well. He ran to the other side of the building and checked out other servers - external, local, even international! All was well on his end. He suggested I reboot my modem. OK, I said. I can do that. Thank you very much.

However, instead of simply unplugging my modem and then plugging it back in, I go to the modem website where I see an option to 'reset modem'. Cool! I'll just do that. Several dire warnings came up, imploring me to rethink my decision - your modem will be reset to factory defaults! Are you sure?! Oh yeah, I'm sure. I am so sure. Just do it.

Oops. Now I was unable to get on the internet on ANY of our myriad of computer-like devices. Guess I should have reconsidered that reset option.

I contacted our internet provider (also very nice and very helpful, by the way) who walked me through setting the modem up and getting things running smoothly once again. I checked and found my website (yea!), and I was happy.

But what's this? Today I can no longer get to the site! How can that be? At least I know to NOT reset the modem this time. I spend most of the morning thinking about it, trying to get to the bottom of the puzzle. In the end, I remembered that my iPad was named lawelles.com, and that the modem saw it as such. I wonder, I thought to myself, if the iPad name was somehow affecting access to the website? Crazy as that sounds - it was affecting things. I changed the iPad name to something normal, and everything was fine.

So - never name your computers/iPads/smart phones/netbooks after a website. That is, not if you ever hope to access that site.

Have we become such a wired generation that we feel lost without technology? How much are we spending on conveniences that were non-existent a generation ago? Let's see, we have (lightning flashing - I really should shut down):

• cell phones - most run $70-$100/month with internet access
• internet access for your home based computer - $20-$40/month
• digital/satellite TV - $80-$150/month
• Sirius radio - no idea how much this is as I can't believe that anyone really pays for radio - maybe $35/month?
• OnStar - $150/year I think

And on and on. I've missed a lot, I'm sure. The ironic thing is that in the background, I'm listening to music on my laptop and currently a vintage Pete Seeger album is playing. It's one that I remember from growing up, when you had to put a vinyl album on to a record player and you had a giant album cover to look at and read while the music played. It brings me back to earth when I feel as if I'm getting too caught up in the digital gadgets.

I admit I've been a little slack on maintaining this site. In fact, with my photography keeping me so busy, I've pretty much ignored it completely. But I do check in every so often, and noticed that two of my plugins had a new version, and that WP 3.0 was out (and of course, it was recommended that I upgrade NOW!). My first inclination was to ignore the upgrade - I didn't have the desire nor the time to deal with anything 'breaking'. I have games to play! Freecell to win! Facebook to update!

But then, without my knowledge, my mouse just clicked on 'upgrade automatically'. I don't know how it happened, I swear. One second I was procrastinating, the next I was in upgrade mode. With a dire warning at the top of the page: Be sure to backup your files before upgrading!! Oops. I kind of skipped over that step. Which I don't recommend. Do as I say, not as I do!

All appears to be well - I was lucky. I have some issues with the photo pages, but thanks to my diligent notes I can fix that.

Just not right now.

Seriously - who's reading this besides me?

It can wait.

The first home I lived in until I was around age 4 or so. I have some dim memories of a tiny ranch home, sharing bunk beds with my sister, getting my finger caught in a mouse trap (who wouldn't go for the cheese right there on the floor?), a kitchen fire (blaze, in my memory, but a mere burnt roast according to my Mom), and not much more.

The family moved about a mile away to a larger home, where we all grew up, and my parents still live today. I consider myself so lucky have the chance to return occasionally and visit. When I go back to that house, I can sit quietly in a room and run through seemingly thousands of memories that play through my head like a B movie that was directed by someone with a severe case of ADD. I smile to myself and remember so much - the good, the bad, the embarrassing. Friends and family who came to visit, dinner parties hosted by my parents (with loud singing keeping me up all night), Holiday picnics, deciding what color to paint the house every few years, dogs that we owned, childhood friends and boyfriend drama all swim through my mind in a blended mess of memories. Ahhh - good times.

My next home was an apartment after I was married - 600 miles away from "home". Living so far away forced us to rely on ourselves and newfound friends. It was a good thing, no calling Mom or Dad to borrow a shovel, or fix the pipes. We were on our own and loving it. We adapted to a new life, a new part of the country, and learned a lot about ourselves.

But we needed to be near a larger city so we bought our first home about 20 minutes away. A ranch, with 3 bedrooms and a big yard for kids and dogs. That is the home where our kids enjoyed their early years, with plenty of neighborhood kids to play with and the elementary school close by. I discovered that I didn't like yard work as much as I thought I might, we found out a wet bar wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and snakes scared the crap out of me more times than I care to admit (including one in the house - NOT cool!). We had awesome neighbors who patched our roof when Hurricane Hugo roared through and we were out of town. We all played volleyball in the neighbor's yard almost every weekend, had neighborhood pig roasts, watched each other's children start school and almost started a house fire with fireworks. Yeah, we had fun.

But that house grew too small for 2 adults, 3 kids, 2 dogs and 1 cat. We sold it and moved to our present home, where everyone has their own room, and there's a great space we like to call the bonus room that is perfect for storing all of our junk that we can't part with despite the fact that we don't even remember what all is there. The yard is big enough for kids and dogs (and one homicidal cat who has a tendency to sever the heads of bunnies clean off, but who is now banned from going outside, so the yard is full of bunnies once again), the yard is also fenced so our dogs can run and play with said bunnies and each other, the kitchen is large enough for the entire family to hang out, laugh, and share memories of good times we've had.

I now realize that I didn't leave "home" way back when I was married. I am home now. Creating the very same feeling for my kids as my parents did for me. Though two have left for college, and the last will leave next year, they will always return to the place that fills them with love and that indescribable feeling that can only be called home.

Thanks Eden - that was fun and well worth the wonderful memories!

Well things are going very well. Tour Factory has taken off - I never expected to be this busy this quickly. Clients are happy with my work, and I LOVE going to shoots! The biggest problem is that most times when I'm searching for the address, I have nothing to go by. The agent hasn't always put a sign out at that point, and not all homes have a visible number. Two times in the same day I wasn't sure I was at the right home - at one I stopped at the end of the driveway (it wasn't on a street that was amenable to parking), got out and asked the approaching owner, "Is this 9999?" (Hoping to the heavens above that it was and that he wasn't some crazy, wigged out, No Trespassing kind of guy!)

But all in all, it's a blast. I love shooting a home and seeing how awesome it can look in photos. I love being outside in this beautiful weather. I don't even mind the driving. I'm sleeping better than I have in a long time - less stress, I guess. I'm also waking up at 7am ready to go - HIGHLY unusual for me!

So maybe this was meant to be my path all along. Strange how life sends you on all sorts of wayward paths to get where you are going. As they say - it's not the destination, but the journey (or something like that, anyway). I can say I'm enjoying the hell out of my journey.

Check out my recent work with Tour Factory if you like. If you're thinking of putting your home on the market - ask your agent to consider using Tour Factory for a virtual tour and then ask for me as a photographer. You won't be disappointed!

Tour Factory

Even though I've been shooting homes for years, doing shoots for Tour Factory is a bit of a different animal. Whereas before I was only working for one agent, whose preferences were well known to me, now I'm working with a different agent each time, trying to work a shoot into their schedule, with their preferences. No longer do I only have to think about my schedule when scheduling a shoot - now I have to think about the other agent, their schedule, their sellers and their schedule. It can get a little crazy if I think about it too much.

I'm going to ease back on the website for a bit now that it's at least presentable. I have lists everywhere that need consolidating and I have to come up with a better way to organize my desk area or I'll go stark raving mad.

I played with my new camera a little yesterday, checking out some different settings and features. Going to experiment with some HDR shots, which call for bracketing (something I've always known about, but never bothered to completely figure out). It also requires a decent tripod, so time to upgrade!

Two steps back.

I thought I'd gotten the photo galleries to display the way I wanted, but I forgot to check the site out on my ancient Windows laptop. Aarrgh! I'm trying to get 3 different plug-ins to work together. So I have to play with the myriad of settings in each plug-in to see what combination is going to mesh nicely and produce the look that I envision. It's sort of like a Rubik's Cube (which I HATED then and still hate now - must be a left brain, right brain thing because I have NO desire whatsoever to figure that out).

So I trudge on, reveling in the small victories, and slogging through the muck and mire that taxes my foggy brain and slows me down.

On another note, it's another beautiful spring day here, with Carolina blue skies and perfect temps. Think I'll ditch the site work and take a walk with the dog.

So, I've been fighting with my site's theme for several weeks now. I guess you get what you pay for ($0 - what did I expect?). The theme (which is the 'look' and 'feel' of the site) is designed to be a photo blog. To showcase photography. But . . . the designer would rather not say which photo gallery plug-in works best with the theme. I was left to my own devices to find one that works. Many hours and much eye-rolling produced nothing more than, "That question was already answered."

Well, thanks so much for your help. Look - if you don't want to provide the help and support for a theme, keep it to yourself. I remember several years ago finding software that was the perfect solution for an organization that I was working with. The designer of that software didn't want to sell it to us (he had only designed it for his wife's local organization to use) because he didn't want to have to provide the support that would be implied. He knew that once he sold the software to one group, others would also want it, and so on, and so on. He made a good point. (In the end, he did sell it to us, as well as others, sucked it up, kept up the development end, and made quite a few organizations very happy. No word on how the support end went...)

So I've been reading, researching, reading some more and checking the forums every so often to see if my questions have been answered. They haven't been. I've tweaked settings, played with the CSS, tried to diagnose with Firefox Firebug (LOVE that little app!) and prayed to the dark overlords of the internet. Nyet. Nada. Nothing.

I think I've found a workable solution. Hopefully now all I have to do is choose the photos I would like to publish, get them edited and resized, and then pop them onto the site. I think.

In the meantime, I am officially a photographer with Tour Factory virtual tours! I'm looking forward to shooting homes for sale and showing them in the best light possible. Nothing is more rewarding than having a client tell you how wonderful you made their home look. With the beautiful weather and picture perfect Carolina blue skies we have here, it's wonderful to have such an opportunity.

Enjoy the Spring after such a harsh winter!

Wow. What a high! What does it say about someone when figuring out ftp makes them dance across the floor while giggling madly? Is that really me? Does site work really, really make me that happy? Sadly, yes.

GoDaddy was a huge help, of course (still my hero!). I was using their ftp to change some files on the site - which was a feat in and of itself - and after initial success with that yesterday (no dancing, but most definitely some giggling), today was unsuccesful. Undaunted, I decided to see if I could figure out Filezilla to finish my updates. As if by magic, when GoDaddy's ftp client had trouble connecting, they provided me with all I needed to know in order for Filezilla to work. Karma baby! I filled in the blanks, transferred files, and danced my way across the floor! What a feeling!

Lesson: don't be afraid of the alphabits. I would suggest not trying to conquer them all at the same time, but really, they don't bite.

GoDaddy saved the day! After squirming and making faces while desperately trying to figure out MySQL, FTP and the alphabits, I gave up. Admitted defeat. Decided to sleep on it and see what today might bring.

Today brought an email from GoDaddy that said someone (me!) had changed some settings for my domain. Oops. Fortunately, the wonderful GoDaddy support team included a handy dandy phone number should I have any questions. Whoa! Did I!

After just a short wait, a wonderfully patient rep was on the line with me (whose name I forgot to write down - I hate it when I forget to do that - especially when they are uber-helpful!). I explained the mess I'd gotten myself into ("I knowthere are people more stupid than me who've done this! It can't be that hard!"), and within minutes he had me not correct the change I'd made, but walked me through installing Wordpress! Yippee! He was so helpful and nice. I completed the followup survey and gave him nothing but the best marks. Who doesn't love good customer service/tech support?

The next email, which arrived not 10 minutes later, was notification that the site was ready. Whoohoo! Turn me loose - I am now live and dangerous. This old dog just learned a new trick.

Sigh. From the top of the mountain with energy to burn and excitement about creating my own website to crashing headlong into reality and discovering that I'm finally going to have to learn about those silly little things called FTP, PHP, MySQL (hereafter referred to as 'alphabits') and other equally scary acronyms. Oh - and I happened to be listening to The Heat Is On (Glen Frey) as I attempted to summon the courage to focus on reading about them. It's not working. I can procrastinate with the best of them. Made sense to write a post about my attempt to gain knowledge about alphabits, eh?

I was all set to run to the library to find some books about said alphabits. Then I remembered that I already had a book about Wordpress blogs - eureka! That very same book covers everything I need to know (but had skipped over the first time I read it because I had someone else taking care of the alphabits) and then some. I love it when I save myself extra work.

Now to read, digest (the hard part), and spend some time looking into Wordpress.org, which, apparently is where I want to be - not Wordpress.com. So says the author and who am I to argue? He knows his alphabits and I don't. At least not yet.

The Heat Is On!

If you'd said to me 15 years ago that some day I'd have a computer sitting on my lap while listening to music on a device smaller than a cassette tape and designing something called a 'web page' that might even include editing code and adding 'plug-ins', I'd most likely have looked at you like a confused dog, head cocked to the side, one eye squinted tight, thinking, "You are making no sense whatsoever. Let's get you an appointment with the men in the white coats."

But here I am. I really do have a computer on my lap, I can hear all of my favorite music in an instant on my iPod, and I'm feverishly trying to dredge up all of my creative mojo to get this site up and running before the end of 2010 (Does anyone else have trouble typing that year? For some reason I always end up with 1020 and have to redo it), it's snowing outside, the dog is curled up on the ottoman, and I'm doing an excellent job of procrastinating.

I'd like to make this work. I'm motivated partly by the desire to do something I enjoy so much, and partly by my new phone, which is a Blackberry and now costs an extra $30/month for internet access - a first for me. How much sense does that make - leave your job and immediately invest in something that adds to the monthly bills and sucks your life away at the same time. Who am I kidding?

So - by putting it all out there, I am now obligated to find a way to generate some income. I have no choice because I do not like to fail. I might even give myself a deadline. But not yet. That's a little too scary right now. Let's first see if I can finish the site and start making some connections for business. It's time. Lock and load. I feel the need for speed. Jump on and hang on for the ride of your life. It's going to be a doozy!