Happy Birthday

Today is my wife's birthday. A crisp 10-degree winter day photographing pigeons flying up from the corn stubble in a field near our house. I went over to the refuge to pick up some surplus slide and movie projectors and was told there was a coyote feeding on a deer carcass nearby. I went home, grabbed the camera and the wife, and went out to get some photos, but the coyote had already apparently eaten its fill. Will have to go back tomorrow morning to try and get a shot.

I was lamenting earlier (again) about how a garage-door repairman can charge $55 just to come out and take a look, then charge more once he gets here. People complain, yet accept it as required to get the repair made. But, as a photographer, the potential client insists I undercut myself to make it worthwhile for them to hire me. Here's the difference. When you call a repairman for your garage door, washing machine, plumbing, who else will you get to do it? When you call a photographer and the first one charges too much, there is generally a whole littany of others you can contact to do the work for nothing. And, it's just photographs, right? Anyone with a camera can do it. But, I guess to fix a toilet takes skill.

I don't see many businesses marketing themselves based upon how well their toilets work, but when a toilet goes belly up they're right on it and the plumber is called to do their magic. Nearly every business I know of markets themselves using photographs of their product or service, and often those photographs don't work. Yet, nothing is done to fix it.

We're off to the movies and dinner.