Category Archives: Freelance Work

One Year On — A 2019 Mid-Year Update

It has been a year since we visited Paris, and quite a lot has unfolded in our lives. Yes, we are still in Brittany, France — for now.

We spent two months in Tuscany at the end of 2018 with Mark doing renovation work on a historic villa and me doing photography for the villa’s website and social media accounts. It is a massive and ongoing project and I’ll place links to the site in the next update — a photo essay of the Villa Francini Del Prete.

Reading a book on the elevated terrace of Villa Francini Del Prete in Fazzano, Tuscany.

The front entry door into Villa Francini Del Prete from the left side of the courtyard. Fazzano, Lunigiana, Tuscany, Italy.

Arriving back in France in late November, a stressful period of rioting, blockades, and demonstrations began. This situation continued for many months afterward as the Gilets Jaunes movement caused chaos in cities large and small, highways, and even rural roads. Yes, I understand that French citizens have the right to protest what they see as economic inequity. No, they do not have the right (in my personal opinion) to cause businesses to fail, to smash in the huge glass windows of shopfronts and restaurants, and to set fire to barricades and vehicles.

The road blockages also made it difficult to get to work, go to doctor or dentist appointments, do the weekly shopping, and even attend scheduled appointments at government offices. This has not been a happy experience, and it would seem that we are soon to be dealing with rail strikes and rolling airline and airport strikes in the months ahead. We don’t find any of this social upheaval appealing or thrilling.

Mark has had the additional stress of losing both parents within 10 weeks of each other, on opposite sides of the world. He was especially close to his father and was startled when he received a cancer diagnosis out of thin air. We spent most of February in England, and Mark drove his father back and forth to radiotherapy. The treatment was ineffective and the doctor was incredibly inaccurate when he told us we had quite a lot longer with Brian, Mark’s father. No — we didn’t. He died the week after we returned to France.

Right now we’re in planning mode. We have some adventures in mind, and I’ll share those with you at another time. For now, this was just a quick check in to say that yes, we are still ticking along. And no matter what, we always find things to be grateful for — each and every week.

***NOTE***
After dealing with severe amounts of spam and highjacking attempts, I have turned off all comments on my posts.

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©Deborah Harmes 2007-2019
©A Wanderful Life 2007-2019
Please respect the words and images on this page. All rights strictly reserved.

The Work-Life Balance?

Just saying…

When you feel like jumping the barricades just to make your day-week-month-life a bit more straightforward…

Roadblock sign in France. Deviation. Route Barree.

I won’t downplay how thrilling it is to have so much consistent writing and editing work — and Mark’s renovation work is taking off again now that the weather has improved. But creating a day or two of time off for just-plain-fun can be a challenge for both of us — especially when we’ve spent so many ‘days off’ doing bureaucratic paperwork like getting two vehicles, inspected, altered (headlights changed from UK direction to EU direction and new tyres, too!), and finally registered with French license plates.

We’ve had multiple trips to Vannes for a variety of reasons including our interview for our residency cards (accompanied by a THICK folder of paperwork!) and a return visit to pick up those photo-ID credit-card-sized proofs of French residency. Hooray!

Occasional bits of sightseeing or museum-going, bits and bobs of shopping, and looking at houses for sale (groan!).

Up and down, up and down.

Juggling — happily (most of the time!) juggling…

#work_life_balance
#deadlines
#writing
#editing

Refresh — Regroup — Relaunch

You may have noticed a significant absence of posts for the last three months — and that’s because Mark has been working away like a busy little bee over in the 1400s house. And I’ve been carefully building a base of clients for my writing and editing business.

We took a much-needed weekend escape at the end of February — over to the far western side of Normandy in beachside Brehal. We didn’t do a lot — ate, slept, read, watched movies, and had a few outings in the icy cold weather. But it was a good break and we came back feeling refreshed.

Mark looking out to sea in Brehal, Normandy, France

A moules (mussels) farm at the seaside in Normandy, France.

On an afternoon drive along the seacoast, we stumbled upon this medieval chateau ruin from the 14th Century in Regneville sur Mer and had a quick walk around. It’s a tiny but very pretty village facing the sea.

The corner of a 14th Century chateau ruin in the seaside village of Regneville sur Mer, Normandy, France.

What was meant to be a short hop back over to England for Mark’s parents’ 40th anniversary party ended up being a two week visit instead. It’s always wonderful to visit with them and see all of the other assorted family and friends, but everyone in the house ended up sick as could be with whatever lurghi was hanging around England at the time and I ended up in A&E getting meds for a chest infection when our local GP couldn’t see me. Aarrgghh!

Margaret & Brian Harmes at 40th Anniversary Party

We arrived back in France exactly 4 weeks after our icy cold visit to the seaside in Brehal — and everything here at the farmhouse in Notre Dame de Fresnay had burst into bloom!

View of the Normandy countryside through the bedroom window in Notre Dame de Fresnay.

Daffodils beside the old well.

Down by the duck pond.

We’re preparing to move on from here in three very compressed weeks. But we’re headed to the OTHER large house belonging to the owners of this house — and we’ll be there for 6 weeks whilst Mark does renovation work on it. I’ll send pictures of that project as it progresses.

The REGROUP and RELAUNCH part of the title refers to us regrouping, going over to England for several weeks at the end of June, and trying to decide if we want to settle down or continue to work and travel for awhile longer. That’s a longer stand-alone post about the turbulent social and political factors at play here in Europe right now, so we’ll save that for another time.

I have to be truthful, it’s one of those things that sneaks up on you a bit as you get older — the mental cushion of a home base. And right now our ‘home base’ is a huge storage unit full of our possessions in England — one we refer to far too often when we reach for something and then realise that it’s in the $%^&£@! storage unit!

In the next couple of months, we will be relaunching ourselves away from here. And I have ALSO just relaunched my personal website — but I’ll leave that for a follow-up post.

Back soonish!

Being Brave and Bouncing Back

Global turmoil and sudden economic instability are beginning to feel less like out-of-the-blue events and more like a set of ongoing challenges to deal with in perpetuity.

To look specifically at the UK and realise that the ‘architects of destruction’ — Cameron, Gove, Johnson, and Farage — have ALL resigned in the two weeks since they schemed and plotted to unravel the decades old alliance with Europe — who could have even imagined such a thing? No matter who ends up inheriting the reins of power as the successors to BREXIT, they will need to have carefully considered solutions ready to implement without delay.

Enough of politics for now…

After our ‘body-blow and mental angst’ reaction to BREXIT — my husband Mark thought he was prepared to just summon up a stiff upper lip and stay in Australia even if it wasn’t our first choice. But then, after two or three days of feeling shell-shocked by that decision, he told me that he hadn’t realised how badly he was going to feel if Europe was totally off the table as an option. That was an interesting admission from the sort of man who usually just gets on with things without whinging. I’m going to be honest — we were both wandering around in a fog and deeply depressed.

We’ve had a variety of ups and downs and rapid changes in our 22 and 1/2 years together, so it isn’t surprising that we were able to brush ourselves off, infuse ourselves with some bravery, and bounce back. It is clear now that whether or not BREXIT is ever actually enacted — there are going to be several years of transition. And during that transition period, we still have a chance to get back to Europe, get back ‘in the system’ in one country or another, and sink our roots into a part of the world that brings us joy.

I called our previously chosen real estate agent, he came over on Tuesday night and we signed our listing papers, and on Wednesday he brought the staff of his office through on a brief tour so that they knew what the house looked like and what the pertinent features were.

In the weeks ahead, I plan to keep you apprised of our progress as we hopefully sell quickly because the market is simply plummeting right now. Brexit didn’t just knock the stuffings out of the financial markets in the UK — it bounced half way around the world and punched us in the gut, too. The value of our tiny pensions have dipped, the banks are suddenly tightening up the money supply, and according to our real estate agent — the values of houses here in our town are a stunning 16% lower than they were a mere six months ago. The time to go is now — not a few years from now.

Wish us luck — seriously! Good vibes add to the energy of success and we need to summon up as much of that as possible. And where are we heading? First stop — back to our beloved France!

Watching the Tour de France on television in Australia.

And perhaps Mark will be watching the Tour de France LIVE again next year instead of on television. He would love that.

Allons-y!

Copyright ©Deborah Harmes and ©A Wanderful Life
Please respect the words and images on this page.
All rights reserved.

Rediscovered Treasure

It happens that way sometimes. You open up an image file (or set of files in my case!) and discover that you have somehow managed to not ever get around to editing it! We were travelling so much from the years 2010 through half of 2013 that it was bound to happen. But it’s fun to discover new things to upload to my NEW SITE (link coming soon) that I am setting up right now. 150 images up so far and hundreds more to go!

By the way, if you notice that the watermark on the photo is larger again, that’s because someone tried to use one of my pictures for their website without paying for it and frankly, I am not putting up with that nonsense! (cough-cough-SCUMBAGS!) Please do note that all of my work is STRICTLY copyrighted.

Until the next time — enjoy this shot from Portsmouth’s historic docks in England.

Nothing like a challenge — or TEN!

You know I’ve given myself a challenge with the novel writing deadlines — but now I am adding to that.

There has been a “Coming Soon” over in the right side column where it says PHOTOS TO PURCHASE for the last couple of years? In the spirit of better late than never, I am putting up an online store that will go live in a couple of weeks. You’ll be able to purchase everything from prints of your favourite pictures or canvas wraps that are ready to hang on the wall, mugs, t-shirts, aprons, and lots more. And since I am outsourcing all of this, you can use your credit card on that site and I won’t have the stress-wrangling of dealing with a shopping cart installation on this site. Whew!

The new photo site will have images broken down into galleries from each of the 12 countries we’ve travelled to over the last 5 years, so it will be easy to work your way through the premium images from all of the tens of thousands that I have shot. Not everything will be on the new photo site — just the best artistic or stock-type images. But if you have a particular image from a past story that is not included, just drop me an email and I will create a custom link for you.

I continue to find funny images like this one below that I never got around to editing. So look forward to the new launch quite soon!

Jack wants some lunch, too!

Sad, Bad Changes To ‘The Good Old Days’ of Photography

Once upon a time in the land of photography and photojournalism, there were these amazing things called JOBS and proper PAYCHECKS for people who had a trained eye and a degree in the arts or journalism. Those are practically non-existent in media now unless you are a fresh-faced intern straight out of university and willing to work for slave wages or you are in a specialty category such a sports.

Is there still a market for glorious human interest photos or breaking news shots? Not unless the digital or print news publishers can get them for free or practically free!

Several years ago, when we were still living in the small Central Victorian town of Clunes, an hour and a half north of Melbourne, I had a very informative afternoon coffee break with a charming man who had been an award winning photographer for The Age — Melbourne’s big daily newspaper. We laughed and talked about ‘the good old days’ when you’d get your assignment, do the shoot, and then even do the darkroom work on occasion.

All of that is gone now as the newspapers around the world have phased out full time photojournalists and frequently rely on everyday people who take shots with their camera phones and upload them (for free!) to a newspaper so that they can say, “Wow! I’ve been published!” Newspaper publishers also use stock photo agencies who have stringers, freelance photographers, who send them images from around the world each day which get sold on to daily newspapers for mere pennies.

Finishing our coffee and our commiserations about the state of the industry, we both agreed that the ever-improving digital cameras that were sold to every Tom, Dick, and Harriette had been the death of a huge segment of the photographic industry since everyone fancied that they were able to shoot equally as well as the pros. In some cases they were correct since some of the more expensive Nikon and Canon cameras were practically goof-proof for things like scenic shots. And scenic shots still sell well, but cheaply, to stock agencies for calendars and greeting cards.

There are still large companies who pay a professional photographer to come shoot their annual report images and yes, wedding photographers are still out there fighting for every dollar. But even wedding photographers have been eliminated at times by a family friend with a decent camera and the lack of expertise and inspiration truly does show in the final results.

As my loyal readers know, we’ve recently returned to Australia from living in Europe for several years and I have profiled weekend markets in quite a few countries. These weekend markets are always awash with simply beautiful photos, lovingly matted and placed in clear plastic protectors, stacked in a display area or perched on small easels. And those photography booths are walked by again and again as you hear the passers-by saying, “Well I could take that same image with my camera. Why should I pay for that?” Back when we all worked with film and we printed our work in the darkroom on various types of specialty papers, fine art photography seemed to be regarded as more interesting and valuable than today’s digital products.

Along came another death knell in the form of microstock agencies who sold images uploaded by the Tom, Dick, and Harriette brigade for those previously mentioned pennies per image. And here’s an example of how deadly that was to professional photographers. If I had a premium image at a premium agency that was listed for several hundred dollars for one time use with copyright restrictions and a microstock agency had Harriette’s similar-yet-not-perfect image for sale for lifetime use for a $3.00 download, just GUESS which one an advertising agency would pick? Right you are! Harriette’s image gets chosen more and more often in this day of cheap-cheap-cheap or free-free-free.

I’ve been registered with several agencies for several years and up until recently, I was making a decent side income from that. Unfortunately, the state of the industry now is in such shambles that even formerly reputable agencies are selling off images in ‘package deals’ to their larger clients and leaving the poor (and getting poorer every day!) photographer with a handful of dollars for a hell of a lot of work! For that reason, I have de-registered with all but two agencies and both of them are in the UK. They are still full service agencies that sell images for premium prices. But I’m not holding my breath about the revenue stream from them since they too are in crisis as more and more of their work slides away to the cheapened ethic of using $3.00 microstock downloads.

Somewhere on my List Of Things To Do will be creating an online database of images so that I can sell my OWN stock images at a fair and reasonable price — not a giveaway price. And I guess I’ll have to go back to actually pitching story and photo packages directly to publications. What a pain in the patoot!

However, the bottom line is that we do no credit to ourselves as self-employed artists if we allow our work to be so devalued by the big commercial agencies who toss a few pennies our way and then rake in the profits for themselves. And it certainly doesn’t help when behemoth media corporations continue to put their smaller scale competition out of business altogether by buying them out and then systematically lowering the commissions to photographers.

Our costs of running a business go up each year — not down. And I’ve been reading some of the professional members on one of my LinkedIn groups who have, after 30 years on average in the industry, actually given up trying to make a living from photography altogether. We’re all in a state of mourning for the way we used to work and the income that we formerly could depend on. And truly, isn’t it a sad state of affairs when iPhone pictures sent to the Internet via Instagram are now considered to be professional. (sigh!)

I’m a Lady Dinosaur and I’ll admit it. But gads, my dears, I do miss the ‘good old days’ when art and creativity and a level of craft were actually things that were valued and respected.

Ah well — end of rant…