It’s here… my new lense.  It arrived last night and I still have not had much time to play with it!   Unfortunately I have to clean the house today for Thanksgiving, incidentally this is my FIRST!, and then I will hopefully get a chance to take some shots.

Anyway, better get my pinny on! Time to clean!

Richard

EDIT:

A pinny..... GOOGLE DEFINITION

This will be my first time celebrating Thanksgiving, and I kinda like the idea.  We will be spending Thanksgiving with the Pugs and Munchkin the cat. Just the two of us - my folks are coming over in Dec (11th) for 3 weeks - so we are going to have a big Xmas Dinner spread then. Its nice, our first Thanksgiving and Xmas in our new home.... Cool.

Richard.

Posted by Richard at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

My new business is all about “raising the bar” in Real Estate Photography and to do this I really needed something special for those interior shots – the wider the angle the better. 

Unfortunately most SLR Digital Cameras, like my Sony A100 and my Dynax 7D have a crop factor of 1.5 and that means that you have to multiply the focal length of any lense by that number.  For example a 17mm Lense becomes 25.5mm which effectively reduces the angle captured.   Luckily Sigma Imaging released a lense for Digital SLRS some months ago and I have been wanting an excuse to buy it for some time now…. the new business has given me that excuse. 

On Thursday last week I ordered the Sigma 10-20mm F/4-5.6 EX DC HSM Zoom Lens from www.Sigma4Less.com.  This basically means I will have a 15mm to 30mm lense.  The possibilities for some great interior shots are endless. It’s due to arrive in the morning and I am getting quite excited! I know, thats rather sad… ;-)

When it arrives I will post some shots of the boys!

Richard

Posted by Richard at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We recently bought a new sofa and loveseat for the house, so we moved the “old” one into my office.  Alfie really loves this sofa and spends most of his time sitting on it watching me work.   Well today I just happened to have my camera on my desk while he was sitting and watching me.  You have to remember that Alfie is nearly 90% blind, so he stares quite often waiting for a blurry figure to move.   I caught this shot of him this afternoon while he was trying to work out where I was.

You gotta love him!

His coat is wonderful at the moment and his breath has improved 100% with his new diet of Nutro, Green Beans and Scrambled Egg!  Yes.  We spoil our boys rotten!

Richard

Posted by Richard at 05:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Robbi spent most of the weekend painting my parents room for their visit at Xmas (yes, I am creative -but not with a paint pot and brushes!) and I have been putting my photoshop skills to use and have come up with the designs for my new ventures business cards.

I must have done about 10 or so variations before coming up with this….

CARD DESIGN (FRONT AND BACK)

The lighthouse is one of my favorite shots that I took down in Kemah a few weeks ago.  I think it may well become the “corporate image” for RIROC IMAGING

No turning back now, I have submitted them to the printer and they will be here in 3–5 days!

The website is next on the list and I really need to start writing some copy down and working on some pricing structures.   Must admit that I have a really good feeling about all this, at last I really do get the chance to do something I really enjoy!

Richard

Posted by Richard at 05:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My posting to the blog has been erratic of late to say the least, and today my thoughts have been all over the place.  So what better place to let it all out than here...

Moving to Texas was not just a change of country for me and the boys, it was also a change of lifestyle and a change of career.   In the UK I was a very successful IT contractor who was never without work knocking at my door.  Giving up life in the UK also meant giving up that comfort.  But I suppose I was also in a lucky position to have that sort of flexibility in my life.

Its been 5 months now since I did any "paid" work in IT, but I have kept my hand in and I still maintain my skills in Microsoft and other products - but I have also been honing my Photography Skills and increasing my understanding with a view to a career change.  It's been difficult making the choice - as I know I can basically walk into a similar IT career in the USA without much difficulty.  But I want out. 

With that in mind I have decided to make a career in Photography - specifically Real Estate.  There are so many options for doing things "different" to the mainstream Real Estate Point and Click mob that I think it would be crazy of me to pass up a chance to do something I really enjoy - taking photos.  And the fact that I can combine my IT skills to provide something unique and different to my clients just makes the whole idea so much more appealing for me.

RiRo Consultants is born, so all I have to do now is get the website finished, wait for the business cards to come from the printers and get out there and sell myself. I see a fun time ahead of me!

Wish me luck.... Please?  It's scary too!

Richard

Posted by Richard at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

As promised....a little late maybe....here is a quickly knocked together video of the boys trip to see FlatNosePups this past weekend.

The file is 6 Megabytes in size, so if your on a slow connection please be patient while it downloads and buffers.

Unfortunatley there are delays in uploads now for Google Video... but as soon as my video is approved and available I will post the link for all you MAC and non Windows Media people.

Richard

Posted by Richard at 04:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Sorry, no video at the moment.   I have been feeling not too well over the past day or so and really not liking sitting in front of a computer.  I think I may have caught the bug from Kara over the weekend as I now have a bad throat and the shakes (not alcohol induced!)

 Hopefully I will get something uploaded today.

Sorry..

Richard

Posted by Richard at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The boys had a trip down to Galveston Beach yesterday to meet with the Kara and Alan of “FlatNosePups” (Kritter and Rascal) and what a great time they had.   I decided to opt for the video camera this time, so at the moment I do not have any photos to show you, but I am currently working on a little video of the event and I hope to have it uploaded this evening!

There are some shots of the boys now online at Kara’s site – http://www.flatnosedpups.blogspot.com/ so please take a trip over and say Hi!

Check back this evening, hopefully I will have kept my promise! ;-)

Richard

Posted by Richard at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

We had planned to take the boys out today, perhaps down to the beach at Galveston… but the weather has warmed up a bit to much for Denny – he is not good with the humidity.   But the weather forecast for the weekend is looking a lot more favorable for the boys…a high of 70 and low humidity are what are being touted, so it looks like we may get them out for their first taste (yuck!) of the Gulf of Mexico!

Might be time to get the video camera out too, I really do have to create a few more videos. My folks in the UK need an update!

I think it will be Sunday if we make the trip, and I will of course take lots of photos.

Richard

Posted by Richard at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When we moved to Texas we had to start afresh with all new appliances and gadgets (apart from my computers of course) – and we opted for a cheap little vacuum cleaner as we have all wood floors and tile in the bottom half of the house and berber carpet upstairs… so a good old fashioned “Hoover” style unit worked great for us. Anyway, the addition of Alfie has also brought a lot of extra fur into the house and he sheds, a lot!

Anyway, last week we decided to jump in and get ourselves a Dyson DC15 Animal (the one that they recommend for pet fur).  It came yesterday afternoon and as we were taking Charlie to his training classes I only managed to get 5 minutes with the unit after assembly – but that five minutes doing about 4 steps on the staircase got me worried…. the canister on the Dyson was filling fast with a mixture of fawn and black Pug hair!   Were we really that unclean?  No time to tell, as Petsmart Beginner Classes were calling.

This morning I was not feeling too great, I had a rough night and really did not feel like messing with cleaning – but the only thing on my mind was the though that the house was dirty… I could not get it out of my head.   So, I popped a couple of Ibruprofen and 3 cups of coffee and set about cleaning the house from top to bottom.

3 hours later and 1 average bin-liner full of fur I can now conclude that we DID live in a dirty, smelly, furry, disgusting and totally unclean house.

But not any more!  We might be living of Ramen Noodles and drinking Dollar General Coke for a month of two, but thanks Mr Dyson…. I knew there was a reason I had a DC04 in the UK!

Richard

Posted by Richard at 04:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We’ve been busy!  Sorry for no updates.  We have lots to tell you all…. lots of photos too.  I have some errands to run today, but will be back in the afternoon to get working on some entries for the boys blog.

Richard

Posted by Richard at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)