Monday, April 28, 2008

Dating

Had my first date last Friday. We went to a movie and then to a restaurant for appetizers afterwards. It was a pleasant surprise to say the least.

I don't know what I was really expecting as I start my life over, but I have to admit that I had a really good time and I hope I can duplicate it again this week with another girl.

-Gary

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Grad Formals

I shot my second grad formal sitting today. The girl had a beautiful dress that must have cost a fortune. I haven't looked at the converted files yet, but I'm sure that I got a lot of very nice photos.

Graduation is my favourite time of year. The girls all look so good in their dresses, they are almost all excited to be their for their photos and they are almost always happy with how the pictures turn out.

Those three things make the job so much more fun. That and this is the beginning of the most creatively free time of the year. During the school shooting and to a lesser extent we have most of the poses pretty well planned and everything is choreographed to be as efficient as possible.

With grad, there is no real plan from person to person, each person gets an individual session. Within the limits of the photographer's style of course. I'm really happy that the formals are starting.

-Gary

Sunday, April 13, 2008

The Big News A Little Early

I promised some big news on Monday, but I guess I'll give it a little early.

The divorce is final today.

I guess I sort of thought of this whole thing as a place to share my feelings. It isn't. Not today anyway.

This will be the final post on the matter.

-Gary

Friday, April 11, 2008

Home Again

I guess I've needed a couple of weeks to relax after my vacation. I'm a big fan of taking a little while to chill.

That being said I do have a few things to write about.

On the way home from Bs.As. the plane waited patiently for it's turn to take off for over 20 minutes. Then there was a storm over the amazon river that we had to go around, not to mention the head winds. Which meant that at the exact time we landed in Chicago, my flight to Dallas was taking off. Which was fine. The lady at the desk was very helpful and suggested that I take a flight to Huston then back to Calgary.

Good. I always liked Huston. But as we all know there are lots of problems in Huston. Not the least of which was that the airline that the lady in Chicago had booked my flight to Calgary on, wouldn't honour my ticket. They said I could go standby, but that if I didn't make it on, I wouldn't have time to go make it back for my plan B.

So I went back to the original airline told them the story and they put me on a flight to Dallas and a later flight to Calgary. I got to Calgary 12 hours later than I expected. But at least I got to go to Huston.

At Calgary I hopped a cab to the greyhound station and bought a ticket to Medicine Hat. Did you know that there is a bus from Calgary to Medicine Hat at 1:00am on Saturday night? I slept the entire way. I had my headphones on and when the bus driver shouted to the people on the bus that, "We're in Medicine Hat, and would Gary Milner please get off, I know you're here I did a head count and we have one extra person and your luggage is here." I didn't hear him. He started waking people up, luckily I was in the second seat from the front. I don't think I have ever been in such a daze in my entire life. I was completely powerless to resist.

A few minutes of the cold Canadian air woke me right up. I called a cab and got a ride home. It was really great to be back in my own bed.

Now I have been working for two weeks and we are done taking all the grad photos, except for a few stragglers. Anyone who comes now is going to have a hard time getting into the yearbook, we already sent the photos to the schools.

On of our photo editors has moved on to another job, editing video now, so I have been recruited to do some of the pre-editing. I like it well enough, in fact it is very nice when there isn't a lot to do in the studio side of things. It helps us photographers be busy and keeps us out of our assistant's hair so she can keep busy putting the packages together and helping customers.

Work is going really well. I'm really happy to be back in the studio taking photos again.

Come back Monday for some big news.

-Gary