This morning i got a flattering, but surprising and somewhat stress-inducing email in my inbox.

A friend of my dads has asked if I'd be willing/interested in being the photographer of her friends wedding, being paid for it. o_O

Part of me thinks "Sweet, that'll be a fun challenge, and a good way to make a few extra bucks."

But a big part of me also thinks "Shit, I aint no wedding photographer, and that's a lot of pressure!"

I actually find that "people shots", especially posed, are one of my biggest difficulties with photography. But, she saw the photos I took at my dad's wedding (my uncle and I were the photographers there) and really liked them.

So, I'm considering doing it... but have asked for some more details, and clarification that they understand I'm simply a hobby photographer, and that's what they want... and we would need to have an agreement that recognizes as much, and that I can't be held liable if the results don't meet their expectations. Because again, I aint no wedding photographer! I think it's a difficult task, and I can pretty much guarantee that I would miss at least SOME crucial shots.

Even just looking at my equipment... I've only got the one camera body, so if I had to change lenses, that would be a bit of fumbling. And if my camera decided to crap out for some reason, we'd be screwed! lol And my flash is an older flash that is a bit under-powered as well... so I'd be a bit nervous if the ceremony is in a dark, gloomy, large indoor area.

If I did it, I wouldn't charge a lot... I have the idea of around $250 bouncing around in my head. I'd have basically zero expenses, other than getting to and from the event, and the cost of a CD to provide the images on, so it'd basically be, I'm thinking, a few hours of photography, a couple hours travel, and 5+ hours of editing... and if I figure to be paid ~ $20 hour for my time, then somewhere around the $250 mark sounds reasonable to me (and is a fifth of what the low-end professional packages around here would cost them).

So, anyhoo, I'm waiting on some answers to some questions I asked, looking for some clarification and details (she didn't even say when the wedding is).

Interesting, anyways, and if nothing else, was a boost to my ego. =)

Say Cheese!!

Some of you may remember back to my ranting about the Crazy Daycare Lady who proved unreliable, so we backed out of our contract, losing some money in the deal... only to have the Crazy Lady commit cheque fraud against us afterwards.

We were still owed our deposit back from her, due at the end of October, and we assumed we'd never see a dime.

Well, we were surprised to receive the cheque from her near the end of October, post-dated til Oct 29... which was fine, as it wasn't technically owed to us until Oct 31.

So, Oct 29 comes along and we deposit the cheque. yay!

Fast forward 3 days later, and we find out that Crazy Daycare Lady went ahead and, after giving us the cheque, stopped payment on the same cheque. o_O

WTF.

So, Lisa caller her and she claimed she didn't know why that happened, it was an accident, she must have stopped the wrong cheque... ya right... how the hell do you "accidently" stop the wrong cheque?

Not to mention, she pulled the EXACT same thing on a friend of ours who also ran into trouble with this same woman.

So, Crazy Daycare Lady said she'd look into it and call us back the next day, which she did, crying the blues that she has no money, that she has no job, that she had to shut down her daycare... to which we are thinking "YAY!!!"... we feel good that we likely played a large role in her shutting down.

Anyway, Lisa cut her off, and told her we didn't care about her situation, we just care about getting our money back (Go Lisa!!)... so... at this point, we are collecting $50 a month from the freak, "until she finds a job".

Which, to my mindset means we'll be lucky if we get $100 from her before she skips town or some such thing, LOL.

But, we did already get $50 from her... so only about 17 months to go until she pays us back in full. Haha! Right!

At this point Lisa and I are both resigned to the fact we may never see all of that money, and we don't have the means to fight her in small claims court, it wouldn't be worth it. So anything we get from her will be a bonus.

So... having gone through all that frustration last week... it's nice to be able to think about the truly *good* things in life, and today my little family headed down to the local park to get a few photos for the album, and to include with our annual Christmas letter.

Last years Christmas photo was a disaster LOL, but this years turned out quite well I think.




And Emma was loving playing around on the playground equipment there, and I was able to get a few more nice shots, such as:






So, yeah, these are the good things.

And Crazy Daycare Lady, bills piling up, too much time at work, too little pay, all that be damned! I am, indeed, a lucky man.

Being a dad is still just amazing to me.

So many "firsts" ... it's just awesome, in the true meaning of the word.

Emma is doing great. She's still small, but growing along steadily.

She's juuust about got the walking thing all figured out. She walks along pretty good, but still has some epic wipe outs once in a while. Hehe.

She's still apparently got a great sense of humour, as she is often grinning from ear to ear, laughing, giggling, hooting and hollering. It's so great to hear her little laughs and all the other sounds she makes.

SHe is also a budding singer, we think... lol. She's taken to making these repeating "oo, oo, OOOO .... aa, aa, AAAA... ba, ba, BAAAA" sounds. It's really very cute.


Anyway, here's a photo of our little window gazer from last weekend up at grampa and grammas house.

Hope everyone out there in Blog Land is doing well. =)