Thanks to my One Reader

Anyone who truly knows me knows I love numbers and stats. At work I'm comparing sales and figures, markups and markdowns. At home I have this lengthy spreadsheet where I keep track of every photo sale, which site it sold on, and for how much. As I sell photos it updates their ranking by popularity and by profit.

Which brings me to my rant about myself for the day. Since I'm a numbers guy, I like stats. So I keep track of my posts and how many people read them, and how they read them. (Don't worry, I don't actually know who reads them, only the fact that you did read it) My first day, when I was posting on other blogs and talking about my project in the forums, I had 34 readers. The next day I had six, and the next two I had 9 each. Then I found I had a subscriber. Cool. So two days ago I had 6 readers and 3 subscribers.

So, the rant is that I was bugged about my rant yesterday. It really bothered me. For one, because I didn't help Michelle when I said I would. For two, because I know I have a problem and won't (can't) fix it. For three, it musta been a really boring post because only ONE PERSON read it.

So, to my either very dedicated fan, or wacko stalker, if you comment (anonymously if you like) below, I will talk on the subject of your choice tomorrow. Anything you want, photography, quantum physics, the war in Iraq, nose hair trimming tips, movies... You name it, I'll talk about it. It's your day, I want to celebrate you.

Back to the purpose of my blog. Yesterday I did not work on anything related to photography. Watched the final movie in the Firefly series. Gutsy to kill off main characters. Great movie if you're a fan of the series.

Sold a photo, which has become a favorite of mine.

Since I got time, I'll give a behind the scene look at my photo. What's cool about this photo (to me) is that dice appear to be rolling. They are actually hanging on pipecleaner wires, which where hot-glued to the backs and hung from a hanger. The reason I used pipecleaners is because they were strong enough to hold the weight of the dice, yet flexible enough to move them into any position I wanted. The "table" is actually a piece of green felt on a chair. The black background is a pair of my shorts. Here is the original photo before I touched it up in photoshop:

I deleted the wires and cleaned up the dust on the table. The pips on the dice had purple fringing, so I used color replacement to conceal that. I then burned the pips to darken them up a touch. I used a paintbrush to help even out the dark background. If you look at where the background and table meet in the final product, you can see a spot I missed. I then adjusted levels and curves and filled in keyword data.

Running out of time, so I LOVE YOU my one reader. Remember tomorrow is Sat-YOU-day.