Tag Archive for 'Professional'

Miss America: Reality Check. Oh GOD…

Published by -MiKe- on December 17, 2007 in Work. 3 Comments

Ok, I shoot for Miss Maine, sure. This, in and of it’s self, doesn’t mean I actually LIKE pageantry, or the pageantry world. Well, the stereotypes anyway. Because, anyone who’s had words with me on the subject knows very well that I actually DO like pageantry, and will defend it tooth and nail if I have to. Provided that by “pageantry” you talking about Miss America, and not Miss USA, Donald Trump’s… ish…

Enough with the sentence fragments; I like pageantry. That said, I just about shit myself when the executive director of Miss Maine asked me to post the following video on the Miss Maine front page.

“Audrey,” I said, after I got over my slack-jawed terror, “um… this doesn’t really… I don’t… get it.”

“Haha,” comes the voice of reason, “yeah, it’s a joke, they’re trying to make fun of-”

“US!” I exclaimed. “They did a good job, what is this all about?” I inquired, even more confused now than before I had called.

Continue reading ‘Miss America: Reality Check. Oh GOD…’

Something I never knew I wanted

Published by -MiKe- on December 17, 2007 in asides. 0 Comments

Here’s something I never knew I wanted.

Trying to write up a contract today and I ran into this. Very nice. Doesn’t help in the here and now though. Back to work…

So, hows school, Mike?

Published by -MiKe- on October 27, 2007 in College. 1 Comment

Wow, I am so glad you asked.

It’s hot and cold actually.

In one corner you have Intro to Algebra, which is a crap course. As a matter of fact, its SU’s fault I’m even in a math course (mine for what I chose…). Basically, NESCom needed me to get another Math credit, and I wasn’t about putting a whole lot of effort into something I didn’t really need to, plus, it fit with my schedule…

In the world of bad choices… Yeah. For those of you out there looking to head into college in the relatively near future, don’t simply pick easy courses. They lead you down the wonderful roads of self-mutilation, and earnest quests towards suicide…

Then you’ve got Copywriting, which, unlike Copyrighting, has a “W” in it, and falls in the “writing intensive” category.

Actually, for all its faults, it’s actually a great class (when I decide to write). Much better than Marketing, which falls dead betwixt the two (primarily the fault of the teacher IMHO). The class I can put hours into, and fail in comparison to those who bullshit moments before class…

So you have got those three on one side, with and Graphic Design I, Web Design I, and Scene Study one the other end, doing all they can to maintain the very foundation of my sanity. Continue reading ‘So, hows school, Mike?’

Business Card Mock-Ups

Published by -MiKe- on October 24, 2007 in Photography. 1 Comment

Ok, upswing time.

I purchased my first set of business cards this weekend. Not only did no one around and close to me see this coming, neither did I!

I happened across a blog entry, somewhere in the etherweb, about memorable business cards, and it got me thinking. For years I have had “business cards” through some entity or another (either through the beach, or more recently, through Miss Maine), but I have never had one to call my own. Until now.

This weekend I put my foot down. This is what I want to do, and I am doing it. You can’t ignore it now, CoverThis Photography is out there, and it’s going to get you.

Below are some mock-ups of the business cards I designed, and will be receiving in a week or so.

Business Card Mock-Ups

The front is white (off-white in the mock-up) with the CoverThis Photography logo in the bottom right. It is printed in black raised thermal ink, and purposely off-set so that the bottom and right sides of the lens will be trimmed off.

The back is “nearly” black, with my name and contact information printed in “nearly” white, accompanied by appropriate icons for each field (a little person next to my name, a camera next to “Photographer,” etc…). The text is formatted to fit into an exact rectangle, making for and “interesting” text layout…

Admittedly, I did get one comment that the back is confusing at first, yet I am happy with it, and chose to go with it after a good long thinking…

It sure isn’t one of “those” business cards, but I think it is sufficiently different, and from what I have gathered from others, I believe it will work in the end.

Past few weeks

Published by -MiKe- on July 10, 2007 in General. 1 Comment

Well it’s been a bit, again, and now summer is in full swing.

Quite a bit has happened since we last spoke. It’s hard to wrap my mind around just how fast this summer is going by.

Tara AllainThe Miss Maine pageant went off pretty well. You know, back in June. Karissa Staples passed on the title of Miss Maine to Tara Allain and the controversy began.

Tara is a good looking young lady, and smart, and talented. You know, just general Miss “Some State Here” material. However, usually “Some State” is the contestant’s home state, and when it’s not, people get pissy… In this case, Tara meets all the criteria to run for, and take home, the Miss Maine title, by residing in the state of Maine for such and such number of months out of the year. Unfortunately, as Tara hails from Worcester, Mass, the finicky folks in the crowd decided to put up a fuss…

And being the webmaster (and in turn, receiving all mail sent to missmaine.org, but not a real mail account) I get the mother-load of complaints. To top it off, administration refuses to make a public statement about it, so I am liable to keep receiving them as word gets out… I feel like saying “I don’t get paid enough for this,” but bitching like that requires that you get paid for it in the first place… Which I don’t…

[2008-01-07 Update: I noticed some links coming in regarding this post (particularly this topic in this post), and I thought I would elaborate. Things have been officially cleared up. It wasn’t long after this post that the head of the board started explaining things to those who were concerned, and there is no longer (hasn’t been for months) confusion about Tara’s legitimacy. She meets all the criteria to run for Miss Maine, and she has turned out to be a wonderful representative for our state. We’re all quite proud of her, and feel she’ll do quite well at the 2008 Miss America Pageant in Vegas in two weeks. See you there!]

Whats a good pageant without a little controversy. Donald knows what I’m talking about. Continue reading ‘Past few weeks’

The little things.

Published by -MiKe- on June 1, 2007 in asides. 1 Comment

Yeah, so this stuff might not be of much consequence to you, but I just registered a new domain:
http://www.coverthisphotography.com/
Which is a pretty big deal for me. :-D

I also just launched the new Miss Maine Scholarship Pageant Forums here, and I just got all this seasons episodes of House, so I will be catching up on that over the next few nights. So, yeah… Geek stuff, I know, but it’s my life.

Aaaand we’re back… again…

Published by -MiKe- on May 23, 2007 in Personal. 4 Comments

Geez, keep taking these breaks… Have to get a handle on that.

So! Summer is finally here! Made it through another school year, I’m out of that damn apartment in Old Town, and I’ve got a new kitten. :-D

Meet Mali.

Summer is a kitten.

2007-05-12 at 13-50-49.jpg2007-05-12 at 14-17-52.jpg

Sorry, couldn’t help it. She’s just so adorable. Stole her from my ex-roommates actually. Jen and I bought 4 cans of cat food, fed her one, left for two days, came back, and there were still 3 cans left… So I fed her some and waited to see if Caleb made a move to feed her. He didn’t. Fed her the next morning (both times being careful no one noticed, to see if anyone else cared to feed her), Caleb left for work, making no move, so I left for home. With the cat. And if you are reading this Caleb, tough.

:-D

Wow, that was all kinds of grammatically incorrect. Oh well.

So school is out and I am back to mowing. Every day. All day. From 8:30am till 6-9pm… And I enjoy it. :-D

God I am happy to be out for a bit. I mean, I love NESCom (MUCH more-so than SU), but I was dogging it there in the last few weeks. Mostly because of English (contrary to the stereotype of most Bloggers, I HATE structured writing…), which I was sure I would nearly fail.

That in mind, imagine my surprise when I received my grades the other day and pulled in a B+ or higher in every class but Intro to Media (C+). Yeah… That look you just made? Imagine mine…

Pretty much, everything is awesome right now, save the back of my hands, which are sun-burnt to the very edge of blistering…

I’ve spent fair amount of time with Jen the past two weeks. Once last Wednesday, then again this past weekend for my birthday, for a full two days. Makes me smile, real-big-like. I’m going back to Waterboro tomorrow night, Justin in tow, to catch a 1am showing of Pirates of the Caribbean 3 with Jen and the crew. Should be fun. And then we’re going kayaking next Tuesday.

You know, I think I could dig this woman. ;-)

Got some pretty cool stuff on my birthday. John and Cathy (Jen’s mum and dad) got me a remote-controlled helicopter, which absolutely kicks ass! I am in the process of calibrating the tail rotor over the past few days… Out of the box they are only roughly calibrated to stay straight, but if you want, you can fine tune it to stay more true (not spin around in circles). We’ll see how it turns out.

Jen’s Grandma got us tickets to WARPED TOUR 2007! Fucking right!

I played with Jen a bit (I got both tickets in my one card), and I think she actually believed I was going to take Justin with my spare. HA! Right…

Jen got me a “Meh.” shirt (much cooler than you think, I can assure you), and a book on photographic lighting. I only looked over the book briefly, but I can tell I am going to like it. I will review it after I get some time to go through it in detail…

And last, but not least, mom got me a watch (which I have yet to really wear, as I am afraid to dirty it), and some shirts…

But not just ANY shirts… Company shirts. Namely, CoverThis Photography. I really can’t describe them, so I will have to post a picture at some point. :-D

There was something else, but I can’t place it… :-/

Anyway, the past few days I have been dubbing around, trying to get Step Mania to work on this old laptop. Had a turn for the better this afternoon, but still not quite there. I’ll document it here in a few days.

Right now, however, I need a shower, and some aloe-vera. Just wanted to check in, tell you I’m not dead, and such. So, that said, have an evening…

A little late…

Published by -MiKe- on February 5, 2007 in Work. 1 Comment

Well, we’re back. Actually, we have been back about a week now, and I’m still jet-lagged. We pulled in at about eleven o’clock last Tuesday night and I left my house at about twelve-thirty to get to school, sleep, and get to classes the next morning. It sure was fun.

PICT0106.jpgAs for the tip, all in all it was wonderful. Vegas is always fun, as usual. However, oddly, I didn’t get out nearly as much this year as I did last year. We did stay an extra week last year, but I also did a lot more in terms of meetings and rehearsals. This year I didn’t attend one single practice, as appose to last year when I attended each and every one. I didn’t go to any press conferences or meetings, save the very last one after Lauren Nelson was crowned Miss America 2007. And yet, despite my admittedly lax schedule, I only went out once, and even then it was only with Shari, my mother’s right-hand gal. Now, there isn’t anything wrong with Shari, I actually had a great time, but I was rather hopeing to get out with some folks my own age, which never really happened. I did hang out on the casino floor with Jr., and made sixty dollars to my fifty. Well… He did anyway. Hopefully I will be returning to hang out with him again. Other than that, I didn’t go to any clubs or bars, besides the frequently occasional drink here, there, and everywhere.

Maybe next year.

2007-01-29 at 21-52-02 - Version 2.jpgIn regards to pictures, this year did go quite a bit better than last year. Last year around this time I was still trying to figure what do do with all of my photographs. I had some up on the Miss Maine website, but I hadn’t really done anything with the vast majority of them. It took me over a week and a half to get them on-line, and I lost a good bit of sales that way. This year, I was shooting for a “night-of” release time, which didn’t happen… However, I did quite well. It took me a day to get my keywords set-up, and to get another project out of the way, but 255 keywords later, I was cranking them out and on-line. In the end, I got Thursday nights shots up Saturday, and Friday and Saturday nights shots up Monday evening. The final night (Monday evening), with the crowning, didn’t get up until Wednesday evening… However, all of this was a learning experience.

Continue reading ‘A little late…’