Coolio!

Either some of you have too much time on your hands or I might be doing something right. Maybe a bit of both?

As 2007 speeds towards the finish line, I decided to don my statistician's hat and take a look at the blog's yearly stats.

This Pretty Girl Shooter blog garnered over a quarter of a million page views from over 70,000 unique visitors with over 50,000 of you being returning visitors. I suppose I could double or maybe triple those page views if I split each post so you had to click an "after the jump" thingie to see the rest of it. Regardless, wow! Thanks! Those stats are so cool! (If only I could figure out how to get everyone to send me a buck or two.)

Lately, like many others, I've been busy considering resolutions I might make for the coming year. One of which will probably be to resolve all the unresolved resolutions I made for 2007. (Yeah. Like that's gonna happen.) I've also been spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to take what I do -- if you'll forgive me for using an over-used and cliché phrase -- to "the next level." I'm not totally sure what that "next level" might be and I suppose that should be my first order of business but it will still include shooting pretty girl pics; albeit, I'm fairly sure it will also include expanding my photographic repertoire. I will, however, resist the urge to paint myself into a corner with those resolutions. I've found that leaving oneself open to unexpected opportunities and attempting to navigate personally uncharted waters sometimes pays off nicely. So I'm gonna make a plan but that plan won't be set in concrete. It will be set in something more akin to Jello.

I'm hoping development of the TV show will grow some legs. My agent called the other day and he's setting up a pitch meeting with a large and well-known production company in the next week or so. The writer's strike (supposedly) has greased the door hinges and increased the chances for non-fiction (reality) programming going into serious development -- since these sorts of shows don't come under the writer's contract -- so we'll see.

As many of you might know, many of my clients are adult entertainment producers. The state of the adult industry is not a rosy one: There's simply too much free porn adult entertainment out there, predominantly on the internet, and revenues are way off. This, of course, has had a negative impact on new production which translates into less and less work. I don't see this trend changing.

I'm partnered with my constant cohort, Leesa, and my daughter, in a family & event photography business-- Bella Vita Foto. That's going okay and we've done some work and made a few bucks but there's as much competition in that business, probably more, than the pretty girl shooting biz.

I also have my peepers set on doing some commercial photography and possibly leasing another space for a small studio. I really miss my studio! If another studio is in my future, it will be smaller than the one I had. It became hard to justify spending that much on rent, utilities, and other overhead. Yeah, having a studio is very cool but if it isn't generating enough revenue to keep "it" in the black, what's the point? I don't earn enough to maintain a studio as a "play room."

The image at the top is Jamie from a recent shoot. I played around with PS's Channel Mixer tool's monochrome capabilities for the processing. (Note to self: Pay more attention to capturing bright, twinkly, catch-lights in the eyes especially when the model has a lazy eye and the MUA applied very dark, smoky eye makeup. I know-- Excuses, excuses...)

Image captured in RAW with a Canon 5D w/28-135 IS USM at a focal length of 135mm, ISO 200, f/5.6 @ 125th. MUA was Dehlia. No Gaussian Blur was used in the post-production of this image.