the last 2 weeks Monday 18th-Thursday 28thFeb

I will start with this week as it's the most fresh in my mind! It was a very busy week. I have been working in the shop quite alot this week.
At college on Tuesday I took part in a weekly challenge with the 1st year photography group. We are given the next days headlines for the guardian news paper and the task is to go out and photograph (photo journalism) if its good enough there is a chance it will go to press. Its really not easy! And no-one knows what the paper is looking for but I think its a great opportunity and a good exercise. The only thing is it clashes with my contextual studies and everything else that I have to do!
On Wednesday I went to an open day at MMU there was many companies in our field that we could talk to. I did a little self promotion went over and spoke to several companies one of which I have been looking at previously caled Flame Digital I noticed they were advertising for a junior web designer over xmas. I need to follow up my conversations with an email. I think it is interesting to see what they are looking for and what particular line of work they are in.
Thursday we learn't about search engine optimisation which was useful.
I had another after effects lesson I like the program I think there is a lot of potential and I must develop my work on it and experiment.
Friday I was in the shop again in the morning then in the afternoon I went with my colleague to The Circle Club in town to set up our shop for the Charity Fashion Show which was filmed for channel M. It was interesting to see the club prepare for the event. It was such a long day I had no lunch and no tea! I didn't see the show as I was in the back dressing the models, it was very stressful as I had about 2 minutes to change each model in between our outfits. Pete my boss said they looked the best out of all the other shops. I enjoyed it but didn't enjoy being in the circle club!
Saturday I went to The Florist to photograph which was a good opportunity as it was mothers day the next day and there were lots of gifts and flowers to shoot at, but however the shop was busy and I was getting in the way so I left with the pics that I had and took them home to look at, they are great and it helped me to design the pages as I had richer content. Tomorrow morning (Monday 3.3.08) I am to go again to show her what I have done so far and to photograph more. I need to get a move on!

THE WEEK BEFORE
Again it was a busy week, we had a very useful session with the careers man and also we started to learn after effects. It looks like I didn't do anything this week because I have not much to write but to tell you the truth I can't remember! Now that's the signs of a mature student, sometimes my fellow students say I am not mature but very immature - which ever but one thing remains and that's my memory has a time span of a week! Ahh! I remember something - I had a meeting with Lynsey at Living Flowers who I am designing and building a website for.
Wednesday 20th Feb - LF meeting with Lynsey.
I showed Lynsey my photography for the Jo Padmore opticians website to give her a feel of my pictures. I showed her my research and we both loved the close up square photos of brightly colored flowers from a Tricia guild magazine and said this was the direction for us to go. She gave me 3 disks of photos of ranges of contract work they have done. I had a look through them and to be honest most of them were not what I wanted to work with, they were not focused enough not styled enough and not like what we had just admired. So I said that I need to take pictures. I wanted to use my own pics anyway as I want the site to flow visually. There will be some missing for example there are no weddings at the moment for any of us to photograph. We want to create a feeling of lifestyle so image is very important.

I have been going to SPIN classes at the gym aka RPM. It's a constant cycle for 45 minutes racing, flats up hill etc etc and my god its a killer!! The second time I went (1st time I went light headed and it really hurt breathing) the instructor said 'You might feel sick but don't worry thats perfectly normal' its so good you burn between 400-800 calories.
Anyway I am going cos I'm waffling!