5am, Books and Matchroom

Well it is 5am, and I have been doomscrolling, through Instagram and Facebook for a while. So I thought I would try and put my time to some better use.

As someone with ADHD, one of my symptoms is only being able to sleep between 3 and 4 hours a night, with much of that time being interrupted sleep. As a child, this wasn’t a problem as I had energy for days and would be up at 3am, playing ware with hundreds of plastic soldiers, or Lego (The pointy Lego would be the good guys, the square Lego, the bad guys). Now days, it is a little bit more of a problem, as I don’t have the energy that I once had, and only having a few hours sleep a night turns me into a zombie.

So we are into the 3rd working day of 2024, and I am trying to do at least one thing every day.

Tuesday, I started working on my covering letter to send out to clients, I need to send that out to a friend to make nice, before sending out to picture editors, with the hope of getting some work. For me, this kind of thing is among the scariest things I can do. When working for someone else, I don’t have a problem going and asking to do something, but when it is for me, my rejection sensitive dysphoria kicks in and even the thought of rejection kicks in (More on that later). But I have a draft of a letter, but I really need to chat to a more knowledgable friend, before I start sending it out to picture editors.

I also received a Bowens XMT500 from Wex. This was a second hand item, and I got it for well below retail. Now, my experience of Wex second hand items is mixed. Last year I bought another second hand XMT500 and that had an issue with the stand mount, that they missed and has meant that this flash has hardly been used. The lesson i learnt from that is to test all equipment properly as soon as you buy it, not 3 months later.

After testing, the new flash seems to be working fine. I just had to change the settings from Canon to Nikon in the menu to get it to work (that was a worrying couple of minutes). I felt inspired and had some time, so I decided to fix the other flash. This isn’t recommended, as taking apart the flash voids the warranty and it can be dangerous. But to repair the stand mount, I had to open the light, to see what I could do. Fortunately, the repair didn’t really involve anything to do with the electronics and wasn’t too hard, and now I have a working light, fifth flash.

In the evening I received a book by Alan Schaller. To me, receiving a new photography book is one of the greatest experiences I can have, particularly when the work is special, which Schaller’s work is. I was a little wary of buying the book, as the reviews had been mixed. Whilst, everyone praised the photography, the quality control of some of the books had bee lacking, with white dots on many of the pages. So with fingers crossed, I opened the book, and within a few pages, to my disappointment, I found the pages to be littered with tiny white dots, completely ruining the images. Later, when looking through the book, I found several black smudges, and finally I found one of the pages to be folded over at the bottom, not cut properly and ripped.

For me, a photography book is a sacred thing, and to see this was a huge let-down. I love photography monographs by great photographers, and to see one in this condition was rather deflating. I would love to get another copy of this book, but with the quality control issues, I am not going t risk it.

Wednesday

Returning the book, meant a trip to a Shell garage, to send back to Amazon. This is a good walk away, so I decided to listen to a podcast on BBC sounds. I am a bit of a boxing fan and generally listen to Steve Bunce’s podcast. This week featured an interview with the boxing promotor Eddie Hearn and his Frank Smith CEO of Matchroom, I always say that I get my best ideas, when I am out walking. My brain just becomes more active, and listening to the interview, I just had thoughts coming through my head, with images of all the things I could shoot, if I did a photography project on Matchroom boxing.

So, when I got home knowing that if I didn’t do it there, I probably wouldn’t with the fear of rejection rearing its ugly head., I wrote an email to Matchroom and to Eddie, asking about doing a collaboration. Now, I am not sure if I worded the email very well. I really needed to point out the benefits to Matchroom much more, but hopefully I made up for it with passion.

We will see if I get a reply, but I think I am going to be dogged about this and if they do not reply I will try again next month (this could turn into a scene from the Shawshank Redemption, where I continually write until I get a reply), as I think this could be something very special.

Well it is now, 6.12am and today, I need to do some research. My current aim is to achieve one thing a day, which for someone with ADHD is a challenge. Once I have started something, everything is great, but getting started, that is the challenge. So hopefully, I am going to be doing some research into picture editors for magazines. I also should be receiving 2 new softening filters, fingers crossed this morning. As I hope to pop up to view a gym, as like many, I need to exercise more and lose weight (we will see how that one goes).