As of my previous post I had planned on blogging about harvest. The dirt, long hours, heat, and general all-around unpleasantness that goes along with it. You know, whine about my job (isn't that one of the primary motivations for bloggers after all?). Well, I'm sad to report that I've been given no cause to do so. I can't justifiably bitch, whine, mope, or even kvetch about harvest this year. The reason for this unreasonably sanguine attitude is that for some unknown--yet entirely welcome reason--I was not asked to help this year. I don't know why, and since my cousin, who controls the farming and harvest around here, hasn't told me; I may not find out. Frankly, in this case, he's the boss. I don't want to question his decisions any more than I want him questioning my decisions about our cattle. As long as his reason isn't some offense I unwittingly caused which makes him not want to work with me--and I don't believe that to be the case--then more power to him.
The question then stands: what to do with myself if harvest and the accompanying griping aren't taking up all of my time? Of course the regular ranch work takes some time, but this is a pretty slow period for us, so I've had some free time too. I've been using my surplus time to investigate some ways to offset the cost of my rather pricey photography habit. I wanted a way to make a little money while still holding on to my artistic integrity (... I'll give you a chance to stop laughing before I continue ... ... ... done yet? ...). I looked at a bunch of options for wringing value out of my photographs and finally settled on a place called Zenfolio. Basically all I do is upload photos and they do the rest. I don't exactly expect huge earnings from it, but if it earns anything I'll feel a bit less guilty about all I've spent on camera gear. I've only put a few pics on for sale so far, but I've got quite a backlog to draw from to fill out the variety. I'm doing a soft launch (as us techie people call it), which means that I'll link to it here in a post until I make sure all of the bugs are ironed out. Then I'll put a link in the sidebar and promote it a little more when I have more content available. I also plan on using Cafe Press for some sales down the road, once I get Zenfolio finished.
Here is the link for the new site: http://pics.aristeos.com/
I have every reason to believe the the quality of the prints as good, but since I haven't ordered any proofs yet I don't make any guarantees.
I'd be interested in any opinions or advice. Well maybe not any opinions.