New Home for the blog

I have noticed I am still getting a fair bit of traffic to this blog, it has now moved to http://philhawley.com/blog please go there for more of the same but with a better design.

Photography – Trying to make money from it

I have been thinking about ways I can make a bit of cash from my hobby of photography, it looks like I have two options, building a portfolio website or selling via stock photography website.

Portfolio Website

I could use this option to display my best work and hopefully sell some work directly and get offered work by publicising the site. The problem with this option is that I will need to get hosting for the site, select the right Content management system (CMS), get the design right, provide a purchase mechanism.

There are solutions out there that have all of this built into an overall solution such as Clikpic, but they have their limitations and associated costs. The other way is to approach this is to use a good CMS I am used to and like the functionality of by using WordPress, the issues I have there are the design, the hosting, and how to integrate a purchase mechanism that will allow people to instantly purchase and download copies of my work.

I think I prefer the second option due to the flexibility, I just need to overcome the associated problems for me, the main one being design as I am not a web designer, although initially I could use/purchase a template and work with that until I can learn the required skills. The other problem of purchase/download mechanism is one I will need to look into.

Stock Websites

I have been looking a few stock sites as recommended in this article on DPhotoJournal and have been banging on about it on Twitter for a while for some feedback on photos I should submit initially. So I did sign-up to IStockPhoto but as yet have not submitted any shots, and I have recently signed up to ShutterStock which to me looks a little more promising.

Now have to pick out 10 of my ‘best photos’ as they say, I am not totally sure which to submit though as the shots I like might not necessarily be what sells on stock photo sites. I think I have settled on the shots below for my initial submission and i would appreciate any feedback comments as to what people think of my choices and whether there are better shots on my Flickr Feed.

Enter the Snarks!

I was going to write this when I knew for sure what was going on with the move to Moscow but I figured I would wait until I was a little calmer and had considered the situation better.

In anticipation of our visas coming through my wife had been talking to head of HR Europe, and head of European Operations at her company regarding the options if the visa news wasn’t good and they came up with the following options:-

1. Stay in the UK permanently.
2. Move to a new location until the work permit-like visa hopefully comes through in October (options immediately on the table were Geneva and Warsaw), then move to Russia.
3. Stay in the UK until the work permit-like visa hopefully comes through in October, and they would see if they could find me work inside the company on a temporary basis.
4. Move to a completely new location.

Well the visa came through and it said “ДЕЙСТВУЕТ 90 ДНЕЙ ИЗ КАЖДЫХ 180” which means we can stay for 90 days in every 180, this wasn’t suitable for the company, and didn’t suit us any better. This was a massive blow to both of us, my first reaction after posting to Facebook and Twitter was to crave the kind of stability in the situation that could not be offered by either of the options that involved waiting for 6 months to go through this all again. Anyway after a few days chatting about it we have decided to stay in this country with the intention of going out to Moscow in September/October, but should a good job come up for me over here that is permanent then we will stay where that is based.

Ok now comes the rant/snarks:-

1. Why didn’t the company know the details of the visa they had applied for?
2. Why didn’t they know when they could apply for the work permit-like visa in the first place as all this started last October?
3. Why didn’t the company engage an immigration lawyer in Russia? – They would have been able to answer all the questions about visas
4. Why has it taken until now for the company to consider quite how they have turned our lives upside down?
5. Why couldn’t they have got their facts straight before I gave up my job and the job I had been offered elsewhere?

So the options open to me right now are really to get myself another job, or take a possible job the wife’s company might be able to offer me until we go. The former is going to be hard in the current economic climate as most of the jobs available in my specialisations are permanent positions that would preclude the move to Moscow in 6 months. The offer from her company seems to me to be a token gesture designed solely to placate her and stop her from leaving the company altogether and will ultimately come to nothing, but at least the perception will be that they have tried.

So another option for me whilst staying over here before we go is to take my photography more seriously, maybe do a few courses, and get some better equipment, actually this was suggested by my wife before I said I would wait to go to Moscow.  So this is what I am going to do:-

1. Look for a new job
2. Get a Canon 5D MKII and some decent lenses
3. Go on some photography courses

This last weekend confirmed this to me anyway as I realised that the villages in Oxfordshire are very photogenic, I am thinking of doing a series of shots of a lot of the pretty villages around here.

I welcome any feedback as to what people think I should do, but here are a couple of the photos I took this last weekend in Woodstock and Chipping Norton respectively:-

Visiting the Folks

So after Moscow and a bit more work on the house I went off to Spain for a few days to see my parents last week. It wasn’t exciting, nor full of incident, but I enjoyed it all the same, just seeing them. Most people reading this won’t know that my Dad was pretty ill during the run up to the Christmas just gone. He fell whilst doing some building work at my Parents’ house and banged his chest on the edge of the concrete base for a covered terrace he was building. Anyway, a few days later he had to have an emergency doctor out to him and ended up in Hospital with fluid on the lungs. A day or two later they discovered a broken rib was the culprit which was good news as at first they thought that it was pneumonia. Anyway, it made him quit smoking after maybe 50-odd years as a smoker which was a good thing and when I saw him over Christmas he was better than I had seen him in a long time but he was on Oxygen for 2/3 of the day. Anyway it was good to see him (and my mum and the dogs obviously) after 3 months and he looked loads better, back to his usual moaning self and busy doing work around their house and on the land around it. I got there and he had finished the terrace and it looked great. The dogs were mental as usual, with the older one shadowing me most of the time and pouncing on the other one everytime it tried to jump up at me.

After the recent run of bad weather in Oxfordshire and having visited Moscow it was good to see some warm sun the morning after however it was misty and cool and we were due to go up to Vince and Gill’s cave house in Caprés in the Mountains overlooking my Parents’ place. Anyway it cleared up just before we went, and was very warm with brilliant blue skies whilst we were there.

Anyway, such is the way with BBQs with my parents and their friends it was a beer, wine, and sangria filled occasion with lots of great food courtesy of Marcel (a visitor from Belgium) and his wife. I did fire off a few shots before the drink was flowing, but later efforts proved to be slightly out of focus and discarded.

The cave house itself is a great piece of architecture, this shot was added on as a terrace above and to the side of the main house, but below shows the main chimney that just rises out of the ground:-

Their dogs however had been having a rough time, looks like they were both abducted/escaped but one returned on her own and so she was being spoilt for the afternoon, the other one was a similar looking dog but all black, such a shame that these things happen, and hopefully he will turn up at some point.

Of the other shots I took, this is about the best I think, the winding road running up the mountainside from the Cave house:-

The next few days were spent helping my parents by digging a log trench at the end of their garden for them to plant fir trees, this was great, blisteringly hot (30 degrees Celsius) and digging rock solid ground; I managed about 40 or 50 feet with it being a foot deep and a foot wide.

The rest of the time I sunbathed and read and my thoughts again turned to the move to Moscow, the latest is that the likelihood is that we could go for three months then have to leave the country for either a day, 3 months, or 6 months depending on who we are speaking to, or which way the wind is blowing it seems. I would love to go, even if it is just for 3 months, then if we have to return we can decide on what we want to do longterm at that point. But, it is frustrating not getting straight answers from the company, but I guess whatever will be, will be. Meanwhile in the airport on the way back I had a call about a job for me going in Barcelona, so we will see what happens.

My last day in Spain I got up early to see the sunrise and to snap off a few shots of it, some were better than others and the HDR ones seem to have come out the best:-

 

Anyway, this post was a little self-indulgent, mainly about my trip to Spain, but it was important for me to go there, and it did give me a lot of time to think.

First Moscow Visit – Part 3: Quiet reflections

We are on the flight on the way home now and I am enjoying a beer, and listening to last weeks TWIT podcast quietly reflecting on our brief Moscow experience. Well after our meal last night it is clear that the people are very friendly, and being in the city has affected us in such a way that we really need the visa issues to be sorted out and to get back to Moscow as soon as possible.

Our last night in Moscow was spent with Lou’s new subordinate Andrey and his wife, we had a fantastic meal in a vegetarian restaurant called Avocado, going to a vegetarian restaurant was not first on my list of places to eat anywhere, much less in Moscow, however the food was amazing. It did actually snow lightly last night, which made for a very picturesque evening around an edge of the Kremlin and Tverskaya Street.  We left the restaurant, and after a short trip on the metro we went to a bas for an hour or two which was fun, and enjoyed talking to Andrey and his wife despite me having a very sore throat (making my English more difficult to grasp, even for my wife!).

Today we went for a walk up Tverskyaya again, but first walked past the changing of the guard at the eternal flame:-

Walking around was interesting with the ice under the snow, we had breakfast in a cafe and chatted about the flats we preferred and I think we have it down to one in Patriarchs Pond and another near to the Zoo. I guess the deciding factor will be availability when we move, and how long we can move for initially.

One thing is for sure,  we both love the city, and the thought of living in the UK for any length of time now holds little, if no appeal.

First Moscow Visit – Part 2: Falling for the City

We arrived at our hotel early in the morning at about 5.30am on Thursday and pretty much went straight to sleep. After having a lot of sleep we spent the afternoon looking at three different temporary apartments in Aparthotels with Elena (from my Wife’s company), they were all tiny and really designed as an alternative to a hotel room, and not best suited to an extended stay.  This, combined with heavy traffic, and still being a bit tired from the flight left us a little deflated when we got dropped off at the hotel.  We decided to go for a little walk from the hotel, this helped to clear our heads, and obviously I snapped off a few photos:-

Seeing a little of the city made us determined to explore more, so the next morning when we were due to meet Elena at the first of several apartments that were suitable for long term rental we decided to walk from the hotel near to the Kievsky Rail Terminal to Patriarchy Ponds which is a fair long work, but one which allowed us to take in more of the city. On the way there we took in a few different areas of the city with the morning Rush hour in full swing. The area around this apartment however was so quiet, with lots of little cafes, and the apartment itself looked great, it was smaller than we would have liked on paper, but looked great all the same and didn’t feel cramped. The next place we saw was huge, almost twice the size, but the walls in the living room/kitchen were pink – this didn’t go down too well with the wife, neither did the location, nor the sparseness of furniture in this ‘fully furnished’ apartment. Anyway, the next two places were immaculately presented, newly renovated places, one of which was in an apparently ‘up and coming’ location (no shops, bars, cafes, supermarket nearby), the other in an established location. After leaving the agents behind we headed onto the Metro for our first experience of the Moscow metro with its beautifully decorated stations, anyway after collecting Elena’s car we headed to a place which I considered to be a waste of time going to before we went, a kind of Private International village/town outside of the city.  This one was called Rosinka and I really didn’t want to like it as I would have considered moving here from the UK to be cheating the whole experience of living in Russia as everything you need is there. Firstly we would be staying in a house rather than an apartment, and these houses were a decent size with a wood burning fire in the living room, and a garden. The complex was built next to a huge lake and forest, the air was clean and crisp, and there were ample leisure facilities that were included in the rent. Like I said, I didn’t want to like it, but I found the open space to be attractive, and the facilities great. Both my wife and I were impressed but ultimately I doubt we would move there, certainly whilst we have no kids because it really could be anywhere in the world, and as you can tell by the title of this blog we were starting to enjoy the city, and this place was certainly not Moscow!

Anyway, we are still left with a dilemma of where to live is and when we move over here that will largely depend on the results of the visa application which we should know about in 2 weeks time.

Last night we decided that we probably should go and see the site that is synonymous with Moscow; Red Square, and the Kremlin, this took us on another trip on the Metro, but when we got there and walked around to Red square, seeing it all lit up at night is truly breathtaking. After taking dozens of photos from various angles of the different aspect of Red Square we wondered off down a few different side streets and found a bar that served some food and settled down with some beer and food.

Today we have been on a fascinating one-to-one tour of the city with a guide who seemed to have encyclopaedic knowledge of everywhere in the city, from everywhere from the original 16th Century wooden British Embassy to the various famous graves in Novodevichy Cemetery. Unfortunately today has been cold and dull and although I have dozens of photos I took quite a few from multiple exposures read to combine in HDRs.  Tonight we are off out for a meal with a Russian couple, and that will only leave us tomorrow morning here before we have to leave, both of us will be sad to leave, but are more determined than ever to make Moscow our home for a while at least!

First Moscow Visit – Part 1: On the Flight

Well I am on the flight on the way to Moscow for the first time, as you will have probably guessed from the post title, I make no apologies, I am just damned tired but can’t sleep! Not sure whose idea it was to get the 10pm flight that arrives at some ungodly hour local time, despite the flight being only 3 1/2 hours or so! I figured I will put this time whilst I can’t sleep to good use by having a bit of a rant to be posted later.

So, a bit of a recap for people who don’t know what is happening with our move to Moscow; Well the truth is, we are not totally sure it is going to happen! So the visa rules have apparently changed, the permanent visa (for 3 or 5 years or something like that) application has to wait until the next round in October.  That part is fine, but this last few days we have been told that the Commercial visa we were going to move with initially might be different than we originally lead to believe due to rule changes in December.  We were told this visa would allow us to stay for 90 days, then leave for a day, then back in for another 90 days, so not a major issue.  Anyway, we have now been told by the local HR office of my wife’s Company’s parent company that this MAY not be the case, it MIGHT be that we have to leave for 3 months after the initial 3 months! So the visa situation will be what it is, and is totally up to the country in question, but why the HR department (who have known about my wife going to work there since Mid October) haven’t found out the situation for sure is a mystery.

So they seem to want us to wait for three or six months more before moving out to Moscow, but as I have previously said I left my job for this move, so we probably can’t afford to wait that long until moving. So in normal economic times I could get a temp contract that would pay very well, but right now the contracts are not there.  Apparently there are other postings available too, so we will see which way things go, meanwhile we are going to enjoy Moscow until Sunday and go and view some apartments, assuming we will move there in the next few weeks.

Back to this long weekend in Moscow, I am very excited, but tiredness is rapidly eating away at me, I just hope passing through immigration goes relatively smoothly so we can get to the hotel and sleep for a few hours. The flight took of from London Heathrow at 10pm-ish, but Moscow is 3 hrs ahead, so we land sometime between 4am and 5am local time, it’s a little like a red-eye flight, without it being long enough to get much sleep.

The plan for Thursday is to meet with a lady from the local office of the parent company in the afternoon who will go with us to look at a few options of places to live in Moscow. Friday will bring more apartments to view, followed by later on possibly meeting up with someone from Twitter, and also due to meet a guy who is due to work for my wife in Moscow too! On Saturday we have had a tour organised for us around the city, not sure where to yet, but I am sure we will enjoy it. Hopefully we will get chance in our downtime to look around on our own and hopefully bumble along with our very limited Russian. I am going back to try to drift off for a few minutes now.

No more work…..Or the work has just begun!

Since my last post, two pretty major things have happened, last Wednesday I finally took and passed my driving test, and I finally did my last day of work before the move to Moscow. Yesterday was my last day at work, which largely passed without much fuss just as I wanted, we did go out to the pub at lunch, and had a leaving presentation where I got a bottle of champagne.  Most people’s reaction to me being able to leave work and not go to another job has been either envy, pity, or bemusement, but hose who know me will know the truth.  The truth is I was happy to be leaving that particular job, even if I had some great colleagues who I shall miss, the job itself has been grinding me down for quite some time now. I had intended to leave late last year, but the Moscow opportunity came up for Lou so I could no longer leave my current job at the time to go to the fantastic job that had been offered to me. At the moment I believe I made the right decision, I needed a change and jumped at the opportunity of some time out, especially in Moscow.

So here I am at the end of the first day of my temporary ‘retirement’ and I am aching all over from all the packing and sorting of the room in the house known as the office. Everyone who has seen it will attest to the fact that it was an office only in words and that it had a computer, printer, etc in there and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number times I have used it as an office.  Anyway, the room is where we kept our junk; computer junk, old video tapes, wrapping paper, lots of pens, old books, CDs, old chargers; I think you are getting the picture! So today I have spent most of the day sorting it all into boxes to take to Moscow, boxes to go into storage, and bags of rubbish to be recycled or thrown out. There does seem to be way more of it than I estimated originally, but it feels better to have the room almost empty ready for painting tomorrow and its transformation into a bedroom reading for renting it out whilst we are gone.

I was due to go to Spain tomorrow to visit my parents for a long weekend until Monday, but my passport is having a tourist visa put in it for a short trip to Moscow next week!  Lou and I are both very excited to finally visit our new home city, even if people think we are insane for not visiting before agreeing to move there. The decision to move to Moscow was an easy one, and the initial decision took many seconds (about 2) for us both to make! Anyway, we are going over to Moscow overnight on Wednesday 4th March and will return on Sunday 8th, a relatively short amount of time to get our bearings and find a place to live, but it should be enough time.

So here we are, it is all finally starting to happen and I can’t wait, watch this space as I will no doubt be blogging whilst we are over there for the visit.

Invitation to Russia

On Friday our invitation letters came through so the move is starting to feel more real, the only issue is that Lou’s is in her maiden name. Her company applied on her behalf, and applied for it in her old name which is strange as she has been known by her married name at work ever since we got married.  They have said that they applied for it in that name as she had told them her passport was in that name.  It was until a few weeks ago when the people at her work recommended she get a passport in her knew name so that all her ID paperwork was consistent. They also arranged the new passport for her, you would think they would have realised they needed the invitation letter in the new name too, apparently not! Anyway they seem to think that showing her old passport along with her new one with the invitation letter will be ok, we will see.

The other thing that the invitation letter shows is the transliteration of my name into Cyrillic, it comes out as:-

My first name has come out correctly, but they have mangled my surname more than people who try to pronounce it in English usually do! When the transliteration takes place they are supposed to try and match the sound of the name, but in Cyrillic, but you can hardly blame them, people have enough issues pronouncing it in English!

Contact with the Outlaws!

I have spent a decent amount of time this weekend with the Outlaws setting up the Mother-in-law’s new laptop along with a wireless router for her so she can keep in touch when we leave for Moscow.

After a bit of looking around for options I installed windows live essentials for her and setting her up with a Live account as she didn’t have an email address outside of work. So she now has an email address and the means to access it on the local machine, the interface for the Windows Live Mail client is very clean and simple, perfect for her really at this stage.

I installed Skype and set her up with an account and sorted out the webcam for her on there.  For when she has issues I made the laptop a LogMeIn client on my account so I could remotely connect. Security-wise I had already installed Avasy free antivirus and Spybot search and Destroy anti-spyware free edition. I alsoinstalled Firefox and made it the default web browser, which she accepted without question.

I showed her how to use the few simple things she need to use initially, and she picked things up pretty quickly and was genuinely excited by it all, especially the simple things like the wireless internet connection that I just take for granted.

She was interested in looking at Facebook as a lot of her family are on there, so the wife set all that up for her and showed her out to use it and added a few friends for her.

I was initially going to have her use the Windows Live Photo Gallery to public to an online gallery, but after taking a look at Flickr she wanted to use that instead, so now I just have that to set up for her, and install the uploader for her.

I am pretty confident she will pick things up pretty quickly, and I was surprised how easy it was to explain the basics in a way she understood and could follow, it has been a while since I worked in support so I thought it might be a lot harder to get her to understand.  Maybe there could be some work in this area in Moscow. Anybody need a hand?

I am pretty sure that the wife is going to be a lot happier knowing her Mum has a few new options to keep in touch with us whilst we are away.