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I've entered a contest on Brickfish.com, which can be greatly boosted by votes from visitors linked from other websites. I believe you can vote once a day, but I'm not sure. It wouldn't hurt to try.

This is an image that you haven't seen so far- my masterpiece to be certain. Don't worry, I'll be putting it up soon- I just figured I might as well wait and try for the 100 millionth deviation. It's a long shot, I know, but I'm an optimist.

Also, I've recently turned eighteen. This means- ta da!- I'm officially legal to sell prints here on DA. Of course, it may take me a little time to get that running, as the payment options are a bit of a sticky matter, but it's something that I've been excited about for a long time and I'm eager to see how my prints do.

And I'm about 700 pageviews from 20,000. Thanks, guys! Much love!

Nova

Even though I don't really ever talk about my personal life on DA, I kinda just felt like letting everyone know all the stuff that's going on.

Well, I've hit senior year. It feels so completely strange, knowing that I'm going to be graduating and heading off to college soon. I've had such a wonderful life these past few years, I can't imagine giving that up and trying to make it on my own. I've been looking at colleges, trying to apply for scholarships and whatnot, but it's hard to find the time and commitment to do all that between school. Because it's senior year, I've been trying to do as much as I possibly can- and oh goodness, do I feel the effects. I'm taking two AP classes (including AP Art, which is incredible and I absolutely love it. I feel like I've grown a ton even after just two months.), I'm in four or five clubs and acting as historian of one, and I'm playing a lead role in the musical. I've also finally gotten my photography business going, which is scary but incredibly fun all at once. I was worried about how I would do catering to the desires of clients, but everyone so far seems to have loved my work. So far, only the cosplay shoots from business have gone up, and I imagine I will continue only putting up my freelance work here and there, depending on my personal feelings toward the final images and the desires of my clients.

As far as colleges go, I also wanted to ask if anyone here on DA had any advice? I feel a little lost as far as college goes. Granted, I have plenty of resources for help between parents, counselors, teachers, etc. I just want to do the best that I possibly can, and I don't know how to go about it. I feel like I have enough raw talent to get some great scholarships to some great schools, but I'm not sure I'm trying in the right way, or looking in the right places. Probably doesn't make much sense... but oh well. If anyone has any suggestions for scholarships or schools to look into, I would much appreciate it.

Hopefully in the future, I'll continue putting up more art. In the near future I'd like to get some girls that I know to model for me and have my sister, who is a cosmetologist, to style for me, so that I can have at least some taste of a legitimate shoot, but we'll see how much time I have for shoots. I'd also like to put up some of the artwork that I've done for my AP Art class (what, you mean, she does TRADITIONAL ART??), but we keep all of that at school in portfolios, so it depends on when I would have time to take my camera to school and get some pictures of it.

My DA page is approaching 20,000 views. I know a lot of people say that it's bad to keep track or watch that stuff, but I like it. I'm glad to be able to see how far I've come. That's also why I haven't removed all my older junk from the far reaches of my (twenty-something page) gallery. Hurray. What should I do for 20,000? Make a piece of artwork? Reward whoever screen-captures the big two-oh-oh-oh-oh itself? Well, regardless, thanks all. It's been a wild ride.

Nova

On a final note, I'll do some features of some of the other folks in my AP class. (Speaking of which, if anyone knows of anyone else in my class here on DA, which I'm sure there probably is, I'd love to see their pages! Step forward, my friends!)





(Not in AP, but will be next year!)

I came across a fantastic article from the awesome photography club *Photo--Assignment today, called Where I'm at, where I've been. Essentially, it talks about when you're facing a rut as an artist, and how it helps to go back through your old work and take a look at how far you've come. So I'm going to do a little shameless self-promotion/inspiration, and show you how far I've come. I would very much encourage you to take a look at the news article and/or post your own.

Old Photography (2005):


New Photography (2009):


Old Photomanipulation:


New Photomanipulation:


Nova

I'm at school on school computers right now, so I may need to cut this short.

Anyway. I'm finally starting to put together a small photography business. I've designed a trifold brochure to give out to people to give them an idea of the sort of thing I'm about, I've got my studio set up in a makeshift way, and I've even got a few prospective clients. But I'm stuck. #1 problem is that I can't figure out what to do on pricing. I know that I want it to be based partially on printing (obviously) and on additional options (things like on location shooting, Photoshop effects and retouching, in-picture frames, special printing, etc). I'm thinking that I could do like a $15 sitting fee at the time of the shoot, and an additional price determined later depending on the printing and options they chose. But does anyone have any suggestions? Am I aiming too high? Too low? What should I charge for on location and retouching and that sort of thing?

The second problem, much smaller, is that I'm not sure where I want my web domain to be. Should I keep it on DeviantART, or should I create a separate website for my photo business? And if I do, does anyone have any good suggestions of a free host with a website creator that would have options for both text based pages and a photo gallery? Should I maybe just create a new DA account for portraits?

Nova

Well, as you can probably tell from your devwatch (if you watch me) I've done some major updating. I did a massive shoot the other day, plus I've had some build up from previous shoots. Also, I'm going on a trip down to Zions National Park tomorrow, so I'll have more after that, as well.

A lot of it is photography. I really love the class, because every time I get a new assignment I ignore the teacher and start brainstorming images, and I feel like I come up with some creative stuff. That's how I came up with all my self portraits, like the Wonder Woman Barbie, the music, the watches, etc. I'm also very happy with the way my utensils shots came out. I laid them on colored Canson paper (you'd be surprised how hard it is to find large sheets of bright paper!) and positioned another sheet of colored paper at an angle where it would reflect, so I think they turned out really awesome.

Also, I requested Critiques on all of the utensil shots and some of the self-portraits, so if any subscribers out there have a spare moment, I'd appreciate it.

Um. I think that's the gist of the news that I have. I'm thinking that I'd like a new journal CSS, but this one has so many cool features I don't know if I dare.

Nova