I recently applied for The Craft Artists Award funded by the Scottish Arts Council and Fife Council, that is administered by Fife Council, Fife Contemporary Art & Craft, and ATTFife. I’ve applied twice before and got funding to set up Milomade a few years ago and last year to buy jewellery equipment, so wasn’t sure I’d be third time lucky and get my application approved this time around.
This year I applied to get funding to purchase a new camera as my trusty old Canon Ixus which I bought about 8-9 years ago is refusing to function. I want to be able to take some high quality images of my work and produce a brochure that I can start sending out to shops/outlets/gallery with a view to stocking Milomade.
I got a letter through the post the other day to say my application was successful! Yippee! I haven’t been awarded the full amount I applied for which would’ve covered buying a camera, a memory card as well as paper and inks for my printer, but I have been awarded enough to purchase the camera. I’m chuffed to bits as I’ve been really struggling with my current camera which is constantly refusing to focus when in macro mode, so the majority of images I have taken on my work have been out of focus and blurry and I’ve had to re-do so many, which has taken up so much of my valuable time and why it’s taken me so long to get images to my new online stockist of late!
Anyway, I went ahead and ordered the camera this morning and just got a confirmation email saying that it’s been dispatched already – I’m so excited!
Image taken from the Digital Photography Review website.
I’m really looking forward to using the vari-angle, rotate and twist LCD screen as when shooting in macro mode with a current Ixus it’s impossible to see what you’re photographing sometimes because of the angle you’ve positioned the camera so you have to guess and shoot and then try again and again until you get the right shot. With the rotate and twist screen I’ll be able to position the camera and then move the screen so I can see exactly what I’m photographing and frame the shots correctly. It’s also got so many more advance functionality than my Ixus so lots to play around with and learn – I hope I can figure it all out and master using it!
Wahey, thats brilliant news. Well done.