Well it's been a busy time, Pachesham Equestrian Centre is virtually my second home as I seem to be there at least once a week. It's not always the most profitable as some of the midweek events are very small with the same people attending each time, but it is close to home which reduces travelling expenses and Linda and Rosanna who run the office are very friendly, thus while I can, I will continue to cover their events.

The only fly in the ointment since my last posting has been a two day event I was called on the do at relatively short notice. It was a move outside my normal field of equestrian events to 5-a- side football. It was a massive event with 6 pitches being played simultaneously and matches starting every 5 minutes continuously throughout the day. On Saturday there were 3 of us, Sophie and I taking shots and Carrie a new person being dropped in the deep end running the computer. Carrie had never used Lightroom before, but had downloaded a trial version and looked at it. She did very well loading images. Sophie did her usual and produced a nice set of images. On Sunday John joined us so that the photographers only had 2 pitches to cover instead of 3. Unfortunately despite our best efforts and over 8000 images, the people were not interested in the photos. As we left on Sunday I was considerably down, subsequent orders meant that I recovered the losses but I'm not sure whether £32.36 for 21 hours work is a good hourly rate, how does that compare to the minimum wage? Unfortunately the minimum wage does not apply to business owners, only their staff.

Fortunately most jobs are not like that, some are good and some are bad, a lot depends upon the weather, what rider wants to hang around and look at photos when they've been out competing getting cold and possibly very wet? They know that they've got the get their mount home, turn it out feed it, muck out the stable all before they can get a hot shower and into dry clothing.

On Carrie's second job I let her take all the shots, it was dressage at Pachesham, Carrie is a rider and thus knows what she as a rider will buy, with me operating the computer and running off prints we did very well. Another event where I ran the computers was over at Warlingham. This was again a fairly short notice booking, the event was actually sponsored by a rival, who could not attend for the entire day. Despite running the printer from a table placed under a tree, we again did very well and we are back there later this month. As I said earlier I ran the printer, this time with Sophie, Carrie and John taking shots.

The other event of note was Wimbledon Village Fair Horse Show. Since there is no power or shelter we are limited to merely taking shots and giving out cards for online orders. I do not normally like operating this way as the income is much lower, but this event seems to buck the trend and indeed orders are very good.