(no subject)

I had an inquiry from a large company who want to use one of my photos for worldwide advertisement. (I'm being deliberately vague because I'm irrationally terrified the whole thing will disappear.) After angsting over how much to ask for, I went on the advice of a very experienced photographer friend and asked for an amount that seems ridiculously large to be paid for a photograph for me but is probably actually at the low end of market rate for that usage. I was ready to negotiate down to a not quite so ridiculous amount of money.

I was so nervous that I almost couldn't sleep, fearing that they'd decide I was asking too much and would walk away. I got a response today saying they'd have a contract to me next week.

I keep rereading it. I feel like I must be misunderstanding, 'cause no one would want to give me that much money for a photograph....

(no subject)

I am so so very anxious tonight.

I spent an hour plus editing and reediting the photo I'm sending to the large client, trying to make it look as good as I possibly can, and making sure it looks like the one on Flickr.

The one on Flickr is resized down to 1000 pixels on the long side, as are all photos I post to Flickr. So to send them the full size version, I need to open up the original photo out of the camera and do the processing I did on the smaller version. (I think in the future, I may save processed versions of smaller pictures before doing the resizing and sharpening. Save some potential time in the future.)

So I reworked it a bunch of times, tweaking just a little differently each time, playing with color and shadows and highlights and contrast and sharpening. This was a handheld shot at ISO 1600, so it's got noise. The noise is more noticeable on the full size picture (of course). I'm terrified they'll get the full size photo, open it up, and go "Oh, this is too noisy to use and we don't want it anymore." I mean, it's there in the small version too (of course), but it doesn't seem as noticeable. I'm stressing myself out tremendously. But there are only so many ways to rework a photo, and it's not going to get better and I just need to relax and accept that.

And I sent the image, but it was too big and it boucned. So they're going to send me FTP info so I can upload it. But I haven't heard back with that, so maybe they're out of the office for the day, so I'll bring it with me on a flash drive and mail it during lunch tomorrow. But that'll mean I won't be around a computer for a while to see their response to seeing the whole thing and I'll have to wait all day to find out if they liked it or not.

I really can't remember the last time I've been so anxious.

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Writing about it helps a bit.