Ever Noticed that Things Don't Always Go Right?

I guess this is a rhetorical question because if you do anything (and maybe even if you don't) you know stuff goes wrong much more often than you'd like, right? I do a lot of stuff and have to say the flow of unexpected events is pretty continuous. So I'm making this quick blog entry to give an example ... I wouldn't want anyone to think that everything always goes smoothly even with the best of plans ... see Always Have a Plan B below somewhere.

I shot the ShoXC Elite Challenger Series fights at the Chumash Casino Resort as you know from recent blog posts. As part of that exercise I provide images to Fight Wire Images (FightWireImages.com) by uploading images to their multi-user account at PhotoShelter.com usually via PhotoMechanic ... I'll talk about this another time. I usually do this Saturday or Sunday so the images are there for the Monday crowd looking to buy for their blogs, magazines and forums.

With PhotoMechanic fired up I clicked the upload button but FightWireImages wasn't on the menu as it has been for a year or so. I tried a bunch of things and double checked my upload configuration ... which I haven't touched since I got it working initially. PhotoMechanic has been rock solid for two years that I have used it. Nothing helped. I sent an email to FightWireImages and to PhotoShelter. Since the images are time sensitive I took them with me to my day job at UCSB and tried to logon to my own PhotoShelter account but couldn't seem to get into the photographers area. All very confusing.

Fortunately, my FightWireImages contact decided to send me a new "invitation" to contribute to FightWireImages (this is how you get connected) and that seemed to let me in again. I started uploading with the online uploader that you can just click to invoke, but it was slow. So, I downloaded the Java uploader and sent the images. Unfortunately PhotoShelter is clever enough to know how to handle files with duplicate names so I now have two copies of several images and some images aren't there. You can see the gallery here.

The good news was that when I got home to PhotoMechanic again it was working correctly. Today, a little late, I got an inquiry from PhotoShelter to see if my problem was resolved. I think that is a bit slow since I indicated the images were time sensitive but am not going to pursue it as I am the pimple on the ass of progress from their perspective as they have huge clients.

I would recommend PhotoMechanic, PhotoShelter and FightWireImages for anyone shooting boxing or MMA, and the first two for anyone shooting other sports although they are much more generally useful than that. Now I have rambled about all this I feel better.

Be Safe,

Dwight