Really quick post – I am so excited to announce that today is the first week of me being regularly featured on the Skint each Monday! The Skint is a daily listing of free and cheap things to buy, see, do and eat in New York, and I’m spicing it up with a link to my weekly Hey Brooklyn interviews. Here is the first one!

This connection is excellent for me because they’re a great website – I’ve turned to them often when figuring out weekend plans – and they have a wide readership, so more eyeballs on me! You know I’m such an attention hog.

I’ve started compiling a list of places that I can ask to advertise on Hey Brooklyn.

It’s nerve-wracking to say to someone, “Take me seriously enough to invest your dollars with me.” It should be cake, because my podcast has grown to a point that advertising on it is something that I sincerely believe would be beneficial to a business. The number of listeners and downloads are there. The quality of content is there. The quality of production is *SO* there – Rob is amazing. It’s all there, and now the scary part is saying, “Hey, come advertise on my show. This is what I can do for you.” EEEEk! But I’m doing it, because, you guys?, I am *SO* over not making any money.

[Sidenote: I'm wondering if blogging about this is unprofessional, but the truth is: I'm not cool! I quiver, I get nervous, and I blog about it.

Ehh, I think it's ok. It's honest.]

***

My friend Walt Ribeiro gave a talk once, and someone asked him about reacting to getting rejected. Walt (who is one of those really sincere people brimming with zest and pep) answered in what would become a bit of a catch phrase among our friends: “Ask your face off!” The logic is that if you ask a bunch of people for whatever you need, someone will, eventually, say yes.

I’ve since found this post and video on his website, and felt newly inspired. It’s super-basic stuff that we all know but sometimes forget. (He usually does daily music lessons on YouTube, but on this day he chose to shoot a pep talk instead. I suggest you merely listen to it, not watch; his walking down the street might make you queasy! ).

So here I go: I’m going to ask my face off.

If you want to better hone your “stalking Amber” skills, check out this interview over on Cherry Patter.  I blabbed all my favorite neighborhood spots (and put in a plea for help getting dressed).

Hugs are free, and ads are cheap!  Just $10!

If you would like to advertise on my blog and have your banner seen by hundreds of the most fabulous, discriminating eyeballs on the internet, now is the the time to set it up for July 1st!  See here for more information, and email me (theambershow at gmail dot com) for details.  All sponsors get a write up, too!

Evidence that I have zero being-interviewed skills.  Zero!

Here is the interview I did with Eugene Ahn for the People You Don’t Know podcast.  (I’m the second half of the episode.)

http://www.pydkpodcast.com/?p=458

Apropos of nothing, here is a photo of me and Tino, taken by Tracy.

Years before I met Rob it was my dream to run a business with my husband one day so we could work together and make our own hours, never worry about loosing our jobs and, eventually, when we were wildly successful, take off to lay on a Mexican beach for a month, just because.

The ideal home business for us came when the newspaper Rob was working for went under and their recording studio, equipment and all, got liquidated into our second bedroom. Our current set-up is fine for now, and it was perfect that we had a place to put it, however, it needs to go into an office building if we are going to be taken seriously as a business. And that’s the goal for the rest of 2009. Everything is connected and we’re open for business, but I want us to be known as THE place to go in the NYC area if you have an audio project you need professional produced (by my <brag>Emmy and Oscar-award husband!</brag>). We’re hoping to find space in DUMBO (the area of Brooklyn right across the water from Manhattan) to be easily accessible to both boroughs.

This is the pipe dream. I don’t know if it’s viable in this current economic climate, but I figure it’s worth putting out there that we currently have a great studio available for recording, and hopefully soon we’ll have a great studio in a professional space available. For now you have to come to our apartment, which is just fine, really, and I promise I’ll make you coffee while your here, or put on the kettle for some tea.

I left with plenty of time to get to my appointment today but I went to 8th Avenue, not 8th Street. With fifteen minutes to spare, I drove the few miles to the proper address and arrived at 3:04. Ok. Not bad. I dropped off my gear and dashed off to park, thinking it would take me no time at all.

I ended up driving about ten miles in a three-block radius. After about fifty swear words, several angst-filled poundings on the steering wheel, and a handful of prayers to gods I don’t actually believe in, I found a spot and arrived back at 3:45. This was a new personal low of mine, and I was ashamed. Also, we are nearly out of gas, and I’ve gnawed off several fingernails.

My interview went well; I get to meet the most interesting people and today was no exception. Lotta offered me water, I accepted, and it came sparkling, in a glass, with a lime. Classy! Note to self: buy limes and put them in guests’ drinks. It shows thoughtfulness.

Her newest book comes out today, and I flipped through it while we were interviewing. The projects really do seem simple, and there are several patterns included with the book. There are things to make for toddlers, too, including bibs, rattles, crib bumpers and quilts.

Order here

I’m back to selling photography! See my new store here!

I had a go at selling on Etsy a while back, but didn’t like it. On Etsy you pay a tiny fee per listing. That’s fine – it’s an amount I could cover with the coins dug out of my couch cushions – but it was annoying to pay given the lack of volume of business my store did every month.

I closed up shop and let it sit dormant. My best sellers were my copyright violating P*ep photos, anyway, and I couldn’t continue selling them.*

***

One of the beauties of SxSW is the people you meeting hanging out in the hallways, at the parties, in the bars, and at the dinners. I serendipitously wound up one night at a table full of people who were launching a start-up called “Store Envy” storenvy.com

It’s a similar concept to Etsy; the biggest difference for me is that they don’t have a fee per listing. Like Etsy, it’s free to launch a store, although it’s in private beta now. (They currently have Pro stores available that offer warehousing and shipping for a 15% fee) I requested a free beta store and got one, because they like me.

You can visit it by going to theambershow.storenvy.com Right now I’ve listed nine different 8×10 and 8×12 prints.

One thing I’m going to do in the near future is offer custom-cut mats. The problem with the way I (and a lot of people) shoot is that we compose our images in 2×3.  That’s normally a 4×6″ photo, and if you blow it up again, 8×12″.   Most frames, of course, come in 8×10″. There would be a HUGE market for anyone who starts making reasonably-priced frames for 8×12″ prints, as many of us are loathe to cut off those two inches for many of our favorite pictures when we blow them up.

Since no one has thought to make millions doing this yet, custom matting is the solution, but Hello! Expensive! So I’m going to start offering custom mats (bought in bulk), sized to fit both 11×14″ frames (a standard size frame you can find anywhere) and 11.75×15.75″ frames, the size of the most common RIBBA frame from IKEA, and frame of choice for cheap people everywhere.

Go check out my shop and pass it along to your friends, if you would. I’d appreciate it so much. If you have a suggestion for me, please share. Currently, 100% of the profits from the sale of every $10 print will be going directly to getting these little guys off the beach and into a good home.  They are puppies born recently to a dog called Patches that some of my Puerto Rican dog rescue friends have noticed on the beach.  We really don’t want them to languish in the filth they’re in, but there is currently zero dinero to help them with.  Since I’ve gotten a handful of emails asking whether some of my prints were for sale over the past few months, this seemed like a good move all around.

*For you newer readers: I got a cease-and-desist letter from the maker of P*eps, telling me I couldn’t use their image for commercial purposes. If you’d like one, I still have a few of both “Godzilla vs. P*ep” and “4 P*eps” available, yours free with a $10+ donation to Manos Por Patas. Just forward your receipt to me with your address and I’ll send it along.

I looked into buying a full-frame DSLR camera. Holy mother of dog! They are expensive! Even the prices on refurbished ones had me reaching for a paper bag to breathe into. I had no idea. This is what I really want, a Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

Last week I was asked to take photos of dogs for an organization called Stray from the Heart. They place dogs in foster care and try to find them “forever homes”. Most folks don’t have good, clear photos of the dogs they’re fostering and don’t know how to take them. But good photos go a long way to make a good first impression on potential adoptive owners, so they’re pretty important, and since I take pretty good photos of my own dogs they reached out to me for help, and I was thrilled that they did.

My first session was Sunday in a dimly lit apartment. I did the best I could and managed to get some good shots, but I got frustrated at the noise in the photos and the lack of rapid-focusing I needed. The experience hammered home the point that I’ve maxed out what I can do and learn on my Rebel Xti, and I’m ready to take on something beefier. The research begins.

In other pet photography news, Sarah from Things are Better with a Parrot exchanged some of her printed note cards for a photography session with pet photographer Li of Fat Orange Cat Studio. I spent an hour today pouring over Li’s website. She’s just started her business a year ago, and my favorite parts of her site were reading the “learning” parts of her blog. It’s so inspiring!

When the Brooklyn Flea had it’s opening weekend, I noticed that a lot of vendors had done special items for the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens 2009 Sakura Cherry Blossom Festival. There were cherry blossom tee shirts and pink cupcakes and things like that. Jane, from Foxy & Winston, made a Cherry Blossom print, and I admired it while I shopped her booth (and chatted with her Mum, who is the loveliest lady ever). I didn’t buy it, but I thought her Sakura print would be a good addition to Baby Art week, so when I went home I looked for it in her Etsy shop. It wasn’t there, so I asked about it the following week (and if you’re wondering now if I go to the Brooklyn Flea every Sunday, the answer is, “yeah, pretty much.” I know this makes me teh lame. You don’t have to send me with emails telling me so, certain people.)

She said it wasn’t up on Etsy yet but if I gave her my email address she would send me photos of it. I handed her my “Hey Brooklyn” business card and (because I am networky! and a savvy business lady!) and was all “Oh, by the way, I think you’d make an awesome guest for my podcast!” and she was all, “Oh! I’d love to be on your podcast!” and now I have an interview scheduled with her next week. So awesome. Anyway, this is the print. I think that it, too, would make a very pretty addition to a little girl’s nursery.

There are matching note cards, too!

Limited edition print, $15