We have made it through my first full year as a full time professional photographer!
The career change finally kicked off in the autumn of 2021, and I pretty much instantly won “Property Photographer of the Year 2021” which was a fantastic confidence boost! I haven’t really put the work in to the awards this year so haven’t really made much headway in retaining the title for a second year - 2022 has been all about building my style and confidence in shooting commercially in the property world. I am quite happy with where I am given the early stages of the career, and people are now recognising my name and my photography which is a pretty big achievement for such a short time!
What is 2023 going to bring then?
Well, the first job is to build on what I have done so far. Continue working to enhance my reputation and gain recognition in the region particularly and to a lesser degree nationally (Scotland) and potentially into the wider UK. This is going to be through a big focus on property work - both residential sales and lettings as well as the hospitality industry and perhaps making a move into commercial property too if I can find the right opportunities. This would seem to offer a good core to the business that will provide regular and reliable work - and it is something that I have found I am actually rather good at!
The second area to work on is more of a passion project (or two). The main one is the Whisky Project, which is currently untitled and the scope is just being narrowed down at present. The basic premise is to photograph all the distilleries in Scotland in their widest sense - hopefully including the landscapes they are set in, the sources of their water and try to capture the essence of what makes them unique. I have made some early enquiries and got a couple of distilleries on board and hopefully as I work with these contacts more opportunities for privileged access will open up elsewhere. This will, hopefully, spawn some saleable products, but more on all that later in the year as the project really gets underway.
The third area to develop will be the workshops, tuition and guiding business that has been planned for a long while but never quite got off the ground. We will hopefully have the huts starting to go in this year too which will facilitate more development of this side of things too.
So whilst 2022 has not been the most financially rewarding of years it has laid some solid foundations that can be built on over 2023 and beyond. My Dad, whom I learned a lot about business from in a totally non-traditional sense (he is way more of a secret socialist than I think many would imagine) always felt that it took 5 years to really become established in the market. We were chatting through it a couple of days ago and I think I am on track to perhaps beat that! His business ethic has certainly rubbed off on me though - to always provide the best possible service and outcome for the client no matter on the scale or value of the order. So whether it is an agency job paying peanuts or a high value commercial job I will always strive to over deliver!
So with all that said, I would like to wish you all a wonderful Hogmanay and I will be back and working hard in early January to make 2023 a real break-through year.
