Here we are, 2023 is underway and things are already looking better than November and December of last year in terms of booked work… not that this would be hard! One thing that is starting to look like a trend though is people moving into Inverness from the surrounding areas, often a result of a push rather than pull. The cost of fuel and the regular closures of the Kessock Bridge are both driving forces it would seem from my non-scientific research (I suspect the latter is a product of the former on reasons if I am honest - government policy really is not helping the Highlands at all).
So… what are my plans for the year ahead then?
First off I want to build on the foundations laid last year. I am no longer an “unknown” in the market and am starting to build a little recognition - so this year I will capitalise on this. Towards the end of 2022 I made a decision to follow my own path rather than that prescribed and shoot property using natural light and HDR rather than a single frame and fill flash. I think this gives a much classier end product myself, although it is more resource hungry. For the low paying agency work this means automating as much of the process as possible, which is still giving really good photographs for the client… just perhaps not quite as good as running the whole process by hand and tweaked for each individual final picture.
So the hope is to build the property side over the coming year to provide a reasonable basic income. The other side of the plan is to slowly start on some other income streams which may or may not make much of an impact this year… or even get off the ground…. The first is to develop the tuition/workshop/tour side of the business this coming season. I think I will start small to begin with and then build on from there as we have quite a lot going on at home over the coming year so time may not be on my side. Secondly there is more of a passion project to get going which will involve photography, whisky and writing! I have done a wee bit of concept work for this already and have a touch more to do before I start embarking on the project with any degree of vigour, but it is pretty exciting and hopefully will be interesting enough to generate some commercial interest as it starts to get going.
There are a couple of other projects and events going on this year and next that I am involved with, or hope to be involved with, but I will talk more on them as they happen.
So… Happy New Year, and lets hope that this is a good one for everyone!
