Many of you, like me, may be in the slow season of the year. The winter months seem to keep my clients nice and snuggly in their homes and far away from my "shop" on my site.
While you aren't buried in client orders and suffocating under mountains of unculled images - here are three things you can do while you're waiting for the weather to get warmer and your calendar to get full.
1) Find, or dig deeper into a photography community
Now, many of you have already read this on the CM forum, and hopefully that means you have already found a community of like-minded artists that you connect with well. For me, I've made that space my home and plan on sticking around for a while. But if you haven't made a commitment yet, consider going all in with your favorite creative community. Already found one? DIG DEEPER with them. This is the time of year personal projects are given the space and time to flourish, use that to your advantage by finding a group who is doing a personal project that intrigues you and joining them! The accountability will give your project more of a chance to succeed, and, hopefully, you'll be able to get to know a group of women a little bit better, and maybe even make some real world connections later in the year! Also look for opportunities to teach in that community! You know more than you think you do, I promise.
2) Look at your money
As you're preparing your taxes (or evaluating how last year went based on what filing your taxes revealed) look at what worked and what didn't work in 2016. I still stand by my opinion that *changing* your pricing is best done in the thick of busy season, and that the slow season is sorta-kinda-really the WORST time to make major changes to your pricing (though... don't look at me to follow my own advice ) Right now is a great time to get a good handle on what you want to make, what you need to make, and how much your business is costing you. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Design Aglow's Pricing Guide for the Portrait Photographer was key in me understanding my money better. (and, no, no one asked me to say this, I just really love the product THAT MUCH, go check it out, it's on sale right now for $95 instead of $150!)
3) Have your work evaluated
This is the time of year where my online mentoring sessions and portfolio reviews typically book up for the entire year. Ladies are excited about making changes in their work and fill up my schedule to have their work looked at from a different perspective. The act of opening yourself up to constructive criticism is far and away one of the hardest things to do, especially if your work is deeply personal, like mine is, but, with a trusted reviewer, you can only grow from the experience. This is also the point at which I point my finger at you experienced photographers as well. When was the last time you put yourself through the process of being critiqued? I have been loving my squarespace site for the past few years and have been slowly, steadily building on it... to the point where I kinda jumbled the whole thing up. My galleries were overloaded, I was trying to pack in way too much information, I was losing a lot of personality. SO I submitted my website to Lauren Sanderson for her input on how I could streamline my site and make it more me. AND the areas that I am no good at? (checking all the links, making sure text is readable and understandable) I was able to give over to her, hiring her to come in and do all that Type A stuff that she loves so much. (The site is finally put together and I couldn't be happier! Take a look around! www.maeburke.com)