Looking Forward to 2022

In 2021, I traveled extensively and wasn’t able to take the proper time to document it. I normally love doing my blog write-ups and compiling the images, but because my workload has been so severe, pretty much everything has felt like a chore.

a picture from the road in the Westfjords, Iceland

I worked an average of 11 hours per day, including weekends, and I’m not proud of it. I love what I do, I do not love feeling like I can’t leave the computer for fear of missing a lead or a call.

So, that being said, moving forward into 2022, here are some of the changes I plan on making:

I’m Hiring!

I want to hire an assistant that can help with answering the phone and answering my email. My average email turnaround time right now is nearly 5 days, and that’s not good. I can’t be shooting, editing, and running the office all at the same time, so I need some help.

If you or someone you know is looking for some part-time, work-from-home work, I’m thinking that I can probably afford a few hours a week at $20/hr and make it work. Shoot me a message on my contact form.

I Need Second Shooters

I love working weddings alone because it lets me stay zoned in on getting the shots I need. However, there are times where I wish there were two of me. That means I’ll need some second shooters. I’ve reached out to a few people already, but I will be formulating a list of my second shooters and offering this as an add-on in the future.

Pricing Updates

Every year, I update my prices based on my demand and if I feel like I’m getting paid fairly for my time, energy, and effort. Being your own boss is tough like that.

My weddings felt comfortable and I felt like I was able to offer people a great discount on their wedding photography while still delivering excellent work, but I think my portrait work was underpriced. I spend a lot of time negotiating back and forth on email or phone and by the time the shoot is done, I’ve spent almost 10 hours on acquiring the client, contracting the client, working with the client, and then returning to edit the client’s photos. When we’re talking a wedding, this is all vital and is part of the packaged price. When I’m doing quick one-hour photo sessions, there’s still a lot of administrative overhead with scheduling and contracting that isn’t easy to do. So I’ve updated my hourly pricing and my package pricing for my smaller package prices.

This is going into effect immediately, but I will honor the old pricing if you’ve found it somewhere else or if we were already talking. I will do this automatically.

Locations

It’s much easier for me to work at the same locations to be able to know the parking situation, rights, terrain, and other things one would need to know. For standard portrait sessions, I’ll be making a standardized list of locations I’ll go to. I don’t know exactly how this will look or work yet, but it will make things a ton easier to process.

Vacation Time

I am going to be figuring out the few months that I’m allowed to not do photo work and I am going to simply not book then. This will give me the time I need to travel and to sit down and actually work on my projects. I love working with clients and it’s what keeps my lights on and rent paid, but when I’m answering emails all day, I need to get back to my roots and feel the dirt between my toes so I can come back energized and ready to advance to the next level of creative work.

The cool thing about running all this myself is I’m able to put up notifications on the site, which I hope to keep getting better at. I want people to be able to use my site with ease.

Thanks so much for another good year, I love my work and I can’t wait to love it even more in 2022.