The first week of February is technically still the New Year, right? During the past 11 months of this pandemic and our new altered reality, I often lose track of what day of the week it is - perhaps you are the same? So I say let’s call it New Years.
I’d like to share one way how the pandemic and this past year have shifted my focus not only as a photographer but as a business-owner.
The Pivot
The word “pivot” has been making the rounds to describe how creatives and entrepreneurs are finding new ways to bring their work and their values to new audiences. This includes me!
At the start of the lockdown, I almost immediately found myself sharing my home office with my husband (but more often working on the dining room table to give us some MUCH needed space), and supporting my teenage daughter in adapting to distance learning. Along with that adjustment, I felt the need to find my own pivot. Photography began as a hobby for me many years ago that slowly evolved into a passion and my career. I had continued taking on photography work during my time as Visual Content Producer with The Hivery team, but I now had to do some deep work on assessing what I would offer to my current and hopefully future clients.
Because I couldn’t actually schedule any shoots in the early days of lockdown, I had the opportunity… and the luxury, really… to emotionally and mentally adjust to these new circumstances and take my time with that assessment process.
What was most immediately helpful was reaching out to people I trusted for support and input. Community is key in these crazy times and although we couldn’t meet face-to-face, I kept in close contact with friends and former coworkers who were similarly carving out new paths.
This is an iPhone photo I captured on a walk recently.
At the time I was feeling stuck and needing to overcome inertia, and I equated how I was feeling to this heron frozen in position waiting for the perfect fish and then springing into action.
Let's overcome inertia together....
Marketing Tantrum
While I would like to focus solely on making beautiful images with my camera, there are other aspects to running a business and this year of pivots required me to examine them. Many folks have an Achilles’ heel – tasks they find overwhelming or difficult – and mine is (or was) marketing. Just saying the word raised my anxiety. Over the years, my photography work has luckily been mostly word-of-mouth but all of a sudden, with the re-launching of my business, marketing became a necessary consideration and it felt deeply uncomfortable. Basically, I don't like to bother people. Which becomes an issue when you need to reach the people with whom you're most wanting to work!
I’m not ashamed to say that I had little tantrums about it from time to time. Below is one of those tantrums when I was making some much needed updates to my website, including marketing content, and wanted to escape my computer, the house, and head for the hills.
Grumpy screengrab of my (temporary!) home page.
Luckily I have super smart, kind people in my life who were generous with their knowledge and support, I took advantage of some classes I'd been eyeing, and I began the process of figuring out how to market my business, while maintaining my time and values surrounding visual storytelling - my way of describing the work I do to help my clients tell their visual stories.
If you have faced your own challenges and pivots this past year, I would love to hear about how you identified and confronted them. And I would be thrilled to help support YOU – if you are looking for ways to update the imagery for your business, please reach out.
I’d love to chat with you and share how beautiful, branded photos can tell the story of who you are and why you do what you do.