Aug 224 min read

August thoughts

This may become my most personal post.

Maybe it is because I am listening to someone playing bossanova with the guitar, or maybe is due to the pizza I just had. Maybe is due to the weather, but I feel inspired to share some thoughts and ideas here.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about my business and maybe I just needed an outcome to be myself, hence this blog post. I really enjoy reading blogs, and I love writing, despite I can find it a bit challenging sometimes. So I am going to, perhaps, focus more on here, and see how that goes. It may help getting my ideas out!

It is an August evening, it has been grey and raining all day here in the UK. It doesn't feel particularly cold but it is very windy, and I cannot avoid thinking back to last week when I was in Barcelona enjoying the sunshine. Although we had a thunderstorm and heavy rain couple of days, we still enjoyed our time there.

I totally disconnected, which I recommend to everyone to do once in a while. I had my camera with me to take some pictures, which I did. I think I could have done with being there a bit longer, as I feel like it was a bit too short. I have been dragging myself around this week as if I had run 10km every day and struggling to wake up early.

But enough moaning, I am supposed to be back to work and feeling refreshed!

Let's do a little recap: It has been another challenging year. 4 months to finish the year and I haven't achieved half of the goals I marked for the year.

At the beginning of the year I decided to niche down and focus more on hotel photography, but things haven't gone to plan. I really thought I would have had more photography projects this year, more enquiries, etc but things have been quiet. I had some nice collaborations and projects, made some contacts, but money wise I didn't really reach my goals.

Plus I made a wrong decision investing some money in a "representation agency" which wasn't legit. I will write the name here, The Hotels Collection, so at least it shows up if someone researches on Google, they may have changed name by now... but if you read this and you are researching about them, get in touch with me, I will tell you more!

But let's get back on track. Despite I thought my little holidays break wasn't long enough, it has actually helped me to think about my business a bit differently.

One thing no one tells you but everyone knows is that when you make your passion your work, you can get very frustrated and lose motivation. You can even get to hate it, which is very sad, I think.

That is me with photography. But I realised I don't hate photography, I am just struggling to find my place. I feel like people doesn't really understand our work or respects it, and even sometimes is our own fault for accepting things we shouldn't, just because we are missing some confidence and we need some money in the bank.

I even thought about just stopping, quitting photography completely, but everytime I fantasise with the idea, something inside me says "not yet". Maybe I am more of a photographer than I think.

But I also realised going down the moaning path and becoming a "victim" just gives me back ache and probably some wrinkles on my forehead.

So I decided that I will go back to one decision I made when I first became a freelancer: for the time being, I will divide my time between 2 types of photography projects: the ones that pay the bills and the ones that I enjoy doing. And I will combine both, and see if that helps.

I also will be sharing more of me, my style, my ideas, and worry less about trends and creating content that people may like. I will create for myself and select my best work and show it to the world. I will define my style and I will stop comparing myself to others.

One type of photography I love is travel photography, so I decided I am going to be sharing it on my blog a bit more. I will also be sharing recommendations of restaurants or places to visit, I keep them all saved on my phone. I love recommending places and restaurants to a friend. It almost feels like you adding to their trip and their memories.

I want to go back to my love for photography, my excitement and my passion. And as I said to myself, if in 4 months I am still feeling the same, I may give freelance life a break and look for a full time job ( despite I really don't want to!).

So hopefully things will pick up. Maybe is looking at things from a different angle, maybe is trying new things, maybe the economy will get better or maybe the ideal clients will appear.

I still have hope and I want to give my business another chance.