Welcome back, and Happy New Year to all of you!! I hope that you have enjoyed the holiday season and have made your New Year’s Resolutions. As I start writing this entry, it is actually the day before Thanksgiving because I usually like to work through these entries slowly over time. It seems that over the years, this annual year in review piece has gotten longer and longer, with the last one being around 12,000 words if I’m not mistaken. As I embark on this wrap-up, I am thinking that it will be substantially shorter because 2023 has been a rather uneventful year for me in comparison. This is not a bad thing, just the nature of photography in a lot of ways.
As part of the preparation for this, I have gone back through the last entry and read all that happened in 2022. It really was a lot! I had started to make portrait photography a viable part of what I was doing, while making all kinds of advancements on publishing fronts with a book cover to my credit and an upcoming inclusion in a photography collection book about Ashe County Photographers. The workshops were going great, and I had a waiting list for my advanced mentorship program. I was seeing nothing but growth for me in the future, and even thought to embark on a personal project of sorts during 2023. There was no better setup for the coming year, and I was excited about what it offered. Whether or not this momentum would continue was still left to be seen though.
As you know, I like to start off these yearly reviews with the first photo that I shot. In this case, it was on January 1st which is something that I have started to do to set the tone for the year of photography. I was fortunate that the morning was very foggy and that gave me just the ingredient I was needing to capture the old Forester Nu-Way building in North Wilkesboro. I was out there for a while to get this one photo, but I was wanting just the right look for it. As the fog moved in and out, I shot photos and hoped that the elements would all line up. They did, and I was happy that I picked that particular morning for this subject.
I started doing this January 1st tradition when I was a cyclist and it always served me well for the years that I did it. It would also seem that it was working from a photography standpoint as well, especially this past year. I followed that trek up with one on the 3rd, then the 8th, and then the 12th. To say that I was on a roll would have been an understatement. I was seeing potential in everything, and we were experiencing great weather conditions to be able to capture these locations. Then it happened. If you have been with me here in the blogs during the year, I have already made mention of it a few times, but will get into it here with a little more detail. The weather conditions that made for some great photography also meant that there were some pretty serious storms that rolled through the area. The storms had some very high winds which usually wouldn’t bother me too much, but I have since learned just what the winds can do to structures.
A little background on our house so you can properly understand what is about to transpire. The house sits up on a hill, with a valley to our West. This valley will channel all the winds that come down the mountain from Watauga County. They tend to accelerate a bit coming through the valley, and during a rather dramatic windstorm around the beginning of January, I realized just how exposed the side of the house was.
I went out to check things around the property the morning after and found part of the trim was loose at the tallest part of the roofline. It was a section about two feet long and I could see where the nails had all been pulled out. it was much too high for me to get to, not that I would have willingly gone that high up on a ladder. I suppose that it would have been simple enough to just try and fix that section, but there has been a laundry list of other issues with the siding that we have had since moving in back in 2020. There was the entire wall that was wavey at the back porch from a grilling mishap by the previous owner, neither porch was properly flashed and if I tried to wash the walls, I would flood the garage and storage closet downstairs. Cosmetically, all of the trim was part of a bad batch which ended up losing the white finish and showing the bare aluminum. I had tried to repaint the areas as they happened, but they were happening quicker than I could keep up with and had gotten higher than I could get to with even my long ladder. Most recently, Toni had realized that we were getting a lot of wind incursion through an outlet in the kitchen which made me think that we were not nearly as well insulated as we should be. All of these things together prompted me to get an estimate to just rework all of the siding and start from new.
This was not an easy task at all, because as we have learned from living in Purlear, there are very few services that will come to work here. We are usually just outside of the service area for different contractors and builders. We eventually did find three companies that would be able to do the siding and started to have them come out to do estimates. The first estimate went well, and the price was decent. On the second estimate, I went out to meet the representative and walked over a half dozen shingles on the sidewalk. Hmmm, that wasn’t good, and I certainly didn’t recall the sidewalk having shingles installed. The three of us started to try and figure out where the shingles had come from, and it was Toni that saw the dip in the ridge cap first. That must have been from the second major windstorm that we had experienced two nights previously, and they had just fallen off the roof.
We got the estimate on the siding, and I went inside to call insurance about the roof. They agreed to send over an adjuster to get things looked at which made me happy. I’ve been through an insurance roof replacement before, and it isn’t all that bad. The third siding estimate that we were going to do was an online estimate which I had very little faith in, but it was a very well-respected company with stellar reviews. It turned into the company that we were going to go with, and they could do roofs as well. It was going to be one stop shopping which I liked, even though they had the highest price of all three companies.
While I was working things out with that contractor, the roofing evaluation happened and they determined that the ridge cap needed to be replaced, but the roof was unharmed from the wind. I called the contractor and they said that they would not do just the cap, only a full roof replacement. We went back and forth on that for a while and I ended up with a sour taste in my mouth from the experience, so I went with the first company which also did roofs. They would be able to do just the cap replacement which was all that we were going to need.
While all of this was going on the main light in the kitchen died, and I thought it was just the florescent bulb. I had a spare one, so I popped that in. The light came on, but then went right back off again after an hour or so. I used my last spare bulb to see if it was a bulb issue. Still dead, so I had to go and get a new fixture which was an LED since apparently the ballast had failed in the old fluorescent light. While all of this was going on, the new fridge which was just bought the previous October was starting to run more than normal and make more noises while doing it. We called for a warranty visit and it was determined that there was a fault with the coolant lines for pretty much all units made during this time. They were going to have to replace several parts which turned into two weeks of waiting while the fridge struggled to stay cool.
At some point around this time, Toni went out on the front porch and was hosing the porch off after she had done some potting. I happened to go downstairs and heard a dripping. I tracked it down to the water input pipe to the house. This was not the leaking that I was used to from the back side of the porch as I had mentioned earlier but something else entirely. I panicked and called the plumber who was backed up due to the excessively low temperatures we had experienced weeks before. They did consider it an emergency and sent a crew out to us that same day fortunately. As I was looking around for other leaks, I found a wet spot under the water heater but didn’t know if that was related to the dripping which was only about ten feet away. After some investigation by the plumbers, we decided that the dripping had been from Toni washing around the dryer vent which apparently wasn’t flashed either, allowing the water to enter the house. The water heater was actually leaking, so I was going to have to put in a new one. This kind of surprised me as it was the original water heater from 2007 which didn’t seem that old to me. In comparison, the house that we lived at in Winston still has the original water heater which was installed in 1995. Quality sure has declined over the years!
Shortly after this happened, I came home from Lowe’s after picking out the new doors which were also going to be replaced along with the siding and Toni met me at the door with this beaten down look on her face. She said that while she was cleaning, the drain stopper got stuck in her bathroom sink and she couldn’t get it to open up. I went in to see what the problem was and found that the lever had rusted and broken. I pulled the drain apart from the sink and went back to Lowe’s to see if I could match up the part. No such luck there as I have found that the plumbing in this house requires OEM replacement parts which generally aren’t available locally. I returned home and called Phister and described the problem. They sent a warranty replacement which is a great feature of that company, but I had to wait to get the sink back in operation. I think it was down for about a week before I replaced the entire drain assembly to make the sink as good as new again.
It was around this time that I had the first contractor come back out to look at the roof and get the repair scheduled for the ridge cap. When they got there, they confirmed that the cap was failing and needed to be replaced. They also showed me where the fiberglass was showing through on many of the shingles indicating that their service life was limited. They estimated maybe three more years on the roof before it was going to have to be replaced. It would make sense to do the roof and siding close together because I would get better roof coverage if they could pull the siding in places. Not wanting to limp a roof through the next few years, I opted to just get the whole dang thing done. That check from insurance all of a sudden didn’t really help at all, but there we were.
As you can see, there wasn’t a lot of time to focus on photography after those first two weeks. It doesn’t mean that there was nothing photography related going on though. There was some good news as I was contacted by the Capital City Camera Club to come and do a presentation for them. This was really cool because I had done a presentation for them in 2020 right before things were shut down for COVID. This was going to be my first presentation that could be done in person since that time, as all of my presentations since have been remote and through Zoom. We agreed to have the topic dealing with the evolution of my photography with a portion on using filters which have had a lot to do with my personal style of photography.
Also, during this time Toni had made contact with two potential boudoir clients for shoots during the Spring. Knowing that I needed to update my sets, I started doing some redesigning of the side room off of my studio that I use primarily for boudoir sessions. I went into more detail about this in a subsequent Behind the Camera. During this update, I changed a lot of things around the studio for a bit more flexibility and added some pieces that would make location shoots a bit easier. I wasn’t sure if these clients were going to be here at the studio or at their homes, so I wanted to be ready for either eventuality. Sadly, both clients fell through, and those shoots didn’t happen. It was probably for the best though because things were starting to get very noisy around the house with the new roof getting installed over two different days.
If you will recall from the previous year, I had decided to do my workshops a little differently based on feedback from several participants during the year. I had released a three-part workshop series dealing with the fundamentals of photography with each part being a half day workshop either here in the studio, or on location. The first of those workshops was an exposure workshop which was designed as a classroom workshop because it was still a little cold during March. There would be a practical exercise during the workshop where we would go outside and use what we had learned. I had great hopes for this workshop after doing a similar one at the beginning of 2022 for the Wilkes Art Gallery. However, even though I had released the workshop in December of 2022, there had been no interest in it, and with a couple of weeks left before the workshop was scheduled, I pulled the plug. Cancelling workshops is something that I have done before, so this one didn’t really bother me, especially since I was still very much involved with the house.
April saw the next workshop on the calendar which was a composition workshop that was going to be in the field. This one went very well the year before and had actually sold out. I had some improvements planned for this one, but sadly it went the way of the Exposure Workshop with me canceling it a couple of weeks before it was scheduled due to having no interest in it at all. That one bothered me a bit to be honest. I had put together three workshops based on feedback from many different clients and was really excited about the new format. However, there had not been even so much as a question about the workshops and nobody was signing up. The last of the three was scheduled in May, and that was going to be a workshop dealing specifically with how to focus effectively using all the tricks available to the photographer. Again, it was one that I was excited about and is a topic that has come up during many of my previous workshops. With no interest, I pulled that plug as well about a month before it was scheduled to happen.
On a positive note, I had been considering taking another suggestion and running with it for a workshop but was a little hesitant to do so. The suggestion was to do a workshop at the Arbor Gardens in Boone where we would focus on floral photography. This is not something that I do often at all and didn’t know if I could conduct a worthwhile workshop with my limited knowledge on the subject matter. I decided to make it a test workshop and make it invitation only where I would invite just two folks to join me. The first was the one who had the idea for the workshop, and I would have let him join for free based on the suggestion. The second was a mentorship client that I was working with who I knew liked this subject. As part of the advanced mentorship that he had signed up for, he would have gotten a free pass to the workshop as well. I now had the plans in place to put this workshop together for two participants, but with no money on the table. That way, if I failed, they weren’t out anything at all. I set things up at the location for August and knew that I now had at least one workshop that was going to make for the year.
I guess it was largely due to the fact that I was putting a lot of mental energy into thinking about floral photos that got me thinking about landscape photography once again. It could have been that, or it might have been the fact that the house was about one repair away from being one of my decay subjects which took a lot of the joy out of photographing old cars and barns. Whatever the case was, Spring really reignited my love of the landscape. I spent the vast majority of the time out along the Blue Ridge Parkway rediscovering my landscape roots. I knew that I wasn’t wanting to move away from decay, but I think my mind needed the calmness of nature with how the year had been going so far.
With Spring approaching, I was looking forward to the Ashe County Photographers book being published as it was supposed to be finished in the Summer. The photographers that were included in the book were contacted by one of the team where she told us about a release party at the Florence School in West Jefferson. We were going to be able to set up several of our works on a juried basis for the show. There was also an event going on for photographers at the Ashe County Arts Council. I had signed up for both and had three framed prints ready to go for the Arts Council. These were dropped off and left for a period of a month while they were part of an exhibit.
While those were still hung, I had gotten word that three more of my prints had been juried into the Florence School exhibit across the street. We had also received clarification that this was not going to be a release party for the book, and the book was actually being delayed a bit with a publishing timeframe around the end of the year. I still wanted to participate in the showing, so I loaded up two canvasses and a framed print to take to the showing. Once I got them all inside, they started to look at the mounting hardware and they didn’t like the hangers that I had on the pieces except for the framed print. Of course, I had cleared this with the staff a week earlier since I was using sawtooth hangers on the canvas prints for stability. That particular staff member was not present to confirm the conversation. Not getting a good feeling for how they were running things, I picked up my bucket and shovel and left the sandbox. I wasn’t willing to risk damage to the pieces to hang them the way they wanted, and it wasn’t worth it to me to just have a single piece on display. I’m starting to think that it is not really worth it for me to do gallery showings. They always end up with these kinds of issues.
When the Arts Council showing was finished, there was another one scheduled right after which I had signed up for. The topic of this was the Mountains to Sea Trail and I had several that I could hang there with that theme. However, after having three framed prints on display with nothing selling and facing a similar hanging issue with the canvas prints that I was wanting to show for the second showing, I decided to back out of the MST show.
May did see the end of the home repairs for the most part. Since you have listened to me gripe about this project for so long, I figure I might as well show you what the house looks like now that it’s all finished. Essentially, this is a brand new house on the outside now. There is a new roof, all new siding and trim with new insulation behind the siding, two new doors, new shutters, new railings, and replaced screens on all the windows. The last thing to do was to fix some wall stress cracks in the living room and kitchen which took another week, and two more days to paint over the repairs. I’m really hoping that this is the last home improvement that will need to be done for a very long while.
Things really weren’t going all that well for me, or for the photography business at this stage of the year. We were just starting to get into June which is usually my slow season. I wasn’t sure how much slower things could get with my photography, but here we were, and I was about to find out. There was a stroke of luck though, and I was contacted by a friend, Mandy, who wanted to know if I would be interested in helping with a photo shoot for Dearworld.com. I read through her request several times because I knew nothing at all about the company and honestly thought that it was going to be somewhat of a scam. She wasn’t confident enough to do the photography end since there was going to be a lot leaning on the use of off camera flash. I could handle that but wasn’t convinced that the program was legit.
Eventually, I did agree to speak with the producer of the UNC Asheville session, and I started to research what the company actually did. The more I read, the more I was impressed with their purpose. They were a non-profit that started out after Hurricane Katrina to document the human resiliency after the tragedy. They have since morphed into doing the process as a “brain tattoo” where you write something that means something deep to you on your body and a portrait is made of you. It is an interesting way to express yourself and I really liked what they were saying about the process. By the time I spoke with Yev, I was fully onboard with doing it.
This would be a paid shoot but would be less than my normal rate based on what they were paying. However, after talking with him, I was going to get paid mileage to the college as well as equipment rentals for all the gear that I was bringing. The end result was almost at my day rate, but the shoot was only going to take a few hours and I wouldn’t have to edit anything as they do all of that inhouse. The shoot was going to take place in August and there would be several different virtual meetings that would take place between now and that point. I was booked for the shoot, and I was looking at it as an educational experience for a high-volume photo shoot. What I was being told was that I would shoot about 150 people with four poses a piece over like four hours. That was moving right along, and a pace that I had not ever seen before.
It was also around this time that I got contacted by an investment/management company located in Charlotte. They were needing to update their headshots and after going through two different photographers, they were looking for someone who could perform what needed to be done. The first photographer had quoted a price which was agreed on, and then they told them that to use the photos, they would have to pay a licensing which substantially added to the original estimate. With that bait and switch, they decided to look for another photographer. The second photographer ended up cancelling twice leaving the company in a lurch as they were calling in employees for the days of the shoot. I was able to give an accurate estimate with the licensing figured in since that was what the whole purpose of the session was for. I set up an appointment for August and agreed to come out to their location to shoot for the entire day in order to get 27 employees photographed.
Things were looking up at this point, at least from a business aspect. These last two shoots that I had signed up, were going to just about clear my debt from the previous year where I purchased an all new camera kit for portrait work. I had been slowly chipping away at that debt with hopes of having it all gone by the beginning of Summer. I was a little late, but these two shoots represented a big chunk of that debt. For that, I was very thankful! It had taken me this long to get caught up on the debt because there are regular operating costs that happen regardless of anything else each month. It is worth being said that these two sessions made up for the overall lack of business that I had been experiencing during the first two quarters of the year. I was actually back on track financially for the year thanks to these portrait sessions.
In July, I went back out to Raleigh for the Capital City Camera Club meeting where my presentation was dealing with my evolution in photography as well as the use of filters. There were 30 in attendance which was awesome as I love playing to the crowd. I had spoken with Singh-Ray earlier in the year after getting the presentation scheduled so that I could go there with some goodies. I ended up taking brochures and lens cloths which went over very well. The presentation went smoothly, and I had a great time in front of the crowd. The one and only hiccup was dealing with the TV that the PowerPoint was being displayed on. Apparently, it was an HD TV when I have been used to projectors over the years. Not only did the photos look pixelated, but they were also blown out in the highlights. Of course, there was nothing that I could do about this at this point, and the presentation was already huge in file size from all the photos that I had included. I still can’t figure out where I could improve on the quality because the presentation slides are only so big in resolution unless changing the native size would fix the problem. I’ll have to wait until I have the opportunity to do another presentation to see if I can custom create to the particular viewing device being used. Otherwise, I might just bring my projector and a screen which has worked well in the past.
July also saw a different kind of trek from what you have become accustomed to seeing from me. Toni and I ended up on Jekyll Island for a weekend with our Granddaughter since she lives not too far from there and we figured it would be a good place to spend a little time during our visit. You can read all about the trek in the four-part blog entry that I have linked, but essentially this was the first time I had done a coastal location since 2021. Neither Toni nor I enjoy the beach all that much, but I do like the photography that comes from the coast. Jekyll Island is also the home of Driftwood Beach which has long been on my bucket list of locations to shoot for the otherworldly look of the deadfall trees.
This was probably the highlight of the year for me when it came to photography. It was a slow process to get in the right frame of mind, but once I got there and went to Driftwood Beach, it was just such a magical time. Even now, I can remember the awe that I felt, even more than the memory of the insects that were trying to either eat me alive or carry me off the island. It really is one of those places that I highly recommend you visit at least once in your life. It couldn’t have come at a better time for me since I was still on my landscape kick from the Spring. I was in the right place mentally to do some coastal photography, and this location was just such an inspiration. In fact, the plan was to return to a different beach in the Fall to further that excitement. That never did happen though.
August was a very busy month for me as it started off with the invitational workshop that I had mentioned before. It turned into a half day affair with the two invitees. I think that it went well, but I could tell that I was kind of out of my depth with the topic. The location was really pretty, and they have done a great job at setting it up. However, it just isn’t my cup of tea for photography. I don’t have all that much experience with photographing flowers which also hurt me being able to help them through the process. I did what I could but realized that this would probably never be an actual workshop that I offered. It is very important to me when setting up workshops that I do things where I can offer lots of tips and share techniques which have worked for me. A workshop should be an educational experience, and not just a group photo outing. That is why I chose to make this an invitational workshop instead of charging clients. While it was enjoyable and beneficial for both in attendance, I would have felt guilty taking their money for what I saw as a substandard workshop experience from me.
In an interesting turn, after the floral workshop was finished, I was feeling like engaging in my own photography. Since the flowers were doing nothing for me, I decided to go out to Yadkin County to follow up on a tip that I had received from a recent location I had shot. The clouds didn’t stick around as I had hoped and when I got there, the sun was in full force. The pair of Impalas still looked good under the high sun, so I decided to give them a try. It was one of those times when I went against all my normal rules for when I like to shoot and came away with images that I thought were really good despite shooting in what I would consider adverse conditions. The full sun changed a lot about how the colors represented as well as how deep the shadows were. It limited what directions I could shoot in, but overall, it was a really fun experience. This trek and a few others that I had been on over the previous month or so started to whet my appetite for decay once again. This would again become the direction for my photography for the remainder of the year.
There was a period in the middle of August where I spend most of my time mentally preparing for the Dearworld shoot at UNC Asheville. That was scheduled for the 17th, and since getting signed up for it, Toni had been hired to work the merchandise table off to the side of where I would be shooting. Mandy was going to be there as the digital assistant running the laptop that I was tethered to. While we were not supposed to start shooting until after dinner, we had to be there around 3pm to get set up. We ended up leaving home at 1pm and planning on getting back home after midnight based on the assumed number of subjects to photograph. It was going to be a very long day, and I had a truck loaded down with all the gear that I was going to need.
Considering all of the moving parts, this entire session went very smoothly with no real glitches. The only glitch that we ran into was the tethering of the camera to the laptop. The first fail was determined to be the cable, and the second one was found to be a setting on my camera which we fixed quickly. It still lost communication with the laptop when we had the first subject in front of the camera, but a quick reboot of the camera fixed the issue, and I just left it on for the duration after that. We ended up finishing a couple of hours earlier than planned and were on the way home around 10pm. Looking back on that experience, I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was fun and I learned a lot about volume shooting during those hours.
I was able to put some of those newfound skills to use a week later when I did the large-scale headshot session in Charlotte. I had signed on to shoot 27 individuals during a business day. With a little over an hour to set up and tear down, I was going to have to shoot about four an hour which was at the limit of what I had been able to do beforehand. To simplify things, I went with a clamshell lighting so that it would be consistent with everyone as shadows were minimized which would be generally flattering. The session went very well, and I was even ahead of schedule by lunch. The only issues that I ran into were when I shot the really tall folks. I had a hard time getting an angle on them that didn’t clip the backdrop through their head. The low ceiling height added to that issue since I had a softbox positioned directly in front of the subject. For those, I brought a chair over and had them sit which meant lowering the light and reflector which was not too bad to do. It was definitely easier than changing the lighting position off to the side.
During the day, I was informed that there were two employees that were not going to be able to make it as well as the owner of the company who wanted to get a haircut before his photo was taken. I considered my options at this point and decided that I was getting paid enough from this job to work with them on this point. Normally, I would suggest that they come out to the studio at a later time, or I would have to charge another creative fee (time spent building the set and tearing it down) to come out a different day. I said that if they could just let me leave everything set up, I would come back the next day to get the leftovers. Since there were a couple that were no longer in need of photos, I would just go with the initial estimate and let that be a wash for the extra time in travel. That was agreed, and when I wrapped up for the first day around 3pm, I just left everything where it was knowing I would be back the following afternoon after I delivered a metal print to a client in High Point.
Well, I woke up early and made my way to High Point to deliver a stunning metal print of a sunrise from Driftwood Beach. The client was very happy with the print, and I would have to agree that it turned out amazing. When that was done, I stopped to get gas and hopped on the highway to go to Charlotte to finish up the headshots. While I was enroute, I was contacted by the company who had been without power in the building for the entire morning. While I didn’t need any power to do what I was doing, there was no reason to have anyone come to work if they couldn’t actually work. On the off chance that power was restored, I kept on the path to Charlotte and when I got to that last point of no return, I talked with them again and found that the power was still out, and they weren’t going to call anyone into the office all day. We made plans to try again first thing the next morning. It had to be early because I was meeting with another client about a large-scale print order here in North Wilkesboro in the early afternoon. When I suggested the time, I wasn’t thinking that I would have a literal truckload of gear that would need to be unloaded so I could load up demo prints to show the client. I was going to need to get the last three people photographed in an hour and be packing things up right after that to give me enough time to make my next appointment.
Things went off without a hitch that morning and I was able to get home, and swap loads to meet with my other client as scheduled. Since I had started doing the edits on the headshots the day after the first part of the session, I was in good shape to finish all of the edits up when I got back home. I was able to deliver the headshots digitally as requested the same day that I finished the last session. This is one of those aspects of business that I feel is very important. All too often, I hear about photographers taking months to deliver the photographs. That just doesn’t sit well with me. I guess I have trained myself to do the shoot, get the edits done, and have the finished product ready after doing all my treks and blogs over the years. It was the same way when I was a Police Officer, no matter how late during a shift I finished a call, I would write that report before going home. I’m glad that I have that sense of completion when it comes to tasks because I don’t like getting behind in anything.
As August wrapped up, I was kind of welcoming the slowing down that followed. I was still going out on my treks, and while I had considered working out some Fall workshops, I decided against them. I just didn’t want to go through another batch of workshops that fell on deaf ears. I was also quite happy with just focusing on my own work at this point. The frequency that I was going out was greatly increasing and I was adding images at a rate that I don’t usually see. It seemed that there was no end to my creativity in sight. As an artist, we revel in those times because we know there will be an equally long down time that will eventually come to be.
In addition to my treks, I was also talking with clients for different portrait services as well. One of them happened to be the stepson of a family friend who was looking to get into modeling. They had reached out to me to do a headshot of him. Now, I don’t know much about the modeling world, but I seemed to recall hearing something about a comp card that models would use. A headshot is a small portion of this card, and there were other aspects of it which I felt I could help with. I started to do the research for what was needed and found that he was going to need four to six photos for this card, with headshots, 3/4 length, full length, and lifestyle shots to be included. I could take care of all of that, and we set up a time at the end of September to do the photo shoot. This was going to be a mix of studio and location photos which fortunately I had the right space here at the studio to take care of all that. We started outside as the sun was going down and finished up in the studio to get a good starter package of photos for his portfolio as well as for his comp card.
That wasn’t the only big studio event that we had here during this time as I was contacted by one of my cycling friends about doing a themed Halloween shoot on October 13th. As you can read in the linked bog entry, there were a lot of new techniques that I learned during that session. Probably the biggest thing that I learned was the use of off camera flash to turn day into night. I have been familiar with the concepts but have yet to have a reason to put it into practice. This session gave me the perfect opportunity to make it happen as they were wanting an outside shoot in the woods with a spooky vibe to it. This turned into one of the biggest themed shoots that I have done up to this point. Even though there were a lot of photos to go through and edit, I was still able to have them all delivered the following day. I really am serious about getting the final photos to the client without delay. It makes them happy, and it releases me to focus on other things quicker.
One of the things that I was having to focus on during this time was a shipping issue I never suspected that I would have to deal with. I’ve long since been shipping prints all over the United States and can do it without putting any thought into it at all. However, I was now looking at a kink to my norm when I was contacted by a client in Australia. He had seen me post a photo from Driftwood Beach on Facebook and just had to have a print. That photo was Once Upon a Time, and you can see it in the list of the 12 most significant images of 2023. He said that it reminded him of the beaches in Australia and he wanted it to be hung on his wall by the bed. I was thrilled at the prospect of selling a print to the other side of the globe, but shipping was going to be much more complicated, and there was the whole thing with converting the money over. There was also the chance that this was a scam, so I shouldn’t be going into it without really looking at the whole situation.
I figured out a rough estimate of the cost of shipping and sent that to him, but it was too much. I couldn’t disagree with him as the shipping was looking to be the same price as the print. I was happy that he didn’t say he would send me a large amount and I could just ship it and send the change back with the package. That would have been a sure sign of a scam. Nope, he wanted to look at other options for shipping to see if it could be done cheaper. Over the next few days, I looked at all the options and gave him the rundown on all of them. To my surprise, he was agreeable with the USPS option, and wanted to be billed through PayPal. Within hours of sending the invoice, it was paid along with a tip. I made the print and put together the delivery packet to be sent. The next day it was in the mail and bound for the land down under. It only took about 10 days to get there which wasn’t bad at all. Just like that, I have become a photographer with prints sold internationally. I don’t think that it is something that I will do often, and I won’t have it set up through the website, but occasionally with the right client, I can see this working out well.
Remember when I mentioned that the Ashe County Photographer’s book was supposed to be completed later in the year? Well, I still hadn’t heard anything about it and sent an email to the team. I can’t say that I was surprised at the response because I had been wondering how this project was going to get done so quickly in the first place. As it turns out, the book was just now going to the publisher and that started a three to six month clock on completion. The hope was that the team had done a lot of the heavy lifting that the publisher would normally do, allowing it to be finished on the quicker end of that estimate. Regardless, it was still looking like well into 2024 when the book would be published and available for purchase. After talking about this book for two different yearly reviews, I am ready to see it and share the end result with you. I would say by my next yearly review I will have a link for how you can buy the book officially. For now, it is only open for presale through McFarland Books.
Speaking of books, I’m sure you will know that I have had a dream of doing a book for a while now. I’ve looked into publishing costs and all the other things that surround that to get an idea of what I would be looking at to make a coffee table book. When I put feelers out online to see what my customer base would be I’m left with it being a great idea, but for no more than $20 bucks which is less than it would cost me to produce a book of even moderate quality. Also, based on the feedback I’ve gotten, I would be looking at having a potential customer base of around 10 people. Keep in mind that I would be in charge of marketing and distributing of the book, so it would all come down to how many people I could sell the book to. To put this into perspective, if I were to do a run of 500 books, in order for me to make a worthwhile profit, I would have to charge $100.00 a book, while if I did a run of 2000 books, I could drop that to just under $50.00 per copy. That is still nowhere near the $20.00 price point that I’ve been able to get a small handful of folks to be willing to pay. Doing a run of 2000 books, my production cost would be around $13.00 a copy, but I don’t see any way of selling 2000 copies of a book, which forces me to go with a much smaller run size, and higher price per book. There are also other costs associated with this which aren’t included yet like packaging, and shipping costs which can add up very quickly. You see the problem now? Not wanting to spend the months it would take making my own book and going through the expense of publishing it (potentially around $20,000), just to have boxes of books sitting in my storage closet, I have decided to not go the book route at this time. Part of my personal project for this year has been related to the concept of making a book though.
I’ve been considering cheaper options like ebooks, or zines which would give me experience in the book arena while not being quite as expensive or daunting in scope. It would allow me the opportunity to test the waters with my ability to market the books as well as determining what the real demand would be. While I had really thought that I would be in the process of putting this project together, the year just hasn’t worked out to where I’ve had that mental energy to spare. I have been focusing on building a body of work that will work in the book that I have envisioned. I know that it will be based on my decay photography, and likely the collection of old cars that I have shot over the years. A lot of the photos that I have been capturing, especially in the last half of 2023 have been with the idea of a book in mind. Whether or not that will actually take off I have no idea. I do know that the Ashe County Photographers book has clued me into the long-term commitment that is required for such things. If two people from within the book publishing industry take over two years to put a book together where does that leave me? I know nothing about making a book which means I would be figuring it out as I went along. Mistakes will be made, and mistakes will cost time and money. When I do make the jump into starting the project, I will undoubtedly see it all the way through even if it gets to be too much for me which is something I worry about. At the same time, I look at my collection of images and wonder if there is another purpose that is waiting for them outside of the internet. Print sales are decent but are still a very small part of my yearly income. If I could get a reliable marketing approach to selling a book, there would be much more chance to grow from a financial standpoint, but also a much higher risk to get to that point. I just see sitting on $20,000 worth of books and having nobody ordering them.
The thoughts about the book project have been there for a very long time, but as the year came to a close, I found myself really doing a lot more soul searching about my photography and its place in the world. I hit on the topic a while back when I asked if photography even mattered anymore. Don’t worry, I’m not going to rehash that topic, but it has been rearing its ugly head here of late. After being officially in business for about four and a half years now, I have to look at the bottom line and see how things are going. 2022 was a standout year for me financially and I thought that it was a sign of great things to come. As I’ve mentioned, this past year has been dismal at best. My gross income is half what I brought in during 2022, although my expenses are about 1/6 what they were then. Most of that difference falls on the missing workshops from the year among some other bits here and there.
As I look at the time that I have spent for different activities, the majority of my time has been spent learning different aspects of photography and going out to work on portfolio images to practice skills as well as doing test shoots in portraiture. I’ve spent comparatively little time actually earning money which does hurt the business aspect of things. My solutions are to get back into teaching on a larger scale for possibly less money to make it more accessible, or to do something meaningful with the photos that I have been capturing over the years. I have always had a hard time dealing with the fact that I am primarily a social media photographer who is paid in likes and comments (those have even dropped off quite a bit over the last year). I never wanted to get into photography to feed the social networks, I wanted to make a viable career out of it. I am realizing more and more that I am a much better photographer than I am a business person which is fine to a point as long as I am not in business. I’ve reached that point where my lack of business skills is hampering me from growing as a photographer. Who knows, maybe I’m just not good at either and I should just go back to writing reports about shoplifters. I’m kidding of course, I’m much too old to go back through BLET and field training. I’m where I’m going to be, I just have to make it work the best that I can.
On the topic of business problems, I want to go ahead and talk about a change that I see coming up, and it is in fact already here. As you know, I have been an affiliate with Singh-Ray since 2017, if memory serves. It has been a very long relationship and one that I have valued over the years. The connection came about in the most organic way because I had made the choice to shoot with their filters dating back to when I really started getting serious with my photography in 2008. I had built up my entire kit with their filters and loved working with them. Because I was so vocal about my use of the filters, they reached out to me and in very short order, I was listed as an official affiliate with the company with my very own discount code. When I started to do workshops, they provided me with a demo kit of the filters that I regularly use so that I could show others how they were used in the field. Through my relationship with Singh-Ray, I was able to help folks make the right decisions about what filters to get, save them money on their purchases, while making a little on the back end. I say make a little, but in reality, there was so much use of my discount code that I was making well into four digits annually from sales generated through me. It was a very nice way to start off each year as I would get a check from them based on sales generated from the previous year. Last year, that check was about half of what I have come to expect which told a portion of the story which was unraveling. The rest of the story didn’t really come to light until the end of this year.
Starting in early November I believe; I noticed a banner on their website stating that they were not currently accepting orders. My first thought was that they were having some issues with the website which I totally understood. I didn’t think much about it until I had seen the banner for over two weeks. I was also dealing with a couple of clients about some filter purchases and was trying to get an estimate on when those filters could be ordered. I called and emailed Singh-Ray with no response which was kind of odd. As part of being an affiliate with them, I had a handler who I had direct communications with. This was unnerving to say the least, so I reached out to a friend who has worked with them in the past to see if he knew anything. He wasn’t aware of any changes but contacted a friend of his within the company. Keep in mind that Singh-Ray is a very small company with less than 10 employees. Shortly after, he let me know that he had managed to make contact with his friend, who also happened to be my handler. Without getting into any specifics here, there have been some retirements among the staff, and a death of one of the owners. With the direction of the company in question, my handler left Singh-Ray. I have no idea how many people remain with the company, but the designers are gone, as are a good part of the admin staff, along the one that has been directing the company for a year or so. She had also said that sales have been plummeting over the last couple of years which I have seen with the decrease in my commission checks. It was all starting to make sense to me at this point.
I have no idea what is going to happen with Singh-Ray, and as of right now, I am still an affiliate with them. However, they have no products to put out, and no way to order anything currently. I have a very hard time promoting a company that might fold any day. I am still using their filters and love what they do. Fortunately, the filters are built like tanks, and I should have no problem continuing to use them for many years to come, but I’m no longer going to recommend using them as I have in the past. I have no intention of reaching out to a new company to maintain an affiliate relationship because unless I believe in the company, I have no interest in promoting their brand. I also like the freedom to be able to choose what I want to use which can get muddied when you are backed by a company. That is what I loved about Singh-Ray for so long. I had already built my kit with my own money by the time they reached out to me. I didn’t need to make any changes at all based on the relationship and it was a perfect fit for me.
That pretty much wraps up 2023 for me photographically. Looking back over the year there was a lot more that went on than I recognized. It has been a rollercoaster of a year and I have run into more obstacles than I am used to. The year has left me beaten down, but not broken. I have learned a lot about myself, and my photography which I hope to put to good use in the coming year. It is quite disheartening to look at this from a business standpoint as all logic would say to hang it up at this point. I’ve barely been able to keep this venture afloat since starting it officially in 2019. There is just so much that goes into owning your own business, and it is very hard to mix the business aspects with something that you love to do so much. Those times when I focus on the business end, I start to resent the actual act of making photographs. When I focus on the joy of photography, the business end ceases to matter that much, and I forget about it. Finding that perfect balance is hard for me to do. This always leads to some version of depression for me.
I’m going to be thinking about this for some time to come and am not sure if I will even come to a conclusion by the end of this year. However, the time has come to really take stock of this as a business venture. I could continue to push through and keep trying to make it a successful business, or I could back away and look at it more as a hobby and just do it for the love of photography. I can’t keep trying to make the two work together because the goals of each are incompatible, at least in the way I have to work it. In the end, I just want to create the best photos that I can, share my knowledge with those that are trying to learn, and enjoy the process. Sadly, I am left to rely on the business end to fund all of that which limits what I can do. Time will tell how I work this out for myself, but at least I don’t see the photography going away.
Thank you for being with me on my journey whether it has been for a week, or for 15 years. It is each of you which are the highlights of what I do. Nothing I photograph would mean anything if there wasn’t an audience for it. You have each impacted my time as a photographer whether it has been a simple like on a post, a comment, an in-person discussion, a purchase, perhaps trusting me to capture your portraits, or putting your faith in me as a teacher and mentor. I appreciate all of you and thank you for the time you have spent in support of this journey of mine.
Let’s get rolling with 2024!!!
