It’s #TravelTuesday and I, Dave Williams, am writing today from the Isle of Skye, Scotland. The weather is typically Scottish, which can be considered secret code for ‘it’s raining’. I’m waiting patiently for the sky to give me some decent light for a particular hike I want to do that goes half way up a mountain for a spectacular view, but so far all I’ve done is send the drone up there. This has made me think about the 5% of time that actually gets dedicated to photography.
As a professional photographer we are only around 5% photographer. Honestly, it’s so boring at times. Developing and driving a photography business is largely about everything else. It’s about social media, marketing, blogging, accounting… it’s about everything that keeps the photography going. The accounting element in itself can break down into general accounts, invoicing, purchasing, and a little more. The marketing includes maintaining a website, dealing with e-mails, finding clients, creating ways for clients to find us, and that list also goes on.
I’ve found that all this can be quite detrimental to creativity. In fact, scratch that. It can be very detrimental. It’s extremely important for us to stay on our creative toes when we’re neck deep in ‘admin’ work.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Personal projects. Having a personal project, either aligned to our regular photography or something totally different, will keep our creativity and our sanity. This is not something that’s unique to photography. Let’s take a look at plumbing, for instance. A plumber spends a lot of time buying parts, sending invoices, marketing their business, and everything else we do as photographers, but here’s the difference: –
A knock in our creativity as a photographer will have a huge impact on our business unless we keep it in check. We need to proactively deal with it. We need to nurture our creativity whilst we’re doing the 95%.
Message of the day, therefore, is this: – Engage in personal projects to keep on top of your creative ‘A’ game.
Much love
Dave
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