Confidence Knock

Today I have to say that my confidence is a bit low, starting a business is the hardest thing I have had to do.
To say that I am not very popular is an understatement, I have always been a bit of a loner and a geek and this is fine by me. I would rather sit and play with my camera than go out drinking with people and until now this has never been a problem for me however I have noticed that between me and my classmates my progress is very slow in comparison. My class is populated, for the most part, by young, pretty girls with lots of friends and contacts to people who can help spread their name and volunteer to model for them and help them practice. I on the other hand have myself and my beautiful daughter. If I were still with my husband I expect I would have many people to help but splitting up with him apparently meant losing everyone I thought was my friend as well. So now I am in a quandry, I don't know how to go about advertising myself and getting help with practice shoots. I know I still have a lot to learn before opening my studio in the summer of next year but with nobody to help how am I supposed to do this? I need to fail a few times with people that wont mind the odd wobble before I try to do this as a profession with people that expect perfect customer service and results.
I have booked a studio and have asked several people if they would like to come and have their photo taken with their children. I am hoping that at least a couple of people will take me up on the offer so that I can at least get a few nice shots to add to my portfolio, hopefully after that things will start picking up and head in the right direction.
I know that in the grand scheme of things I have only been working on this for a couple of weeks but I am very aware of how important it is for me to be at least ready to start by the time I finish uni. This is where I want to go and what I want to do. It's likely that if I don't get off the ground next year then I never will and I'm back to square 1 in another dead end job somewhere trying to make ends meet and never doing what I love :-(

Hopefully this is just a little confidence wobble and I'll be back to my usual self in no time. I expect this is just because I am full of cold and rather tired

Wish me luck everyone...........

Macro Adventures

I have recently been thinking about macro photography, It's something I've always loved but never really got in to, so I went out with my macro lens and had a go. The initial results were good, but not for why you would think...

Although I am very pleased with these photos and I like them a lot none of them were actually taken with my macro lens. I found that a small shake I have always had in my hands is magnified when using the lens (as I suppose it would be) but despite that I was as pleased as I always am at the results from my kit lens.
At this point I started looking for a macro lens with Vibration Reduction on it like my kit lens does.
After fainting at the price I went in search of alternatives. What I found was something called extension rings, these are basically hollow tubes that force the lens to focus closer to the object you are photographing. It was also at this point that my lovely partner got me a gorillapod for our anniversary. usually I don't take my tripod out and about as I'm generally photographing things that are either moving or in the middle of undergrowth next to the ground so it has no use. This one however can get pretty much anywhere I can and is small enough that I can just lift it up if something else suddenly catches my view so it's perfect!
After a bit of messing around at home I went out for a test run.
Here are some of the results of that.

I am very pleased with the outcome and will be continuing along these lines for a little while. I am hoping to eventually put together a book containing images like these throughout the year to encourage people to take a closer look at their surroundings.

I am also tieing this in with a landscape project we have been given at uni and this will add to the image selection for both that and my book, 

The idea behind it connects my love of macro photography with something else that is close to me, sight, people see but they do not observe, I am quite observant despite not being able to see that well, being almost totally blind in one eye I have struggled with sight all my life, I find reading quite hard and suffer from headaches constantly due to eye strain. This also makes me very nervous of the future. I am a very visual person and without my sight I don't know what I would do so I really want to encourage people to take the time to see what they are looking at as opposed to just taking everything for granted.

If you like what you see then don't forget you can visit my facebook page Here, why not give me a like and stay up to date with how my book is going and other things i'm up to :-)

Studio Planning

After a few phone calls and some long discussions i now have a few ideas of how to go about starting my own business and how to go about it.
I have an appointment schedueld with a business advisor who is going to help me write up a business plan and talk me through possible finance options etc. I also have a friend helping me to build a website. which i'm hopping to have up and running before christmas.

My business seems to be taking two separate directions,

1 Is the set up of my own studio for portraiture and family photos, really I want to set this apart from the average family portrait studio in that most studios do photos of mum, dad and their 2.5 kids, or even just the kids, I however have a larger family than that and have no photos of myself with my parents, 2 sisters and brother. I also am separated from my daughters father and we both have new partners, his partner has 2 other children and my 3 year old wants a photo of all of us together. (we are all on friendly terms so this is not a problem), however it is quite difficult to find a studio with enough space to cater for larger or extended families so this is what I want to try and cater for.

2 Is my online presence as a nature photographer, I sell prints of my work and would also like to start entering competitions and sending work to magazines as well as to a stock website.

I'm now trying to work out how to integrate the 2 together. I'm not sure whether to have both on the same website / Facebook page etc or whether to keep them separate. I think that until I have my own studio space then I will have to concentrate more on the nature photography side of it as this is what I can do and sell. however once I have a studio then this is what I want to be my main job description as it were so that is where I will concentrate my main efforts.

There is still a long way to go and a lot of things to but I am gaining confidence that it's all going in the right direction.

Critical studies essay

So we have a critical studies essay to write in uni and I have decided to write about how editorial photography does not always relate to the photograph that was actually taken. I started with the idea that I wanted to write about the portrayal of women in the media however whilst researching this I came across a photograph of a female US soldier and an article about how women are portrayed in the military. The article spoke of how women are usually shown in stories that relate to peace and nurturing whereas men are shown in the stronger roles. This led me to wondering about how a simple caption can change the entire story of a photograph and not always in a good way. Research and background for this essay is starting now and the actual writing starts after Christmas.
Watch this space :-)

website

So it looks like i'm going to be heading into the territory of building a website, I am both terrified and excited about this. I have dabbled in the world of web development before but am well out of practice! i am however in good hands with the help of a lovely friend who does such things for a living so i am confident that all will go smoothly :-)

Wish me luck!