Archive for Starting a Business

Starting a Photography Business: Part 55 – An Eventful Recce

The first time I left Sorrento a few years ago, after a holiday, I had a tear in my eye. No place before or since has had such an emotional reaction from me, not even my native Yorkshire. Sorrento and the Amalfi coast gets under my skin like no other.

From the outset of this venture of a photography tour, it’s been important to me that this tour is a holiday that sees fantastic view points of the area whilst experiencing it on a local level; getting a feel for the local culture and life, exploring local footpaths, tasting local food and understanding the way of life down here.

Rain took its hand in making this recce just what I needed to make the tour just what I wanted. After a day of torrential rain a rock fall made it impossible for me to get further down the coast, forcing me to stay very local to Sorrento and her peninsula. Though to be truly honest, I did curse my misfortune of not being able to explore further down the coast for a couple of days. Read More→

Starting a Photography Business: Part 54 – Going Home

The island of Capri

Well today is the day that I’ve been waiting for for some time, to be returning to the place I lived in Italy, to a place that always feels like home when I am there. And it’s really important this time as I’m going back to recce the places that I will be including in the photography holiday, and I can’t wait. I’m really excited about stepping on the plane about being in my favourite hotel and being around the friends that I made when I was there.

Also the area is so beautiful, so bewitching and when I set up the photography website, the thing that I most wanted was to have a fuller portfolio of Italy, of my part of Italy that I love. Alluring photos of the hidden corners, secret alleyways and beautiful viewpoints.

I’ve allowed myself a couple of days in the schedule where I can relax and enjoy myself although they will be days that I visit hotels. Sorrento is notoriously expensive for hotels even as a tour operator, it’s very hard to get a break in Sorrento and when you look at holidays in Italy, you will see that they are so much more expensive than holidays in Spain, Greece or anywhere else in the Mediterranean, because the initial costs to us are very, very expensive and it’s very hard to drive them down and get good tour operator rates. Read More→

Starting a Photography Business: Part 53 – A Divided Mind

Autumn Fruits

I was having quite a tough time before going to Italy in September, I felt like I was being pulled in several directions at once and my mind felt very muddled.  With two photography holidays on the drawing board, hotels needing inspecting, doing photography courses locally and trying to work on Healing with Photography, it all felt too much, and that I needed to think about streamlining the whole business. I hoped that when I came back from Italy I would be a little calmer, more positive and with more direction.

Though trying to work out if the Cilento region of Italy was right to do a photography tour increased the feeling of being spread to thinly; not only was I arranging a photography tour in Sorrento for the May, I needed to recce an unknown area and get to know it in a very short time. And so I didn’t actually take the time to sit down and work through anything.

Before going away I picked up a cheap novel, you know the kind, one that didn’t matter if it got damaged whilst I was away as it wasn’t a book that I wanted to keep. Unfortunately I picked one up that wasn’t good for my mind set. Read More→

Starting a Photography Business: Part 52 – Birthday Celebrations

A year ago I nervously started writing this column with the focus on the starting of the photography business and getting the photography website up and running. Yet in the background, out of sight the idea for Healing with Photography had already happened. So it feels kind of fitting that on the birthday celebration of this column, with a little cake thrown in for good measure that a new business starts to take shape in the form of a website.

Essential Props

The website design for Healing with Photography has started in earnest now, I am using the same web development company as I used for my photography website; SmartDeCat have over last few months been working hard to bring new software to the market that makes the whole process so much easier. Seriously, I cannot believe how easy it now is to create my website. Menus have been made slicker and more compact, and everything is easy to find.

Plus of course, it’s a whole lot quicker putting this website together rather than the photography website, as it doesn’t involve me adding lots of photos. Though previous experience didn’t prevent me from making a basic error and printing my companies email address on the about page. Thankfully my web designer pointed it out to me and reminded that the reason you never do this is because spam robots go around collecting this data to later spam your email address.

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Starting a Photography Business: Part 51 – Diversification!

Putting the World to Rights

Since August I have been working with a local farmer to start compiling photographs for a documentary series and exhibition, ‘A year in the life of a farmer’. I’m happiest when I’m working around farm animals be it in a field on a showground or on a farm; I find a lot of humour and character in their personalities particularly cows.

I’d had the idea a few months ago to find a couple of farmers who would be happy for me to turn up to take photographs at significant times in the year; ploughing, harvesting, calving, milking etc. There may be a little bit of artistic license in the sense that the farmer I’m working with has beef cattle, and to cover farming as a whole I would like to get some images from a dairy farm; milking and the like, to show the full scope of farming along with the arable side or the business.

Then a different opportunity presented itself a couple of weeks ago; working with a horsewoman who trains horses and shows them in hand and ridden. As I was talking to her this week, and she was explaining the intricacies of the job to keep the interest of the horse and teach it ring manners, I was taken by how much skill there is and how best to show that via photographs. Read More→

Starting a Photography Business: Part 50 – The Way We React!

Autumn Colours

Just before going away to Italy I was talking to a relatively new friend about Healing with Photography; in essence just explaining what it is. You’ll know if you’ve read my previous articles that Healing with Photography is close to my heart and whilst I’ll listen to constructive advice, woe betide anyone who sticks their nose in where it isn’t asked for.

It turned out that I was talking to someone who didn’t understand the issues of mental health, as I guess many of us don’t, and they then tried to offer advice. And for a while there they had me re-thinking, questioning my ideas and looking for a different way to run it even though the professionals I’ve spoken to in mental health tell me that I’ve developed something that they really like.

And in many ways the re-think was a worthy detour, it gave me the opportunity to look again at Healing with Photography and make sure that it is on the right tracks to help the people most in need of it and to make sure that commercially it works too. I took this musing away with me to Italy and I was going to find time to sit down and work out the best way forward, whilst all the time I could feel the resentment towards this friend for having stuck their nose in to my business bubbling up in my mind. Read More→