Not really a success

It’s end of the year, time to be really honest with ourselves. How did we do? I’ll focus solely on my business here. Summarised: not as great as expected. As an income it was not sufficient. It’s not a big surprise based on how few hours I actually spent working 🫣

Most of the money came from portraits - which I haven’t shared online for privacy reasons. Something I need to change - I need to start to ask people who would be willing to share online.

Update: Done and you are soon going to see some!

My other focus - nature photography was financially a disaster. Which makes sense - the demand is clearly not as high as the supply. I still love taking photos of nature, but it has lost a bit of its magic if there is not really anyone on the other side - appreciating them.

How to make it a success?

It feels like time for adjustments. Not just to make money, but to keep doing what feels interesting to me. I’ve made a short list of my options:

• More portraits

  I love taking portraits, especially children’s’. Adults already have these behavioral “filters” of how they “should” look like, which face to make… Children not. They are who they really are and it makes the photos authentic. I need to approach more schools.

• Food photography

  I studied it for last few months and felt in love with it. The only issue is that I need to find someone who wants the photos of their food - I’m not a chef. I love food and cooking, but I focus on the taste rather than look of it 😅 I have one friend who is about to start a pastry business so that’s a start. After I create a portfolio, I can start asking around food-related businesses.

• Product photography

  Something to learn about! My idea was to take one product photoshoot a month for free - to create a portfolio and gain experiences, support small businesses that I like.

• Calendars

  A calendar with all the beautiful photos of Algarve could be interesting for some local businesses. I need to do my research! Or perhaps their products?

• Real estate

  Especially here, with all the touristic accommodation around, there is always a demand. I just don’t feel the sparkle.

• Presets

  I could sell presets, but it seems like what everyone is doing and I still don’t really believe in presets as magical wands.

So what’s the problem?

I also got an offer to make UI/UX design and/or take care of customer support of a new amazing digital product. Can you see why I feel so torn now? I’d love to do all of it, but I am not sure that it’s possible. I struggle already with all the things. I wanted to try to be more focused instead of being all over the place all the time.

I’ve ordered some books about this topic and let’s see if I fall in love with it or not.

How do I decide? 🤯

Shall I try to do everything together? Shall I give something up? If so, what? I love all these adventures! How do you make such difficult decisions?