Don’t forget to check out Parts One, Two and Three!
If Part One was titled ” Reassessing Gear,” then I guess this post could be titled “Reassessing Business.” My off season is a time for me to do some spring cleaning for my business. I take some intentional time to think about and jot down a list of the types of things that worked for me during the year, the things that didn’t work so well and the things I want to see improved, tweaked or changed. It includes, but is not limited to, branding, marketing, legal stuff, financial stuff, scheduling etc. Let’s give you some some real life examples:
Just like with gear, these are things that I’m consciously thinking of throughout the year and making a mental checklist of anyway. However I usually only have time to minor tweaks rather than a whole revamp during my working season. I would not suggest doing crazy overhauls of your business while in the middle of your season– it was like the time I decided to paint one of our bathroom in July and it never got completed until November :S Doing a complete revamp or adding new things to your business take a lot of time whether its the research stage, transfer/implementation stage or the re-adjustment stage (or all of the above) which is why my off season is the ideal time to dive into this.
New Website!
If you haven’t noticed, my blog has a minor change to it mainly in the form of color scheme. It’s to match my totally new, completely overhauled and rebuilt webpage! :) And believe me, doing something major to your business like getting a new website built is something you REALLY want to keep for your off season or when you know you can dedicate a lot of hours to.
The process of getting a new website actually started 2-3 years ago. You see, my old site was coming up 5 years old so you can say that it was time for a refresh. So as of about 3 years ago, I’ve already been researching designs and layouts, slowly taking steps in the redesign process. There seems to be a trend of “blogsites” in the wedding industry where photographers get rid of a formal portfolio and use their blog as their one and only site. While I think the concept is good (especially for young photographers who do not have a complete body of work to make up a portfolio yet), I come from a background where you’re always shooting for your book aka portfolio. Your portfolio is THE motivation for you to keep pushing yourself to shoot something fantastic and have it book-worthy. A portfolio is a highly thought out and selective body of work to best represent a photographer’s style and approach. If we were talking about musicians then it’d be their album. The blog (imho) is for the extra little goodies and the in betweens. I couldn’t imagine telling a photo editor or art director to dig through my blog (which includes a bunch of irrelevant personal content and banter, such as this) in order to see applicable work or worse: showing them my blog at a portfolio meeting. That’s totally messed up. So how could I ask a newly engaged couple to do just that?! For me, the idea of me not having a formal website portfolio as a professional is mega weird.
Requirements when looking for my new site? Clean, simple, intuitive. Mobile friendly. Easy to update. Hassle free change-over with zero downtime. My poll concluded that people place a high importance on thumbnails so I wanted to make sure I had a kickass thumbnail feature! As for ease-of-use, I had my mom test drive it and she seemed to figure it out pretty quickly so … I think we’re set haha (No offense mom!) I went back to a website style which resonates with the industry standard in the editorial and advertising world because that’s the world I learned and grew my craft in.
It took several days to get everything smoothed out from CNAMEs, redirecting DNS, crazy data transfers to a new server, I almost lost this very blog and three years worth of data but was able to salvage it! Point in case to make sure you have a lot of dedicated time to spend on big overhauls in your business :)
Hope this was helpful!
You can comment on my new website below or add on any additional questions below as well.
Please send your new FAQs here and I’ll be sure to include it in the next post!
c.
I really like your new site Claudia! And I love reading your educational posts.
I’ve been thinking about the blogsite/portfolio debate and this post really put what I’ve been thinking about in words! I agree that the blogsite is great for someone to get more of an insight on the photographer’s personality but a portfolio should be the ultimate place where the best of the best should be displayed!
Enjoyed reading these four off season posts! Thanks!!
The key to blogsites is not making it look/feel like a blogsite. Let’s face it, most users think pop-ups are the most annoying part of browsing through a website. Depending on your target audience, a blogsite might be all you need to get those bookings (as a wedding photographer). It’s all about great content and great UI. You can still have a portfolio in a blogsite.
However, blogging is an artform in itself. For those who don’t know how to blog or keep up, I wouldn’t even bother with one. Having huge gaps in between blog posts looks horrible, in my opinion. It’s better to just have a website.
Again, it’s all about who your desired audience is. If I’m bidding for jobs where Art Directors and Photo Editors are evaluating my portfolio, I would not even think of giving them a link to my blogsite. I just think that’d be common sense lol
awesome new look. jealous is an understatement :)
-myw