2023 - The Year in Review

Whoah - that was some year man. The busiest 12 months of my 19-year freelance career so far, and here are the highlights:

My revenue (sales) was up by 33% on the previous year due to a small increase in job fees, and a marked increase in the number of jobs completed. Some weeks were seeing me suffer 90+ hours doing the work, and this is something I need to address going forward. My 60th birthday (I know!) is a year away, and it’s not practical to be able to sustain those types of hours week after week without doing lasting damage to my health. I’m pretty much at capacity now in terms of being able to deliver top-quality results in a short timeframe for existing clients, so something has to give. I took my usual 1 week holiday in August - much to the chagrin of my main client (who shortened it to 6 days by insisting that I did a job before heading off to Yorkshire), and I’ve managed to avoid working over the Christmas holidays by pure chance. This has given me a much-needed 2-week rest, and I haven’t thought about work at all during this time. There are options open to me in terms of consolidating my client work, but i’ll give that some consideration before committing to anything.

Back in October, I was locked out of my own email and website due to some botched admin on my part. It was a total pain in the arse, so I took the nuclear option of just writing off my existing digital footprint, and starting from scratch. My website is just a visual scrapbook for any potential clients and gets around fifty views a year. At first I decided to do without any online presence, but after some thought, I pressed ahead with a new, simple website from Squarespace, with a very simple web address. I’m not looking for more real-estate clients, but a move to architectural and interior design firms would be preferential, and the new website reflects this type of shooting. Updating this blog is ongoing - transferring all content from my Blogger site is a time-consuming process, but I’m almost there. My ancient email address was eventually recovered from 123 Reg, but the amount of spam bombarding it was causing untold misery. Consequently, I moved to a client-only email address and set up a temporary forwarder which will capture any emails from old clients who haven’t been informed of the changes. I also set up a new Instagram profile for work stuff (link at the top right) which is something I don’t relish, but unfortunately seems necessary in this extremely narcissistic industry. My withdrawal from the Facebook world was the best thing I’ve done for ages, and I don’t regret this at all. This blog is now part of my website (which might need some simplification - too many sections currently), so everything is displayed and consequently managed in one space.

Artificial Intelligence - AI has been in the news for all sorts of reasons, and my last year review detailed my foray into its uses in terms of streamlining processes and workflow. It continues to improve and has knocked incredible amounts of time from my under-stair post-production shenanigans. I’m dipping my toe into virtual staging - which involves the AI software adding realistic-looking furnishings to empty spaces that I’ve photographed. (example above) The results can be incredible, but the challenge is getting clients to pay for it. Estate agencies and developers are used to making thousands or tens/hundreds of thousands of pounds of profit per newly-built property, so sharing around £200 of that for 10 highly crafted images is frankly unreasonable, and I should be privileged to be allowed to use my savings to accommodate the purchase of their 25th holiday home. By the way, the 2023 banner at the top of the page was created by some AI text-to-image creation software called Stylar, which is currently in beta development. Check it out while it’s still free to use.

Healthwise, it’s been an up-and-down year - the physical demands of lugging heavy equipment everywhere have resulted in my left side being cursed with a very painful frozen shoulder, and my right side copping for an even more painful tennis elbow. I’m constantly waking up with aches in one arm or the other, and they’re both self-limiting conditions that can’t be treated unless you can rest for months. That’s not a possibility, so it’s a case of “grin and bear it” while the Anadin Ultra kicks in on bad days. My diabetic journey continues, with medication being prescribed back in the spring. The first course of one slow-release Metformin tablet daily had zero effect on my blood sugar levels (probably because I assumed it would be an instant cure, and started eating like a twat), so the dose was doubled to 1000mg a day. I’ve been sensible with carb intake, as the side effects include some severe, and instant diarrhoea which can occur any-place, at any time. This isn’t exactly conducive to working days where I can be on the road for 8 hours, and I’ve been in some awful situations where the need to go is NOW! Avoiding alcohol, chillies, and excess carbs seems to be the answer, and having an encyclopaedic knowledge of public toilet locations helps somewhat. I’ve got an annual checkup at the end of February, so we’ll see what my progress is then.

New gear - An upcoming post will describe my tactics for the year ahead. This past year has seen an investment in the gear used for high-end property video production - namely a Nikon Z6ii mirrorless body, a Laowa 12mm zero distortion lens, a new tripod head, a slider, and a DJI Ronin RS3 gimbal. A client expressed a wish to move to higher-production cinematic videos during a review of its website marketing, so I bought into the equipment thinking it would pay for itself. Once again I was mistaken, and as always, the demand for the service fell flat as soon as a client cost was incurred. I ended up spending thousands while I’ve only output three videos. I even persuaded the client to do their own social media reels which I’d previously produced - losing revenue in the process.

Video for my real estate clients is almost non-existent, but I’m going to restart a tight package of vertical videos for Instagram Reels which should be easy to produce with my new iPhone 15 Pro Max shooting in Apple Pro-Res raw log footage. More on that in a future post as well. My old Godox AD200 flash units have taken a hell of a battering this year. They’re on the go 7 days a week, and the power switch seems to be their weak spot. I’ve always had to send them back twice a year for repair and was forced to buy a new one just to rotate them a bit, so when two went out of action in the autumn, I dived in and bought a new AD400 Pro, which adds a stop of light, and a whole bunch of weight to my kit. The 200’s are all fixed now, so I only use it for jobs involving very dark spaces or huge atriums etc.

What a waste of money - apart from the aforementioned video gear, i’ve been quite good at curbing spending this year. The one thing I regret was my radio scanner thing off Temu (Shop like a billionaire, realise you’re a sap), bought for listening to any traffic problems on my journeys. I discovered that it’s actually illegal to use in the UK, so it’s stuck in the gear cupboard. I have no idea how to use it as the online instructions are in Ukranian, and the many YouTube posts are all intended for other brands of short-wave radios.

I usually include a bit about my favourite and least favourite properties of the year, but to be frank, as every day has melted into another, I can’t remember a single shoot that has particularly inspired me this year. I’ve shot huge places, tiny places, stinky places, fragrant places, filthy places, immaculate places, apartments, bedsits, semis, new-build, cliffside places, mansions, hotels, B&B’s, factories, offices, pubs, care homes, rentals, fields, & even shopping centres, and all of them had a story as to how they came to market. This remains a fascinating way to earn a living and beats any 9-5 job hands down.

The “Strop of the Year” lands firmly in the lap of the owners of a big ex-care home in Whitley Bay which was being sold to potential developers for residential conversion. A spot was booked to do the shoot, and the day before, a request was made to change the day. Unfortunately, I couldn’t accommodate the change as I had other jobs booked in all day, but offered all sorts of alternatives including the weekend. This perfectly reasonable offer was instantly rejected, and the owner sacked off the agent because I wasn’t doing exactly as they wanted. OK then.
That’s the highlight then - I intend to keep things updated regularly in 2024. My Blogger platform is now disabled, and this is the place to come for excitement and the thrills associated with my working life. Let’s hope we all have a happy and prosperous 12 months, and I’ll see y’all soon!