How I got here 6: Adapting to change
Finding myself back to square one, with no income, thousands of pounds worth of annual overheads, & a ton of unaccommodated equipment wasn’t where I imagined myself at the grand old age of fifty. Starting from scratch this time was a definite uphill struggle, although there was no need to buy or replace thousands of pounds worth of specialist equipment again thankfully. First task was to safely store the contents of the old studio in a dry, secure environment – Safestore in Wallsend on this occasion.
I had a temporary boost to the depleted coffers in the early winter of 2014, with an unexpected couple of months shooting at the in-house Barbour studio near to their Head Office in South Shields. The machinery of large organisations never runs smoothly, and this had delayed the recruitment of the necessary staff, and the acquisition of the necessary equipment required to get the operation up and running in time to shoot the AW15 range of clothing. All my stuff was transported over to the facility from the storage unit, and I got cracking with the enormous workload all by myself. Not a stylist or assistant in sight this time in an attempt to provide a buffer for the challenging months of rebuilding ahead. I didn’t enjoy this couple of months at all to be honest, as the silly hours I had to put in were starting to take their toll. The studio space was shared with other photographers as well, so I was frequently evicted to small rooms to continue my efforts out of sight of the main entourage. My last ever day in the place was spent shooting a selection of dogs sporting the latest quilted bedding. I shot a half-length selfie as I packed up the lighting rig for the final time. My last ever significant payment was credited to my bank account a few days before Christmas 2014, and after clearing my list of expenses for the job, I was left with a sum of money that I had to survive on until further notice.
With a raft of experience and skill, one would hope that gaining new clients would be a cinch, given my portfolio of imagery and clients, some of which were pretty blue-chip. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’d built up a pretty good range of shots by doing occasional jobs for an online estate agent over the previous couple of years, and I enjoyed the process of shooting while out and about, so decided to take the route of developing contacts in the real-estate world with the aim of building up a client base that would provide a stepping stone to some of the bigger players in the industry. I read all these photography forums with articles written by people who cite their “creativity’ being the greatest motivation, and the notion that you shouldn’t pursue financial gains so as not to taint your aforementioned “creativity”. I see shots of beautiful travel locations like Cuba, The Serengeti, and the Middle East, and amazing crafted still life creations using crystals and all that shite, and I often wonder how these smug idiots manage to travel the world without earning any money. So…..when embarking on a marketing campaign, it’s important to start with an end point in mind, and that usually means a sum of money to live on. Creativity would have to wait I’m afraid.
Given that an individual real-estate job pays £75 on average – you need to do 15 jobs a month to simply pay the bills for the business. PR work paid slightly better, so I decided to start by contacting all my old clients, using my silky skills to find out how they were doing, and see if there was any chance of reconnection. It was the most depressing process ever – one was dead, several had been exterminated by government cuts, and others were wholly reliant upon volunteers for any photographic work (they’re just as good apparently, as they got a DSLR for their retirement). A total non-starter.
Unfortunately, you need to make money to live. Hassles such as rent, food, power, pension (yeah right!), and the simple pleasures of life need to be paid for, so enough jobs need to be done in order to get on the first rung of humanity. Another 30 jobs a month should do it.
So I needed to bang out 45 jobs a month to be relatively comfortable in the long term. Two a day, every day, with the odd day off.
I contacted every estate agent from Teeside to Southern Scotland using all sorts of communication methods ranging from Emails, to phone calls, and cold-call walk-ins. Not one of the Emails resulted in anything – I got three polite replies from some of the more posh agents, but the vast majority didn’t even reply. One agent forwarded my email to a property marketing agency who supplied services to everyone in the “onthemarket” network, who offered me unlimited work at £30 a pop, with no travel expenses paid, as long as I took no longer than 30 minutes, and uploaded files in the car. (No thanks). Cold calling was nerve-wracking, and also resulted in a zero return for my efforts. I spent days in Hexham, Corbridge, Newcastle, South Shields, Alnwick, Morpeth, and Berwick going into all types of agencies and talking to the staff therein without any success.
As I was about to give up and sell my kit, I got a call, out of the blue, from a local top-end agent who was just setting up a brand new office in Alnwick. After a quick meeting, I started shooting properties, and word soon got out to their other branches that I was making a difference to their viewing figures. I began shooting for five separate offices, and things built slowly but surely. The first job was in a location called Rothley Hall, and was a definite taste of the type of stuff I was destined to shoot over the next few months. I was nowhere near the 45 jobs a month however, and things got pretty tough by the end of 2015, especially with the pressures of paying a tax bill generated by the previous two years of successful trading. A pressure which remained for years.
Rothley Hall - start of something bigger
Along the way, I started picking up the odd commercial client, but nothing substantial. The press and public relations work just dropped off a cliff, as this is probably the most oversubscribed genre of photographic work in the UK – anybody with a camera seems to be a “commercial photographer” nowadays, despite having absolutely no idea how to work with light.
With an increase in my day to day workload, I needed to add some things to my equipment inventory without spending anything. I emptied the storage unit after a few months of paying extortionate amounts of money to hire a small box, and sold/burned/dumped anything that I could. My army of mannequins went on a giant fire at the back of the house – causing a black cloud of poisonous fumes which could be seen from space. My bank of powerful studio lights were sold to a film maker in Soho, and bits & pieces went onto Ebay. Eventually, I accumulated enough to squeeze a Fuji Mirrorless X-E2 and a couple of used lenses into my equipment inventory.
This amazing bit of kit allowed me to shoot arial shots by adapting the tall painters pole (used to decorate the studio), by attaching a geared tripod head to the top, & controlling it via wifi, and an app on the iPad Mini. This gave me the opportunity to add some value to potential clients in the form of elevated exteriors at no extra charge. I discovered quickly that this game is all about offering more than your competitors for less money, & it’s as simple as that. Some might think that enduring a two hour return car journey, spending an hour shooting a property and another hour processing and uploading for fifty quid is nothing short of stupid, but you have to take small steps to rebuild a business and a reputation, and those fifty quids become two hundred quid once you perfect a workflow that allows you to handle four jobs a day – way more for the top end guys. Gone were the days of earning £1500 a day shooting pairs of shoes, but a new era of honest graft, requiring physical effort and long hours all year round beckoned. The foundation of a revived career had been laid, and things could only get better. Tune in for the last in the series detailing my plans for the future – what’s left of it anyway.
