2019 - End of year Review
A rundown of my past year, both professional and personal.
I do a review at the end of each year, this is a brief overview of my professional and personal photography work and a bit about what I did in the previous year. I enjoy this exercise quite a bit, and it allows me to reflect on the year, and it’s nice to go back through the previous years and see what I’ve achieved.
If you would like to see previous years (and how my work has progressed) then follow the links below:
I havent really set any goals for each year, rather just focusing on getting better at what I do and making my working life as simple and clear as possible.
Over the past year my work has been shifting focus onto marketing and content creation for a small restaurant group, the comfort of a steady pay check is very nice indeed, and while I’m still doing weddings I’ve seen a slight decline in the amount I’m doing.
Getting those little in between moments at weddings. Fuji X-H1 + 23mm lens.
WEDDINGS:
This year I have shot 18 weddings.
That’s 6 less than last year, but this year has also been filled up with more press trips as well as some interiors photography.
My weddings have been a mix of photo and video; the video side of things I’m planning on growing and pushing over the next year, it’s been great to get a new skill under my belt and develop this side of the business.
So far there are 6 weddings in the books for 2020 (A mix of photo and video) and I’m writing this is October. I personally find that January and February are the times my bookings increase to what I’m keen to work, I would of course like to see this at more, but with other work and my marketing job it’s nice to have things spread out a little.
I’ve also put my prices up to £1500 for full day coverage. We shall see what the year brings.
Here are a few of the fantastic couples I’ve had the pleasure of working with this past year, thank you all so much for having me at your wedding!
Most of my photo+video gear, shooting video has significantly increased the size of my kit bag.
GEAR:
My gear has remained largely the same this year, my main change is selling my old XH-1’s and buying 2 brand new XH-1’s as Fuji were offering a 5 year warrantee.
Other than that I’ve added a few bit of gear to the bag, mainly a 60mm macro and a 12mm wide angle, the wide angle was purchased for a job photographing a house and it’s proved to be very useful for such work.
I also picked up a very cheap, used Fuji XPro-1 as a little backup camera to keep in the bag.
You can read up about my gear here <
I also purchased a Macbook Pro for use when I’m out and about and having a laptop has proved invaluable to my work, I’d be tempted to only have a laptop in the future, but I’d still want a big screen for home.
Shooting for a collaboration between Ernest Journal & Another Place Hotels - Shot with my Fuji XH-1 + 50-140mm lens, in the water, holding the camera very tightly.
EDITORIAL WORK:
I’ve been out on assignment a few times this year, mainly with Ernest Journal and the Canal and River Trust, these jobs are always fun and interesting to take on.
For Ernest I traveled up to the Lake District to photograph a wonderful hotel as well as a small day trip to the Somerset countryside to photograph some advertorial items in various situations.
My Canal & River Trust work has been a little photogprahy and also some video this year, again adding to my video portfolio and growing my skills in this domain.
I also got the chance to travel to Spain to photograph the El Gran Sueno hotel which was just wonderful and a second trip is on the cards for 2020.
I’d love to expand on this work and I’ll start by adding an editorial section to the website in the new year.
Me and my partner took a great trip to Palermo, Sicily - I also kept my phone turned off most of the time which was fantastic. (Shot on my iPhone)
Personal life:
This year I moved from Hereford back to Cardiff, as such I think I’ll start to push more Cardiff based weddings in the coming year.
I’ve been trying to get myself organised and make a plan for the future, reading more and listening to more podcasts and audiobooks, I can strongly recommend the podcast: Creative Rebels, which is a very well put together podcast about being creative, well worth a listen.
Hopefully next year will see me purchase a house (should be interesting being self employed and I’ll probably do a blog about that) I’d also love to push the marketing side of my work and be able to grow what I’m already doing and keep doing it.
I’m going to start writing more, I find it a great way to organise my thoughts and plan out what I need to be doing, I imagine most of this will be done on the blog.
I’ve found over the last year that the Reminders app on IOS is fantastic, I’ve got my to-do lists divided into days, so on a Sunday I can plan my week day by day and keep adding notes to other folders so I make sure it will get seen to at some point. (Plus it syncs across all my devices)
I really love my work/life balance (I see the two as the same thing most of the time) and more of the same will suit me just perfectly.
‘The Bookshop’ one of three restaurants I do the marketing for. Shot with Fuji XH-1 + 23mm lens.
Marketing Work:
This year has seen me take on much more marketing work. While I’m still very much a wedding photographer I feel the advantage of expanding into different fields is great for future proofing my business as well as diversifying what I do.
A large part of the work for this is content creation and social media, which means I get to photograph (and eat) lots of food and drink.
For me I see this work evolving into setting up a creative design studio sort of thing (not sure of exactly how to describe it) where I can offer social media management and content creation together. This is a long long term outlook.
One of my wedding highlights video from this year. Shot on my Fuji XH-1 + 56mm lens
TO SUM UP:
It’s been another great year of varied work. I’ve been trying to streamline even more and become more efficient in the way I work, as well as refine my gear and learn as many new skills as possible.
I’m aiming to spend 2020 working as much and as smart as possible and buying very little [hopefully zero] gear upgrades, although I did say that last year and I got a fair few upgrades, lets see how this year goes.
I’m going to try to get back to blogging on a level I was a few years ago, that is one per week (tall order) but I plan on spending the quieter months of January and February writing posts for later in the year.
You can always see that I’m up to on my instagram; @colinnichollsphotography and if you have any questions feel free to DM me on there and I’ll get back to you!
Cheers,
Col-
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