The only way I can improve is to reflect, learn and progress.
Last year I set myself some challenges and things I wanted to achieve. I checked out my old blog HERE that I wrote at the start of the year to see what they were and looked at the work I had done this year.
My passion in photography started with music and then moved onto modelling. This year I haven't shot any music photography, which is a shame , as I love everything about a gig, from the research of a bands to shooting them live and showing you all the end results.
So what have I done in 2018?
Clients & Networking
As a photographer it is so important to network with others in my field, and when you do you learn so much, I have attended a few meet ups and I have learnt about new studio, lighting, how others work and had the opportunity to try out new things.
With networking and going to networking shoots, I have found new clients and even had more people come to me directly wanting work. It has been great to watch new models progress and get noticed, and also working with those experienced models who are creating amazing work.
Learning
I challenged myself in 2018 to learn more and work harder at putting more into each shoot. I have learnt more about working in an outdoor environment and doing landscape photography, as well as in the studio - working out lighting set ups and how different set ups can change an image dramatically.
As a self taught photographer, I have learnt a lot from others, but also had to work things out myself, I wanted to do a qualified photography course to maybe go back to basic and really go through things and maybe learn something new. This hasn't happened, but maybe next year.
Another challenge I set myself was to edit in a new way and give my work a new fresh feel where it feels better edited. I have worked with the same way of editing for a couple of years now, and I wanted to try and learn more about lightroom and try editing on there. I am not quite there with lightroom yet, but I have embraced some of its features and I now use it for image selection and hope to use lightroom more and try new things.
Publishing
This year I have shot with a couple of new clients and together we have submitted the work that we produced into a magazine "Rising Model Magazine"
I never thought I would get in a magazine or online publication; this was a real moment for me to now being published in both music and portraits. I have had lots of great feed back from this and I will continue to work with this magazine in 2019.
So what does 2019 have in store?
I will be out of action for the first 4/5 months of the year as I am having surgery of my shoulder, so I will be spending that time doing a lot of planning.
But what do I want to achieve in 2019?
- Get a qualification in photography.
- Keep growing my clientele and network of photographers.
- Attend more group meet ups throughout the UK.
- Learn more editing techniques and software.
- Get back into music photography
- Renew old kit / buy new kit
- Produce work that I never thought would be possible.