How I Survived the Slow Season

Sometime around mid-November 2018, I started to freak out. Though I was fully booked through the end of December, I had many openings for photography sessions in January, February and March. Since my family relies on my income to help pay the bills, heading into slow season without a good portion of my schedule full kept me up nights.

Here’s how I survived…

Found and Fixed the Problem

I’ve been a full-time professional photographer for 6 years, and I had never as many openings as I did in winter 2019. My work was better than ever, and I hadn’t increased my pricing in 4 years, so I started looking at my website analytics to see what was going on. For a couple of years, my website had been losing traffic, despite the many, many things I had been doing that should have been driving more traffic.

A little over a year ago, I started taking yoga. One of my instructor’s favorite sayings during class is to “let go of what doesn’t serve you.” After 10 years, I realized that my current website was no longer serving me or my business. I knew what had to be done.

More research, several months of website development, and here I am today. My new site that has increased my search impressions 3x since launching two weeks ago. Let’s hope this winter brings me more amazing clients and less stress.

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Got Published (again & again & again)

There’s no better time than downtime to write. Few distractions and no guilt over writing vs. editing photos for clients. I started blogging again and wrote articles that were published for the National Association of Professional Child Photographers (photographing older newborns), Lemonade and Lenses (photographing my own family), and Click Magazine (newborn photography session flow).

Became a Better Photographer

I always told myself, I’d do X, Y, & Z if I had more time. Welp, I had more time on my hands!

I watched all of the photography workshops I had purchased over the years and then never watched. I LOVE learning from other photographers. There’s ALWAYS room to grow and improve your craft. CreativeLive.com is one of my favorite sources for online workshops, and I especially love the classes taught by Lindsay Adler.

I became a Certified Professional Photographer with Professional Photographers of America (PPA). The certification program is in two parts. First, you have to pass a multiple-choice test that covers all aspects of photography – from the mechanics of cameras and lenses to all sorts of lighting equipment and styles of photography. Lots of studying. Second, you have to submit three technical images of specific objects (ordered from a kit), arranged in a specific order, and shot at specific camera settings and lighting setups. I was so excited and relieved to pass both on the first go.

I became a Qualified Newborn Photographer with the Accredited Professional Newborn Photographers International (APNPI). In order to become a QNP, I had to pass a newborn safety exam and then submit dozens of images that fulfill stated requirements to demonstrate my knowledge of lighting, posing, camera settings, and more.

Made Newborn Props

Perhaps the worst thing to do when you’re not working much is to spend money, but creating fluff and wool batten isn’t that expensive and gave me lots of new textures to work with during my newborn photo sessions.

In fact, the fluff was so easy and inexpensive to make that I made a video on how to create fluff to share with other photographers!

Entered Photography Competitions

This is a goal I set for myself every year, but the truth is it takes a lot of time to enter competition. First, I have to go through all of the photos I took over the past year and choose the best ones. Then, I spend about an hour on each doing even more detailed retouching – examining every inch to remove any specs of dust or stray hairs, small amomalies that I may have missed during the original retouching process.

I entered two competitions – the APNPI Image Competition and PPA’s District Competition. I’ll get the PPA results in June, but I’m thrilled to announce that my image won FIRST PLACE in the sitters category (babies 2m-12m old) in the APNPI competition!

I Fell Down… and Got Up Again

In early March, I took my first ski trip to Colorado. Used to skiing the groomed easy trails of Virginia and Maryland, I succumbed to the unwieldy fresh powder five minutes down the mountain on my first run on the first day.

I tore my ACL, which was devastating, and also reaffirming that I love my job, because one of the first things I thought of (besides “ow, that hurts”), was “I’m probably not going to be able to work.” And that was so depressing, especially since my schedule was no longer empty. I had to rearrange many of my clients’ sessions, but was able to continue shooting prior to my repair surgery and am now four weeks post-surgery and doing great!

Spent QT with the Fam

My father-in-law went into hospice care in March and passed away on April 3rd. He was a wonderful, loving, funny, smart and kind man. We miss him so much.

Having a little extra room in my schedule allowed me to spend a lot of time with him and the rest of my family in March and help my mother-in-law following his death. It’s been hard, but we are so grateful we were able to say goodbye.

Thanked my Unlucky Stars

In the end, the extra time was really a blessing. I have a better website, have more recognition for my work, I’m a better photographer, and I spent more time with family than I could have otherwise. Yes, my emergency fund savings had to be tapped, but that’s what they are there for. I’m sure I’ll be able to build it back up over the next few months.

So hey, want to book a session for winter 2020? Call me. 😉