A reflection on 2023.

Inside the messy mind of a burnt out, self employed photographer.

Basically this is just my journal. But have a nosey through at my stream of consciousness and get all the raw, real emotions from the highs, the lows and all the in-betweens of 2023.

But if you want something more profesh and written by someone that doesn’t sound like they’ve been invaded by the souls of Jekyll and Hyde then check this post out about my top photos of the year. It’s less ‘ramblings of a mad pigeon lady’ and more by someone that has their sh*t together.

Back to the beginning

I didn’t really know how to approach this reflection. For a large majority of the year I had an overwhelming sense of failure and to explain that I have to jump back in time to the Covid years.

I was a graphic designer in a fast-paced, high end advertising agency, churning out ads for everyone from Burberry to Ben and Jerry’s. You name any household brand and I could probably say ‘I did an advert for them’. But then the world shut down, a team of 12 got furloughed (apart from 3 of us) our money got slashed to 80% and we got worked to the bone whilst a lot of our peers were off making sourdough starters and falling back in love with painting.

I think it was at the point that they were brought back off of a multiple month furlough and immediately put onto the annual leave they had accrued whilst having their ‘paid sabbatical’ whilst we cried out for a break that truly swayed my decision for change.

I never wanted to have another human control my life like that again. In the midst of a global crisis, I had to bend and break to the whim of another business, another person and a whole different set of rules, whilst experiencing moving goal posts over and over.

So I went self employed. To be brutally honest: sarcastically.

“Oh I’ll give it a go and if I make no money I’ll just get a job somewhere else”.

I practically set myself up to fail. I needed a change, I wanted unlimited annual leave and I am privileged enough to be in a household with a financial safety blanket if it all went tits up.

Spoiler alert. I made double my salary in the first year. Not to brag (and I had NO work life balance, I worked 24-7 instead of 9-5 and a lot of my clients were not ideal) but I had made my own money, with clients that I could control (I very quickly realised the importance of boundaries) and it lit a fire within me to build a business I was proud of and really make self employment work for me.

So for 2 years I struggled on through the graphic design freelance world. I was the cheap option. The “Mac Monkey”. The person that got hired as a stepping stone to an agency or they needed because I could speak ‘Adobe’.

And I was such a people pleaser that I watched it happen again and again. I’d bend over backwards for clients then be made to feel bad that I charged money to do the thing they needed me for.

My love affair with my camera

So I leant into what had brought me solace in 2020. When all we had was 45 minutes outside a day and you could literally smell the dustiness of the home that had become like a prison, I had picked my dusty old DSLR off the top shelf at the back of the wardrobe. In a search for the feeling of freedom I had started a course by Laura Carly Adams of Lens Eleven ‘Start where you are’. I could remember how to turn my camera on and that was about it. Laura’s energy saved me in the Covid years. Gave me some fire in my belly, flexed the creative muscle that had grown sore and undervalued at work. It gave me a new challenge and I discovered a new passion.

I’d always loved watching the birds. There’s something magical about sitting in your house, listening to the quietness of the outside and seeing a small, feathered being dart into the frame of your vision. So photographing them felt like a natural progression for me. That’s where the passion started. In the quiet, alone, just the birds and me in a safe kind of solace away from reality.

But then I photographed a human and everything changed. Frustratingly I can’t actually remember that pivotal point but one moment I was hanging out in a shed with a camera and the next I was trying to learn everything I possibly could about photographing small business owners.

A quiet curiosity became a passion and now here I am, shouting about getting female business owners visible from the top of the rooftops and on my own journey of self discovery, body positivity and appearance acceptance via having my own portrait taken and being the taker of my own portraits. (Blog post on that coming soon…)

So 2023 was effectively my pivot year. I stopped designing and threw my whole existence into being a photographer. I left space for the dream clients to find me and I worked on marketing, networking and getting myself and my work seen as much as possible. I also started a brand new wedding photography business just in case I thought that maybe having one focus was too easy. Yes I hate myself.

I feel I may have hopped off on a tangent there for a while but I think context is everything when trying to explain exactly why I feel like such a failure at the end of 2023.

To make a long story short, I sold my soul for cash for 2 years and then this year I cherished, nurtured and developed it and my bank balance suffered.

I also have a massively warped sense of what making good money actually is thanks to society constantly screaming about 6 figures, and those around me in the corporate spaces swimming in it. Money mindset is definitely an exploration for me in 2024, both in journalling and also researching so I can reach a level of peace with what I have and how I use it.

My 2023. The Lows.

So let’s go through my 2023 and if I lose you here, I really don’t blame you. At this point I’m just trying to get my head around it myself.

Let’s have a quick look at this year’s lows:

• I failed to sell out Micro photoshoot days. 3 times.
  A couple of times it was because I had watched family photographers just casually announce new mini shoots the week before the shoot. Spoiler alert: for branding shoots that just doesn’t work. People don’t wake up and decide they fancy a headshot. It’s built into a business plan or is thought about for a while…
  

• I had inconsistent income each month.
  

• I didn’t beat my £50k yearly income target. In fact if I hit £25k by April I’m doing better than projected.
  

• Towards the end of the year my sleep hygiene and work life balance has gone out of the window.
  I’m seeing 2am more often than I’d like to admit and I am consistently chastising myself and beating myself into a pulp for not having enough enquiries flooding my inbox.
  

• I gave up on planning my wedding.
  Honestly. Horrendous. I’m glad I got engaged but all wedding planning is on hold until a massive pub crawl in February to find a venue. Too much drama, too much stress and I don’t know how my couples do it. I’m going full ostrich mode on this one.
  

• I took on a swimming teaching job for some extra cash to get me through the winter.
  I had to do a lot of soul searching to not hate myself for this one. It’s not ideal and it is definitely not what I wanted but it does get me away from a screen and gives me some exercise so it’s not all bad.

I photographed these wonderful humans in 2023.

Plus more, but they wouldn’t fit on the grid AND I had already expanded it twice.

My 2023. The Highs.

Now for some of the highs. Now when I tell you that I was surprised at the length of this list that is the honest truth. I don’t think it truly hits you until you physically write this kind of thing down.

• I photographed 30+ business owners in true ‘me’ style and I didn’t realise this until a mentor and friend made me put them into a grid. (See above).
  Because this grid makes me weepy and proud and stuff and you can stop reading here tbh.
  

• I sold over 53,000 greetings cards on Thortful.
  Weird one, but I sarcastically design greetings cards. Mostly to take the p*ss out of my sister and my dad but one went viral and it escalated from there. So much so the team at thortful bought me brownies and invited me to a Christmas party because I was one month’s highest seller. I still can’t really believe it either but all of you air fryer nutters have kept me afloat on commission this year.
  

• I bought a house.
  This took my partner and I two years to finally get over the line and was probably the most stressful thing I have ever done in my entire life but we bought a house with a tonne of potential that I can’t wait to make a proper home (and make a great shoot location hehe)
  

• I went to Big Snap.
  This was massive for me. My first residential conference, away from home, it felt like a proper investment into my photography career and I wasn’t expecting it to give me everything it did. Inspiration, vulnerability, a safe space to be and it laid the foundations to some of my closest friendships and business partnerships that I now have
  

• I added film making to my skillset.
  From the expertise of Leanne Hanna, it lit a new fire within me that I didn’t know I even wanted - moving pictures. I find the combination of both to be a winning one and I can’t wait to see where 2024 takes it.
  

• I went to my first Wild Women event.
  I did my first ever professional talk about design, I created a trailer for the event and I took my clothes off, tied a tutu round my waist and covered up with a Vogue book in front of a bunch of about 10 other photographers. This kickstarted my self acceptance journey and I don’t ever intend to start a talk with “I would introduce myself but you’ve already all seen my tits so I feel like introductions are no longer necessary…”
  

• I went to Lensfest.
  This was completely freeing. Bouncing off the energy of the events I had intended before I was a ring leader in the empowerment shoots that we orchestrated in the middle of a campsite in Norfolk. The energy and creativity was wild and I had the wonderful opportunity to meet more amazing creative business owners and explore my own craft.
  

• I recorded my first podcast.
  If you’ve been reading my content for a while you know I love to chat, waffle on, talk b*llocks and I thrived on this podcast. It’s definitely something I hope to do more of in 2024.
  

• I did a branding shoot in Lisbon.
  When networking turns into cherished friendships then all of a sudden you’re on a plane to a new city to hug someone you have never met in-person but you feel like you’ve known all your life, and you get to take their picture. More of this in 2024 please.
  

• I went to multiple different in-person networking events.
  I think in-person networking is a theme that contributes to most of the successes on this list. I seem to have identified a love for meeting and creating real connections and am finding it far more successful than any other form of marketing.
  

• I shot 17 weddings.
  I wont bore you with this too much because unless you are getting married, in which case click here, then you wont be that interested, but trying to build a wedding portfolio kept me incredibly busy this summer and 7 day weeks very much became the norm. This should probably be on my fails list too…
  

• I started regularly co-working online and in-person.
  Co-working is the secret sauce that networking doesn’t give you. It gives you familiarity, consistency and the opportunity for deeper conversation. Co-working is where you start to cement the foundations you make at networking.
  

• I hosted my first ever Lens Eleven event.
  If it wasn’t for the people around me, one of the biggest parts of my life and business wouldn’t be happening. I am so thankful for being pushed out of my comfort zone and I am finding so much joy in sharing knowledge with fellow photographers and those newer to the craft. I already have a diary filling up with events and I can’t wait to see where this goes in 2024.
  

• I went on a workshop about street photography and now i’m heading to Barcelona for it next year because I’m obsessed.
  Sometimes you just have to reignite the creative fire and Matt’s course did this for me. So I booked onto a longer one, abroad and I’m taking my mum. I can’t wait.
  

• I started writing a course.
  It started as a dream, which then turned into a one day workshop and now it’s a full online experience. March 2024. The Edit Clinic is coming. Sign up here for the wait list.
  

• I found a work wife.
  Probably the best, most game changing thing I got in 2023. As a self employed person I had written off the possibility that I could ever have this. (It took until Amy actually wrote it down in her 2023 reflection that this had actually happened but we’ll skim over that fact). I don’t think I could have done 2023 without her and 2024 will be even greater because instead of nurturing a relationship, we’re building empires and leaning on each other. It’s going to be epic.
  

• I had both my film and photography up on the wall of an exhibition.
  Still can’t fathom this. Still need to write about this. So tired I can’t do it justice now but I will add it to the list of future blogs.
  

• I found routine around marketing.
  "‘Blog club” has changed me. Once a week my work wife and I jump on a call and sit in silence (in between the chatter) to write our blog posts. I find the accountability stops me from dropping it to the bottom of the to do list, I feel complete freedom when I wake up in the morning knowing exactly what I have to do that day and then I have regular long-form content to repurpose for social media. I want to cement these habits fully in 2024.

What 2023 taught me:

• Surrounding yourself with people that push, challenge and cheer you on is essential to success.

• If you are consistently out of your comfort zone you will get braver.

• I realised I offer so much more than photography to my clients. I offer an empowerment experience and the personal branding expertise to be able to change the lives of small business owners.

• I learnt that the people I want to shoot with are the ‘hell yes’ people and how to see the time wasters coming.

• I realised that supermarket wine can get in the bin.

Just look at the lists. (Me, not you). The difference between the highs and the lows is drastic and a massive example of how you feel the knocks far more than the successes but that stops today. I need to stop feeling like a failure, get festive and acknowledge the hard work is paying off. I have all the foundations in place for it to be an excellent 2024 and I can’t wait to dive into full on planning mode for the year ahead.

I set ‘INTENTION’ as my word for next year. No more chucking spaghetti at the wall and hoping for the best. If I want to sell out a service I make a proper launch plan, if I want to boost a customer experience I spend time getting it right through testing and market research. I have all the right tools. Now I just need to use them.

So watch this space. 2024 is going to be a big year for me. Because if this is what I can achieve chucking spaghetti at a wall, imagine what I can achieve when I’m actually putting it on the dinner table.

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Want to work with me in 2024?

I am super passionate about making business owners feel seen, heard and highly amused on photoshoots to get the best, personality-filled images and footage to use within their businesses.

If you are looking to get a whole image bank of personalised stock photos and film footage then send me an email and let’s have a chat. I need you to get visible, stand out from the crowd and not want to die whilst you’re doing it.

PS. My new VIP day contains coffee and prosecco. Ask me about it…