Surviving 2023: A Photographer's Tale of Triumphs and Trials

2023 kind of sucked for me for a number of my friends my colleagues uh other photographers last year there were uh ups and downs for me I want to get into them and I want to give you sort of a realistic picture of what it's like being a photographer in the current climate the current economic climate at least here in Canada one of the first things that I I'm really proud of last year was I put up my first Gallery exhibit there things about that that didn't go as smoothly as planned and and I have learned some lessons but I'm really proud of the work that I did I'm really proud of the show that I put up and I'm working on my next show uh now it's in the planning stages it's going to be all new work whereas the show from last year was all archival work in 2022 I was sharing a studio I started the year in 2023 sharing a studio but at the end of January I was given a month to leave that studio it's run by a friend of mine but she wanted to take it over for herself and reclaim her space it had thrown a wrench some of the plans that I had leading into the year and delayed everything until I could get my own Studio and now that I've got my own Studio it's uh painted the way I want it to be it's uh set up the way I'd like it to be it's not an optimal space for me but it is a workable space for me financially 2023 just it just was not a good year it uh the it was it might be my worst year in business since I started over 10 years ago the only other year that comes close is 2020 when the pandemic hit and we were in the lockdown business just has not bounced back to the level it was prior to the pandemic we also have seen the uh emergence and the creep of AI Technologies into the photography industry and that has affected the industry in a massive way I released a video last January about my predictions for 2023 I'm going to do the same for 2024 and I was more right than I ever could have guessed AI took off in a much bigger way than I could have anticipated I use some AI Tools in my business but I do not not use them I was going to say I do not use them to replace the image creating work that I do but it's now getting to a point where that's actually going to be part of the process and I have to deal with that and I have to grow with that and in my portfolio not only do I have to have Stills in motion but I now have to have uh some AI work quite frankly the the culmination of uh Stills video and AI in a single integrated campaign and uh working on creating projects for my portfolio that are utilizing all of those at the same time and depending on the type of work that you do uh if you're in the commercial space you have to be using AI there's there's no escaping it if you're in the consumer space shooting portraits families things like that um you don't need to use AI if you're shooting head shot AI can really help augment your work by creating digital backgrounds for you as far as equipment goes for the first time in my career I sold some equipment I've just been hanging on to equipment for a long time I picked up a new light an amaran 150c so it's a constant LED full RGB color spectrum I'm going to show you how I'm using that in some coming videos but I'm using that in my work for uh photographing acting head shots and uh in my commercial work I'm doing some uh a lot more work with colors and it what would look like gels but it's actually just the the LED lights themselves I sold my Canon 60D and the kit lens that came with it and a grip that I bought separately for $400 and I sold the original strobe lights that I used to use for uh $200 those helped me purchase the aperture amaran 150c light I am in the process of moving over to constant lights primarily as opposed to strobes primarily and that is because I have to on almost every shoot that I'm doing I have to shoot video and so it makes more sense to light everything with the LEDs shoot the Stills even with the LEDs instead of replacing everything with strobes get the lighting right once there are some uh advantages to that and I've got a video that I'm working on uh that will be out uh in a few weeks and that will cover that and why I'm switching to constant lights in my workflow in July of last year I was in Costa Rica photographing a destination wedding for a friend of mine and we had a a bit of a terrifying experience on a mountain in which we thought we were going to die and that's not an exaggeration uh it's not hyperbole I at least I know I thought in that moment that this is it so it really was a terrifying experience as far as YouTube goes the beginning of the year was pretty strong in May I was posting a video almost every day in June that got down to about I think every second day and then July when I went to Costa Rica it stopped because I was out of the country for 10 days and then when I came back I just was not in the mood and then it took uh it took a while for me to make a video then I I I made another video and while things were busy and then I just had haven't had the time and so now I've got the time I got diverted and now I'm back this channel is monetized I do make some money off of it but uh it's about 20 to $26 a month I think right now in the last 28 days uh it's $223 and so it's it's not much money you know it covers my Capture One subscription that's the way I look at it if these videos help you that makes me happy as well going into 2024 there are some things that I'm going to be changing about the way that I work and the way that I operate my business and the way that I run my studio first things first it's going to be a much greater focus on motion I have Da Vinci resolve Studio that I I edit uh all of these videos in but I don't shoot in log I shoot you know whatever the camera produces that's that's what this is what you're seeing right now is exactly what comes out of the camera I'm going to start shooting in log for my other projects and learning to color grade I'm going to set up uh projects for myself to learn to get better at um taking footage and and uh making it look the way I wanted to look that's a big aspect of what I'm going to be doing this year and planning uh projects that will be worthy of my portfolio that are going to be integrated uh which means Stills photography video and AI but primarily uh motion then Stills motion and stills so if I'm shooting motion I'm going to shoot Stills as well so I'm going to set everything up and I'm going to figure out like what is the still image here and then what is the motion that can exist in that image and then putting a project together on my site on a Blog and saying like hey here's here's this project that I piece together and I need to be consistently producing more and more work so I'm going to also go back to something I used to do 10 years ago which was have what I call gym days and that means setting aside a specific day of the week in which I am in the studio and I'm photographing people no matter what I need to be shooting I need to be editing I need to be producing work constantly ideally for commercial photography you want to be producing a good original project every month a good creative project every month uh thanks for watching this video And subscribe to the channel um hit that like button if you uh found this uh interesting or intriguing I don't know what to tell you you stuck through the whole thing so thanks for watching and take care bye-bye