All Things Photography
"The
first thing I do every morning is turn on my PC to
see how much I have earned in the night."
Wow! Where do I start?
Right now I am sitting at home in the
middle of a "working day" writing this,
while my wife is playing with our young children in
the next room.
Just writing that sentence makes me
realise how lucky I am!
I am 40 this year, and since the age
of 12, I have had an incredible passion for photography
and everything it stands for.
However, the pressure of parental expectations
in the 1980's, coupled with very little communication
and real opportunities in my small village location,
pushed me take the "usual" route. I ended
up choosing a career that I felt would gain approval
and be safe.
Ten Years In An Office...
There Had To Be More To Life
I spent 4 years at Business College,
moved to London, studied accountancy, and worked for
10 years in an office... really not me at all.
During that time, I kept my passion
for photography alive. I ran a wedding photography
business part time, while studying new techniques
and the latest technologies. I even got a finance
job at Nikon to keep the fires burning as it were.
But I always knew there had to be
more to life than an office. I went from job to
job looking for something that wasn't really there.
I tried all manner of part time schemes and scams
that would free up my time.
I didn't want money so much... I just
wanted time.
Some employment options worked for a
while, some didn't, and in the end I moved abroad
to Spain to continue my search. It was there that
I got married.
Spain was also where my new wife and
I discovered the internet and bought our first computer.
In all honesty, it was the photo editing software
that reeled me in as I "went digital" with
my photography!
My search for the ideal job, what I
called "THE thing," went cyber. Unfortunately,
what I found was the opposite. I got roped into "buying"
an online store for $200 that absolutely and categorically
didn't work, no matter how much I wanted it to happen.
As a result, I went "offline" again for
a few more years.
Then
by chance, about 3 years ago, I bumped into a friend
who excitedly told me about something he was doing.
I half listened (like I had done so many times before),
but soon my eyes and mind glazed over.
His enthusiasm was amazing, but I had
kind of heard it all before. So I let his suggestion
go.
A whole year later, he once again gave
me an update. Now he was doing his "thing"
full time from home, his wife was helping him, and
he was earning some really good money.
I dragged him to a coffee house and
listened this time.
I Can Do It, Too!
Finally, his solution seemed like something
I could possibly do. I could build a website about
photography, the one thing that has been with me consistently
throughout my life. It was a chance to get all that
information and passion out of my head.
The only catch was that I knew nothing
about the internet. How could I build a website
and earn money from it?
Then it hit me. If my friend who couldn't
even switch on his laptop when he first bought it
can be a success, I was sure I stood half a chance.
At that time, I was working as a property
photographer in southern Spain. It was a good job
that gave me a few hours each day to pursue this new
and exciting business. Suddenly things were looking
up...
Until disaster struck for us. It was
just before Christmas. There I was with a 1 year old
son, and a "very newly pregnant" wife who
wasn't working. We were six weeks from signing for
a huge mortgage. And then the worst case scenario
happened. I received the news that my position at
work was made redundant.
The Pressure Was On Me To Succeed
Being in Spain, jobs are fairly hard
to come by, especially with photography or accountancy.
It was kind of "sink or swim" time.
In January we signed for the mortgage,
and moved in.
I remember saying to my wife... "Give
me one year to set this website up. If it doesn't
work, we will have to either get jobs selling real
estate, or move back to the UK."
Both of those options were enough to
get me motivated, so I sat at my PC and just typed
and typed. I knew absolutely nothing about the internet,
websites, HTML, or anything... I just typed.
The
great thing about Site
Build It is that they do all of the hard (and
necessary) work for me. That frees up my time to do
what I do best and love the most... write, teach,
play, and learn.
After just one year, my site started
to take off. Any page that I built using SBI's simple
10 step Action Guide got ranked well with the search
engines, and traffic started coming my way.
I even tried a little test. I built
a single, simple page for myself as a wedding photographer
in Spain and the Costa del Sol. This experimental
page went straight to number one (google "wedding
photographer Costa del Sol" and see what I mean).
The result? Wedding contracts started
rolling in.
The rest, as they say, is history. By
the way, that page needs updating, but I dare not
touch it :-)
Work Is Getting In The Way Of Work!
Two years on, and it is now February
2007. My entire upcoming year is packed with weddings,
commercial work, property photography, and even fashion
shoots. I have weddings booked in the Park Lane Hotel
in London, the Ritz Carlton in Spain, and one in Tuscany
in Italy. I am even currently dealing with an enquiry
for a wedding in Mauritius later this year.
The funny and ironic thing is, I am
hoping to do a major shuffle next year!
My photography website is producing
so much work offline it is stopping me from building
more sites (which is what I want to do). I have started
another which is also starting to take off, and now
"work is really getting in the way of work."
What a great position to be in and a huge contrast
to two years ago!
Life Couldn't Be Better
To finish off my ramblings, here are
some quick facts as of now:
