Photographers New Year Resolutions
By Rebecca Goutorbe
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New Year Resolutions for Photographers
New Year, new ideas, new goals, money making and saving ideas for photographers. Here are some New Year’s resolutions photographers can try to start the year off with and continue with throughout the year.
5. Trade in photography gear
This is a hard one but try and stop buying new photography gear, especially the gear which you don’t really need. If you really want a new lens or camera try hiring it out first to see if you like it. Or you could always buy a second hand lens or camera and save hundreds of pounds. By trading in your old camera or lens you could save even more money.
Get the photography equipment you already have calibrated, if this is done properly the results can be incredible.
4. Learn a new skill
Learning a new photography skill does take time but it could be what sets you apart from another photographer in your area. Try and make it your New Year’s resolution to try something new each month. If you stick at it you will be amazed what you can achieve by the next New Year.
You never know when you will need to use that new skill either. With the terrible business year a lot have had to deal with over 2020, I have seen a lot of photographers of all different genres turn to product photography to keep their photography business going. With the rise in online shopping, and the need for product shots for e-commerce stores its worth learning new skills.
3. Update your photography portfolio
Updating your photography portfolio at the New Year is another essential. It is amazing how much your photography can improve in a year. Your photos need to be displayed well in full size galleries to show them at their best. You will usually only get one chance at to wow visitors who will be looking at your portfolio. Less is more when it comes to choosing what is going to feature in the photography portfolio, just use your very best images.
2. Join a photography organisation
By joining a photography organisation like The Guild of Photographers you can join a community of other photographers, learn more photography skills, go for qualification and enter their monthly photo competitions. The Guild of Photographers kick off the New Year for their members as their monthly photo competition starts in January and runs all way through until November. A lot of photographers will use entering The Guild of photographers image of the month competition every month as their New Year resolution. Entering a photo competition each month sounds an easy task but a lot will give up half way through the year, or run out of images to use.
The Guild of Photographers is not free to join By becoming a member you can take advantage of the trade partner discounts and save a lot of money off photography products and services which you usually buy and need anyway.
1. Update Website
Updating your photographers website should be at the top of the list at every New Year, especially if you don’t do anything else with it for the rest of the year. Take a good look at the website and see if it’s working for you.
Is it bringing in enquiries, new clients and making you money?
Do you need to change the layout or change the design?
Do you need to add more pages?
Can you sell prints and photographic products easily from the website at the flick of a button?
If the answer is yes great well done. But if it’s no then you need to make some changes.
Just by changing the main colour of a website, some of the images, and the layout on pages can make all the difference towards whether someone will press that contact button and make an enquiry or, the buy button and make a purchase.
With a SmugMug photo website all of the above can be done and much more, easily. The beauty of a SmugMug website is that it works by a system of your photos being securely stored in galleries. You can store hundreds and thousands of your photos online, in fact you get unlimited storage for your photos and videos. You can share your photos online securely through private links to clients, or display the images online in full size galleries. You can change the theme which is the look of a the website easily. Customisable templates are available, or build your own website with no codes. All the SmugMug branding can be removed easily from the website if you would prefer. Prints and photographic products can be sold online easily by choosing a price and products from the available list and then by just switching on a shopping cart on a photo gallery. A SmugMug website can help photographers sell their photography and make money.
I hope this list has helped for you to set some goals for the coming year.
Take a look and see how I will be using SmugMug once again this year to help my photography business. Or you can read my review about how I have used SmugMug websites in the past.
