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Almost there....

9th May

I’ve been sat in the library all day, finalising my blog, digital marking report and website. 

So far, its been very productive. I’ve almost finalised everything just a few more final touches and I’ll be ready to submit!

I’m ready to have a break over summer, I’ve been planning to actually go on and do my Masters after this year, something I’m really going to look into once everything has been completed. 

After today I’ll be getting on with my final piece of the year; End of Year Presentation, this will showcase all the work i’ve done from this year, along with branding pieces, marketing materials and presentation boxes. 

This year has been chaotic but I wouldn't change it.

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More Deadlines

30th April - 6th May

2nd May

Hooray for more deadlines!

We had a talk in the morning from Kim, explaining what should be apart of our end of year presentation, which is where we will showcase what we have been working on for the past year at university along with how we plan to present to our clients and our plans after we graduate.

After this we had a talk from a gentleman who came over from Demontfort Univeristy to speak to us about Masters, I found this talk very interesting as it is something I have thought about doing but was very unsure! Since having this talk I’ve decided that I’m going to head to the post graduate open day on the 6th of June to gain more information about this to see if it’s something I definitely want to do.

Myself, Connor and Lois decided to head to the library after this to finialise our work for SEED that was due, we spent a good two hours working and helping each other out where we could, it was such a nice atmosphere. Getting home, I finished off the final touches to my report, by putting it into indesign to make it look more appealing.

4th, 5th & 6th May

I spent the better part of these days working on my business, ordering business cards, shirts and also stickers (a separate blog post will be up about this soon!).

I also attended my best friends 21st birthday party, which was such a nice break after the week that was had. I allowed myself to relax for a few hours and not think about university work (oops!).

However, I felt like I needed it. Sometimes you do have to allow yourself to have a bit of fun, even if you’ve got deadlines coming up! As long as you can create a great balance between the two there’s nothing wrong with it, next week will probably be one of my busiest though! So having a relax was good.

I have a shoot planned for Monday and the weather is supposed to be beautiful, plus a large deadline and a mock presentation!

Heres hoping it all goes to plan!

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Mock Shoot Number Three!

7th May

The most difficult part of doing my Wedding Mock Shoots is the models, Its finding a time where they are free but so am I. Leaving it this close to the deadline does panic me quite a lot, however I’m having to make the best out of a bad situation! 

Originally I planned to go to Swithland Reservoir, however it was difficult since I couldn't get access into the areas I wanted, I decided as a back up I would take shots at my local Marina in Sileby.

The dress is actually the models own, so far it’s the most ‘obvious’ wedding dress I have used.

Im super happy with how these images turned out, even though I wasn’t able to use my original place, my back up I think worked even better!

I have two more shoots left to do now, it shouldn’t take long for those to be completed and edited, however I am worried about how close it is to the deadline date, but sometimes life gets in the way and you just have to work with what you’ve got!

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Social Media Material

Since having my logo resigned, I thought it would be appropriate for me to create some new Social Media content.

Something I don’t advertise enough of is my portrait sessions, so I created this below with all the information that is required for a client to get in contact to book in.

I’m so pleased with how this has came out and want to work on creating more content like this in the future, but with various shoot types. 

I think Social Media material is key to a successful business, so I need to make sure that I stay on top of this!

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Future Thinking...

Today I thought about the future of my business as whole, and what I would need branding wise.

Below you can see various types of branding material including a business card, t-shirt, mug and pen. 

Each of these are something that I want to have for my business however I decided to prioritise what I needed. I actually used vista print for all of these items, having ordered from them before and being pleased with my outcome I decided I would use it once again.

I chose to order both my business cards and T-shirts. Since these will be priorities within my business; there are also stickers that aren't pictured below that I have ordered, these will be used for packaging my products that I had to the client.

Overall I am very pleased with the outcome of what I’ve designed, looking into the future I want to invest in pens to hand out to clients and a mug but this will be for personal use whilst I’m working on my business. 

There will be other things that I plan to have such as thank you cards that will be personalised to the client, but also letter headed paper for when I take down client details, send letters and jot down notes. Very simplistic things but as a whole can make your business seem much more professional.

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London Mock Shoot - Preview

I made the decision early on that I wanted to do one of my mock wedding shoots in London.

My sister modelled for me on this particular shoot so we set off at 7am for our drive to London.

Once we got there we spent some time to eat and plan out how the rest of the day was going to go.

We headed over to Piccadilly Circus for our first set of images. It was here that Jess, went and got changed into the Wedding Dress you can see above. Luckily we borrowed the dress from a friend of ours which is exactly like I wanted for the shoot. There were last minute changes like the hair and make up, these were supposed to be more pinks with the hair in a updo, the flowers were also supposed to be a baby blue. However I made last minute changes as I felt that this didn’t fit with the dress since it was slightly peach coloured.

All in all we went to 13 locations for images, some were planned and others were not. It was definitely a learning expierince for me as a photographer. Since London is such a busy city I had to be aware of this when taking images, since people would just walk into shot and stare right into the camera. Others however, waited until I said they could go which was very respectful of them.

I learnt from this that I really need to work on my low light situations with flashes, this area was my downfall. So I plan to do some experimenting with this when I can, since some weddings will require this.

Below you can see two of the images that were taken in our time there, one in front of the iconic red telephone boxes and the other in a garden at Enbankment.

Doing this shoot has made me want to progress into doing a fashion in London because of the iconic backgrounds and hidden areas, this is something I’m definitely going to look into doing over the summer.

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Dissertation Deadlines!

23rd - 29th April

Today we went through our dissertation with our specialist tutors, for any last minute changes and adjustments. Luckily I didn’t have much to change in regards to my dissertation - however I did decide to write a small amount more into it regarding ‘selfies’ and how these have changed the way in which we view photography. 

After this we had a small session at SEED, this was just to cover the Business Plan and Digital Marketing reports that we need to write, Jon spoke about things we should add in and how we should format the document. Along with this he advised that instead of using long links in the documents to use QR codes instead, so when they are printed off it is easier for the reader to use the links. Jon said for us to have somebody read over each of our reports to check our spelling and grammar on them as well.

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London

28th April 2018

For one of my final pieces for University I’m doing various mock wedding images, if you look back on my blog, you’re able to see that I have already done one of these in Wales.

My next big one away from Leicester was London.

I’ve always had a connection with London, I was born there but moved up to Leicester in 2000. So I wanted to do something that was personal but also create beautiful images.

Throughout the day we had a lot of fun, I had to keep my model in a upbeat mood to ensure that we got great images, I’ve had a brief look at all of the images I’ve taken and I’ve fallen in love with some of them, I’m so excited to sit down and edit all of the images. Keep an eye out for a more detail blog post that will showcase some of the work! 

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Re-branding.

After having the same logo for the last four years and it not fully matching my business anymore, I decided to get in touch with a graphic designer. 

After talking to him about my ideas and plans, along with colourisation, theming and showing them a pint rest board of designs I liked I let them go on to design what they thought I would want.

I asked James (Graphic Designer), if he could incorporate a dusty pink or pastel blue within my logo. 

Below the first image, is what my logo used to be, it was a handwritten piece by a friend of mine since I adored her hand writing, the middle and last are both of my new logos. I decided to have two. The middle one will be my main logo that is used in various areas, and the last one is my secondary logo, this will be used to watermark, and in areas that my main logo will not fit or work with.

I feel like both of my Logos now represent my business much more than before! 

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Sun?!

16th - 22nd April

The week started off a bit terrible but it got much better towards the end of the week.

18th - 

I started off by speaking to my tutor in regards to my dissertation. I had done a pretty basic outline of my chapters and what I planned to write for each one, she provided some good ideas and tips on how to improve each section but also other areas for research that would work within my dissertation. 

After this I had so many ideas in my head for what to write and research about that I felt that if I didn’t get them out then I would forget them.

I ended up leaving early, but thankfully got notes from our lecture at SEED from one of my peers. We learnt about LinkedIn in this lecture which is a website I have been using for a while, its a great way to connect with employers, clients and other creatives. Definitely a website I would recommend to any creative.

19th & 20th - 

I spent both of these days working on my Dissertation and Business plan, after been cooped up inside on Thursday for the day I decided on Friday I would have a change of scenery and headed to a park in Loughborough, somewhere I used to go when I was younger. It was a very welcoming change to the four walls of my room I’m used to seeing!

21st & 22nd - 

Over the weekend I tried to make the most of the sunshine by sitting outside doing work. I also managed to set up a meeting with a family friend for another mock shoot which I’m very excited about.

The fact I finish university soon is becoming very real, I’ve started to look into how to create my own business and what the next steps for this are. 

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Mock Shoots and Cheese?

9th - 15th April

11th-

Due to schedules I had to miss out on university this week. I had to travel to Wales to shoot one of my pieces for my final project, we set off around midday on Wednesday and arrived pretty early. Luckily we have family up in North Wales so we stayed with them in Llanfairfechan. 

12th- 

Getting up early me and my sister went over to Llandudno where my cousin who was modelling lived to get her ready for the shoot. Because I had a specific vision I actually did her make up myself, I found myself straying away from my original ideas due to the fact it didn’t look correct. My sister did her hair, once again we did the original piece that I wanted but it didn’t fit with the overall look so we had to make last minute changes with the hair also. Once we were set we headed down to Colwyn Bay beach where we did the photoshoot (see image below). The weather was overcast which made for perfect shooting arrangements! 

13th- 

We headed back home on this day, I spent the morning editing some of my favourite images from the shoot so I could get a feel on if they worked correctly or not. I felt that after doing the shoot that I would have no useable images however I found I was wrong!

It was quite foggy on the way home and a lot of the mountain tops were hidden but it was so peaceful, we stopped off at Snugburys Ice Cream on the way home also which is a family tradition. At Snugburys they create large pieces of art using hay bales. This year was peter rabbit, in the past there has been creations like big ben, a dalek, a meerkat and a bear. 

14th - 

We spent a large majority of the day at the Cheesefest that came to Leicester, it was definitely an expeierence, there were quite a large amount of oddly flavoured cheeses. I found myself (even though I’m not a big cheese lover) trying flavours like Whiskey, Raspberry & Prosecco, Triple Chocolate and Rhubarb and Vodka. It was interesting to see how something as simple as cheese could be changed to be something different. Even though it has no relation it makes you think about you could be doing a simple job for a client that you’ve done many times but it can be altered to become something significantly different.

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Wales Mock Shoot

13th April

Wales is the first area I went to do my mock wedding shoots.

I used my cousin as my model for this one, a lot of this didn’t actually go to plan, the flowers were actually supposed to be a lot more vibrant, we tried to hand dye the flowers at my aunties but it didn’t work as well as I had hoped. You can see elements of blue in there which I actually think worked much better than the vibrant blue I was going for.

The wedding dress was actually my mums that was made by her mother for her wedding to my dad in 1988. Because of how flowy it was it worked perfectly on the beach, the below image doesn’t show how long the sleeves actually are but you can view more of these images on my website (here), for the full effect.

The images were taken at one location which was at Colwyn Bay Beach in North Wales, the beach was perfect since it also had a large rock area.

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Easter Break Week 2

2nd - 8th April

I started the second week of the Easter break by going to Rutland Water with my family. Considering how close we live to it I haven’t actually been. There is a small church there that is actually underwater which I found interesting. Its quite a beautiful area, I found myself planning to do one of my mock wedding shoots there due to the countryside that it has. It actually rained a small amount whilst we were there but we sat and had our picnic anyway.

I spent the rest of the week finalising planning for my shoots, sorting out dissertation research and planning out my business and marketing plan.

Overall It wasn’t much of an exciting week in terms of University and Business planning, but I actually accomplished a lot more than I was hoping for.

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Clients

I’ve decided to do a small post on how I’ve had my previous and current clients, many of these have actually been referrals or word of mouth!

My first Wedding was back in 2013, this is when I fell in love with photographing them, it was actually my cousins - who lives in North Wales. I was unbelievably nervous about doing it, mainly because I hadn’t long started fully studying Photography; I had just done it as a hobby.

The amount of trust somebody has to have in you to let you photograph their wedding is amazing, they’re allowing you in on their day with the expectation of you getting all the shots they want.

The next wedding I did was two years later in 2015, it was at the time somebody who knew I did photography and they were more than happy for me to photograph their day.

My third wedding, was the most nerve wracking for me, it was somebody I knew who was also a photographer, one that had multiple bookings in herself for weddings and portraiture shoots. I wanted to make sure I did this wedding justice since I knew she would be my biggest critic. I remember asking her three times if she was sure! I was so happy when she told me how much she loved the images. 

In 2015 I had a further two weddings, one found me by having their children search for photographers since neither of them had Facebook, and the other was a family friend. 

After this in 2016 I did four weddings, the first one I got by recommendation. Somebody who had actually saw my work previously recommend me to them and from here they booked. The second wedding was a recommendation once again, this time a friend of mine mentioned I did photography, number three contacted my after finding my page and my fourth one of that year I went to school with. 

2017 provided me with two weddings, one was a recommendation by a previous client and the other somebody whom I know of. 

2018 brings me one wedding as of current, which is actually from a recommendation from a wedding I did in 2016. 

Currently I get and maintain my bookings by recommendations only, considering I haven’t fully marketed my business yet, I’m very pleased with the amount I have had. Obviously there will only be so many times you can get recommended, I’m planning on promoting my business using Facebook Ads soon, I will put up a blog post about the results of this. I’m extremely interested to know what the outcome of this will be.

Some clients I have had in the past for portraiture work have came back to me since, for example one of the clients has pugs and I have photographed them on multiple occasions. I really enjoy doing pet portraiture and with how well behaved hers are it’s definitely something I want to work more in! 

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Easter Break

26th March - 1st April

I mainly spent this part of Easter relaxing and spending time with family. 

After receiving some news I took myself up to The Humbles, a local spot near me. I find myself up there a lot recently to just chill out and have a few moments to myself, it is extremely peaceful and a brilliant place to just think about a lot of things.

I have used this area as a filming place before for the Beacons in Leicester as part of a time lapse piece. Something I would love to try again in the upcoming warmer months so that I am able to create a longer piece. 

I found myself thinking about what my life is going to be after graduating from University. What I plan to do and accomplish. I spoke to my Mum later on in the week about how I would go setting myself up fully as a sole trader (since my dad was one she knows a lot about the subject). So this is something I will be doing once I finish University, I’m going to look for a full time job and from here fit my photography work around this until I am able to live off being a photographer full time. 

I think that it’s key to have time to yourself especially at crucial times within life and I’m glad that I’m able to get out and enjoy places like these. 

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Concert Photography...

19th - 25th March 2018

21st - 

We started the session off by doing 30 second business presentations on what our business is and what we offer. Because of the amount of time we had I didn’t manage to get to do mine however I was okay with this since I heard some of my peers. It was interesting to see what their businesses were and what they offered. 

After this we spoke amongst ourselves as we waited for Jon to come around and discuss our Business and Marketing Plans with us. He advised that if we need to write more to put it in the table since this doesn't count towards our actual word count.

24th -

My Sister and I found ourselves heading to another concert this time in Nottingham. It was nice to be in a city that even though it is close I haven’t actually been too properly. There was a lot of small alley ways that were actually quite sweet and lead to small independent shops. Being at concerts if definitely one of my favourite things to do, I found myself at the last concert I went to watching it through my phone. This time I decided to fully enjoy it without my phone to document every moment that happened. With the images I did get on my phone it made me think about being a music photographer. I researched into this and found out you can get press passes that allow you to be in the pit for 3 songs of the artists set. It is totally different to what I’m used to doing however I think that it would be a experience that would benefit me as a photographer. I believe these posts are unpaid until you ‘make’ it. I feel like I want to be a photographer thats quite flexible with what they do merely because I enjoy every aspect.

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Pro Active and Reactive Sales.

12th-18th March 2018

14th - 

Today we spoke about Pro Active and Reactive Sales. 

Pro Active sales include areas such as Telesales; selling over the phone. Email; however this approach is easy for clients to ignore. Face to Face; Networking, Meetings, Business cards etc. Mail Shots; provide customers with information and benefits. Tendering; providing quotes and ideas. Customer Relationship Management; use lists of your customers likes and dislikes, refer to this if they come to use you again, it will gain you more trust from the customer and provide a personalised service; also capture data and information from them and use this going forward. Advertising products and tools; Have spreads within magazines, get radio shoutouts and use mixed media advertisements to spread your business. Social Media; content is key within this, have specific keywords and do special offers and deals. Partnerships; Referral Marketing, Work with other media specialists and if any of your clients require them pass on information, promote each other and finally Public Relations and Promotions; editorial pieces, radio, tv show features and any press releases. 

Reactive Sales are areas such as Referrals; word of mouth. Existing Customers; if you do a great job for them they will most likely come back for more. Recommendations both on and offline. Website; keep it up to date and consistent. Collaborative platforms; Social Media. Search Engine Optimisation; Key Words such as UK Based, Leicester Photographer, Aesthetic Photography. 

Sales Strategy, Identify your target market, build a contact database filled with client information even down to how they take their coffee, research individual companies offering the same or similar to you to see how they are making sales, build a campaign then move onto proactive sales. Engage in Meetings, provide a quote/proposal, produce, invoice and then follow up; upscale and side sell. 

There are quite a few advertising tools that can be used. Business cards are probably the most popular due to their wallet size but also how it can hold a lot of information in a simple way. They are less likely to be thrown away whereas items like Flyers even though a good idea are more likely to be thrown away quickly. Items like brochures and posters depend on your type of business, posters may work well to advertise within local shops and items such as brochures may be good to have instead of carrying around a large portfolio. It could offer selected images of your own along with reviews and pricing information. Another common one would be a website, as long as this is kept consistent and up to date can work effectively. 

It is important to understand who your customer is and market towards them  but also make it work and fit to yourself. 

15th - 

After speaking to my tutor Kim yesterday we wrote up a rough plan for my dissertation, since then I have been working on collecting together research that backs up my claims for ‘Digital Photography has undermined the value of Traditional Photography’. I really believe that this topic could provide very interesting since photography has came along way since it was first invented.

16th - 

After a week filled with working on university projects me and my sister headed over to Manchester for a concert. For once I wasn’t driving and had time to fully admire my surroundings. I think that there are so many beautiful places that we pass by without even realising it. I find myself wishing that I was able to stop the car and get out to photograph a lot of them however it wouldn’t be possible. 

We found ourselves driving through the Peak District at one point, somewhere I haven’t actually seen. It was laden with fog so I still didn’t get to see very much however from what I could see it was amazing. I plan to go back there to photograph on film various places, I feel that capturing these images on film will be more authentic compared to digital.