From athlete's foot to apertures

(Bear with me on the title, all will become clear!) I'm hoping that the process of writing this post will help me to see the wood for the trees, put some order of priority on all my projects. I feel like my brain is on overload - in a positive way, when compared to the brain fries I regularly experienced when working full time for someone else. I expected and planned for Jan / Feb to be quiet, particularly with portrait work, and decided to use the time for business planning, web site updates, even taking it a bit easy and getting to the gym occasionally. I'm feeling dragged down at the moment by a feeling that I've not made much, if any, headway on any of these, but logic and ever supportive husband keep telling me otherwise.

Portrait work was non-existent but Spring must be in the air because bookings for March keep coming in - bank balances must be starting to recover from Christmas and the gradual warming temperature and lengthening days are making people emerge from hibernation. And photography jobs involving glass baubles, food and snow kept the wolf only scratching at the door over the last two months.

The new area of business I am pushing this year is photography courses. This is something I find so exciting - combining one passion, photography, with another, training or teaching. A long time before I started taking pictures for a living, I wrote "a jargon free guide to taking better pictures" and had more or less put to bed the portrait section. I've always been excited by the idea of enabling people to improve their photography with some simple, non technical tips and techniques. I spent the last two years of my life as an international marketer developing and running training courses on foot disorders - anything from athlete's foot to verrucas. Despite the unappealing subject matter I got such a buzz from this job and can't wait to get training again. Working on my dad's old adage "if you don't ask, you don't get", I approached a number of local venues and struck gold with Willowpool Garden Centre, Lymm, an absolute Aladdin's cave in terms of photographic subjects. So my first course is booked in and I can't wait to start the marketing and get the course material written.

I've updated areas of the web site and tidied it up a lot, but there's lots more housekeeping to do - I suppose you never actually get up to date with this kind of job. If you've read any of my recent blogs, you'll know that taking it easy never happened and aside from dog walking my keep fit regime doesn't deserve the title! My "quiet period" is officially over and I'm chomping at the bit to get on with March's workload. And I think writing all this down has sort of helped with priorities and self esteem!

By Jane Burkinshaw. Share this post by clicking on one of the Share buttons on the right hand side. I'd love to hear your comments too!