On Failure
Acceptance, and moving forward
Lives in a van. Bimbles with a camera. Often pointing his pixel box at scruff. Has been known to run long distances. Would consider cake as a form of payment.
Recovering.
Welcome
Hello, and welcome back to another week behind the lens of a full time nomad, living, working and travelling in a VW camper, trying to eke out a life from the creative arts.
Thank so much for all of your kind words after my post last week regarding dad. The situation remains and with that my own semi-permeance here in Northern Ireland. I am, however, hopeful to be back on the move again in a few weeks time, and hopefully even managing to make an image or two.
The current situation has brought up quite a lot of emotions, none more so than failure and it’s to that point I’d like to speak a little about this week.
As a side note I’ve also started a separate newsletter on here which details our life on the road from a travel and van perspective. I hope to start populating that with our journey so far over the coming weeks.
Thanks, as always, for your support.
Often, living this nomadic life the conversations we have with strangers invariably turns around to the question of why? What made us give up the conventional life, sell up and move into a tiny home on wheels? While we have a well worn story to tell, I often find myself talking about my failed Landscape Photography business due to the impact of Covid and how that spurred me on to think about a different way to live.
For sure lockdown didn’t help, and soon after things started opening up again we took our first European trip in the van to Northern Spain. This showed us just how well camper vans and motorhomes were catered for in mainland Europe, compared to the UK. We looked at each other and thought - could it be possible to live, travel and work full time while being full nomadic?
The answer, 4 years later, it turns out, was a resounding YES !
Each time I talk about the impact on my business I get an uneasy feeling in my stomach, as I know the main reason it failed was less to do with lockdown restrictions and more to do with me. After leaving the sports photography arena in England, when we moved back to Ireland to look after my dad, I carried on working for our agency in a back office capacity. While this allowed me to stay somewhat connected to the sports photography world, as well as providing a basic salary, it did make me a little lazy when I should have been 100% of focused on building my own landscape photography business.
In those first two years being back in Ireland I had plenty of time with the camera, some incredible moments of light, along with wonderful experiences, but I did little to work on my business. My busiest time running workshops was 2018/2019 when I ran close to 30 one-2-ones locally, as well as 3 group residential sessions over in Co.Donegal. On top of this I was even managing to sell prints and even the odd zine or two.
I guess looking at those figures the business didn’t do too badly, but I certainly wasn’t as focused as I could have been from a growth, promotion and expansion perspective. In short I was a terrible business person. Owning a camper van also allowed me to visit more remote locations, supposedly from a scouting perspective, and yet I never really fully committed to expanding beyond my local patch on the Causeway Coast, along with Co.Donegal.
I have always maintained to run a successful workshop, intimate knowledge of the location is needed, and so dismissed the idea about running anything in Scotland. And yet, with the van, I spent weeks if not months, in all seasons, exploring the west coast. I had an intimate knowledge of the mountains, the coves, the woods and the beaches. And yet, I was afraid to go forward. Or was I just lazy? Perhaps a bit of both.
In the last few months before lockdown I had also noticed that the needs and wants from clients was also changing. It was becoming less about the photography, and more about being taken to epic locations, while also staying in 5* accommodation. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, and often clients have limited time, so want to avoid the hassle of organising themselves, instead being picked up and dropped in front of something spectacular. This didn’t sit well with me, but perhaps again I was simply hiding behind the fact that I didn’t want to put the effort in to grow the business. I should have embraced this, instead of hiding from it. I got comfortable, and the opportunities passed me by.
I convinced myself that by keeping the costs down (by staying in less salubrious accommodation) it would attract more participants, and yet the opposite was true. I continually wrestled with the idea of price, an uncomfortable feeling that 70% of the costs of the workshop was little to do with my knowledge and experience, and more to do with where we stayed, and what we ate. I could have done more to secure a rental property or similar for the week. Instead I hid behind the line that I didn’t want clients to pay over the odds for a fancy hotel.
Over the past year or so I’ve started to accept the reason for my failed business was mostly down to me. It’s been tough to accept, although this has also made me stronger. I think I will always regret not making more of my business, knowing now that particular ship has sailed, and it’s never coming back. Of course on the road I needed to pivot and have, over the past 2 years, picked up a number of travel writing and photography commissions.
While I regret my failure, I’m also glad that acknowledging it has meant that going forward I hopefully will be in a much better position to grow. This has allowed me to realise that the responsibly of business is 100% on me, and right now that’s a combination of photography and writing. Nothing gets done unless I put in the yards. These past few months have allowed me to forgive my former self. To grow, to commit, to focus.
Also also to realise ….
Failure.
I’m okay with accepting it was my fault.
Vlog
A few vlogs from my channel which documents our life on the road, travel, photography, with the odd smattering of running and food thrown in.
The week that was
A few images from this particular week down through the years.
Other corners of the inter webs you can find me.
The X100 Diaries
My Portfolio
Bimbles magazine
Thanks so much for allowing me a few moments of your time. I hope you have enjoyed my words and images, and if so a quick share amongst your own community will help spread the word.
And if you really enjoyed it you can even consider throwing a few pennies into the tips jar. It helps most with diesel costs for the van to keep me on the road making images.
Until next time .. Happy Pixels …
Bless you bud. Some of those words are all too close to home.
I too, am wondering about how to adjust my photography so that I can stop shooting for others, and shoot for myself. I don't think that you have missed anything by not moving toward the luxury photo-safari end of things. You'd need to deal with people, and people are, icky. If you can make it work, what you are currently doing would be my personal choice. Include a few small group excursions when possible, and drink your coffee in beautiful surroundings as the sun comes up. Good luck!