trying to find my way

Did you know we make almost all our own bread? Yup, we do! And I made this beautiful loaf over the weekend from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. If you’ve ever considered making bread at home then you must have a look through this book. I also made the aloo paratha from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Oh my! So yummy! It’s like a panzarotti except that instead of being filled with pizza toppings it’s filled with curried potatoes and peas.

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I’ve been spending quite a bit of time lately trying to become more successful in the photography world, step things up a notch. Thinking long and hard about where I am and where I want to go. I am a minimalist photographer trying to find my way. I want to create beautiful, peaceful photographs that bring a natural serenity to people’s lives.

Aside from capturing these images how should I go about doing this?

• Should I blog about how I do what I do? Sharing with everyone my trials and tribulations, both good and bad, about all aspects of my business, not just the final products.
• Should I change my pricing structure to build up my clientele and gain experience? I feel like I’m past this point now, as far as minimalist landscapes go I think I have all the bugs worked out.
• Should I find a full time fine art photographer that could be my mentor? Or that I could assist? Do you know anyone in the London, Ontario area that I should talk to?
• Should I start approaching more galleries? How do I even do that? What sort of package should I put together? Should I aim to have work in at least one gallery at all times?
• Should I spend more time shooting stock photography so all my eggs aren’t in one basket? This may require some equipment upgrades.
• Should I really tighten my schedule keeping a better focus on core photography tasks? Today I got up an hour earlier than I usually do, I’m going to try to keep it up for a few weeks too and see how production is. I’m also going to really rein in my time spent on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. Even email. I’m going to limit checking these venues to certain times once or twice a day, giving me more time to focus on what’s important.
• Oh, and then there’s this blog. For the past little while I’ve wanted to post five times a week. Ya, five times a week. Clearly I’m insane. Do you have any idea how long that takes? Cumulatively over the course of a week it takes hours and hours, over half a day sometimes. I’m not a writer. Blogging isn’t my business. Blogging is how I connect with you online. So as of this week I’m going to start limiting my postings to 2-3 times a week.
• Should I eliminate the clutter from my office to eliminate the clutter from my life? Probably. That’s going to take a while. Maybe this week I’ll focus on my desk and take it from there.
• Should I start printing my work myself instead of outsourcing it to my lab? This could save me a lot of money and time because I won’t need to drive to the lab. Plus I could print notecards until my heart’s content. This is something that I’ve been pondering for a while now (oh how I’ve ogled the Epson R2880) and definitely an item for further exploration.
• Should I have e-commerce built right into our website? Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to go to Etsy to purchase my prints? There could be a drop down menu so you could select what size you want, maybe even a way to choose what type of shipping you prefer. It would be so lovely to keep everything here on our site, but what about the traffic that Etsy brings me? Perhaps I need to step up my advertising.
• Maybe I need a rep.
• And I definitely need to find a practical way to carry a camera with me wherever I go, even if it’s my point and shoot. It’s hard because I don’t carry a bag. Heck, ask anyone that knows me, I barely carry a wallet. What are all those things that women carry around in their purses anyways? Maybe I could get something small that just fits my G9. Or maybe I should go for something that’s more like a satchel and less purse -like. Hmmm, this is huge.

I’m totally open to suggestions.