Shared ownership Journey

Hi Folks

Well with no views of my previous post maybe I am the only person interested in knowing about the journey!

Today I had confirmation from Metro Finance that they had sent the affordability calculator off to Riverside and that my Share purchase was 35%.  I’m so pleased as we should get a mortgage for that amount.  I spoke to the Halifax, we bank with them so hoped to get a mortgage with them, however for Shared Ownership they insist on 20% deposit on your share purchase.  Which is shocking really, the idea of shared ownership is to give an affordable option to people who can’t buy on the open market, so with a 35% share of a home costing 185000, I need to pay £64,750, so 20% for the deposit, would be £12,950…. that is a hefty deposit, when you are a low paid employee therefore requiring the Help to Buy schemes.  Imagine if you were advised you need to purchase 60% that would be £22,200, who can save that while renting?  Very disappointing Halifax, especially when you have seen our bank accounts for so many years.

Still there are a lot of companies out there wanting only 10% deposit and the Leeds Building Society asking for only 5%, wow what an offer, so today I went through an application with the Leeds, I have said 10% deposit, because I have saved that much and was expecting to pay that. Hopefully this will pay off as it means the amount borrowed is less so the payments over the short term we can take (12 years remember).

Things are progressing nicely, with only five more sleeps till Christmas I expect these companies to wait till the New Year now, so roll on 2017.

Shared Ownership Journey – My Start

Hello folks

It has been a while since I thought I had anything to say, however I’ve started the process of buying a New House through the Shared Ownership government scheme and as I’ve not been able to find anyone else who has written about there experiences I thought I would share mine.

So to set the scene, I have been in a council rented property for ten years, its a lovely area, but an old property that has tiny rooms and some quirks that aren’t that appealing as we grow older.  My husband is 54 and I’m 53, both of us in permanent employment, though not in well paid positions.

Driving between our current home and places of employment construction started on a new housing estate the entrance displaying a huge sign saying Help to Buy scheme. I thought it worth investigating what these Help to Buy schemes were. Finding the Help to Buy NEYH site, I quickly decided the best of the schemes for us was Shared Ownership allowing us to buy a part of the property and rent the rest. ( You will notice I change between me/I/us/we a lot, I’m jointly buying but seem to do all the work on my own, its not poor writing its factual!)

Checking the available properties in the area I wanted, I found a great looking house on the development we drive past, 40% share was £64,000.  Thinking that we should get a mortgage for that amount I sent an inquiry to the Registered Provider who was a national Housing Association-Home Group.  I then completed the application form to Help to Buy NEYH with our information.  This wasn’t as easy as I expected as I had to print the form out rather than complete online, then complete it by hand and post it off to them. In this day and age, I expect the government to keep up with technology – you got a great gateway for tax online!  Within four days I received a call to talk through my information, and within ten days I received a pack of information.  Very straightforward in the end.

The next step would seem logically to visit the show homes at the housing development and asking to see the property, this wasn’t easy at all. The properties aren’t owned by the builders they are owned by the Registered Provider, in effect they have been sold and therefore the builders are not interested in helping you at all. We were lucky and because they were built and complete we could peep through the windows of the downstairs to see the room sizes and shapes.  I could see that the kitchen wasn’t going to have space for my American fridge-freezer and didn’t seem to have space for a dishwasher either – and when you think about it, the kitchen colours were already chosen the tiles in place, every kitchen we could see was identical.  Now when you are buying a new build home, you would normally get a little say in what colour tiles etc are being used.  Well not with Shared Ownership, I could own this home in five -ten years but I can’t choose anything as I’m jointly purchasing – well actually purchasing second hand -with/from a Registered Provider.

When Home Group contacted me to discuss the application they had all my information from the Help to Buy NEYH that was good as it gave them a basis to work from.  I was soon to understand however that the advert for 40% share was not a choice but a starting place.  After going through my income and outgoings I was TOLD I had to purchase 63% of the property.  I was advised of the government criteria which wasn’t as simple as the key information they state. The following is copied and pasted from the government Help to Buy site:

The criteria is fairly broad and you should be eligible if:

• Your household earns less that £80,000 per year
• You are a first time buyer or used to own a home but cannot afford to buy one now
• Able to obtain a mortgage and/or savings for your share (deposits are typically 5-10% although may be higher in certain circumstances)
• Your income is sufficient to cover the mortgage (if applicable), rent and service charges
• Savings (or access to) £2,500 to cover the fees of buying your property plus the deposit.
• Have access to a minimum 5% deposit

That all sounds good, we earn a lot less than £80k, about £35k, we can’t afford a new one, we should be able to get a mortgage, we have some savings to pay about 5-10% deposit and a around the right amount for the fees.   Yeah, we should be able to go ahead – oh wait that was all based on the purchase of 40%, they want me to buy 63%.  A visit to my lovely bank the Halifax to ask about a mortgage next.  The Halifax mortgage adviser was good, she listened, we went through our income and our potential outgoings, remember you have rent to pay and service charges as well as the other commitments you already have.  So with 63% to purchase we require a mortgage of £90k and a 10% deposit of £10k,  we can’t do that, we can’t get a mortgage of more than £70k and we only have a max of £6k for a deposit.  Remember we thought we were buying a 40% share.  So why the big difference? Well ‘eligibility’ and ‘affordability’ don’t go hand in hand.

The scheme has additional criteria, that you only find out about when the affordability calculator is run with your specific information.  The calculator is provided by the HCA, you can access it yourself, though it is well hidden. HCA Affordability calculator section 6.1.3 on the link gives you access to the calculator, download it and you can enter your own figures.  The calculator uses a debt to income ration of 45% as per guidance.

The HCA considers a 45% household debt to net income ratio as maximising their contribution to home ownership yet not over stretching in order to allow applicants to adapt to market changes in interest rates etc. This should cover mortgage costs, service charge and rent. A multiple of 4.5 x household income is also the maximum applicants can use to purchase their share. This is a cap and cannot be breached. Applicants should also be maximising their contribution, as a minimum the HCA requires applicants to be multiplying their income by 2.5x of their household income and 25% debt to net income ratio to be used.

All a bit  much to follow?  It was for me, but the essence is you need to be spending 45% of your net income on the house debt.  So if your combined income into the bank is £1000 then you should be spending £450 of it on the mortgage/rent/service charge and living on the remaining £550 for bills, food, petrol to work, clothes, savings for household purchases, savings towards next car purchase…… what? so with a combined income of £2000 that is £900 on the house and £1100 on everything else. Have I got this right, is this normal, this is where I started looking for other peoples experiences.  You see I live in a council house and the rent is low, just as well as I started off here as a non working mum.  Yes I can now afford to move on, and agree I should, but even though I have high bills here because of the damp and old property I couldn’t see how giving 45% of my money to live in a house was going to work for me. Plus at our ages we could only get a mortgage for 12 years not the average 25 years that most people get.

With this in mind I wanted answers if I was going to spend so much money on  home I wanted it right I wanted space for my appliances so I didn’t need to buy others and I wanted to be treat like a customer making a big purchase not a person complaining because I didn’t understand the process. I would have liked a face to face meeting over a coffee like the customers at the Show House got. So I found the email for the Head of Development at Home Group and sent him a scathing email.  Surprisingly he sent me an email back immediately saying he would discuss it with the person I was dealing with.  I did get my call back from the Home Group, but there was no compromise so I withdrew my interest in the property.

Thinking it wouldn’t work for me at all, I left it all alone for about two months, then while driving to a new pub to meet friends we saw another little housing development. Beautifully designed houses in a great location, I couldn’t help myself, I had to see if they had any on the Shared Ownership scheme.  Checking the Help to Buy NEYH site, yes they did, and they had four of the ones I liked.  I registered my interest and waited.  The next day I got a call from an agent of Riverside the Registered Provider who owned the houses, they recommended using Metro Financial advisers to go through my affordability, they then send that information to Riverside, they work the calculator to the interests of the customer, supporting them to understand what is affordable, they have to stay within  the HCA rules, but they use the flexibility available.  The real beauty is that they also check with mortgage lenders as they go along to ensure that you can get the mortgage.

So to date, I have found the house, I have registered with the Help to Buy NEYH (that first application is valid for six months), I have given all my financial details to Metro Finance and I’m waiting for them to contact me tomorrow the 19/12/16 with how much of a share I have to purchase.  It will be a great Christmas present if the share amount is no more than 40% which on this property would be  £74k,  that would be a mortgage of £66k and the rest deposit.  I am prepared to upset, I am prepared to send all the documents they require – I can gather them and send them over my Christmas break.

The house itself will be handed over to Riverside at the end of January and that is when they want a non refundable reservation fee.  I don’t know if they give any options in the layout of the kitchen to allow space for the fridge freezer or the dishwasher.  I don’t know if there will be any colour choices.  What I do know is that I feel from the telephone conversations that they are treating me as a valued customer.

I will keep this blog going to give you my experiences as they happen,  if I’d known how complex it all was I would have started it the day I contacted Home Group.

I did in the midst of my angst write to my Member of Parliament, I’m still awaiting there response. My friends often say don’t get on the wrong side of Dee she will make sure everyone hears about it, but we all have a voice.  There are more dire situations out in the world than my little rants. But silence is never the answer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello, I’m back!!!

Well after a break of about 9 months, I decided to come back to WordPress.  Its not that I didn’t enjoy blogging, I just found that I didn’t have the time or enthusiasm I thought I would have. I find life is like that, one minute I’m up and flying with all my ideas working well and the next I land with a bump and don’t know where I am or how to move forward.

With the economy such that non-essential services being a low priority for many households, including mine, fewer people are looking at having professional photographs taken.  Offers on the likes of Groupon, Living Social and Woucher from some photographers make me wonder how they are making a living. Let me explain that one later on.  There are always key times in life when you want to have professional photographs taken, weddings, newborn babies, an engagement, Graduations maybe a prom.  However with the reduction in prices of quality digital cameras many people know someone who has “a good” camera, someone who is an enthusiast, joined a camera club, took a course at the High School.  Now I know that all of these are a great start to being a professional photographer, however there is a lot more involved than just taking a good image.  Have they insurance, will they turn up, what if they make a mistake, have a camera malfunction. Will they provide a set of edited images with a fluid colour palette that allows any images to be paired together in a book, frame or collage.   How are their skills at posing, I know some amazing camera club members who take admirable award winning images of landscapes, but ask them to group a family of five and they wouldn’t get a striking portrait you would be proud to place on your wall.

Looking at the offers sent to my mailbox everyday from companies such as those mentioned above, along with others, sound too good to be true.  A family portrait for £9 with four prints included, wow how can I compete with that.  Well having asked a friend to go along to one of these local offers I found out how they work.  The booking was made, and an email sent to confirm when, what to wear and what to expect, all very basic and no personalisation at all.  On the day, my friend turned up herself, her husband and her two children of 10 and 6 years, all dressed in bright fun colours, they were asked to wait in reception where the walls were covered in lovely photographs of families and babies, all different with prices along side. When the photographer came to meet them, he asked if they had looked at the photographs and if any of them were what they were looking for.  One of the Frames had a main image with 6 smaller ones along two of the edges, this was priced at £400.  My friend mentioned that looked great, the photographer said he would ensure that those type of images were taken.  The photographer took the family into the white studio and took a range of photographs for 15 minutes, then arranged a viewing date and time for a week later.   My friend called me to give me the details of the shoot and how it had gone, on explaining that it was a viewing to see the finished shots, I warned her to not take the kids, to leave her bank cards at home and not to sign any agreements when they returned.

On the viewing day I called her and reminded her not to be swayed into buying anything.  If she wanted any images I could do them for her, and to remember that at all times. At the viewing she and her husband were shown to a room with a comfortable sofa and the images were shown on a TV to them, the images were all good, nothing wrong with any of them, she was asked to select one to be her price inclusive print which was then printed four times so not four different prints.  After seeing each photograph on its own, she was shown templates of the images within the various framed products she had seen in reception.  Constantly told the images could be any of the other images but they had selected the most appropriate for each layout, she was asked her thoughts on each product; did she like the photographs? did she like the frame? which room would it suit in her home? had she photographs of the family in the kitchen? in the hall, in the bedroom, in the dining room?  Constantly told how attractive her children are and how quickly they grow up, she felt worn out and realised she had been in the viewing for forty five minutes, three times longer than the actual studio time.  On saying she would think about which she liked and would like time to think about it, she was offered a 10% discount for signing up today.  These products were all over £300, and even an additional print would have to be framed and purchased at £50.  After a few minutes of trying to extricate herself, my friend said she felt like she was a bad mother for not wanting to buy the photographs.  It certainly took a bottle of wine and a good talking to from me to show her that this was just a marketing ploy.

So that is how many of these photographers offering these incredibly low prices can do so, its because they know they can get their costs back from selling you high priced products afterwards. It takes a strong person to be able to withstand a good salesman when you have large images of your children in front of you.

So beware if you book a special offer session expecting a bargain.  RANT OVER, how will I be able to compete in a market that wants and needs a bargain.  Well I hope to be able to offer an experience, I am looking at how to develop this experience, but that is my current goal, so I ask you to help? What kind of experience would you want to have when visiting a studio, what kind of experience would make you even want to visit a photographic studio?

Life is too short to worry about tomorrow

I started my blog with a goal to post at least once a week, its only taken seven blogs to miss this goal!!!! But life got busy and I got lazy in the shorter free time I had.  Photographers don’t work the 9 to 5 life, at least none of the ones I meet do, some of them work 9 to 5 at other jobs and then do photographic work after that and on days off, taking leave as necessary and generally having very little free time.  

I was made redundant from my day job so have the added worry of looking for a ‘bill paying’ job as well as creating photographic images, (notice that I don’t say taking photos any more), it would be amazing if that bill paying job was connected to photography, but dream jobs are few and far between so I’m not going to wait for that miracle to drop in my lap.

I have been using  some of this newly found time to network wherever possible to see what is going on with other creative types.  I found a great studio group that has allowed me access to practice studio shooting with models, something  that I couldn’t have afforded to set up if I was paying for the full shoot.

I have taken the time to meet photographers from the local camera club outside of club meetings and discussed issues I want support on, like printing and mounting photographs and the very complex Adobe Photoshop which has at times had me wanting to through the laptop out of the window!!

This has all involved something I wasn’t sure I had, compromise, negotiation, relationship building and mutual support. I’d always through I was a bit bossy, controlling, an upfront and tactless bitch to be honest. Honestly I did think the first two of those attributes would be helpful for a photographer having to work with a large group as in a wedding or event… However I have surprised myself with how much more I have to offer when I want something myself.  Its difficult to not take advantage of kind, good people. Yet I find that by offering to pay for materials, respecting their experience, bringing the biscuits/cakes, and being honest,  I am building up that support network nicely, Don’t be afraid to ask, I’ve found people like to share, they may not give you every tip they have, but they will steer you in the right direction.

Luckily I am getting some paying work, as since I’ve been putting more of these ‘professional’ looking images on my website and FB page I’ve had some interest, and actually got two bookings.  Both involved meeting the client to discuss and decide on what was required from the images.  While both are very different requirements the process was very similar, getting key contacts, who is involved, dates, times, purpose, making a shoot list of requirements. Getting the basics right at this stage means spending time planning,  Funny that you don’t always take this time into account when working out your fees?

I’ve started to use that book I bought for bookings, it feels really good now its not just got dates of courses, meetings and photo opportunities in it. Is this is am I on my way?  I don’t know but I unless I get a new job every day next week, I need a bill paying job in the next month or I’m going to be screwed for getting a flashgun before its needed in May!

Specialism

To be honest I love photographs, I love images (there is a difference) it doesn’t matter if its an image of a sunrise, a baby, a rusty nail, a seascape, an autumnal tree, a tasteful naked lady, or an old dog.  The image needs to speak to you, it needs to be technically right, it can be au naturale or manipulated but if you see the beauty, the grime, the heart or the need in an image then does the subject matter?  Of course it does, and that is why so many photographers work out what they like to look at and specialise in that genre, from Fashion to Sports, from Travel to Architecture, from Baby Portraits to Candid Urban Scenes. But when you want to make photography your business which genre makes money?  Portraits and Weddings my readers, portraits and weddings, of course a fantastic shot of Remy scoring a goal is going to sell to a newspaper but it will be old news by the following week.  A great seascape may be sold via stock libraries for inclusion in a calendar or a book on that local area, but stock photographs can pay as little as £5 on some sites. So what do you want to take photographs of? I love taking images of buildings and architecture, but don’t have a tilt shift lens that is absolutely necessary if I wanted to be able to sell images of buildings without those converging lines that make buildings look perilously top heavy.  

So that takes me back to genres, I could sit in a hide all day trying to capture wildlife, I could learn to be patient and take sunrises and sunsets and for both of these try to then find an outlet that would pay a reasonable rate.  However the easiest route would appear to be getting the best out of people and taking photographs of babies, children, couples, families and weddings.  To do this well you need to learn to be in control, talking the client through the shoot, without sounding demanding or stern, keeping control of larger groups of people without taking over what is after all a social event if its a wedding or a party.  One way to ensure that you give the paying client what they want is to discuss the brief well in advance of the event, make notes, find out who are the key people, who is shy, who will take centre stage, both of these characteristics in people need to be well handled to get a good image or set of images. 

Visit the venue prior to the event, if it is a studio shoot, then you will be at an advantage to be on your home ground, but if you have agreed to take images out and about or at the clients home, to take lifestyle portraits then you need to know where you want to set up your tripod, what angle the sun is at, scope out interesting backgrounds and useful props. 

Don’t forget that many of the skills and techniques you develop in one genre of photography will be transferable to other areas, so if you do become a great pet portrait photographer, earning a good income, but your heart is still in taking sports images then you will be able improve on your ‘hobby’ and hanging your sports images around your business may just inspire someone to ask if you can take images of their local team in action, whether that be football, rugby, netball or pool!

Recovering Capital for Photographers

Thinking about Capital, so you are ready to start charging clients for photographs. Easy you think, how long do they take, how much are other photographers charging, how much paper and ink are you using? Well as I mentioned before that is not all that is required to ensure a successful photography business. How much have you spent on your equipment? How long does that equipment last and how will you recover the cost of that from your clients?

Ok, so you are ready to work on how to make sure your photography business is recovering the capital invested in it for your equipment. You know this is important as equipment doesn’t last for ever and at some point you will need to replace items.  This is not the same as increasing your equipment. The example used may seem very small, but it is a good way to understand the principle and you will see when you start how large an amount you may have invested.

To start write down every piece of equipment you have and the price, write next to it when you bought it, next to that write how long you think it will last – or how long till you think you will want to replace it. I used Microsoft Excel to do this but you can do it on paper. You should have something like this.

Nikon D700 Jan 2013 £1400 5years
Prime lens Mar 2013 £ 190 5years
Canon Printer Mar 2013 £ 100 5years
Interfit lights Jun 2013 £ 300 5years

That is just an example, you will have probably a lot more, remember you can’t include memberships, consumables like ink, paper, bulbs.

Total your amounts up, on this example it comes to £1990 and I want to recover this in 5 years. This means that in 5 years time regardless of any profit or wage I take from the company there will be £1990 sitting in my bank classed as recovered capital that I can use to replace my equipment. Many people will want to include a vehicle but that is where it gets complex. If you include a vehicle you have to only use that vehicle for your photography business or have a way of verifying the miles that you use for business. At this stage I only put petrol receipts onto my accounts for travelling. I could at some point start to use a mileage allowance, say 50 pence per mile but that’s for another blog. Of course you could pay for an accountant or bookkeeper to do all this for you. But until I am making a few thousand with the business I don’t plan to do this.

So now you know how much you need to get and over how long, so for a newly started business it would be unwise to just divide this amount by five and say that is how much is required each year as it takes time to build up a business, it makes more sense to anticipate that the volume of work you can achieve will increase over the years.

To continue with the example of £1990 this could be broken down into
year 1 £250
year 2 £320
year 3 £390
year 4 £480
year 5 £550

So you have the yearly amounts you want to achieve. How are you going to attach these to the paying jobs you work on? I undertake three types of commission, weddings, portraits and commercial. I can charge a lot more for a wedding than a pet portrait, and for a commercial shot I am paid more than either of the others. Yet in expected work there is a clear connection between the type of work and the pay received for it. I find commercial work as high paid but low volume, weddings a good pay but not so many, and portraits being low pay but high volume. So in year one how will I achieve the £250 I want to recover for capital.

Each type of work I undertake has a capital rate I attach, this rate will change throughout the five years – achieving in the fifth year what it could stay for the following years unless additional equipment is purchased.
Wedding capital at £25, Commercial capital at £50 and Portrait capital at £10. I decided on these amounts due to the expected number of jobs per year, which in the first year is 4 weddings, 0 commercial and 15 portraits.

The number of jobs I achieve each year is forecast and you can amend these every three months throughout the year to see if you are on track or need to increase or could even decrease the amount of capital you are achieving. The secret to forecasting jobs here is to ensure you are honest, how many jobs do you think you are capable of achieving you are unlikely to be able to work on 100 weddings per year, and would you honestly be able to attract 100 wedding clients? So be realistic with what you can do and how many clients you can attract.

By year 5 in my plan I aim to be photographing 15 weddings per year, 3 commercial jobs per year and then the faithful portraits at 45 jobs – that is one a week for each working week!! Portraits being the main stay as they are varied, pets, babies, children, groups, couples, engagements, boudoir, and beauty. Don’t imagine you are going to be photographing London Fashion Week in two years unless you have an internship with a leading studio now! But plan your expectations, revisit them on a regular basis, play with your figures on a separate excel sheet to see how much you could be reinvesting in advertising, marketing, and always remember you need a take home wage.

I will at some point put a link to a possible Microsoft template for your photography accounts on this blog.

Qualifications in Photography

Because I want to be the best photographer I can I want to gain qualifications as well as experience and skills. So I signed up for a level 2 NCFE course at a local college. I attended the first class and found our how many local people love photography, the majority are there to learn about Photoshop and processing of images, only one said they wanted to learn more about composition.  The course takes you out on three occasions as well as some studio work and a research project.  I think it will be a big benefit for me to gain this, at the end of the course you need to have put together a portfolio of 10 images for submission.  My aim is to ensure these images are the ones I would like to submit to the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) for a Licentiate distinction therefore gaining feedback that will give me time to improve them.  But at least I won’t be putting them into the RPS blind.

Having letters after your name are a great way to show your experience and presumably you have been in the industry for a reasonable period of time, therefore honing your skills and developing techniques, however starting out with a strong foundation to build upon is always a plus point.

Do you think qualifications, experience or letters are the most important  aspect when booking a photographer?

what an opportunity

today has been a shocking day all round.  it was my last shift at work and with no warning at all. myself and the other area manager where given 30 days notice of redundancy, now some would look on this as a great opportunity, however, I have only been with the company 6 months so no redundancy package, no payout and no  alternative employment.  so all in all a huge let down, and even though it is a possible option to change career it  is so not the right time.

How much to charge?

So when you set up your website, your facebook page, your twitter page, you start a blog and have a domain so  you can have your emails sent to a professional sounding email account, you wonder why you are getting a few people viewing your info, reading you blogs and giving some comments on you photographs but no one is contacting you regarding a booking WHY, one reason could be…

… have you shown your charges, no!!! no of course not they are probably negotiable and even not worked out yet.  But would you contact someone to ask about a service when you don’t know if they will charge you £10 or £100.   So have you considered how you will work out your rates or charges?

Think about how much work is involved before working out your rates,  I recently spent an hour with someone taking portraits, twenty minutes were spent discussing their requirements, then I spent about 2 hours processing the images,  selecting the best 20 and then another hour with them showing them the images and discussing which they wanted and at what size.  I then spent about 30 minutes printing and mounting images and a further 30 minutes copying images to disk for the customer to have all 20 for further use.

This means I spent 5 hours working for this customer,  two images sold at A4 size and 3 at A5 size, 5 out of 20 sold and one memory stick of images. Do you want to work out an hourly rate or a price per photograph, what about a combination of both?

Do you want to do your own printing or do you want to use a third party,  getting a photo-book for a customer is a very simple way of giving a customer a good selection of images and some of the companies can give a phenomenally quick turnaround, but are you planning on spending the time with the customer to plan the layout of the photo-book because that would add to your time further.

Have you looked at the prices of other photographers in the area, are you offering anything different, anything unique or do you want to compete on the price aspect?

Do you put your rates on a separate page of your website, do you do special offers? after all after the work spent on the shoot, any further sales of photographs are almost a bonus for you.  Consider the aspects of putting up a package, showing a couple of photographs of different sizes, perhaps different mounts whatever you want to offer with prices. 

Having considered all of this, do you think you can make a profit at the prices you are going to charge.  Don’t forget any travelling, any consumables, inks, paper, mounts, covers, memory sticks, CDs, DVDs.  electricity, rent, studio costs.  Are you still making money? The cost of you camera, lenses, computer, software, lights, memberships of organisations, insurance? Still making a profit? 

In the coming weeks I will show you how to plan to recoup your capital outlay of equipment against each job, keeping a record so you can track all your finances.

Studio work

Today I had a project to complete, a simple lowkey flower shot.  Quite easy really.  First I had an booked at a studio,  on the way I purchased a bunch of red roses.  I thought that purchasing a bunch of roses would be the easy part, but what a fiasco, first the local supermarket didn’t have any red roses, when I asked I was told “they will all be waiting until Valentines day, before cutting them”, what so you can’t show someone you love them a few weeks before the commercially set up day.  Grr, I digress.

I called in a florist, I didn’t really want to, they would be more expensive than the local supermarket and I would need to park on the high street which is a nightmare for parking.  However I found a space reasonably easy and only had to walk one block to get to the flower shop, they had some lovely red roses, nothing big and blooming, just tight buds but they were a lovely colour so I made my purchase, put the bunch on the back seat next to the camera bag and set off for the studio.

As I pulled into the studio car park I had to break to avoid a mini pulling out very fast and the bunch slid forward and fell on the floor, the camera bag didn’t of course as I always fasten the seatbelt around it and through the handle.  Do you do things like that? I always have thought about how to look after my equipment.  The roses didn’t fare too badly but they were far from the perfect blooms I had thought to be taking photographs of.

With my project notes and the perfect studio set up, I position the lights, background and flower and set about my shoot. I realise now why I like to carry my ipad, even though I didn’t have a live model, I work better with music, having something uplifting and bouncy playing helps you keep your mood, keeps your time focused and can keep you energised.

So lessons learnt from this project, consider the purchase and transportation of props, always carry music.  Allow time for purchases of fresh props.  Safe transportation of your photographic equipment is vital.

Images are successfully available on viewbug and flickr.