The phone's not ringing off the hook, all your business "housekeeping" is done, and your well of creative inspiration is reduced to a damp spot at the bottom of a very deep hole. What's a photographer to do? Well, sitting on your butt is not an option.
Be your own best client.
Give yourself an assignment. Photographers do best when they are accountable. An assignment is made, a shoot scheduled, a client guided toward a vision that fulfills their image needs. You are being counted on to make it happen. That accountability fires the creative imagination.
If you're experiencing a lull, you likely have a shortage of accountability. When that happens your creative spark flickers, gutters, and sometimes, all but goes out. Time for a personal intervention.
One of my goals for 2010 was to be more proactive in my personal shooting. When I'm not busy for clients, I refer back to a list of personal projects/shoots that I created early in the year. New subjects, new techniques, experiments, holes in the stock library...all are fair game.
Slack time can be filled with professional and creative projects. The key, however, is that you MUST treat them as if they are being done for a paying client. I will repeat: YOU MUST TREAT THEM AS IF THEY ARE BEING DONE FOR A PAYING CLIENT!
That means they must be planned, scheduled, and executed using your best business practices. Your personal work must be done professionally. It's the only way to create the accountability that keeps us moving forward.
The beauty of this idea is that your completed projects will result in new expertise, new techniques, images with value beyond your investment of time. Your next sale could result from these efforts.
Hire yourself.
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