WELCOME TO WAYWARD SPIRIT STUDIOS
This panorama broke the gallery, so I thought I would include it here instead. The Paddock, Westhills from Friday.
The big news this week, I have Wayward Spirit Studios new website up and starting to take shape! My plan is to split my more personal work off to their, so that will become the home to my Fine Art Landscapes and probably the workshops once they start to take a little more shape in the future (we are still waiting on the accommodation side of things before I get too deep into that!), whilst Wayward Spirit Photography - which is this site - can become more focussed on my commercial work.
Speaking of which, there are plans afoot here too! I want to start to build my work away from “property photography” to provide a little more resilience and provide some protection from the ebb and flow of the housing market. It is great at the moment, Inverness is booming, but these things are cyclical so I want to offer more diverse services. This will include more videography but I am also looking to build a portfolio and presence in the wider commercial photography world. Marketing and Architecture are going to be my initial targets as both are closely related to both my property work and also my landscape photography. This is going to be a bit of a slow burn as I need to find some places to shoot, I need to develop my style a little more to suit these avenues and I need to network to build relationships with buyers. If I can do all this within a year I will be very pleased, but I suspect I will need to give myself 18 months to 2 years in reality to get everything just where I want it. Which leads me to another thought… my panel for my British Institute of Professional Photographers (BIPP) qualifications this year is going to be largely landscape based… but perhaps my next entry, perhaps next year, should be in architectural photography? It’s a thought… and one I think I may pursue after the October event as that will, hopefully, offer a good chance to network with people from within that world.
Back to this week then. It’s been a bit of a crazy one! The eldest boys were away in Ireland on Scout/Explorers camp for the week and only returned on Friday afternoon so I have had Angus in tow for work, and we have been all over the place! Sheildaig was the furthest out, with a scenic route home via Applecross, the Bealach nam Ba and Loch Carron, and the rest of the week has been around Inverness and surrounding areas. We have been shooting stills and filming quite a lot too, which is a reminder that I need to start working on a new show reel over the next few months as I haven’t produced one in quite some time and my skills and techniques have moved on considerably since then as film work has become much more of my standard fare, which is good as I see this as both a high value and growth area to be working in. I am still massively undercharging for this work I suspect as I am not quite certain on price points, and I am still building up both my skillset and reputation in the area. This is one of my key target areas for growth over the 25/26 financial year.
So this is what I have been up to (commercially) this week.
Next week is going to be wrapping up everything I still have to do, getting the dog to the kennels for his hols and then off on our own adventures on Saturday morning! Hopefully I will get an update in before we go….
