How To Stay Organised as a Fashion Photographer
I'm Swiss, and by birth that means I need to be uber organised. I don't know why that is, but we just are an organised people!
I've always found it quite easy to stay on top of things. So much so, that when I get asked the question “how do you stay so organised?" I need to really think about it. I'm hoping today that by sharing some of the things that I do day to day to stay organised will in turn help you.
Married To My Calendar
Erin May Henry says that you should be married to your calendar - and I couldn't agree more. I really, really am obsessed with keeping EVERYTHING I have to do logged in my diary. I personally use iCal, the digital calendar that comes with Apple products. I've got a Macbook, and an iPhone, so it means that everything seamlessly integrates. If I add something into my phones calendar, it will automatically show up on my computer as well.
I've also become pretty good at knowing, realistically, how much I can achieve in a week. This took time, and practice, but I've been working for myself for 5 years now, so thanks to many years of either overbooking myself, or underestimating how much I can take on, I've found my happy middle.
The best advice that I can give you when it comes to managing your time in a week is simply to practice, experiment with how many shoots you book, and see what works for you. I know that my happy place is about 2 shoots a week. Sometimes I can manage 3. I know that 4 will feel overwhelming (doesn't mean that it doesn't happen though).
Filing Is Boring But Important
Ugh, keeping files up to date is boooooring. But my goodness does it make it so much easier to find things when you've got a solid system in place. I take a lot of images (I'm sure that you do too) and I also have a lot of hard drives. If I just dumped shoots onto my hard drive any random way, I'd never find them again. And what would I say to a client who was asking me for images 12 months later if I couldn't find them? I'd struggle.
I personally organise my files by year, month, and photoshoot. To give you example, it looks something like this (example purposes only). (I hope you can see!!!)
Setting Quarterly Goals
With so much ambition, and so many things that I'd like to achieve, it can feel really, really overwhelming. I've got big dreams of shooting for specific brands and creating work with specific magazines.
I find that setting myself goals for each quarter of the year breaks them down in to much more achievable, bite sized chunks. Instead of having a goal for the whole year like: “Shoot for Harpers Bazaar," I might break down my goals for Q1 into: study and research Harpers Bazaar. And then in Q2 make it: Shoot an editorial that would be perfect for Harpers Bazaar. Then in Q3: reach out to editorial team at Harpers Bazaar with latest work.
If you're looking for fantastic frame work and prompts for planning your quarterly goals, I'd highly recommend using ByRosanna's workbook. I use it myself every quarter, and it's a game changer. Oh, and it's free!
