5 Photography Business Activities you can do during a Power Outage
Image by: @mercedesbosquet
Today in Montreal there is a snowstorm. Yesterday, the weather stations were warning of a large amount of snow in a short time, combined with gusting winds up to 80km/ hour that could cause power outages.
My neighbourhood has a lot of mature trees, and it can just take an above average windy day to cause a branch to fall onto a power line and take an entire section of the grid out. So we are accustomed to outages on a fairly regular basis! Some days when it’s unexpected, it feels like we sit for a moment and then wonder what the heck to do now!
While our data plans might support us in continuing work (although sometimes the networks get sluggish too because of so many users on the system), we can still be productive online. In anticipation of possible outages today, I thought of 5 things that I could still do, and talked about them in my daily live on the Facebook Group. I figured I’d communicate it here too:
Call Someone
In my youth it was normal as normal could be to pick up the phone and call people, but times have really changed. I imagine that one of the least used features of the iPhone is actual phone calls!
Hear me out. It’s good to face our fears head on and overcome what we are uncomfortable with. Last Fall, the idea of going live on FB was intimidating to me. I overcame and recorded my Alphabet Marketing Series. 13 videos in total, 2 words covered in each video for a total of 26 marketing terms explained. I recorded daily with exception of weekends. Despite discomfort, I committed and did it. And it got easier every day.
At the end of December, I came across an educator who had committed to a 365 live in her group, and I thought it would be a good challenge for me too. We are Feb 13th today and I started Jan 1, for a total of 45 videos so far! These are casual, daily recordings on my phone, no script. Just from the heart thoughts on life, and business. I haven’t missed a day yet and it feels pretty old hat! A positive side effect that I didn’t expect was that I have started to look forward to them! Daily, I’m on the lookout for something valuable to share, and then excited to share with my audience. There is a Gestalt effect - that the activity has become bigger than the sum of its parts.
What feels alien on day 1 will feel different on day 2, day 10, day 135. Tieing our shoelaces and riding a bike may have seemed out of reach on day 1, and soon enough we don’t even think about it. This is encouragement to take a brave step for your business and call someone! A former client, a potential business contact, a vendor. Call the camera store and ask about something you have on your list to buy - that’s a pressure-free call. Just like the side effect of daily live videos for me, a simple phone call can create new opportunities for you in your business and boost your confidence too!
Work Out
I’m on a regular schedule of strength training and I believe I’ve now reached a point where the discipline is paying off and the workout is becoming an automatic part of my day. My mind still sometimes whispers to skip: that I’m tired, or behind in work, and I’ve done pretty well to neutralize that pest voice.
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Working out can look different for everyone, and if you don’t have a regular workout and struggle with creating a discipline, just think of movement. You can do jumping jacks, squats, sit ups, planks. Stretch. Go for a brisk walk. You don’t need any special equipment and if you want to lift weights but don’t have any, grab some cans from the pantry and you’re set!
Movement, stamina and endurance is important for us photographers. We carry heavy equipment, might be on our feet for hours during photo sessions and we may hold awkward postures for elongated periods of time to get certain angles or hovering over newborns.
No electricity required; the only energy we need is our own!
Read
Sitting down for an extended period of time with a good book seems like a luxury that is quickly fading from our fast-paced lives. I used to dedicate enormous amounts of time to reading physical books, and my amount of time reading skyrocketed in 2020 when life halted and we were stuck at home. Since then, life has hurried up once again, and I found Audible. Now I “read” where I couldn’t otherwise: in the car, walking the dog, cleaning the house. The ability to consume books in another format has definitely had an impact on my sit-down-and-read-a-book abilities, but a power outage almost begs for this! Some cozy blankets, candlelight and a good book can’t be beat!
Develop Deep Content
Our daily life can certainly feel like we are on a hamster wheel, and that we have the attention span of the hamster too! We are pulled in so many directions and may have so many ideas that it can be hard for us to sit down for extended periods of time to focus deeply on one activity from start to finish. But when the computer isn’t singing its siren song with the promise of doomscrolling, we may indeed be able to settle down and concentrate! When we are able to churn out some long-form content and get our ideas out, then our daily work becomes easier because we can simply execute.
Pick up your camera
As I’ve progressed further in my career it seems that the casual use of my camera has decreased. Understandably so. As we shoot more for clients, it becomes more work than play, and then we may play less. At the start I’d have my camera with me wherever I went, and now even in slow shoot times, I sometimes don’t touch my camera for weeks! In the Fall I started to dedicate a day a week to just go out somewhere and shoot, but other work eventually overcame and I didn’t keep it up. But the environmental conditions that cause power outages usually also carry potential for great photographs - rainy days with gorgeous reflections (especially in the Fall with amazing colours), ominous clouds, and in today’s case, a snowstorm. Next time the lights go out, you go out too - outside to look around and get those creative juices flowing!
One final note about these activities: you don’t have to wait for a power outage to do any of them!
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