What To Do If You Have A Quiet Month

When you are working as a freelancer, you know never know how many jobs you will have to do the upcoming month. Sometimes I’m very busy and I have jobs every week, but there are also months where I have just a couple of jobs to do. This can be stressful, but I learned how to deal with this, because this is part of the job. I also learned how to spent these days without paid jobs useful.

Get Inspired

These things are helping me stay inspired for my upcoming projects:

• visit a museum
• meet with other creatives
• read books or magazines
• create moodboards
• create a new inspiration board on Pinterest
• go to the woods/beach/city alone
• go on a trip

Prepare Your Instagram Feed

We all know how important Instagram is for our business. When you have the time, you can start preparing your Instagram feed in apps like Planoly, Later or Unum. Here you can see what photos are the best combination for your feed and you can already write the captions so you don’t have to think about this every time you want to upload a new photo. Sounds like a good way to spend your time, right!?

Create Portfolio Work

I try to do at least one portfolio shoot a month to make sure I keep working on my techniques but also to stay creative and experiment. Luckily I have a lot of creative people in my network, so I create a moodboard together with the team and then we contact a model agency to find the model that suits our style the most. We all want to bring our work to the next level and create a new shoot to upgrade our portfolio, so the vibe on the set is very positive and exciting. By showing the behind the scenes photos on my Instagram stories, my clients see that I’m working with passion and maybe I inspire them to shoot their next campaign with me as their photographer!

Contact New Clients

It’s not a good idea to wait for clients to reach out to you (unless you are already well known in your business). Check Instagram for new brands, buy new magazines where you want to work for, go out and visit shops where you might want to work for. Write the names and contact information down, so you can contact them my email. Write an impressive email where you tell about yourself, your business and what you can do for the possible new client. At the end you can ask if they are interest in a meeting, or let this open so they can ask if you want come visit them to talk about possibilities.

Update Your Website

Now you don’t have any jobs to do, you don’t have a reason anymore to ignore your website. Always make sure that your website is up to date with your latest fashion editorials and commercial work. Also check your text pages again, is your ‘About Me’ page still good, or do you want to rewrite this again? And maybe it’s time to delete your older work? It’s good to spend some time on your online portfolio again!

Check Your Gear, Do a Firware Update, Make Back-Ups

Now you finally have the time to check your gear, maybe you can clean your lenses and all your other equipment. Also check if your camera is ready for a new firmware, you can see the details at the website from your camera brand.
It’s also good to take notice of your Hard Disk/NAS, clean it up and make a back-up of your recent work. Not a fun thing to do and it may take some time, but it will make you feel more relaxed when you are sure that all your files are save and that you always have a back-up.

Do Your Admin

Probably your least favourite thing to do, but it’s good to stay updated in your administration and make a new plan for the upcoming months.

I hope this post inspired you to keep working on your business during a quiet month, and of course take enough time for yourself to relax!

photography: Liselotte Fleur
styling: Asmae El Ouariachi
makeup and hair: Isabeau Ottevanger
models: Moisha @ De Boekers
Lisa @ Elite Models