31/01/2024
Hi everybody….sad news time.
After a serious amount of consideration I have decided to step back from providing professional photography services. I haven’t taken this decision lightly my photography journey has been a part of my life for over 17 years and is something I’ve always been immensely proud of.
The past few years (covid, cost of living etc) have seen a serious decline in the demand for work which in turn hits future viability. The general overheads of buying and maintaining kit, websites, hosting, tax returns have simply been higher than the small amounts I’ve taken for several years. This is money I’m having to take away from my family to keep it alive, but…that’s not why I’m stopping.
The main reason is that with lower photography commitments, its freed up more weekends to do things I love doing myself, more time engaging in exercise and hobbies but most importantly sharing experiences with my family.
The desire to now chase business and spend each and every weekend working has almost gone from me entirely. I don’t want to look back on my life and having missed the bits that were most important, I am very aware that the next ten years are exactly that for me.
As I muddle my way through my mid-forties I now find myself with a young family who need me, a demanding full time job with the Leicestershire Fire and Rescue service, a budding YouTube Channel and A LOT of physically demanding hobbies that soak up just about every minute of available time.
While I push the door shut on paid work I will not close it completely. I will hold on to all of my kit, all of my props, the domain name and keep the studio as it is so that I can continue to take photos for my own family and friends as well as dabble in the odd creative works every now and again. This will also mean should my life circumstances change I could resurrect everything pretty quickly.
I will keep the page live as it hosts over 600 albums I’ve spent an enormous amount of time building. I will however stick an auto reply on the messages and take the website offline.
It has been an absolute honour and privilege to have taken so many wonderful photos of so many fantastic customers over the years.
I will always be a photographer. This isn’t goodbye, it’s a Thankyou
Martin, Holly, Isabelle & Charlie
