It’s December Again (Already!)

I can’t believe it’s December again – already! It only seems a short while ago that I was taking down the Christmas decorations from last year. In a few days I’ll be putting them back up again.

This year has definitely been a challenging one for Shooting The Dog. We lost all of our Christmas work last year when the November lockdown come into force. And then for the first half of the year we found ourselves in lockdown again. Unable to work normally, we took to taking pictures while we were out on our walks, and the Dog Walk Gallery was born. This helped to keep a little money coming in while we were unable to earn any in our normal manner.

The summer reopening

By June we were able to re-open the studio again, and we had a short burst of sittings. But most of my work is local, and many locals were avoiding our town centre as it was too busy with tourists. So the middle of the summer was very quiet, and I must confess to getting rather concerned about our future.

Then September arrived, and as it did so my calendar began to fill up again. October started getting so busy I was having to shuffle things around to fit everything in. November has been pretty good too, with several studio sessions and a few brave souls booking outdoor on location shoots.

So are we out of the woods?

Does Shooting The Dog have a prosperous future ahead of it? Well, we certainly hope so.

We need to keep pushing and trying to get more visible. We need to ensure that the diary is filling up throughout the year. We need to make sure that anyone who has a dog (or other pet) wants a photoshoot, and that they know the only place to come to is Shooting The Dog.

All of which sounds easy when written down on a page, but is far from it. I will do whatever I can to keep doing the job I truly love, and to keep a business that I know can work given the right conditions running for as long as I can. It won’t be easy, the last two years are going to take a long time to recover from, but I am sure that we can do it.

So as we get to December again, it’s time to start thinking about how to approach the new year and continue to grow. Who knows, may be we will be able to afford to eat again soon!