Let's face it, 2011 is a bust for me

mercphoto

Well, after seeing my symptoms flair back up again this last week I've resigned myself to not getting back to the race track for the rest of 2011. This usually happens when I push myself too hard, and if I ease up the hand starts to feel better again. So best to take things easy and take the surgeon's advice to heart: it will be at least 12 months after surgery before the symptoms settle down to a steady, consistent state. Its just a matter of what level that steady state becomes. Sigh....

Going to let the website expire for now. Next year if the hand cooperates I'll open business back up again. My only question now is if I run a customer appreciation sale before pulling the plug on my 2010 image archive.

PRW_Photo

mercphoto wrote: »

Well, after seeing my symptoms flair back up again this last week I've resigned myself to not getting back to the race track for the rest of 2011. This usually happens when I push myself too hard, and if I ease up the hand starts to feel better again. So best to take things easy and take the surgeon's advice to heart: it will be at least 12 months after surgery before the symptoms settle down to a steady, consistent state. Its just a matter of what level that steady state becomes. Sigh....

Going to let the website expire for now. Next year if the hand cooperates I'll open business back up again. My only question now is if I run a customer appreciation sale before pulling the plug on my 2010 image archive.

Hi Bill

Sorry to hear about your health problems. It is difficult when your body prevents you from doing the things that you love.

I would definitely recommend running a final sale. I usually run a "Last Chance" sale with a 10% discount prior to taking a gallery down, and it always draws more sales.

Paul Wossidlo
www.PaulRichardWossidlo.com

Sam

Sorry to hear bill.......................Wish you the best. I had a couple of thoughts reading this. First keeping a website open for a year isn't that expensive, but trying to recreate it and upload all your images etc would be a lot of work.

Second, if you need to stop shooting only because of your hand what about taking on some young apprentices and going to the track and teaching them? What about teaching other aspects of photography? How about spending the year learning more about processing and printing?

I guess what I am saying is you don't have to quit everything.

Good luck, keep us posted!

Sam

Mark Dickinson

Never let the site expire.... Your .Coms... I posted a coupon code for godaddy
Keep that in your back pocket if possible and do some pt on the hand best of luck.

Glort

I have been in the same boat.
Basicaly had to let my business run down due to health problems and then when I started to get on the mend and wanted to get off my butt again, I over cooked it and knocked myself around. I'm still on a roller coaster with that. I feel fine and take on a lot then get a reminder that I'm still a long way from where I want to be.
And if another Doctor/ specialist tells me " I can't rush things" and " it takes time" my response will not be polite. It's been 5 years already, I have had enough and want to be 100% again. I have considered that it may be more to their benifit than mine to keep me on the medical metrry go round but in giving away the handful of pills I take every day, I soon get a reassurance that is not the case. :cry
Anyway, back to another specialist this afternoon for more of whats wrong rather than real soloutions to fix it. :bash


I would say by all means have the sale. Nothing motivates people into action in this game more than the removal of the ability to keep on procrastinating.
Thats why I stick to onsite. "No, they won't be on the web, buy today or they are gone forever. "

Because I have unlimited server space, rather than actually delete the images I do put up on occasion, I just add a prefix to the gallery name which renders any old links useless but if need be i can still access or give access to people by either telling them the prefix or simply removing it to restore the old links they had.

As far as teaching assistants, not sure of that idea.
The corner of the game you are in is over saturated now and bringing new people into it to teach them what you know only to have them competeing with you when you want to come back to it sounds counter productive. I guess you would have to weigh up possible gains which I would guess would not be much after paying people against potential loss and increased difficulty when you come back to things.

Of course you could go the teaching route full on and start running classes showing people how to shoot sports work. that seems to be a big thing here atm with lots of shooters going from competeing against the wannabees to encouraging them all they can!
It's pretty easy to throw courses together being one day workshops or ongoing classes over whatever period of time and perhaps this would let you use your skill and experience to earn a quid in the field you know and be workable within your current limitations?


As far as 2011, it's also been a bust for me so far.
I have done about 1/4 of the events I was hoping for. Most I have missed due to bad weather and diminishing participant numbers either causing the events to be called off or them just being too small to make profitable to cover. Luckily the corporate side of things has started to come good and the high capacity onsite printing and greenscreen ability is starting to open some doors. The corporate work is giving a much better return for far easier work with much less over all capital tied up in equipment so if i'm lucky and it keeps heading the right way, I may be able to be very selective in the sports events I cover next year.
Here's hoping.

I hope your recovery exceedes expectations Bill and that you can find something to channel the energy and frustrations your feeling into that will give you what i know first hand your needing.
The mental Fight with these things is often worse than the Physical one and can be very hard to cope with. Having something to work on and put your energy into is important and I hope you find something suitable that will help you get through all aspects of your current difficulties.

DavidTO

Bill, that sucks. I hope that you still stick around and share your considerable knowledge with our community!

Get better soon!

mercphoto

Thanks Glort! Sorry to hear about you as well. As per something to pour my energies into that would be my four month old baby girl.