New Directions
It's been a wild year to say the least, and it feels like every week brings it's new set of challenges. What started out as a much needed break from work life has now turned into a frenzied hustle of adaptation and catch up. With that being said I consider myself very fortunate to still have a job in these trying times, and even more fortunate that it's a job I genuinely enjoy.
I began working in the taproom at Black Heath Meadery in February of this year. Just a couple of weeks before the COVID-19 lockdown. When the lockdown hit I was unsure if I was going to be going back to work at all as both of my jobs were based in the service industry. I'm sure many of y'all have heard of numerous amounts of restaurant closings around that time. Luckily we got the word that Black Heath would be back up and running in June and it's been my only steady job since the lockdown.
After being back at work for a few months I was offered an opportunity from our owner. He wanted me to manage the social media accounts for Black Heath and create the content going forward, one post a day. I gladly accepted, and the days have been flying by ever since.
I had always considered going into social media management but I never really knew how I would get into it. I hadn't really had experience running accounts for any established businesses other than my own. I knew how to work a camera, I knew how to edit the photos and add simple text, but I never had the experience of creating and growing a larger audience on these platforms. Once I got passed the first week, and did a bunch of research, it all started to make more sense and with some time I had effectively streamlined the process.
Learning the languages of these different platforms and how people used them was the first hurdle. Most people around my age grew up with these platforms and have them figured out pretty well. But how are people outside of my age range using these tools? How are other business using these tools to cater to their base? I had the process on getting these materials out there, but my focus quickly changed to WHAT I was putting out there instead of HOW I was putting it out there.
Soon enough I began to run out of ideas, especially since I didn't want to post in a too similar style over and over again. This created a creative challenge, how to keep things interesting and fresh on a day to day basis while also clearly and quickly informing our guests about different releases and events. I've found this to be the most difficult when we don't really have anything to highlight at a particular time. While I still don't really have a clear answer for this, I've found that just getting out there and trying to make something happen usually creates results. Or at the very least an idea to work off of. Often times if I have my camera with me the shots will start presenting themselves. If you start getting too deep on a train of thought then you'll remain there stagnant. It's best to just get out and do, even if nothing comes from it at least you're getting some ideas flowing and you never know what could come from that.
To tie in on my last post about hitting the creative wall, having this daily exercise has helped a lot. It's nice to complete a simple daily goal that relates to my creative pursuit. Especially now that it's been a couple of months and starting becoming second nature. I can now focus more on the idea or the image instead of how I'm going to do it. There is still plenty more to learn however. For instance I've been spending a lot more time navigating the Adobe Suite to create more promotional material and I look forward to see how learning these skills will transfer over to my personal work.
Speaking of personal work, I've still been mainly shooting film. I've found that medium to be very kind to me lately and I'll be sharing a lot of shots on my website within these next few days. I've also come a long way on the Pinot piece shown on my last blog post, I plan on wrapping that up this week while I have the time. I'm thinking about doing a small run of prints was well, depending on how well they turn out. It'll be my second time attempting a CMYK print, so fingers crossed! In addition to all of this social media work i've also been commissioned to do a drawing of the meadery, I plan on doing it very similar to the one of King's Fish, and I plan on doing prints of that this month. There's some other little projects floating around, but for now I think I have enough on my plate until some more time frees up.
Lastly, thank you thank you thank you everyone for all of the support. Wishing y'all the best in these unpredictable times. I'm just waiting for when all of this is over and we can sing and dance in the streets once more!
Stay Safe
