Case Study Selections

 National Centre for Writing

The first business that I considered for my case studies was a business that's relatively local to my location - the National Centre for Writing. The NCW is a creative writing centre that's based within Norwich at the Dragon Hall, and from what I've researched they seem to have a joy for "[exploring] the artistic and social power of creative writing and literary translation". They often hold workshops and courses for people interested in creative writing of any kind, and have links to events such as the Norwich Crime Writing Festival and the Norfolk/Norwich Festival.

They also seem to run a podcast for writers and people interested in writing, which seems to allow anyone to send in an introduction to potentially come onto the podcast to chat about their experiences with writing. This business seems like a great option for one of my case studies, and the locality of it will help with contacting and potentially even visiting (although living in Gorleston, my travel options are slightly limited to getting there).

https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/

Northlight Images

The second business I decided on for one of my case studies was a photography company called Northlight Images, specialising in commercial landscape photography of both natural and man-made locations. They're based within the UK, but not locally and therefore would fit better for the 'large company' option, as they seem to have a bigger presence than the National Centre for Writing. They do commisioned photography for any number of business clients, producing images for both decoration and for use in a similar way to a stock image.

The business also has a number of guides about the equipment they use, tips for photography and composition, and various social media pages in an attempt to gain marketing traction. Seeing as the business seems larger than the NCW and is still UK based, I believe it'll be a great option for a case study for the photography side of my interests.

https://www.northlight-images.co.uk/

Jon Gibbs Photography

The final business I was considering for a case study was a local freelance photographer known as Jon Gibbs. He specialises in landscape photography of the Norfolk area mainly, although I believe he has done photography of other areas around the UK as he's visited them. He mostly does photography just for the feeling of capturing the images, although he has mentioned on his website that he also does commercial landscape photography for people who ask. 

Additionally, he also helps to run a photography gallery where he's been able to showcase a lot of his images to the general public. He gets a lot of his profits and business from this gallery, where people are able to come view his images and also purchase some of his prints that he's created. Considering how local he is and his overlap with a lot of my interests, he seems to be a good idea to research for my case study.

https://www.jon-gibbs.co.uk/

Business Plan VS Business Model

When running a business, especially as a creative entrepreneur, it's absolutely vital that you have a defined idea in mind for what kind of a business you'll be running and how you're aiming to achieve that idea. In an attempt to better define what this idea is and how it'll be achieved, most business owners have formed two important aspects of a business - a Business Model and a Business Plan. Whilst the two sound almost interchangeable in their utility to a business, they actually have a variety of differences that set the two apart, making both of them necessary when running a creative business.

To begin with, a Business Model is the way that you aim to make profit and create value within your business. It's not necessarily a tangible thing, like a document, but it's still absolutely vital for your business. The Business Model goes into detail about how your business is going to go about making money, how it'll be attracting customers and generally how it generates value to bring in your target demographic. A brilliant example of a business model would be the franchise model for a line of restaurants, such as McDonalds. McDonalds runs its restaurants under a franchise model, where it has a variety of different stores across the entire world, allowing it to generate a gigantic income from a wide variety of customers in a wide variety of locations. Similarly, a subscription plan for something like an online game or a mobile data plan is a business model as well. It details how the business is going to be making money, by having their customers paying a certain amount each month for the service/products.

On the other hand, a Business Plan is something that goes into far more detail than the Business Model, detailing almost every aspect of your business in the form of a tangible written document, often presented to important aides within the business (e.g. banks who can offer grants). The business plan will go into detail about the goals for your business, how you intend to achieve them and what sort of resources you'll require for the business to run smoothly: equipment, staff, products, materials, etc. It's a little harder to define an example of a business plan, but a good example would be an upcoming cupcake business. Their business plan would have to include what kind of confectionaries they're planning to sell, how they plan to obtain the resources to bake the cupcakes, what staff they have, what location they'll require for the business, potential prices and demographics, etc.

Comparing the two, a business model is focused much more on the potential value and money-making power of the business whereas the business plan is focused on the business as a whole; the resources, the staff, everything. The two supplement each-other, as you require the business plan to understand how you're going to achieve the values detailed within your business model. Whilst both the business model an the business plan can go into detail about financial details regarding the business, it's much more of a minor note within the business plan when compared to the business model's heavy focus on financial details. Something else to be considered between the model and the plan is a slightly superficial difference - the business plan is a physical document that is actually presented to those it regards, whereas a business model is a less tangible thing, more of an idea of how the business is going to make its money.

In conclusion, the business plan is a document focused on the entirety of the business and how it will achieve the values detailed for the business model, which informs us how the business aims to make its money (e.g. through a franchise plan or a subscription model). Whilst the two both have quite a few differences, they both supplement and aid each-other and are essential when starting up your own business - without either, it'd be difficult to know where you stand as a business.

Self Portrait Evaluation

In general, I feel that my self portrait went quite well. I feel that the quality of my writing was up to standard especially when compared to some of my past work that I have done, such as the story I attempted to write for the EPQ in my first year. The descriptive-ness of my writing was captured by the audience very well, and I also feel pleasantly surprised about the reception of my narration of the story by the audience as well, as I seemed to have done a relatively good job reading the story.

However, I feel that the presentation itself could have been better, as all I did was read my story accompanied by a presentation of some images I took within the park - I feel I could have spruced up the presentation more with maybe some music or slightly better/edited visuals, perhaps to set the mood and capture the immersion better. This is doubly true after seeing some of the other presentations my fellow class-mates presented, which had very well put-together video/audio compositions.

I was decently happy with the images, especially considering that I wasn’t taking them with the intention of using them for the presentation (I only planned to use them for my own visual aid whilst I was writing the story). I obviously feel I could have put a little more thought into the composition and editing of the images (e.g. rule of thirds, attempting to get the golden hour for timing, etc). However, most of these finicky photography compositional rules would have gotten in the way of the relaxation and comfort I was aiming for within the walk itself.

All things considered, I’m quite happy with my self portrait. The story itself seemed to go over quite well with a good reception from the majority of the audience and some surprising feedback relating to my voiceover, which pleased me. I feel I could have done slightly better with the presentation, but that the content of the project was done well.

Self Portrait Planning Document

Self Portrait

Creative CV

Headshots

 After looking at all the tips researched in the previous post, I finally felt ready to begin producing my own headshots. I wouldn't be behind the camera, and therefore couldn't control all the tips I researched about, but there were still some things I was able to control during the shooting.

For my headshots, I ensured that my hair looked good and not overly messy or in my face, as to not block out any of my important facial features. Furthermore, I chose to wore my green hoodie rather than my red hoodie, as I felt that it better matched my eyes and general 'tone' better. I also attempted to keep a neutral but positive expression during the shoot and tried to keep my eyes lively. However, this was partially difficult as my photographer was quite a bit shorter than me and therefore required me to squat down whilst my photo was taken, resulting in a bit of discomfort which I believe is visible in some of my rejected headshots.

Below are the headshots that I decided not to use.

This one is very close to the one I ended up deciding to use, and I believe the only reason that I didn't decide on using it was because the other one came first in the download I received. I've got a neutral expression that still appears positive, a clean background and no ridiculously bright colours that distract from my face. Furthermore, there's a clear sense of 'me' within this picture due to the casual clothing I'm wearing that I'd wear on any normal day.

Yet again, this one is quite similar to the one I chose to edit and produce into my final headshot. In this one, however, you can see that I'm scrunching myself inward a little more than the previous one, due to the fact that I was forced to squat down. Therefore, I decided not to use this one in favour of the first headshot which appeared more natural.

This has pretty much the exact same issues as the previous one, although the camera also appears a little closer to my face. Whilst my expression is still fine and my general appearance suits a headshot pretty well, I feel that the scrunched appearance of my head and neck detracts from the overall headshot and therefore left me wanting other options.

This one is my least favourite headshot, because I was caught trying to hold in my laughter from the people behind the camera, as they were laughing at how awkward I was squatting in the middle of the corridor for the image. The expression appears less neutral and slightly scrunches my face even more than the rest of my body, making me appear unlike how I usually do. Therefore, I decided to not use this headshot.

The final headshot that I decided not to use, mostly because of some annoying shadows that fell across my face during this image due to my glasses. There wasn't much I could do about it across all my photos, but I believe it's more noticeable within this image and therefore makes this one less keen to be used as my professional headshot for CVs.

In the end, I decided on the below image for my headshot. It had everything I felt that it needed in a headshot, including a neutral expression and a decently natural pose along with no bright colours that distracted from my face. Furthermore, this headshot had me looking as I usually do on a day-to-day basis, making it useful for showing potential employers what I'll look like before they hire/interview me.

Here's my final edited headshot. As you can probably tell, it still has that annoying shadow from my glasses that stretches across my face although I couldn't edit it out without it looking unnatural (the shadow makes it obvious that the glasses are actually there). In terms of what edits I performed, I have increased the saturation of the image in order to make it appear a little brighter and more energetic. I also did quite a bit of airbrushing on my face to remove a few of the more minor issues I had, such as some spots and facial hair that I didn't want present. I also used airbrushing to colour out a lot of the gray hairs within my hair, although I now feel that may have been slightly unnecessary.

In general, I kept my final headshot very close to how I normally look with a few minor edits to make myself appear slightly more presentable whilst still not drastically different from how I actually appear.

What Makes a Good Headshot

For quite a lot of people, especially those involved in the acting business of the creative media sector, their headshot will be a very important way to get themselves out there in the business world. Without a headshot, most agents or production companies won't know what the talent looks like and therefore won't get a good idea of what they'll be working with. It'd be bad if you were asking for a dark-haired model and ended up with someone who was platinum blonde. However, someone's headshot tends to say quite a lot about them, and therefore it's very important that your headshot looks good and represents you well.

In an attempt to discover what made a good headshot, I researched into what people thought a good headshot consisted of, and decided to use the research that I collated in order to make a judgement on how to improve my own headshots.

According to a magazine called 'Backstage' (accessible at https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/tips-better-headshot-11730/), here are a few things to consider when structuring your headshot.

• Personality
• According to the magazine, a good way to improve your headshot is to "make sure it looks like you." If you present a headshot to a director and it looks absolutely nothing like you, you're unlikely to make a good impression. Therefore, it's highly recommended to not go completely crazy with post-production editing and ensure that your headshot shows your 'type', so that casting directors may get a good idea as to what they'll be working with if they hire you. With this in mind, I'll be sure to not airbrush my headshots once they're complete, and will attempt to make myself look as 'normal' as I usually do.
• Eyes
• A slightly less obvious tip suggested by the magazine relates to the eyes of the subject. According to the magazine, "it's all about the eyes and what's happening behind them". If you're the subject in a headshot and your eyes appear dull and glazed over, then you'll not seem like a very energetic model to be working with, therefore losing out on favour with the director. However, showing some energy and life behind your eyes within a headshot will make you seem like someone a director would want to work with. Considering this, I'll have to ensure I don't appear bored or tired during my headshot, and will have to make sure I get plenty of sleep the night before (although there's nothing to be done about the bags under my eyes).
• Framing
• Unsurprisingly, a big portion of what makes a headshot look good is the framing of it. Backstage magazine recommends that your headshot will usually be a three-quarter shot rather than something like an extreme close-up, which won't show much of your face or torso at all. Ideally, a good headshot will show the model's head and shoulders within the frame. It's also recommended to use a rather high depth of field for the picture, in order to get a blurred background and therefore more focus on the subject. This isn't something I as a subject can control, but it'll be something to remember when I receive my headshots as blurring is something possible in post-production.
• Clothing
• It's also recommended that for your headshot, you don't go ridiculous with your clothing that you choose to wear. Ideally something simple and professional that doesn't distract from your face. In fact, the magazine quoted earlier recommends that your clothing "matches your eyes", perhaps in an attempt to draw the viewer's eyes towards your face. In any case, I'll have to consider whether my usual attire of hoodies and sweaters will suit the nature required for a good headshot.
• Lighting
• Finally, the magazine recommends thinking about what kind of lighting you want to use for your headshot. As someone who did two years of a photography course, I'm well aware of what lighting looks absolutely terrible for attracting attention and what works. Therefore, when having my headshot taken, I'll want to avoid bright sunny days where the sun will draw massive contrast on my face.

Whilst all of these tips are good in practice, it can be hard to remember it all when having your headshots taken. Therefore, I decided to research further into some good examples of other people's headshots, and what they did right in order to learn what I can replicate for my own headshots.

Within these three headshots, we notice several things in common:

• A blurred background, which attracts more of the viewer's attention towards the model's face and not distracting them from what is the entire purpose of the headshot.
• An angle that shows the entire model's face as well as a small portion of their torso, which varies slightly from shot to shot; usually, it's a small portion of the shoulders although the second example goes a little lower.
• A focused gaze on the camera with some expression behind the eyes - the second example shows some clear focus from the model, with his brows furrowed whereas the first example has a pleasant smile and centered gaze, showing her focus as well.
• Simple but presentable clothing that matches the model quite well whilst not distracting from the main subject of the photo; their face. There's no ridiculously bright colours or wavy patterns, instead just muted colours that add some life to the image whilst not distracting and pulling at the viewer's eye.
• Minimal editing (as far as I can tell), allowing you to see the specific details of each actor. You can see the lines of their face and the details of their minor wrinkles, giving a director a perfect idea of what kind of cast they'll be working with if they decide to hire you.

Conclusion

With all of this in mind, I feel that I've gotten a much better understanding of what makes a good headshot. When I have mine taken, I'll have to ensure that I wear simple clothing that looks good but isn't super colourful, as to not distract from the main subject of the headshot. I'll want to choose soft but ideally natural lighting (not bright sunlight, which will cause massive shadow contrast on my face) and will want to ensure that I'm putting some effort into my expression and gaze into the camera. This all is rather foreign to me, as I'm used to being behind the camera (and have even taken some headshots for my sister in the past). However, I feel that using all of the research I've gathered now, I can make my headshot appear at the very least presentable (and ideally stand-out).

Portfolio Research

In order to get a better idea of how I wanted to design my portfolio in the end, I knew I'd have to research some portfolios that fell in similar areas that I was interested in; photography and writing/screenwriting. Thankfully, there are a gigantic amount of freelance photography portfolios floating around on the internet, so it wasn't hard at all to find plenty to take some inspiration from.

Aralani Photography

Aralani Photography, from what I've gathered, is a freelance photography business run by a woman calling herself 'Ara'. According to her 'About Me' page, she specializes in wedding photography but also enjoys doing photography of couples in more daring and exciting landscapes, such as exploring mountains or hiking. Of course, this doesn't mean she strays away from the more typical wedding photography either; there are plenty of pictures dotted around her website that take place in a simple wedding hall or next to the altar.

To the left is the first thing you'll see upon entering the website (apart from the specific image, as it had scrolled a bit when I took the screenshot!). I'm personally a huge fan of the minimalist style that was taken up by Ara for her website - just a simple logo with a beautiful font and stand-out design and some navigation buttons. This portfolio hasn't fallen into the trap of becoming overly complex like some other portfolios I've seen.

On the right is the rest of the home page, which has a small gallery of examples of past photography as well as a quote proclaiming adventure (which I believe takes itself a bit too seriously, but that's my opinion). There's also a small welcome and some info about the photographer as well as some reviews from past clients. I quite like this idea, as it'll keep potential clients feeling positive thanks to the glowing reviews and some information about the photographer to familiarize themselves.

Apart from the home page, there's the actual portfolio separated into several different categories: Weddings, Engagements, Elopements and Landscapes. This is something to definitely consider for my own portfolio, as it'll make browsing far easier when a client is looking through my work (assuming I decide to go for the photography route). There's also an 'About' section with information about the photographer, prices, recommendations from Ara and some travel dates. Again, it's good to consider including a lot of information so that potential clients know as much about what I'll be offering as possible, preventing them from needing to contact me for information - the less time spent troubleshooting, the more time spent working with a client.

All things considered, I quite like Aralani's website design wise, and feel that a lot of her inclusions are quite handy for a portfolio and are therefore something to be considered when I design my final portfolio. However, I feel that some of her introductions take themselves a little too seriously, almost like poetry. Whilst it looks very nice and is quite interesting to read, it's not something I'm wanting to replicate in my own portfolio. I want to appear warm and welcoming rather than musing and mysterious.

Ara's portfolio can be accessed from the following link - https://www.aralani.com/

Cale Anthony Boudreau

Whilst the last portfolio examined was focused more on photography, this one is focused solely on creative writing, as that's another venture I was potentially interested in pursuing for my creative enterprise. After a bit of research, I found a portfolio by a Canada-based creative writer known as Cale Anthony Boudreau, who has his portfolio set up on Clippings. While this is quite a departure from Wix, I believe I can still take a stab at learning something from his work.

Whilst the last portfolio had quite a few pages and a lot of design put into it, Cale's portfolio is much more simple (although I wouldn't call it minimalist, as I believe it's following a template). The top of the portfolio has a simple 'about' section, showing a picture of the author, his name and some information about him along with some social media links. Below this are all of his example works, sorted into different categories: Comics, Press Release, Copywriting and COGConnected Features.

In general, the portfolio is very functional and does quite a good job at showing us all the work that has been produced by Cale, and is something to consider taking inspiration from assuming that I do my creative enterprise around creative writing. However, I feel that his portfolio suffers from the opposite problem of Aralani's; while it doesn't take itself overly seriously and uses casual language, it isn't as nice to look at. Therefore, I'm thinking of trying to get a mix of Aralani's design and Cale's 'style' in any portfolio I may create.

Boudreau's portfolio can be accessed from the following link - https://www.clippings.me/users/caleboudreau

North Landscapes

Considering my history with photography during my time at EN, I knew that one of my portfolios that I examined would absolutely have to be related to landscape photography. A photography portfolio is all well and good, but it'd be even better if it related to my preferred brand of photography; landscape/nature photography. Therefore, I managed to find a portfolio of landscape photography by a photographer called Ian Erik Waider. He's branded his portfolio as North Landscapes. Whilst his portfolio is similarly minimalist when compared to Ara's, there's definitely more detail and more complex design notes used within this portfolio.

When first entering the portfolio, we're greeted with a homepage similar to the homepage of Aralani Photography, albeit much more single-minded. As far as I scrolled, it was merely examples of his photography from a range of different topics/locations (example shown on the right). At the very bottom of the homepage was a few links to social media pages. This is a fairly simple and effective way to go about doing my portfolio's homepage, albeit a little boring. I think I'll be going for a middle-ground between Aralani's and Ian's (assuming that I actually do a photography-based creative enterprise)

When it comes to navigating the rest of his portfolio, he's used a slightly unique way to navigate the website; there are two seperate navigation bars. There's one at the top for the galleries, seperated into different categories (Landscapes, Fine Art, Subjects and Commercial) and one beneath that for all the other less important details such as the about page, contact details and information specifically for clients or photographers.

While this does work, I feel that it'd be far easier to navigate if it simply had one navigation bar, with the galleries being seperated into a dropdown menu similar to the Clients and Photographers sections of the navigation.

In terms of the rest of the pages, Waider has included the usual staples of a photography portfolio: About page with backstory and some social media links, Contact page for learning how to contact the photographer, etc. However, there's also a few pages that I haven't seen quite as often on other portfolios. In the clients section, there's information about what photography he'll do, how to license his images, his newsletter and a list of his past clients. This is all very effective information for clients to learn about, and I feel that this is something that I could take inspiration from for my portfolio, potentially in a more clear and concise way however. For instance, I feel that my portfolio could have a single page with all the information on it rather than a whole category of different pages. Nonetheless, it's something to consider.

Similarly, for the photographers section of the navigation bar, there's a collection of information that's useful for up-and-coming photographers. 

Things such as potential coaching on how to get better at photography, some articles and tutorials that he's collated for new photographers, presets that he uses within Lightroom (a prominent editing software amongst most photographers), a collection of styles used within Lightroom, a wallpaper for your smartphone, some potential inspiration and his newsletter once again. Whilst I feel that this is all very useful information for new photographers, I don't see it helping much with the portfolio and pulling in new clients. I don't doubt that someone should help out someone aspiring to become like them, but believe that it should take a backfoot compared to the main purpose of a portfolio - selling your skills. Therefore, I won't be considering this for inspiration.

Naturally, the Lightroom Presets and NFTs sections of the navigation bar are exactly what they say. Notably, I've never seen another portfolio focusing on providing things such as potential presets to use within Lightroom or especially a website for NFTs (clicking on the navigation for the NFTs page brings you to an entirely different website for purchasing the rights to some of his photos). I'll not be doing either of these things on my portfolio, as I've not got much experience within Lightroom and don't see the use in selling NFTs (especially at my experience level).

The final page, the Contact page, is something I'll obviously be including on my portfolio.  On Waider's contact page, he's included his phone number, links to a variety of his social media pages, his address and his email address. Additionally, he's included a section for representation which I can only assume is for potential legal issues. At the bottom of the page, slightly cut off on the screenshot provided, is a map showing his exact location. I absolutely don't feel comfortable divulging this sort of information on a contact page, and therefore will be attempting to be more vague in how I describe my 'base of operations', only writing England or East Anglia for instance. With that in mind, however, I do feel that the set-up of his contact page is quite efficient but not anything new compared to the other portfolios that I've visited.

In conclusion, whilst I do like the way that Waider has set up his portfolio, I definitely find it less visually pleasing when compared to Aralani's portfolio. Furthermore, I feel that Aralani has done a better job 'selling' me on her potential skills. Despite all this, Waider has given me some very unique ideas for potential things to include on my portfolio, such as a page about potential coaching (with the correct experience) and lots of information to help aspiring photographers.

Waider's portfolio can be accessed from the following link - https://www.northlandscapes.com/

Conclusion

After looking at the three portfolios listed above, I feel that I've gotten quite a range of inspirations for my portfolio, ranging from a Wedding Photographer to a creative writer to a Landscape photographer. All of these portfolios essentially hit the sort of interests I have when it comes to my creative enterprise (not including the wedding photography specifically, but instead photography as a whole). With everything I've looked at, I believe that designing my portfolio to have a minimalist design would be quite efficient and pretty to look at, assuming that I do it correctly. Having seen Waider's portfolio, I'll need to be careful to not stretch my portfolio from minimalist to bland and boring (the main saving grace for Aralani's portfolio having been the interesting logo and unique usage of fonts and line breaks).

An Introductory Post

 Just getting used once again to the functions of Blogger seeing as I haven't used the program in quite a while.

Here's a picture of a dog in order to test the images function of the Blog.