Latest News and Updates – Cleaning house on all fronts

It’s been awhile since I’ve put up an update post. It feels like I’ve been buried under work, but in all honesty, I’ve been cleaning house on all fronts professionally – from wrapping up outstanding work and commitments to optimizing my websites, trying to streamline my current workflow, and editing photos like crazy.

Writing

I actually haven’t been aggressively pitching much this year. Many of the recent assignments I’ve completed so far have come from editors directly reaching out to me, which I absolutely love and appreciate. Looking at my pitching stats so far, I’ve only sent out 23 pitches (9 assigned, 6 interested, 3 rejections, and 5 sitting in “No word” limbo) this year.

And there are many reasons why I haven’t been pitching – one of which you’ll find out in due time.

But mostly, I’ve been trying to wrap up a lot of previous outstanding assignments and I’ve been working with a lot of higher paying commercial clients like Absolut Vodka, Electrolux, Visit Stockholm, the Swedish Institute, to name a few.

For a fulltime freelancer, it’s a scary place to be in because I haven’t been pitching hard. I need to invest some time upfront on some important work tasks (more below). But this has meant, for example, working on a commercial writing assignment that covers the cost of 4-5 articles, which frees up time to clean house, metaphorically speaking. In a sense, working smarter not harder. But still, I’d like to hop back into my regular publications.

That said, I should be back on the active pitching train by September/October.

In the meantime, I’ve updated my publication list with the latest articles and photo essays here.

Photography

So this is where the bulk of my time has been going. Instead of pitching articles, I’ve been focusing heavily on editing and uploading photos into both my personal image bank and National Geographic’s collection. These are extremely time-consuming tasks and require upfront time investments. The editing and selection process takes awhile.

So far with the Nat Geo collection, I only have about 300 or so photos uploaded in there and I’ve already sold close to twenty.  So I’m trying to get thousands of photos in there as soon as I can because it will exponentially increase sales. I just added another roughly 250 photos this week. It’s a long editorial review process but so worth it in the long run.

You can check out my latest Nat Geo Creative photos here.

As for my personal image bank, the goal is to upload galleries from 50+ countries I’ve been to so that is also a time-consuming task. Once I have most of the photos uploaded, I’ll turn on the shopping cart feature so individuals as well as publications can purchase photos for personal and editorial use.

In the meantime, you can check out my latest gallery from Turkey.

Four Seasons

I love working with Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts and I’ve been publishing some photo essays since my return from Mauritius and Seychelles on their Taste blog dedicated to food and drink from the properties. In addition, I was also assigned to write some articles for the Four Seasons Magazine site as well.

Here are my two latest pieces:

– One Fish, Four Flavours at Four Seasons Mauritius

– Creole Cooking with Chef Sherla at Four Seasons Seychelles

Hopefully this is a partnership that continues well into next year because I would love to return to Asia, Africa, and South America to explore more of their properties in those regions.

All article and photo essay updates are on my portfolio site.

Travel

In the last two months alone, I’ve had to say “no” to trips to Zanzibar, Ghana, Greece, Sri Lanka, a rail trip around Europe, and more as I wind down projects and travel for the rest of the year. I ain’ mad. It’s all a balancing act working full time as a travel writer and photographer while being the best wife and mom I can be to my family.

Right now, I’m just soaking up the rest of this wondrous Swedish summer, wrapping up outstanding work and clearing my plate so I can take on more meaningful work as well within the next two months. Overall, I’m so grateful for the flexibility this freelancing lifestyle affords. More time with family and time to pick and choose where to exert energy so I type all this with a heart brimming with gratitude and contentment.

How’s your summer going so far?