DIARY 037
What I've been up to the last couple of weeks.
WEEK 1
MONDAY
I’m kicking off this week with a call with a fashion editor/curator/consultant. I signed up to her mailing list a long time ago and some time finally came up with her to have a portfolio review, and general chat about my direction. I spent the end of last year feeling really grateful to be busy, but being totally reactive to what came to me. There was very little intention there, just a drive for cashflow and ‘busy-ness’ (if such a word exist?). Sometimes you just need some external input, a fresh pair of eyes to show you what you have become blind to.
She asked me questions which I sent written answers to ahead of the call; how I described myself/my practice, what’s going well, what are my frustrations etc. and when we sat down she had a really clear and concise way of running through the issues that I had brought up, and talking me through where I can do things differently. Most importantly, where I am not communicating myself clearly in terms of being in tune with what I want my future work to look like. This is something I do with my mentees all the time, but it’s amazing how hard it is to do for yourself. She made me see that there is a gap between my portfolio and the work I’m showing people, and the type of jobs I want and that if I just presented my work slightly differently, and described myself slightly differently, it would make a huge difference to people’s perception of me as an artist.
Come off the call feeling hugely energised and excited to make some changes and spend the rest of the day fine-tuning my bio.
TUESDAY
I kick off the day with a huge studio clear out. I’m not sure if i’m ‘shedding’ as it’s the end of the year of the snake which everyone seems to be talking about, or if I just got really lazy at the end of 2025 but it dawns on me that I haven’t had a really good clear out in about 6 months. There are paper strips everywhere, test prints, printing tests (sound the same but actually different lol), negatives unfiled, scraps of paper i’m ‘saving’ for collages that never seem to be made; it’s so cluttered, no wonder I’m finding it hard to be inspired. Knowing i’m going to spend the day looking at my archive and portfolio with fresh eyes I know I need to come at it with a tidy mind, and none of last year’s crap weighing me down. I file all the last few months negatives, hoovering every corner of the dark room (where spiders et al. love to hang out - gross), throw away loads of old chemistry that’s gone over, I buy a load of new Muji acrylic storage for pens, stationary, and sketch booking materials, add four new sketchbooks to my basket, and buy a new (very cheap) printer and scanner to start digitalising some of the bits and bobs I want to put in a new area of my portfolio. I feel reborn. x
WEDNESDAY
Spent most of the day finalising the edit for my interview with Brydie Mack. I’m so excited to get it out there as I know how excited people are to hear from her. These interviews are so worth it, but are such a lot of work. The editing alone takes me a whole day in the office to make sure it flows well for listeners, but also keeps in the natural tone of the conversation we had - which was extensive. There were lots of tangents that needed to be trimmed to make sure the whole thing wasn’t three hours long, but the most important and exciting content all needed to be there. This is after us talking about doing it for 6 months. Getting two travelling photographers on opposite sides of the planet at their desks at the same time, in a suitable time zone is so difficult and I am so happy it’s finally happened.
THURSDAY
London day. I head into town for a full day of meetings and galleries. First off I meet up with a stylist who I’ve been in touch with for a long while. She’s really successful in her styling, but has been keen to move into photography for a long time so I offer her intel on photography and answer all her questions there, and she kindly let’s me bombard her with questions about approaching stylists, and how to get editorials over the line. She’s worked with some of my favourite ever photographers and, similarly to my mentorship call on Monday, I ask her to point out the gaps between my work and theirs. She points out that this particular person’s work seems more fast-moving / dynamic than mine and it gives me such a great place to start looking at what imagery I post on the front of my carousels, and in my portfolio. It is such a rewarding exchange.
Then I head to the Design Museum to see the Wes Anderson exhibition, where as usual I’m most drawn to Wes’s hand-drawn treatments, the hundreds of identical yellow notebooks, the Polaroids. What is it about seeing the process I love so much? From there I head to The Photographer’s Gallery to see ‘Zofia Rydet: Sociological Record’, an exhibition of a selection of images the Polish photographer took in a bid to shoot the inside of every home in Poland. It’s a fascinating documentation of domesticity in the country. Popped downstairs afterwards to meet another stylist, and we chatted ideas for some upcoming editorials.
A dream day, and now I am absolutely knackered.
FRIDAY
Armed with all this new information from two different people, I start addressing my instagram, archiving a few bits and changing the front image of a few posts. It’s not a huge change but I think shows my work more in the way I want it to be perceived. Next week I need to send out a mailer to my whole mailing list so I need to get all my channels looking in line with one another before I do that.
WEEK 2
MONDAY
I’ve set this week as a personally-imposed deadline to send out a new mailer, which I do every quarter or so. To send out the mailer, my portfolio needs to be ship shape so I spend the rest of the day trawling through my portfolio and moving anything i’m just not sure about into draft mode (I don’t delete straight away in case I have a change of heart - buy usually I don’t). I start pulling out what stories I want to highlight in the mailer; what am I trying to say? What shoots am I trying to attract? I decide these things and then try to find content to match. Then put them in the mailer, and link to the corresponding area of the website.
Phone call with one of my mentees at the end of the day. We do a live editing session on Capture One and tidy up her social feeds.
TUESDAY
My (self-imposed) mailer deadline is looming (I think the first half of the week is always best for outreach so Wednesday is the latest I’ll go) and I’m working on every element of it to make sure it shows the breadth of my work, but in a coherent way. It has a section that shows I can do resort-style imagery, moving image, travel, editorial and then a couple of bits which show slightly more polished commercial work. I also have a few pictures of my scrapbook-y type work but am not sure where to link it to. This is such an important part of my process nowadays but I need to show that in a more obvious way. Suddenly I have a brainwave to just carve out a new space for it on my website somewhere to put all the ‘in-between’ bits of my projects in one space. An assortment of scans, gifs, video clips, iPhone photos, studio insights, travel snaps: everything I love that doesn’t have a home in the other areas of the website, can now live here. I love it and think it says more about me creatively than anything else, anywhere.
WEDNESDAY
Sent mailer out. Job requests start coming in. Honestly it makes such a difference every time. Sometimes' I think putting something out into the world just shifts the energy in your favour. I’ve felt really flat so far this year and now I feel totally different; it’s all shifted in ten days.
THURSDAY
I’ve explained this to you before, but once I send out a mailer, I spend the next day or two watching the analytics. I have a spreadsheet which I’ve been adding to since I first started the newsletter. It outlines who has opened the mailer several times, and who has clicked multiple times on multiple areas. These things show me who is engaging in a meaningful way and who to approach with more direct comms in the future. This is separated into brands, stylists and consultants, editors, agents, and then just ‘other people of interest’ which can be anyone from producers to prop stylists who i’m keen to collaborate with.
It’s super geeky, and a lot of people wouldn’t be bothered to do it, but I love this sort of thing. If you don’t have loads of time to spare for pitching and outreach, it’s great to be armed with data so you can be more targeted with your approach. I can see who is consistently opening and clicking the mailer each time I send it, and where they are spending the most time. Those people I’ll create a specific pitch for, or reach out to for a call or a coffee in case there are place we cross over this year. It seems time-consuming analysing in this way, but not as time-consuming as sending 100 decks to 100 brands who you aren’t totally sure will answer, or even open them up as they don’t recognise your name.
FRIDAY
Spend a couple of hours answering emails, and then head off to play padel.
A x
P.S. Do you have any assisting opportunities you need to get great photographers for? Or are there jobs you can’t do that you want to pass onto someone else? To list them on our Job Board and tap into this amazing community of creatives, just send the details to studio@aliciawaite.com.
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Absolutely enjoyed reading this newsletter. Good to know that having a couple of pairs of eyes looking over your work has been rewarding. I think I need to invest in that part too.