Clickety Click is a business born out of a love for photography. Taking photographs for money seemed like an obvious way to fund such an expensive hobby and this is exactly why Eleanor Clark, David Robertshaw and James Upson founded their company.
James Upson studied systems and engineering at the University of Sheffield. He does all the website stuff (“Googles it ‘til he makes it work”). David is a student nurse and getting married in January to another member of the Clickety Click team who couldn’t be there. And Eleanor is a medic. We all sat down around one of the round tables in an Enterprise meeting room. It felt like I was interviewing them for a job…
Why choose photography?
Eleanor: Me and Dave have been doing it on our own for about a year. I took a gap year and took lots of photos and wanted to get better. We were taking photos of friends and family all the time and they started moaning about it. We thought if we started our own business, people would want to have their photos taken and not moan about it.
James: Eleanor is my fiancée and she got me into it, basically. I do the website.
Eleanor: It’s a very expensive hobby. We just want to make money to pay for the new shiny things.
How are things going? And where do you see things going?
Eleanor: We have had a few enquiries through the website, but there’s so many photographers in Sheffield it’s getting a name, a word of mouth name. Because everyone can have a go they think they don’t need a professional to do it.
David: I think it will never be our main job because obviously Eleanor’s going to be a doctor, I’m going to be a nurse and James is going to be some kind of high flying IT consultant. But it would be nice to do it part time and draw some income from it.
Eleanor: I think if it was successful, we would keep it going when we started work.
David: Maybe in 20 years I might give up nursing and go back to it.
Eleanor: I want to be a radiologist so it’s still digital pictures at work.
Have you had any unexpected issues come up?
David: Copyright was a big one.
Eleanor: We were surprised at how many people don’t know anything about copyright.
David: There’s a lot of hoops to jump through when you’re setting up a business. If you don’t know what they are it can be very difficult. Like registering with HMRC.
James: My dad’s an accountant so we have had some pointers in that direction. I know where to go and look for things on the HMRC website like registering small earnings when you start trading.
Eleanor: And things like how to answer the phone and what questions to ask and I was thinking “Oh my God, I am writing a page about how to answer the phone.”
David: I feel a lot more business savvy than I did a year ago and a lot more confident to deal with people in a business sense.
Eleanor: I can explain things better. I actually now have a grasp of what’s going on.
Are you ever sat twiddling your thumbs?
David: There’s always something to do
Eleanor: And if there’s no jobs, we tinker with the website. We’re not allowed to touch the code.
James: The website should be changed week in week out. My degree didn’t teach you web design. There was some Java programming that I never really got to grips with when I was at Uni. And I can understand Java code now but I can’t write it from scratch.
What are you working on now? Any big projects?
Eleanor: Rotherham Hospice had an ‘It’s a Knockout’ event. We had a contact and she invited us to go and take photos of people getting wet. We’ve done a couple of photo shoots… a makeup portfolio.
David: We have got a big event coming soon… MDT Mayhem to raise money for Western Park Hospital. It should raise about two grand really… hopefully something like that.
Eleanor: Our display is on our website and have just started using Photobox Gallery. That allows people to buy directly from their site.
James: At the moment we’re not going down the line of digital downloads because of password protection. We don’t have to worry about that because it can all go through Photobox.
David: You can buy anything from a 6×8 print up to a massive canvas.
Eleanor: And by the time we’d have quoted for it and everything it is a lot quicker after postage and packaging and all that… it’s quicker through Photobox.
What about your love lives? Do you find time? I know James proposed to Eleanor. When was that?
James: I proposed in April- 18th April 2008
Eleanor: Very good
James: Please don’t put me on the spot like that again. We’re getting married on the 2nd July 2011 when she finally graduates.
Eleanor: We’ve got yours to go to first (looks at David)
David: That’s Caroline. We are getting married in January. Lots of people have said ‘why don’t you do the photography at Dave’s wedding?’ Eleanor’s a bridesmaid and James is a groomsman so I think it would be unfair to take from those duties.
Eleanor: In fairness, Dave and Caroline are two of our best friends and it would be awful to have to work all the way through their wedding. We don’t really do weddings yet anyway.
David: We are trying to specialise in events and portraits.
Eleanor: We don’t want to say yet that we can do wedding photographs and then not have any experience.
David: We are also looking at getting Royal Photographic Society accreditation. You can use the letters LRPS after your name and stuff. It is just a professional standard.
Eleanor: We are trying to get the really good photos sorted for it so we don’t have to reapply. We have got so many things in the pipeline.
If you want to find out more about Clickety Click, why not visit their website? The address is right here www.clicketyclicksheffield.co.uk