How's business in 2026?

Personally, I'm coming off the two lowest months in the history of my business and I'm scared. I've been doing commercial photo/video work for 10 years, averaging well into 5 figures per month for the past 5 years, up until April. That's when things fell off a cliff out of nowhere and I just cannot figure out why.

For some context, my primary niches are product photography, advertising/campaign work and some weddings. Currently trying to subsidize with real estate work but haven't had much success as of yet.

Across all niches, leads, conversions and sales are way down. I'm literally scraping by with 25% of my average sales over the past few months... and this comes after a record breaking Q1 with outstanding sales numbers. I have absolutely no clue what happened in April. Successful operation for 10 years, then an inexplicable nose dive out of nowhere.

I've also noticed client friction is way up, as is ghosting and insane lowballing. Clients looking for 80+ hour projects for $1200... that sort of insanity. Everything feels hyper transactional an toxic. The atmosphere has changed for me, it's completely unrecognizable to what it was just a year or so ago.

AI, lowball competition, outsourced contractors, inflation etc are all pre-existing factors so it's hard for me to believe any of these caused an immediate and ongoing disruption of this magnitude. If it were any combination of these, I would have expected a slower decline.

Anyone else feeling it right now or is it jus me?