To make the cut.

I got high standards y'all. If you've been reading for a while, you know I can be pretty hard on myself and I hold high expectations for our business. While I don't really feel like this is something I can change, I've never really noticed the benefit of it. I think lots of photographers out there put a little less effort into things and still acquire business. Sometimes it makes me shake my head. 'Can't people see how their photo's are inconsistent/crooked/overexposed/have a mechanical distortion?' I wonder sometimes.

But today I'm beginning to realize that this desire for perfection (okay... let's call it "excellence") is one of the characteristics that sets us apart as professionals.

*Now... when I say perfection, I don't mean that our work is perfect, I mean that everything that is within my control is held to a certain standard. I will not simply graze over photo's to make them "decent", I make sure that they are straight, properly exposed, consistent with the other photo's, color balanced, etc, etc. This standard also overflows into our business relationships where I make sure that my e-mails are spell checked, I'm not talking about myself more than asking a client about themselves, things like that.

This realization came to me today, after posting an ad on craigslist last night in search of a second shooter. I specifically stated that the photographer we were looking for would have a similar style/philosophy of photography as us, and would be experienced in shooting weddings. Now, I'll be the first person to caution that searching for a photographer on craigslist is not the best way, and I am searching other avenues, but I was just curious what kind of response I would get.

It has been an eye opening experience indeed. Several photographers replied to me with links to their portfolio's and websites, which led me to my epiphany. For once, the shoe was on the other foot. I was the one to do the hiring. Instead of appealing to clients to hire me, I was the one to make the cut. So what did I do? I held these photographers to the same standards I hold myself to, after all, they would be representing me. I looked at the quality and quantity of their work, the consistency in style, the obvious markers that give away an experience level (a few things I listed in the first paragraph).

What I discovered was mostly lacking, which is why I'm assuming these photographers have a difficult time getting hired and have resorted to working off craigslist. I thought I would share with you the things that "broke the deal" for me, and could potentially do the same for couple's searching for a wedding photographer.

1. The quality over quantity debacle. 
As far as actually shooting a wedding goes, yes, quality over quantity. Your couple does not need 3,000 average photo's, rather 500 great one's that really tell a story. In your portfolio however, you need to have a large quantity of work to show potential clients. A lot of the photographers who e-mailed me only had one or two weddings to show their work, which is not enough for me to get a average reading, and it also tells me that they have not shot very many weddings. I know that getting work when you're first starting out is difficult, which is why breaking out of this cycle is so hard. But learning how to shoot for free/cheap  and contacting professionals you know to second shoot with them is a quick way to build your portfolio. As your work and experience grows, your portfolio will evolve.

2. Your personal presentation.
How you come across online is very important, and most couples make decisions about a person on a subconscious level. It's about how connected they feel to you. It takes time to learn how to really write about yourself (like in your bio), but taking it beyond "My passion is to document life in all it's beauty", is really important. I didn't read the rest of these bio's (and I'm sure potential clients wouldn't either), because I've heard it a thousand times. What really makes you, YOU?

3. Your application.
Consider your first correspondence with a potential client your job application. While it's important to sound professional, you also have to make it personal. Shooting weddings is not a desk job, you are going to spend your whole day working side by side with people, so how do I know if I want to work with you? I was also quite surprised that no one mentioned our style or our website in their e-mail. I clearly stated in the ad that we needed someone with a similar style, but not one person mentioned what our style was or what their philosophy of shooting was. It felt very impersonal. Always try to focus on the client, ask them questions, tell tidbits about yourself, get to know them.

I hope these tips can help some of you move to a more professional appearance and in turn book more clients that fit with your brand.

15 weeks

There are a lot of ins and outs to pregnancy. For the last ten weeks or so, even though some times have been really hard, everything has felt okay because it was happening when it should have been. I felt awful the first few weeks, and as crummy as it was, it was normal. But now here I am tapping my foot at the second trimester and waiting for the new normal to begin. I expected that by now I would be softening up and rounding out, with a healthy glow and a hearty appetite. But I have none of those things. I throw up a few times a week and I haven't gained a single ounce since I got pregnant. Most of the time I still have the first trimester "blah's" where I do really care too much about anything except trying to not feel sick. Migraines, stomach aches, nausea, heart burn... How does anyone gain weight during pregnancy?

But I do have the mood swings... don't worry :) (or do).

I am glad we are going to the doctor in a few days because I need her to put me at ease. Is my baby actually growing even though it (and I) still feels tiny? Could anxiety be playing a role in all of this?

Life is all about realizing that your expectations are off base. And well, pregnancy isn't any different.

Grasp.

This blog is about my least favorite topic. Something I have never considered verbalizing to anyone but Charlie, but today I realized writing about this is just as important as writing about the feel-good helpful stuff (I guess that is how I categorize my average posts?). If it's not important to any of you then I hope it at least helps me somehow to get it out into the world.

Failing at what you love sucks. When you invest time, and not just your daily time but like years of your life, and mental and emotional energy, and passion and love and excitement, and hard work and perseverance into this one thing that you just want so badly to succeed, and it doesn't, it feels like a slow and painful depression.

All I want to do for a living is take pictures. I figured this out five years ago. FIVE YEARS AGO. And since then I have been pouring over information that could teach me how to do that, I have been practicing and yearning and even giving myself away when I deemed it necessary. And I feel like I have learned so much and I feel like my work has gotten so much better. So why is failure my reward?

I feel like there is something I am missing, or probably a few things, that are holding back this growth and success. I think deep down I want to just think everything I have done is enough already and to do more is just not fair. Why can't we have even a little taste of success before we have to change our strategies? Why does it seem so easy for everyone else? Not that being a photographer is easy, but that gathering business seems easy.

This failure pains me day after day. At times I just want to throw in the towel, but the worst part is, I can't. Because photography is all I want, I must see this through until I succeed or until a greater passion takes over.

It's time to celebrate.

The first trimester of pregnancy is a dark time... well for me it was anyways. People kept telling me it would get better in the second, but it's hard to believe. But over the last few weeks I have been feeling better and better, and finally I am in my second trimester. If I could play you all the cheesy songs in the world I would . ("I can see clearly now the rain is gone..."). But it is unbelievable how good it feels to have energy again and to have some desire back to do things I love. (You know like showering, wearing makeup, moving in general, drinking decaf coffee). I still haven't made it in for a workout yet. But every time I clean I feel like I'm dead lifting 50 lbs anyways.

The last few weeks have also been a mental and emotional transformation as well. I have been reading "Fearlessly Feminine" by Jani Ortlund and it has really been changing my outlook. I would recommend it to any woman who is struggling with her roles as a wife, mother, or homemaker. God has been preparing my heart for becoming all of those things, to the point where I have become excited and giddy for it all, where as before I was quite fearful. I have always wanted to be accomplishing something or "making" something of myself. So while staying home with children was what I wanted, I was terrified of being miserable. But God can truly raise the dead, and he has changed my heart.

2013

Because our year will be drastically shaken up at the end of July, I have decided to make quarterly New Years Goals. (Yep, nerd.)

January-March:
-Rejoin Bible Study Fellowship
-Successfully complete marriage counseling at Reality
-Dedicate my efforts into the five family portrait sessions we are giving away to hopefully open up a new branch in our business

April-June:
-Wrap up remaining portrait sessions by the end of June
-Complete Personal Training testing and certification
-Host another workshop

July-September:
-Eat, sleep, remember to take care of Charlie too

September-December:
-Start losing that baby weight!
-Start to plan out re-branding/new website
-Host at least one workshop

You will, trust me.

If I could offer a mantra to new business owners, this would be it.

If you are as hard on yourself as I am, then you are constantly criticizing your work and desperately wanting to improve every step of the way. Every winter I go through a major depression in terms of our business and my work. During the summer and fall I am too busy working to slow down, but when I finally just sit and look at my work for the past year, I want to do better. I hate to say it, but I can get really down on myself. I am glad that I have Charlie who always reminds me that I am good at what I do, and that I will get even better.

When the New Year hits though, it's an exciting time, it's goal setting time. And there's nothing I love more than making me some plans. As important as it is to look at where we want to be and write out the steps to get there, I think it's equally important to reflect on the previous year and admire where we came from. Today I'll do a little of both.

If I had to choose one thing to be the most proud of this year, it's how far we've come in organization. If you are unorganized, you cannot offer great customer service, when you don't have great customer service, it strains your relationships with your clients, when that happens, your word of mouth referrals aren't going to flourish. That was where we were at the end of last year, but I made it my goal in 2012 to be more organized and prepared, and in turn we've had fewer mishaps and have wonderful repertoire with our clients. There is nothing better than hearing your couples, and their friends, and their families, tell you how happy they are and how they are going to tell everyone about you. What more could you ask for?

Because we have better systems in place now, we are ready to take on more clients, which is where our 2013 goals come in. It may seem obvious that your goal for the new year would be to simply get more business, but if you really aren't prepared for more business, then you should focus your efforts on filling in your cracks first.

My main goal for this year is to find ways to:
1. Be more accessible to our clients
2. Engage our clients more

Overall, I just want to be more involved with people, and get people more involved with our business. I want to move beyond offering "sales" and "deals", and find out what really thrills people. All this is because our work is the most meaningful when more people are engaged. We don't want to be shoot and burn photographers, we want to be your photographers. The one's you can count on.

Baby to be

If you are friends with me on Facebook, then you heard our big news on Christmas... I am pregnant and we are expecting our first baby on July 24!

I promise this wont turn into a pregnancy or mommy blog (I love those, but there are enough already :), but I will post updates every once in a while and I'm sure a bombardment of photo's after baby is born. I also tend to be the most pensive when I am struggling or can't stop mulling over things and that's typically when I like to lay my thoughts out in a post. I'm excited to write today because my pregnancy has been (mostly) a secret until this week, and I haven't gotten to share it with anyone so, time to catch up! 

We found out I was pregnant the day after Thanksgiving. I was previously diagnosed with PCOS and told I wouldn't be able to get pregnant without the help of a perscription drug, so pregnancy was far from a concern of mine. Even after my wonderful monthly gift was a bit late I wasn't too worried, it was far more likely that it was being weird (as usual). But I was having something weird, very mild cramps on and off throughout the week. Finally by Friday I googled it and saw that can be a symptom of pregnancy (mild cramping as the fetus is implanted), and then I thought 'Wow, I really could be pregnant." We bought a test and within seconds the line over the pregnancy window was visible. My heart started racing, I was in disbelief. I called Charlie in, we were both shaking and having a major adrenaline rush. 

That weekend was by far the worst days of my pregnancy so far. I was nauseous every second of the day, I could hardly eat saltines. I was exhausted and could smell everything from a mile away. Not to mention that I was going through a grieving processing over all of my materialistic and self absorbed idols. ('I'm going to get fat, my body will never be the same, it will take me forever to finish school, I have no energy to workout or study.'). The following Tuesday I weighed myself and I had lost four pounds from being so nauseous. After another week it started to get better, and as of now I've gained those pounds back and then some :) 

Throughout the last month, Charlie has truly been a blessing from above. He makes me food without even having to ask, he always makes sure I have my water and whatever I happen to be craving at that moment (oranges!), he wouldn't leave my side for five hours at the hospital while I got rehydrated and checked out. He has been so sensitive to my moodiness and has never given me a hard time for being  tired/emotional/crabby. I praise God for this man!

At our first appointment we got to see the baby on an ultrasound (not normal, but I was having some side pain so they just wanted to be cautious). It was such a sigh of relief finally getting to see that yes, there was a baby in there and everything was normal. We even got to see it's heartbeat flickering on the screen. I have never seen Charlie so happy in my life. 

Right now I am ten and a half weeks along, and greatly looking forward to my second trimester. I haven't had very much energy over the last month, but I'm hoping that second trimester energy isn't a myth!