As the years go by, it usually becomes more difficult to get everybody together to have family portraits done. That's why when these two families asked me about doing family portraits, I was more than willing to do it. It was certainly an interesting and challenging shoot for a couple reasons. First, it certainly stretched the limits of space in my small studio space with having thirteen people total between the two families. Second, I took a lot of photos of a ton of different groupings.
Well here we are already one month into 2016. This as expected has been a slow time of the year when it comes to the photography business. I'm not too nervous about this fact and realize that at some point in the future, there will be a part of me that will miss this slow period. Since I've had quite a bit of time on my hands, I've been using my time to gain knowledge on photography and business side of it. Last week, I got to watch numerous webinars from some of the most respected names in the photography during the Turn It Up Conference. The last few days, I spent preparing for a shoot that I had yesterday. So you guys can look forward to me posting shots from that shoot later in the week. Additionally, I had a week in there where I didn't get much work done since my cat played with and chewed up my computer wire one night while I was sleeping.
My final photo session of 2015 happened the day after Christmas. Going into this shoot, I was nervous for a couple of reasons. The first factor was that this was my first time doing a shoot in a client's home. Also, due to the nature of the holidays, I did not have as much time as I had become used to in order to prepare for this shoot. Obviously I overcame my nerves and did this photo shoot. In the end, everything turned out well and I look forward to working with Cynthia and her family again in the future.
Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and are enjoying the new year. I know I'm a little late in posting for this new year. The last couple weeks have been quite hectic as a result of the holidays so can you really blame me?
I'm really looking forward to what this new year has in store for me. One of my goals is to catch up on a few shoots that I've been meaning to do before the summer season begins. My bigger goal is to find a wedding photographer that I can become a second shooter/assistant for the coming wedding season. I see this as the perfect opportunity to gain experience in wedding photography. If anyone knows wedding photographers in the Chicago or Milwaukee areas looking for an second shooter or assistant, please put me in contact with them.
The month of July went nothing like I expected it to go unfortunately. I spent the first week and a half of the month without a cellphone. On one hand I kind of enjoyed being "off the grid" and being free of the distraction of having a cellphone. However, being a little harder to reach than normal is not good for a growing business. As a result of being without my phone, I ended up missing out on a photo session.
Additionally, in my last post I mentioned that I was hoping my workload was going to ease up a little and give me time to work on my photography. To my disappointment, my work schedule did not slow down and instead was still rather busy. My job as a landscaper took up its normal 40 hours a week and work as bellman still took up a few evenings of the week. This week the job as a bellman finally had me scheduled for one day of work. Granted, most of the spare time that I have had has been used to continue with the renovation project at my parents' house. By the end of the week, the renovations should be complete and hopefully I finally will have more time to devote to my photography.
As I said in my previous post, I ended the month with a family photo session. I first got in touch with the Larsens by responding to their posting for a family portrait session on Thumbtack. I later ended up meeting them in person prior to the shoot as they visited my booth at Dandelion Wine Arts Festival. This was an exciting shoot because it was the first time photographing someone that was not friends or family. It was a pleasure to photograph the Larsen family. I want to build on this experience and do some more family portrait sessions.
The month of June was very hectic for me. I attempted to balance 4 different jobs at once over the past month. I found myself working my usual 40 hours a week on landscaping and then found much of my spare time consumed with a mixture of working as a bellman at a hotel and helping my parents as they renovate their home. All this work, made it difficult to find time to focus on my photography as much as I wanted. The good news is that my boss at the hotel is interviewing and hiring people soon. I will soon have more spare time. Praise the lord!
I started the month of June off by preparing and participating in the Dandelion Wine Arts Festival. Partaking in the festival definitely helped to rejuvenate me and definitely encouraged me to continue to pursue my passion in photography. I have very little in the way of complaints of the festival. The weather was lovely and I got to meet so many new people. I even got some clients that I ended up photographing later in the month. I’m going to edit the photos from that session soon and be posting them on here.
For the month of July, I have a goal of getting out and doing some artistic photography. Also, I’m hoping to do some photo sessions that I’ve been meaning to do for the longest time. This month, I’ll continue to work on helping my parents with the work on their house and prepare for hopefully having a gallery space setup for the August ArtWauk.