Category: Personal

Quitting the day job, people to whom I am exceedingly grateful and, as if you wanted to hear it, how busy I’ve been the last few weeks

I quit my job last week.  It wasn’t an I’ve-had-it-up-to-here spur-of-the-moment regret-it-immediately decision.  I’d been planning to make the move for a while, ever since my goal for the year got blown away and then doubled… and then my bookings moved from “manageable with a bit less sleep” to “no life whatsoever besides shooting, editing, client management and… the day job.”  Something clearly had to give.  And it did. I started writing this post the day I said the words, but of course I was too busy to actually finish it and now I’m a week out and have had some time to actually enjoy my freer schedule.  It has been, in a word, relaxing.  I actually watched a movie this week.  I cooked dinner for my husband.  I cleaned.  I’ve started to tackle all of the projects that just couldn’t make it onto the must-do list (cleaning my “area” of the house, laundry, website/branding stuff, reaching out to old and new friends to catch up, reading a damn magazine).  I’m still busy, but I’m starting to breathe. Things got crazy for me quickly in April.  I more or less had everything under control up to then, even though I was swimming in engagement sessions.  But somewhere early April things started to tip for me, what with a trip to New York to do two engagements, followed the next weekend by a wedding and two engagements, and the following weekend by a boudoir session and two weddings.  The next weekend, I went to New Orleans.  The following, one wedding, one engagement, one headshot and another boudoir session.  And then… I quit.  And this past weekend, I had absolutely no photo work to do whatsoever (besides editing, of course).  Actually, typing this out, I can’t hardly believe I got all of this done and delivered and the way I want it.  And in-between, I was trying desperately to get together my Artomatic space!  And all through the weekdays, looking through my calendar from the past month, I have orange (my color for photography business events) all over the damn weekdays – client meetings, networking events, meetings with other photographers.  In short, I’ve been really busy.  Busier than even I realized up until right now. And looking at this list of things I’ve done the past month, I’m really proud of myself.  Proud that I held it together.  Proud that my clients (hopefully) didn’t realize I was on the edge, just a bit.  Proud that, as of today, everything is delivered.  I have outstanding items with some clients, of course, but they’re not waiting on me.  It’s a beautiful feeling to be able to work on the less urgent matters.  Naturally, I have two weddings this weekend so that all goes out the window tomorrow, but today is nice.  I might even watch another movie. So I quit the job.  Would have been wise of me to quit before everything got crazy, but I set the date months ago knowing this past week was an important one for my organization.  I’ll still be working here part-time for a while (at their request) but spending a lot more time at my other computer.  I don’t have any great revelations about self-employment yet… we’ll see what happens when I really do have to rely on this income. But in the meantime, I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has helped me get to this point.  Just a few years ago, I was a total newbie shooting my friends for a “fake wedding” so I would have portfolio images.  Just a few years ago, I was blogging about what I ate for dinner, just so I would have material and hopefully improve my SEO ranking (for the record, I don’t think I have a single booking from keyword searches, just to be clear).  Not so long ago, I signed a contract with a lady to give her a twenty-two percent commission rate for weddings she sent me (we’ve since dissolved our relationship and I never did actually shoot a wedding on that contract).  In short, not all that long ago, this day seemed like a far away place.  I’m so grateful for the guidance, help, knowledge and money from these amazing folks:
  • My clients.  Obviously.  Especially those first few who took the leap with me.  I recently told my first paying bride that she was – and she either gracefully lied and said she didn’t know or I was playing it that cool.  I never forget what a huge decision a wedding photographer is and I’m really grateful for each and every couple that chooses me to be there on their day.  Every wedding I photograph is an honor, a privilege, and a huge responsibility.
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by Amber Categories: MusingsTags: ,

New Orleans, three fantastic friends (and then some) and a hefty dose of nostalgia

I spent five years in New Orleans.  Four and a half amazing years and one positively terrible final six months.  College is pretty much awesome wherever you go, I've gathered, but I spent those years in one of the most delightful, challenging and historical places around.  New Orleans will always hold a very, very dear place in my heart.  Just like these folks. Those ladies put up with all my ridiculous college antics senior year.  We shared an apartment in the on-campus housing.  We had dance parties.  It was awesome.  Jenny's the only one of us to multiply, with the dude in the hat. And because we a) are all dorks and b) didn't have a lot of money in college, we decided to do a swamp tour since none of us had ever been.  It was actually really cool. This is a picture of an alligator.  Oh, you see it now, right?  You can say I'm a crap travel photographer but it's just because I didn't want to haul a bunch of lenses with me.  50 did just fine, thankyouverymuch. This is a shrimping boat that blew up the river during Katrina.  Crazy. The swamp was a very beautiful place.  Swamps get a bad rep. Poor little R fell asleep before the baby alligator came out.  Here's where I might launch into a rant about how I am terrible at doing snapshots because I'm used to doing "photography." Further proof of dorkiness. Yesterday morning, the last day in NOLA.  Erin and Lara took early flights and mine wasn't until 2:45, so I rolled on down to the Quarter to wander around and have a last food experience.  Here's a couple snaps. Neon is back in style, go figure. Also, dear friends, every time I see someone I used to know well but haven't seen in a long time, they always tell me they read my blog.  This should equate with me doing a lot more personal stuff in-between all my client work so these friends get some actual reward for checking in on me.  I'm going to try to do that more often and maybe I'll get better at doing snapshots!
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by Amber Categories: TravelTags: ,

Pricing and respect

[Note: I'm not trying to insult the majority of photographers out there with a different pricing structure than mine.  We all figure out the best way to serve our clients.  This is a personal opinion and you can take it or leave it.] I was reading a book by Seth Godin (something I do frequently and highly encourage others to do as well) and came across this passage about not disrespecting your clients with your marketing.  It really struck a cord with me, as I thought this is why I set up my pricing like I do.  Seth was talking much more generally about marketing, and probably about big companies, but his article was nonetheless insightful to a small business owner:
I believe that it's all about to come crashing down on slash-and-burn marketers. Consumers (especially the business-to-business buyers) are getting ever smarter, cagier, and more sophisticated. They won't sit quietly as marketers steal their time and attention and money. Ask yourself a simple question: If all of our customers were well-informed, would we do better -- or worse? For many companies, the answer is grim. McDonald's was stung when it was caught slipping beef flavoring into its supposedly all-vegetable french fries. And Kmart went bankrupt for committing contempt of consumer -- telling its shoppers, "Hey, it's cheap. What do you expect?"
As I was reading this, I realized that not only is my pricing "structure" easy on my clients, but it also trusts them to be able to make their own judgements and makes the process of buying (yes, buying, not "investing in") my services as transparent as possible. I have a price.  One price for coverage.  For all-day coverage, with two photographers, because I honestly believe there should be two photographers at most weddings - both to capture everything and also as an important backup in case I trip and break my leg or crash my car at the wedding.  This includes full-resolution digital files.  All day because I don't want you to have to pick and choose what to have captured from your wedding.  At the same time, if I'm going to ditch my husband on a Saturday, it doesn't make much difference if I'm gone for 6 or 8 or 10 hours.  Sure, I'll be more or less tired, but it really works out to about the same. That is, I don't have packages.  When I was first getting all my pricing together, I started to put together packages.  6 hours and digital files here, 8 hours and a small album here, 10 hours and a big album with parents' albums here!  None of this makes any sense to me.  What if you have a 6-hour wedding and want an album?  What if you don't care about an album but want 10 hours of coverage.  I honestly don't know where the wedding photography industry gets all this stuff from.  Everyone else has packages, so you figure you should also.  Everyone else calls it an "investment" so you should too.  Everyone else likes to put their lowest package on the site and say that's where things "start", so write me to find out what you'll actually pay. So I threw all of that out.  And here now reading this article, I realize this is about respect. My clients are grown adults.  They can make their own decisions about what products they want from their wedding day.  I respect that they know what their budget is and will choose whatever tangible items they want from my extremely short list of things to buy.  Offering one price, with whatever add-ons they like, makes me feel like I am not talking down to my clients, like I am not trying to talk them into anything they don't want. In the meantime, I haven't created any "anchoring effects."  That is, if I give you a package at $2,000 and one at $3,000 and one at $4,500, most people will be drawn to the $3,000 package as a comparative "savings" from the big package.  This is silly and (take it easy, photogs) seems sort of deceptive or underhanded.  I in no way want to trick my clients into buying something they don't want.  My clients really seem to appreciate this approach and I'm always pleased when someone tells me it was easy to understand my pricing, referencing other photographers they researched with confusing package "options."  It makes me feel good to make it easy on them.  Maybe I'm leaving money on the table but that wouldn't bother me as much as feeling I was tripping up my clients. And I'll wrap up by saying that it isn't necessarily disrespectful to present packages.  I'm sure many photographers would say they are helping their clients choose items they want, or are offering discounts with the bundled products.  Others have time limits on their day or charge hourly rates - great!  We all have to figure out what works for us and our clientele.  I know one photographer who never works more than 8 hours at a wedding.  He is respecting his family.  Others don't offer coverage without an album purchase, because they truly believe an album is necessary to enjoy the photographs from the wedding day.  But for me and mine, 100% in-the-open, no-comparisons-to-make pricing is how I show my clients I respect their values, priorities and budgets.
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by Amber Categories: MusingsTags: