Nocturnal Sunshine

As some of you may know, I sprained my ankle on Mother’s day. I was playing with Miles outside of the restaurant that we took my wife to and landed wrong after jumping up in the air trying to show him how to broad jump.

I’m roughly 90% right now. It still tweaks a little but I can walk on it. I’ve not tried to exercise on in for fear of re-injuring it and I’m especially fearful since I have 6 weddings this month.

How ignorant is it that when you sign up to get an electronic bill that they send you an e-mail notifying that you have a bill without giving you an amount that’s owed?

My AT&T wireless bill achieves this massive FAIL.

So instead of just having the amount to look at and if nothing seems out of order, I can pay it, I now have to log onto the site and then look up the bill amount. How much time do their customers lose and how much money does AT&T lose in cost associated with people having to access it’s site when another line included in the e-mail displaying the bill amount could adress both issues.

So I’ve decided to take a hiatus from my personal work for a bit.

There are several reasons for this
- I need to take some time to recharge creatively
- I’ve got more retail work scheduled in the next couple of months so I need to focus on that
- I’m making some big changes and I don’t want to be bogged down with commitments that could possibly contradict these changes.

I’ll probably shoot some work but only if it fits some very narrow criteria and it will be for specific work.

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of shooting some portriats for Rodney.

Rodney is an Actor as well as a Photographer. I’m always flaterred when a fellow shooter asks me to do shoot some images of them.

If you use “to do” lists and would like a use a good one check out Gootodo.

Most “to do” lists are static and you see the same daunting list every day. When it gets long it gets intimidating and demotivating.  Gootodo allows you to move tasks forward to another date which is the advantage that it has over another “to do” list program like Ta Da.  So it gives you the power to prioritize which tasks you want to focus on and can get done.

I also like the fact that it’s web-based so it fits nicely with my cloud based computing strategy. I love that I can access it from my iPhone or any computer with internet access

Check it out: https://www.gootodo.com/

Is it me or does Teabaggers seem to be an unfortunate name choice for the Conservative protesters?

Gotta keep up with the current slang..lol .

One of my goals this year is to try to put into place the Four Hour Work Week princple of automation. Once place that I’ve really been looking at is a back end management system.  My previous  system of multiple Excel spreadsheet is just not cutting it. I need one centralized system that can allow me to track leads, track customer service from booking to delivery, manage my workflow, allow me to keep up with my invoicing and give me a snap shot of my finanical situation.

I think I’ve found my solution for my management system.

I’m still setting it up but I’m already seeing a difference in how my time is being spent and now knowing for sure if I have time to take on work that I thought I had simply because I didn’t see it before.

I’ve also set up a new album proofing system that allow my clients to look at their design and make comments and approve the design all online. Less meetings and faster turn around to the album makers so that they can start enjoying their images sooner.

Hooray for automation!

“Alpha 1961 dash  Omega 2004…dash…

We now come together when,, neither of these dates matter.

It’s the dash between the two

Ah….not because she was born , not because she died, it was because of the DASH!

She lived! I mean she LIVED! I mean her dash is vibrant! It’s not broken, it’s full.”

Robert Glasper -  “Tribute”

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How’s your “dash” going?

So after almost two years of having Photoshop Lightroom, I’ve decided to incorporate it into my photographic workflow.

This adoption is causing me to examine every step of my processes and practices to keep things consistent.  So I’m looking at every step to see where I can reduce production time and improve image quality.

One place that I’ve discovered where I can gain time is to try to cut down on the number of steps in my process and the number of programs that bring the images in.  Lightroom 2.0 now has the features that I need to make replace my iView+Capture One based workflow as I can do image management and process to proof all in one program.  Also now that it’s been out for almost two years there are resources and processes that have been tested that I can review and test so see what practices are worth adopting and incorporating into my workflow.

Well my fall wedding season is almost done.  I have 3 more weddings left for the year (Dec 13th, 15th and 20th). I’m turning my focus on finishing up with my spring and summer weddings (guys, thanks for being so patient).  I’m grateful for all of the clients that have hired me this year.

It’s almost the end of the year and I start to become more introspective as I look forward to planning for next year.  Many successes and failures this year so I’ll share some lessons learned.

I think the biggest lesson that I learned this year was that I failed to account for the scalability of my business as I moved from low volume work to a higher volume.  Frankly I was shocked by my rapid booking for the latter half of the year.   I basically have been shooting every weekend since August (quite a few double wedding weekends) doing almost triple the amount of weddings I did in 2007.  My goal was to shoot 25 wedding this year and I ended up shooting 34. Because my business model was based on me doing everything and not really letting me leverage my time most efficiently or effectively.  I worked my ass off doing back end things for my customers that I need to hand off to other people/vendors to do.  I want to free myself up to focus more on the front end and have more interaction with my client and focus more on making great images instead processing them.

I want to have more balance in my life.  I love photography but it’s has become way to dominate in my life and I do have passion for other things. I saw one movie at the theater this year (I saw “Sex in the City” with my wife while we were visiting my parents in Nashville for the 4th of July) and mostly have listened to audio books instead of reading them (I have 7 books that I want to get to).  I’ve stopped exercising mainly due to trying to recover from the weddings (yes, it’s really physically exhausting work).  A tip that I’m going to take from a successful wedding shooter is to set more specific hours of work and zealously stick to them. What’s the point in working so hard if I don’t have the time to enjoy the fruit of that that work?