Hi!
I thought I'd pop in today and fill you in on what's been happening lately.
First thing first! We got our Christmas tree and it is a REAL one and it smells divine! Do you get a real one or have a fake one? I also found a real wreath at our local grocery store for a whopping $9.99 and my front door needed it!
If you follow me onInstagram you will notice that I have been doing some hand lettering. Well, not too long after I posted a picture of my work, the nail salon I went to asked me to create some gift cards and menus for their salon. We decided we would swap services. I'll do their menus and gift cards and they will do my nails. It's been a learning process for me and I also think it is fun to trade services.
Photography!
Do you want to know a secret? I love photography but the thought of doing portrait photography kind of freaked me out and wasn't appealing at all. Being around people I didn't know well and posing them without knowing for sure if the photos would come out was scary to me. Well, one of my best friends asked me to take 6 month pictures of her son and I agreed to do it. And you know what? It was so much fun! I later did his 1 year pictures too. Then, someone at church heard I take photos and asked me to do their family photos. There were 16 of them and they picked 2pm, which if you know anything about sunlight, you know that is a hard hard hard time to shoot photos. I did my best and they turned out fine for 2pm sun. One of my friends referred a family to me and I did their family photos last week. They were such a neat family and I'm so glad they hired me to do their pictures.
I'm going to pray about pursuing photography as a side business. I think it would be good to create my own schedule so I can work it around Dave's. I also have decided that I want to be affordable and give people full rights to their photos. If anyone else out there has a photography business, if you have any tips and tricks you want to share I'd greatly appreciate. Also, if you have a webpage comment with it and I'd love to see it.
Here's another random photography fact for you: I know the market is smaller but I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to be a floral photographer. Like how awesome would it be to do photos for flower companies in town so they could have good pictures for their social media sights and web pages??
Anyways, here are a few pictures from my two photo shoots. Any feedback of what is good and what I could change would be much appreciated. I feel like I'm learning a lot still and it's been a big change from capturing landscape and traveling to portraits.
Tonight Dave and I went to a burger pug and they had football playing. This is how the conversation between Dave and I went:
Me: "Dave, what is that team? I have never heard of MNF? Who are they?"
Dave: "Who?"
Me: "MNF!"
Dave: "Who? Where?"
Me: "Right there on the screen. Don't you see it?"
Dave: "You mean, Monday Night Football."
Me: "ha ha ha ha ha! I clearly don't know anything about football."
How many days until the Super Bowl is over? I am so for reals having an Anne of Green Gables party this year on the Super Bowl. Bring it on.
I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about The Bible and beliefs. Mainly, I just feel sad that so so so many people I know live their beliefs on culture and respecting others rather than in obedience to God and respecting His Word. It doesn't shock me that the world does this but what shocks me are the Christians who do. It's no wonder people aren't getting saved more. Maybe someday I'll share more about it on my blog. I'm honestly not even sure how to process all of it right now but I know I need to keep praying and staying in The Bible. I'm just glad God doesn't change.
Okay, friends. That's a mini recap of what's been going on lately. How have you been? What has been your favorite part of December?
Hooray for considering photography as a possible business! I got started because I took my camera with me everywhere and documented life around me and then shared it on Facebook. People would see the photos I took of birthday parties or the kids I nannied or my sister's family and comment about how much they liked the photos. And then people started asking if I would take photos of them and their children. Figuring out what to charge was really hard so I started with a really low number because I wasn't a professional and wasn't planning to start a business. Well, as I shared those photos to Facebook I got more people asking me about taking photos and what I charged. So I realized that this could be an actual business if I wanted it to be. So I went for it. I made a Facebook photography page (separate from my personal Facebook account) and shared photos there. I tagged the people in the photos and soon I had their friends and family members asking me to do photos as well. Side note: this is the only advertising I've ever done and it has been awesome. Tagging people in their photos for their friends & family to see is awesome because then they see your beautiful work and want photos taken too! And Facebook gives you an option to invite every person who liked the photo you posted to like your page as well.
ReplyDeleteOnce I started the FB page, business exploded and I realized that I was making pretty low $$ for a lot of work. I loved what I was doing, but if I wanted to keep doing it and really let it be a business then I needed to charge more. So I did research in my area to find out what people tend to charge and I decided to go with about the median. I don't want to charge less and undercut everyone else's business here in Memphis, but I do still want to be an affordable choice. And like you, I offer a print release to all of my clients. I actually just wrote someone a super long email the other day about all of this. I'm happy to send it on to you if you are interested in more details. :)
I've never had a real wreath, but I bet it smells AMAZING every time you walk inside!
ReplyDeleteI love that you want to be an affordable photographer. I wish you were here! We haven't had pictures done since our wedding photos because we haven't been able to afford it. Even my friends at church who have side-hobby photography businesses charge A TON. It was so discouraging.
ReplyDeleteI wish you would write about culture and beliefs! I'm having the same frustration with fellow Christians.
So cool about trading lettering services with the nail salon! Then everybody's happy! :)
ReplyDelete