Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Dividing Time

The last week or so has been crazy... I used to spend the vast majority of my day taking care of the kids, and now I spend most of my time editing photos! I love doing it, but I feel like I can't get them finished quickly enough. I used to have all my client proofs done within a few days, and then sitting around waiting for another session to come along. I am now experiencing the opposite extreme, and it is taking me closer to 2 weeks to edit all of these sessions. I'm pretty sure people don't mind, but I don't like the slower turnaround. In the future, scheduling will have to be a little more spread out, because I feel guilty if I sit out on the deck with a glass of wine - which is silly, I should be able to do that! I also have to learn not to overshoot, as I did for a recent family session! I won't say how many photos I took in total, but it was far too many. I learned a lot from that session in particular.

I get frustrated sometimes because there are always things that I learned from a session, and wish I could go back and have applied that lesson. Impossible to do, because I am already back home with my files ready to edit... but that's how it goes. Each time out is a learning experience for me, and that is how I will get better. If you have hired me in the past for a session, I guarantee if you hire me again your photos will be better, because I have come a long way since starting this little operation!

Ron is doing a great job taking care of the kids and the house while I camp out in the basement with the computer(s) editing. I definitely would like to balance my time and not have to be doing this full-time as I have the past couple weeks. I think with this career (or as a photographer friend put it, "jobby"), at least for me, it's hard to predict when things will be slow and when things will be busy, and I was eager to accept as many jobs as I could, scheduling them all based on the clients' convenience (which I still prefer to do if at all possible). Here's one from the session I referred to earlier... this is Sadie and a Ladybug.

1 comment:

Heath said...

Working from home can cause you to easily fall into the trap of putting too many or too little hours in. What may help is if you set regulary working hours for yourself, that way you have a set start and end time like if you were going into an office. You may feel less guilty relaxing on your own time then. Plus, you will get a better sense of how long turnarounds will take if you work set hours and can give people consistent estimates?