Personal // Setting Boundaries.

This is an old post, that seemingly got gobbled up with my blog when it crashed.  But I got an overwhelming response and a flood of messages when I posted it earlier this year so I thought I’d repost it…

I sit here on a Saturday afternoon, sipping on tea after an intense yoga class.  I’ve spent some time building a fort with my six year old, and cuddling with my 1 year old before his afternoon nap.  Last night we had a family movie night, complete with popcorn and sleeping bags.  Life feels as good and it sounds.  And I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Being a mom of two rambunctious children, the wife of a political figure and a run a busy business is no easy feat.  This business of being creative, cultivating relationships and getting your work out there will suck the life right out of you.   And when you work from home, your work trickles into your life and your life trickles into your work.  Answering phone calls and e-mails is not easy with a toddler hanging from your left leg.  Editing 1500 images for the next wedding that is due with a six year old on your desk organizing her My little Pony collection is not going to work.  Trust me, I’ve been there.  This business of being a photographer – and in most cases a one man show – will turn your life upside down. And most of the time, it kicks my ass.  If I let it.  Let me repeat …  If I let it.  

But I refuse to let it.  And I’ve learned how to set boundaries.  I’ve learned a lot in the past six years that I’ve been in business.  But the most valuable one I’ve learned is to not let my work take me away from living my life.  I didn’t walk away from a high-paying, demanding job in Corporate America so that I could have no time for my family or friends and spend the bulk of my time chained to my desk editing my life away in Lightroom or Photoshop.  After all,  Living your life will only inspire your work.  

This post wouldn’t be complete without crediting Lara Casey and the amazing people behind Making Things Happen.  The concept behind it all is genius.  Lara really helps put things in perspective, and pushes you to evaluate things from the inside out. This is the 2nd year that I’ve followed the process and it has transformed my life.  So a huge thank you to those amazing women!

We talk a lot about this when I mentor other photographers.  Because it seems that everyone struggles with it.  So I thought it would be good to share with you how I manage my time, made use of valuable tools, and how I’ve learned to set boundaries in my business.

Office Hours:  Even though I don’t shoot out of a studio and my office in my home, it’s so important to set hours that you work.  Whether it’s 4 hours or 12 hours, setting specific office hours sends a message to both your clients and your family that this is your time to run your business.  For me, those hours tend to fluctuate but I always make them known on both my website, Facebook and my other social outlets.  My general office hours are 10a – 3p M-F.  This is often my time to shoot, return phone calls, answer e-mails and edit.

A note on phone calls: I do my best to return all phone calls during my office time.  I think it’s also well know that I don’t respond to text messages.  This may be a hot topic with some photographers, but for goodness sake I am a photographer, not a cardiac surgeon.  Very few things that I manage such as client orders, scheduling, shooting etc require me to be “on call” or are in deed emergencies.  Besides, it’s really tough to explain a 15 page wedding pricing guide via text.  There is nothing professional about a text, either.  So I just don’t do it.

This time also happens to coincide with my little one’s nap time.  Lucky for me he is a consistent and long napper so this gives me a good block of time to get my to-do list conquered.  If I do have to work while my family is home, I have a little piece of furniture called a door that gets closed while I’m in my office.  But that rarely happens.  Which I loooove.

Planning:  Plan your work, work your plan.  This is huge.  If you don’t have a list of things that need to be done, there’s a good chance your valuable time is going to get sucked up by a little thing called Facebook.  Or Pinterest.  Or Instagram.  Or Tubmlr.  Ok, you get my point.  This year, I decided to take my planning and to-do lists back to the good old days of paper.  Yes, that’s right.  Even though I own every Apple gadget under the sun, paper organization works best for me still.  I knew I wanted to go back to paper this year after a fatal crash on my phone left me scrambling to find important details for a project I was working on.  As soon as I saw it,  I fell in love with The Day Designer from Whitney English.  Let me tell you.  It’s so much more than a paper planner.  There are sections on creating your vision for the year, starting big ideas, refining your passion and skills, defining your client and creating a strategic plan for your brand.  It’s perfect for any entrepreneur, and it’s more of a life planner for me. It feels great to get this year off to a great start and stay focused.

E-Mail:  Will suck up every last minute that you have before you even had a chance to hit reply.  I use Mac Mail which for me, is really easy to use and syncs up perfectly with both my personal and business accounts as well as my iPhone and iPad. So here’s what works for me:  I try to answer e-mails as they come in during my office hours.   But ones that come in after that time get flagged and answered right before I go to bed.  Sound weird?  Well, here’s why I do it.  Before I go to bed, I respond to any e-mail that has a little orange flag, and I save them as drafts.  In the morning when I get up, it takes me no more than 1 minute to send out all of my drafts from either my desk, my iPhone or my iPad.  I have to be honest, many times I even send them from snuggled under my covers before my feet even hit the floor.  So now when I sit down to my desk for a few hours of work, I can spend that time being more productive than 3 hours of e-mail.  Huzzah!

Editing & Workflow:  I’m pretty sure that I spent my first three years living in Photoshop.  Literally.  My poor family.  They barely saw my face! It would take me 20 hours to edit a wedding and 5 to edit a shoot.  Which is insane, people.  And completely unnecessary.  It’s pretty simple. GET IT RIGHT IN CAMERA. Sounds crazy right?  But seriously, if you spend more time behind your camera and less time fixing your images your art will grow by leaps and bounds.  Trust me on this one.  Behind the camera is where we truly create.  It’s where we connect with explore new elements, connect with our clients, step outside of our comfort zone.  It’s where we spread our wings.  Spend more time there.

I shoot with the best gear Canon makes.  I currently shoot with Canon’s 1Dx, 5d Mkii‘s and all L Series glass.  My favorites right now are my 50mm 1.2L, 35 mm 1.4L and 85mm 1.2L. It’s these amazing tools that are really what makes my job easier.  Quick to focus and spot on with metering, all of these tools help me get the best results and bring my visions to life.  Which means I spend less and less time fixing mistakes and more time doing what I love.

But because I shoot RAW, all images need to be be processed in Lightroom and that is where I spend about 60% of my time editing.  The other 20% is spent in Photoshop (finishing touches) and the remainder 20% in Bridge (organization and batching).  I make my own actions for each client, wedding and shoot which I apply in small batches to create my own style and look for my images.  It’s a pretty simple process really, and most images come out of my camera looking pretty great.  I shoot everything as I see it and do very little cropping in post production.  If you’ve ever been a second shooter for me you know that this is one of my first pet peeves that I mention.

Let’s just say that it has been a personal mission of mine to perfect my workflow so that I can actually live my life.  I’ve been able to cut my editing in half over the past two years and I don’t get to hang out with Mr. Photoshop on a Friday night like I used to.  Which makes me really, really happy!

On a sidenote: I’ve also been able to utilize tools that I already have vs. spending $1.1M buying new software and actions.  Yes, that’s right, I do all of my blog boards and albums right in Lightroom 4.0.  Holy speed up my workflow so that I actually like blogging and designing my own albums again. Thankyouverymuch.  That way I have more resources (otherwise known as income) on doing things that help me grow and inspire me like attend amazing conferences and travel.

Here’s a peek at what I mean when it comes to simplifying your workflow and using the tools that you have.  Focus on the technical and creative side of shooting in camera vs. all the craziness of editing.Shoot it like you want it.  Practice good composition, posing, exposure and focus.  Keep the integrity in your art and learn to shoot with intention.

Social Media: is fun.  And I’ll leave it at that.  Facebook is not the be all of end all of running your business. It’s a nice outlet and way to get your face and your work out there and to interact socially with clients and prospective clients.  But please.  By all means, don’t run your photography business from your Facebook page.  And here’s a few reason’s why …1. Ever heard of MySpace.  Yeah.  Believe it or not, Facebook will not be around forever. 2. Facebook will take your amazing images, compress it into a jumbled ball of ugliness and spit it out for the world to see.  Facebook does awful things to your images.  I mean awful. 3.  I DO NOT need another e-mail or message center.  End of story.  Sorry, but this post is all about setting boundaries with your life and your business and Facebook is a huge intruder on both.  I highly encourage any professional photographer to get a website and/or blog.  There are plenty of free or even low cost sites to choose from.  It will give you such a prettier platform to get your work out there and will be a more professional experience for your clients.  You’ll thank me someday, I promise.

Studio Management:  Once you get rolling or even if you’ve been in business for while, you’ll quickly realize that you need 14 different systems to track leads, billing, referrals, contracts, proposals, anniversaries, questionnaires and pretty much all of your every day business communications.  And while you could hire an intern to do it all for you or even hire your own personal secretary all you really need is ShootQ.  I’ve been using ShootQ for the past 4 years and I cannot live without it.  Shoot Q tracks all of the things I mentioned above plus more.  Don’t believe me?  Give it a try for yourself.  It’s free for the first 30 days, and if you need a referral, please get in touch with me.  It all syncs to the app in my phone so I have it no matter where I am.  Now, tell you can find a secretary that will do that!

And lastly,  Blogging:  I personally love to write and blog about everything under the sun.  Being an avid blogger has really helped me reach my clients in a way that other, more traditional ways ever could.  I get to tell a little bit about my personal life and I get to show off some of my favorite work.  It’s a win win situation!  And the blogging platforms that are available in today’s age make it so easy to design, upload and share.  This blog post?  Yeah, I wrote it yesterday during my office hours.  Except for the first few paragraphs, of course.  And in between tea, yoga and cuddles with my kids all I had to do was hit publish.

It’s tough, but creating boundaries has made such a huge difference in my life.  I can sit on the couch and do “normal” things like watch American Idol with my hubby.  I can spend an entire day with my kids making crafts without the interruption of business e-mails and phone calls.  I can head out on any given night to catch up with my favorite girlfriends without the guilt of “omg, I should be editing that darn wedding right now”.  And we’ve all been there.  And it sucks.  It’s time to set boundaries so that you can fill your life with … your life.  How wonderful (and easy) does that sound? It sounds fabulous to me.

I certainly hope you were able to take a way a few pearls from this post if you are someone who is trying to set boundaries with your personal life and your business.  And I especially hope it helps you carve out time to spend with the people that really matter and the passions that are close to your heart.  Happy Saturday!