I know I have several personal posts back-to-back, but I do have a lineup of actual sessions being posted soon from the past few months… just haven’t officially gotten them scheduled since I haven’t been home!
On Wednesday, I woke up at 3:34am. You read that right. 3:34. I had decided Tuesday night around 7pm to take a quick nap before meeting a friend at the gym at 9, except that quick nap turned into me passing out. I realized when I woke up how much I had been overworking myself, and how mentally and physically exhausted I was. Everything I do, I do it for my business. I know that while things are tough and overwhelming right now, it is 150% WORTH IT. What I’m building up to is something so amazing and worthwhile- my ultimate dream come true. While I sat in bed at 3:34am, I debated getting up and working or returning to sleep (regardless of the 8.5 hours of sleep I had just gotten) so that I could handle a full day of the What’s Next? workshop by Justin & Mary. Clearly more sleep is what I needed!
When morning arrived, I got ready and headed out. Traffic was insane so I texted the photographers I was meeting for lunch and explained that I’d be a little late. To my surprise, about 75% of everyone was running behind as well, which gave me an opportunity to make a joke. You see, each chance Asharae and I get together, we both run late. It’s kinda expected, so we have this joke that photographers are always the ones who are early for sessions but late for personal outings. Only 12 people were supposed to arrive, but by the time everyone was settled there were about 20! AMAZING. As more people arrived, the room slowly grew louder with talks of shutter speeds and sessions.
Mark Potter arrived and started a conversation about going full time. This has been a topic very near to my heart as I begin evaluating changes once I take it to that level starting in May. I will take a moment and be honest to say I am terrified yet excited. I am terrified as I review all my expenses and figure out what I need to book each month in order to “make it”. Seeing those numbers is scary! You realize that you are trusting yourself and your clients to support the life you live. All the “What if?”s begin flooding my mind every morning….
Mark talked with me about this, and someone beside me overheard everything. She turned and said to him that this is HIS year since he has so many wonderful opportunities happening. It’s his time to shine, to take it to that level, to really push himself out there… and then she turned to me and asked how many weddings I have this year. I told her, and what she said next really made an impact on me- “Casey, this isn’t your year yet… ” WHAT?! I didn’t really understand… “Your year is next year because you have so many weddings booked for 2013, and you are going to reach so many people through those! 2014 is IT.”
Oh geeze, she’s right. 2014 will be MY year. It’s MY year to showcase more brides than I’ll have this year. It’s MY year to start my focus on specializing in certain photography. It’s MY year to really be out there. Everything I do and put into this year is in preparation for 2014 to be one of my most incredible and memorable years – to start everything off while ready to take over the world.
After lunch, we headed over to hear Justin and Mary speak. First off, NOBODY MENTIONED TO BRING TISSUES. I didn’t realize how emotional this workshop would be. I watched as people went up to pour out their hearts to us about their business and what it means to them, and then I was challenged to write about what I want and what my business really stands for. I had never thought about it, but I just knew. I knew that I wanted to show people how beautiful they are no matter what they looked like. I wanted to show what true love looks like- you know, those moments when a groom first sees his bride, that time alone after all the group photos are taken, their first dance…. there are some pretty emotional moments throughout a wedding. I love capturing this. Capturing total honesty. Total love. Total joy. It’s those beautiful genuine moments in life that warm my heart, and I know as soon as I hit that button that I am where I’m meant to be. This is what I stand for- capturing your pure moments in a beautiful way, to show you how I see even the most simple details as art, and to provide you with memories that will last for generations to come.
During the break, I met up with Andrew Barlow to go over all the details of PASS. I have been quite interested in it, but honestly wasn’t 100% sure on how it works. I have followed him for awhile on Facebook, and was excited to begin with to finally get to meet him! He went over everything with me, and by the end of it I was pretty sold on switching over after my subscription to Zenfolio runs out. I had not had a trial period for Zenfolio, and seriously wish I had… I have had several people complain about how difficult it is to use it and download from them. I listen to all feedback, and I choose what would be best for my business and brand. That being said, I have a wonderful announcement to make: Starting soon, I will be offering personalized websites using PASS, and will be doing away with DVDs! PRAISE THE LORD.
Here are the great advantages you, as my client, can look forward to:
-A personalized website you can share with family and friends so they can look at all your images whether it be from your wedding or engagement session
-I’m upgrading ALL my clients to allow for their friends and family to download ALL images for FREE. YEA.
-It’s super simple to share your images on Facebook now!
-You will have access to everything from almost ANY device known to mankind at any time so it won’t matter if you lose the DVD or if it gets messed up
-Your images will SAFELY be stored in the cloud forever
-No waiting on the DVDs to come in, for me to burn them, or for the mailman to FINALLY come (thus NO MORE STALKING UPS GUYS!!)
I mean, the list is endless, so perhaps this video will fill you in better…
To my great surprise, at the very end of the night they announced they’d be giving away a year of PASS to someone… which is why I was totally blowing up Twitter and Facebook with tweets… They had had giveaways all night, and I watched as folks to the left and right of me jumped out of their seats with happiness about their new bags or a free canvas from White House Custom Color. I secretly hoped and prayed I’d be chosen for this because it would be absolutely the most perfect gift I could ask for right now. Andrew got up and did a random scroll through tweets and selected whichever one he clicked on while scrolling… “And the winner is… CASEY H PHOTOS!!!” … My heart stopped, and I’m pretty sure my jaw dropped to the ground. I watched as everyone turned to look at me with smiles. I was stunned! Andrew looked over at me and gave me a big grin, probably because he may or may not have been laughing AT me. Regardless, I want to thank you, Andrew, so much for this gift- it truly means the world to me.
Before that, we had a lighting part of the workshop. I use my flash only for times where I absolutely NEED it for lighting, like receptions. Other than that, I despise them. I hate that artificial element it adds, and I feel it takes away from quality a LOT most times. However, I was interested in how you could use different lighting that I am not aware of yet. I have had several moments where I wished I knew something about lighting, but yea. When we first began this, Justin brought out Mary’s AMAZING shoes. He showed how to photograph different details of the wedding day when you have NO sunlight at all, only flash, and how to make it appear as if it was daylight from a window. We also went on to learn different types of lighting for studio work, which was pretty neat despite the fact I most likely will never have a studio like that. It’s just not my thing. I prefer outside beauty than staged sitting and smiling with a slight tilt of the head… slight tilt down…. to the right… I also won’t call my clients names like “cutie patootie” or “honeybun”… Sorry, was having flashbacks of the elementary photo days. Ew. ANYWAY, we all had a wonderful time learning, and I was really excited to try out some of what I learned. That being said, here’s your image of the day! While waiting for Caitlynn to arrive at the Duncan Hill Inn for our boudoir weekend, I set up my lighting and positioned it the way I had been shown. These flowers aren’t real, and this image was taken at midnight. I am quite pleased, if I do say so myself! Knowledge is power for sure.
So yes- this year may not be MY year, but next year sure will be. As I’ve mentioned, everything I do this year will be in preparation for something big, something great, and something that will surely know your socks off 😉 Get ready!
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