Decisions to be made

Next month, it will be three years ago that I bought my first DSLR and my passion for photography was driven by the desire to capture every precious little wrinkle, smile and milestone that our first born Lachlan met.  I couldn’t  and still can’t believe we had been blessed with the honour of raising this gorgeous, happy beautiful little boy and every part of me, wanted to freeze every part of our lives together.  Through Facebook and with the encouragement (albeit probably a little premature) from another photographer, when I was approached to start taking images for other people, I found myself saying “Yes”. 

My first ever paid session was to photograph seven (YES SEVEN) two year olds down at Glenelg………. OMG if I knew what I know now! LOL Anyway, I think we came to the conclusion that I would charge $20 per child and this was purely for my time….. not skill! This booking was through a dear friend of mine Tracy and it was her little girls mum’s group that wanted some shots of their group playing. I remember sitting all seven children down on a park bench, on the foreshore of Glenelg and all of the mums and dads singing right along with me ”Rock a bye your bear” at the top of our lungs just to try and get all the kids looking at the camera. It goes without saying that we failed miserably! LOL To onlookers, we must have looked like the Wiggles on speed. I actually would have paid to see a photographer try and do a session with seven two year olds. I laugh fondly about it now and to date, it really remains a highlight for me in my career, purely because someone wanted to actually pay me, ME, to take photos of their children. Who in their right mind would want to do that???

I practised on just about all of my friends children’s and babies. Everyone I knew with a child became an unsuspecting victim! To those people, who offered up their children for me to practice with, I thank you.  I wouldn’t be where I am now if it wasn’t for you

We have since been blessed with another gorgeous, completely edible healthy little munchkin Mitchell and he brings our house so much joy…. and cheekiness and I just can’t believe that we have two adorable, perfect for us little men. How lucky are we? 

Along the way I stumbled into wedding photography. Again, I was encouraged by the same person to join her at a wedding and second shoot for her. I had absolutely NO IDEA what I was doing, what I was meant to be doing or why on earth I was there but I was and upon leaving that wedding, I knew wedding photography was for me. It had me, hook line and sinker.

I then second shot 9 more weddings with two photographers and was able to gain a valuable insight into just how weddings work, what doesn’t work with weddings and what works really well as well as put together some sort of portfolio. I started offering wedding photography and before I knew it, my first wedding season was booked out.  Within my first year I had work published in BRIDE Magazine, SA Style Guide, Polka Dot Bride, Style Me Pretty, SA Life and Adelaide * Bride and I still have weddings from that season to be published in magazines this year! How on earth could this be possible???

Along the way I have made some amazing friends who started out as clients and I now consider them to be friends, people I have a special connection with, people who shared their , wedding with me. I have also grown to love the community of people that I work with. These are the people that get the hours that I work, these are the people who are also working until 2am in the morning each night just to keep afloat, these are some of the people who keep me sane and keep me going when I don’t think I can anymore. THANK YOU to those special people who are my go to, thank you for being dear friends and for being my band aid when I feel broken and thank you for the referrals, I still can’t believe that other photographers refer to me, it does my head in!

It probably seems like I’m not really going anywhere with this post but I promise that I am. The last few weeks with the onset of wedding season have put me into “Deep thought” mode and have forced me into making a public decision that I had long ago come to.  Putting it out there and actually saying it though has proved to be the hardest thing for me but I feel the time is right.

I really pride myself on the fact that I offer a truly boutique service to my wedding clients. I won’t book a wedding each and every weekend as I don’t feel it’s fair to my family or my clients. I need to fall in love with the people and the weddings that I take on. Doing so means that my clients get the best out of me and I can give them 150 % of myself. Unfortunately though there is only one me and in order to provide the service that I want to my clients AND try and bring some sort of balance and normality back into my life to be a better wife, mother, friend and daughter and also a better whole me,  something needs to give. I guess what the above means is that I have to let go of the beginning of my journey. It means that I have come to the point where for the time being, I will no longer be offering newborn or family photography.

In a perfect world I would offer newborn photography and family sessions to past wedding clients and I do live in a perfect world but my perfect world is only going to include two weddings per month and has been put in place for the beginning of next year. In off season, I would like to offer birth photography to a special few and we will just see how we go with this.

I’m also limiting my commercial work to the one organisation who helped us create our little family, Flinders IVF and I look forward to seeing what they have in store in the near future.

This all being said, I thought I would leave you with the last newborn images I will take for quite some time.  They are of little Luther, the son of one of my special friends Ness. Ness, Nathan and Hadley welcomed little Luther into the world a few days earlier than scheduled in August WITH OUT ME…. LOL, I was supposed to photograph his entrance into the world and Ness and I discussed this for two whole years but alas, he had other plans! Your mum and I will get you back for that one day Luther

If you have managed to read this far, congratulations! I hereby hand you a “reader of loads of waffle” award!!

Mwah
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