FAQ: How to balance personal life with photography life

I got an email from a client-turned friend-turned amateur photographer this week that I thought would be great to share.

Why I all of the sudden feel like a business advisor is beyond me. But this is a question I get quite often, and since I'm feeling somewhat like a motivation speaker, I figured I'd share. 

**side note, I'm obviously NOT a motivation speaker by any means. What works for me may not work for everyone. It's just my advice.

She, like many others I know, is just getting her start in the photography industry and wanted to know how I balance my personal life with my business life. She said...

"I just never feel like I can get caught up. Don't get me wrong, I love what I do and I love the business I'm getting but I stay up for hours on end every night editing pictures and before I know it I'm 5 or more sessions behind, I have barely said two words to my husband this entire summer and I feel like I don't spend enough time with my kids at all. Any advice on how to balance my life? Did you feel this way in the beginning?"

Absolutely 100 % YES! I can relate to everything she's going through (well, minus the husband and kid part). I was entirely too busy for my own good, I became overwhelmed and I edited until the weee hours of the morning. Although this is a very rewarding industry to be in, sometimes you have to step back and look at the big picture. You can become so consumed in it that you will realize it has taken over your life. And it will if you don't have a game plan in store.   

At the beginning of the year, I set several goals for myself and my business. I won't list them all, but I'm proud to say that, so far, I've managed to hit every one of them :) And I'm only half-way through the 2011 season.

Brownie points for me! 

Two of the biggest personal goals were....

1. To not schedule more than two weddings a month.

2. Give myself a two-week break during the busiest time of the summer.

Although I'd love to take everything that comes my way (and trust me, it's been hard to tell people no, or have to book their session later than what they like), but I learned a few years ago that I just can't do it. I can't take every session, I can't shoot every day of the week and I can't book a wedding every single weekend. Don't get me wrong, I did it for the first three years, but I was aging myself 10 years by doing so and it became an impossible task. And I was single! And doing this full time! Yet I still surrounded myself by anything and everything photography related and, in the end, I had absolutely no personal life and I was a mess.

Hey, I'm a one-man show here, cut me some slack.

It's great to get so many requests for photo sessions, but I am a true believer in quality over quantity. I could book seven sessions in one weekend, but unless I have an entire office behind my back, helping with the culling, processing and editing of all the images, it's darn near impossible for me to provide the kind of work I want to for my clients because there aren't enough hours in a day - and at some point I need sleep. Even when I did this full time, I still found myself taking on way too much and, in the end, I wasn't happy with myself or the work I was providing (in a nutshell, it was a "fast editing process" and I didn't spend the amount of time I should have on the images I was offering).

Thus, I decided to take on less and also give myself a break half way through the season. And what a blessing it's been! 

My little vaca (although I can't really call it a vaca because my face is still buried in a computer at my other job)....so let me rephrase....my two-week vacation away from my photography business started this past weekend, and it will end Friday, August 12th. Although I didn't like the idea at first, I now see why it was oh-so important for me to do. 

This is the first summer in six years that I haven't felt overwhelmed, exhausted and/or completely stressed out. And I actually have somewhat of a life again! My clients have all gotten their products before deadlines, I've been able to pay more attention to detail when editing portraits and, in my eyes, my work has improved. This, to me, is they key to success. 

We all want to be successful in this highly-competitive, fast-growing industry, but you need to enter it knowing what you're doing and what you're getting into. As I've mentioned before, when I first started, I had no idea what I was doing. I had a funky, cool, awesomely expensive camera that took great pictures, therefore I thought I was a "professional photographer" and I started shooting everything that came my way. HA! Joke was on me.

Now that I've actually learned a few things over the years, I see the rewards it has provided to take on less. I'm happy, my clients are happy, my work is getting done ON TIME and I actually know what it feels like to sleep a full eight hours again.

I schedule no more than two sessions a weekend (or three, depending on the shoots). Or, if I have a wedding scheduled, I won't book any sessions that weekend. Occasionally, I will book sessions during the week, but I prefer not to. After I clock out of my full time job during the week, I usually come straight home and spend a good 4-5 hours in front of my computer editing. So the weekday evenings are devoted to nothing but editing. 


And if you're wondering, yes, I do have another full time job. I have to. I don't have a super rich husband who can support a house payment and pay for my health, dental and car insurance, and I definitely need bill-paying security in my off-seasons. But even if the day comes where I do have a wonderful husband who will allow me to do this full time again, I still wouldn't take on everything I did before. In fact, I'd take on the same amount of sessions I do now.

So that's that. As I said, quality over quantity. I can't stress it enough!! Unless you have an entire village working behind you, you enjoying sleepless nights or you don't mind turning gray 20 years before you should, don't feel obligated to take everything that comes your way. Yes, the money is great, but word-of-mouth is richer than any bank account I've ever seen, especially when you own your own business. And to me, my biggest payoff is a satisfied client. And trust me, I've had unsatisfied clients in the past due to the amount of time it took me to get their images to them and it's not a road you want to go down!  

Do your research, come into this industry with a game plan and you should have no problem succeeding.