So with a deep breath, and a purring cat beside me, I’m sitting here thinking about my business goals for 2012.

1.  Establish office hours for myself.  I want my family to know when to expect me to be working, and most importantly that when it is not office hours (or when I’m out working with a client) I can give them my full attention.

2.  Make the business side of things a priority.  I am an artist.  I don’t like dealing with numbers and much prefer Photoshop to Quickbooks.  This year, I will take one day at the end of each month to keep my bookkeeping clean, be aware of all the numbers, and find ways to simplify the process.  Step number one is already taken.  I am meeting with an accountant to discuss planning this week.

3.  Take my customer service level from great to exceptional.  I just love when businesses go out of there way to provide exceptional service.  I’m a small business and I get to know each of my clients personally.  I just want to find ways to make sure they know I appreciate being chosen as their wedding or family photographer.

4.  Blog regularly.  I’m not committing to an exact number, but I need to find balance and blog 2-5 times a week.  I believe in blogs.  If a company catches my interested, I go to there blog pretty quickly.  I want to hear the voice of who I am dealing with, and see what types of things they talk about.  I think brides benefit from knowing who I am.  I want you to choose a photographer whose work you love, and who you really click with.  (Sorry about the pun, not intended.)

5.  Be me.  I recently ditched my wedding packages in favor of simple pricing, something that goes against what any sales publication will recommend.  On the opposite side, I recently turned down a wedding I really wanted to photograph because what the bride wanted didn’t coincide with my policies.  Thinking back I could have just went with my gut.  In the future, I am giving myself liberty to break my own rules, incorporate things I believe in as part of my business, and just go with what feels right.

6.  Expand my family portrait business.  I love weddings, and plan to keep photographing as many as last year.  I enjoy the diversity of working with families too, especially maternity and newborns.  Photographing in a lifestyle manner, I love capturing the little moments.  My favorite is when one of my brides calls me a year or two later to ask me to photograph her new baby.  As part of this, I would like to photograph a birth.  I’m scared out of my mind to do it, which means I should.  Our doula photographed a lot of my labor and immediately after my daughter was born.  I treasure these photos.  (Thanks Taffy!)

7. Print my photos, and encourage my clients to do the same.  This is the most important.  I need to print samples.  I need to print personal photos.  I also need to convince every single one of you to make prints of your photos too.  Yes, I believe in professional quality prints, especially for the big 20×30 enlargements.  More so I just want everyone to get their photos off their computer and onto paper, in a book, on the wall, on the fridge… anywhere as long as they can be seen and shared.

8.  Make all this pretty.  I’m working on making my blog, website, and all those branding things pretty, or at least cohesively me.  Oh, and this includes my office too!

Here’s a favorite from a recent family portrait session.  New little feet to start the new year!

Yes, this post is driven by caffeine.

For fun, I present to you Gracie Joy, my ten year old cat.  This is actually taken 5 years ago, with my first digital Nikon camera.

It’s end of peak wedding season, so I’m thinking about albums.  With moving to Washington DC last year, I never even ordered a 2010 wedding album sample, something I usually do every year.  So I think that means I get two new ones this year, right?  I’m eyeing the gorgeous handmade albums from Red Tree for a new flushmount… just ordered paper samples!!!  My Kiss ones are great but I want something with a few more options.  Red Tree  has cameo’s and personal printing on the cover.  Best of all, Japanese silk or luxurious leather covers.

I’m also thinking about less fun things, my books… taxes, records, all that non-creative stuff that I must do as a business owner.  Yes, that is all I have to say about that.

Back to fun, marketing goodness: more updates to my blogsite, a new 2012 / 2013 weddings brochure.  This is the area of the business that could put me into the red if I’m not careful.  Okay, not really but I’m a sucker for printed books and pretty papers and designing and re-designing things.

Even more fun, I’ve been spending time meeting with brides!  Coffee, frozen yogurt, a glass of wine.  It’s so fun to get out and just hear about everyone’s wedding plans, and your stories.

Personally, I’m moving to a new home, just a mile away.  It’s won’t affect my business in anyway, except for having a better office, but it’s keeping me busy.  In fact, I’m about to sign off from work for the next 36 hours and dive into a pile of boxes, which are unfortunately mostly still empty!

A photo for fun.  I love the beach, so this image relaxes me.  It’s looking out at the Chesapeake Bay from Love Point at Kent Island.

My blogsite update has taken a temporary backseat, but I still have plans to put on all the touches I promised, as the colder months approach us.  For now, I must take the rest of the afternoon off to spend with my family and enjoy an afternoon of fall, my favorite season.

Check back soon, for lots of new photos.  In the meantime, catch up with me on Facebook and see some more previews from Gretchen & Lauren’s wedding.

Below is a photo taken hiking in Washington at Mount Saint Helens National Monument. It was taken in the fall about five years ago, with my first Nikon. I used to hike a lot, and can’t wait to find some new places to explore in Virginia.

So my things I love post this week, the little moments…

It was my hubby’s birthday and we were sitting in our living room, watching him open presents. I was taking photos, and my daughter wanted to join in. I got out my old Nikon D50 and handed it to her. Notice that she already knows how to hold it correctly?

The internet started out as such a text based thing, and pinterest just turns it all into visuals. You see something you like you pin it. You can search other people’s boards on their site and repin items, or just pin as you are web surfing. It takes bookmarks to a new level, especially if you are a visual person. I could just stare at the pretty little tiles the boards form, for hours.

Here’s a copy of “My Pins” section. Pretty, right?

Not just pretty though, it’s useful. You can use it to plan your wedding. You can create a board of wedding dresses, or flowers, or details. You can use it to share you who are with others, or to create reminders of ideas for yourself. I just created a board for branding inspiration. I’m using it to gather up ideas of what I like, to create a better more me blogsite. The possibilities are endless.

Instead I enjoyed the time.  My daughter and I hung out on a brick wall by the pavilion, with her on my lap, eating a chocolate chip scone.  It was the biggest scone ever.  Do scones count as eating healthier?  I think not, but it was made from a small local bakery with natural ingredients at least.  That has to count for something.

We walked around the historic downtown area, and then got serious.  The little one went in her stroller.  My big Trader Joe’s canvas bag came out, and back to the market we went.  We got to taste sweet white peaches, and compare them to the more traditional yellow ones.  I saw apples that I didn’t recognize, and asked about it.  Tart, great for baking… not for me (can’t even bake pre-made cookie batter).  This is why the obsession though, to be able to ask someone involved in growing the fruit about it.

We came home with a huge pile of peaches, sweet tiny plums, cucumber, heirloom tomatoes, a tiny cantelope, and more.  Jadie (my daughter) and I hung out in the kitchen snapping green beans this afternoon, which I steamed, then seared for dinner.  They were amazingly delicious.  So now, I just spent the last 30 minutes learning about how a csa works, and now here I am blogging about fruits and vegetables instead of photography!

In fall of 2005, we moved to Portland, Oregon. We found a little house to sublet in East Portland, with a big yard and great neighbors that liked to bring us fresh tomatoes and cucumbers from their gardens. In 2006, we decided we were ready to buy our own home. Little did we know, as we closed on our first house, in Beaverton, Oregon (actually an unincorporated part of Washington County called Aloha), that I was pregnant.

Left: 600 sq foot East Portland sublet | Right: Our first home

About eight years had passed since starting working in Information Technology, and I was photographing personal stuff (nature, my cats, and street photography). I had just bought my first digital camera about 6 months prior, a Nikon D50. I was still amazed at the ease of digital compared to film. I knew I was done with IT, but wasn’t sure what direction to go, so I was taking some classes in multimedia and web design. I knew I needed to find a way to merge my creativity with my career. By mid-way through pregnancy I also knew I could not leave my baby everyday to go to a job I disliked. I was 34 and ready to finally do what I meant to do all along.

I didn’t have a plan though. I knew nothing about running a business. Like so many other photographers, I thought it was simple. I’d put an ad on craigslist and charge $100 a session for portraits, and shoot 4 per weekend, handing over the digital files. I’d put up a website, hand out cards, and so on. This was truly as far as I thought it out.

I quickly learned that there is a lot more to starting a photography business. Particularly I realized that a new mom can not work at home with a baby by my side all day, and that I could not possible profit or even break even at the prices I initially set. So I revamped my pricing structure, upgraded my gear, absorbed myself in SEO, did some pay per click advertising, and learned to work every second my hubby was home, or while the little one slept in a sling on me.

I had never planned on photographing weddings.  I was interested in photographing families and babies originally.  Then, when my daughter was six month old, I photographed my first wedding, for a friend.  I was hooked.  I loved the pace, the emotions and the story.  With those wedding photos on my website, the inquiries started coming in.

Having a background and education in film photography definitely gave me an edge.  I learned a lot of the business end, from an online group, Starting a Wedding Photography Business, and reading books.  About a year in, I became part of a local group of photographers called Click Chicks.  I was amazed at how helpful other photographers were, and try to always pass that on now.   Just over three years later, having relocated across the country to Washington DC, here I am starting over in a way.  It’s much easier with experience, knowledge and a portfolio!

So that’s it, without all the nitty gritty details, that would take an entire blog of their own.

, two clicks max.  300 – 500 later, we’d pack up, drop off the film at the studio and head home.  I was home by mid-afternoon, with just enough time to sneak in a nap before my night class or bartending shift.  This was not what I imagined in art school as a career!

So when I graduated college a few months later, working for a studio was the last thing I wanted.  Instead I got a temp job as an accounting clerk, and found I had a natural talent for Information Technology.

Another few years passed, I had moved to Seattle.  I decided to try photography again and got a job in a semi-professional lab.  Digital retouching was pretty new, and I discovered Photoshop.  I believe version 4 (not cs4, just 4) it was at the time. Clients would bring in old photos, and we’d scan and fix them up.  I thought this was super cool, and was pretty good at it.  However, I got paid so little that I could not support myself, so after 9 months left the job.

The great thing was it got me shooting again.  I hiked a ton during this time, so I mostly did nature photos.  All of my friends were photographers. We’d sit around late and talk about photography, art and how the internet and digital was affecting this.  We’d have art shows, and go to all the gallery openings… all that sort of stuff.

This was during the dot-com boom.  Everyone was a tech.  Every dot-com was hiring and many in Seattle were millionaires, only on paper.  It made it easy to get back into the technical world, and after waiting table in Pioneer Square for a while (a necessary stop-over since it was how I met my hubby), I went to work for an e-commerce team at Wizards of the Coast.  From there it was Boeing, IBM, Toyota… my resume as an IT person started to look great and I suddenly had a promising career.

Check back next Tuesday for part 2.

I keep noticing how personal my old posts were.  Sure, I was new and didn’t have many clients, but it adds something… I think it’s that something that is missing here.  Check out this post on babywearing, something I am absolutely mad crazy passionate about.

Before I go tear my little one away from playing to get something in her besides vanilla milk, I am going to let this post and whatever else I find on this crazy fixing links project, inspire me to write a little more me.

Here’s a fav from a family outing to Great Falls Park.  Who needs waterfalls when there are mud puddles?