Category Archives: Business and Family

Juggling family life and business life

Organising the Stresses

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Well now I have a little one, my life is no longer one big organised, calendarised diary. Before Jazzlyn, I prided myself on the detail on my calendar. Every aspect of my life was categorised and colour coded. I had reminders reminding me of an upcoming reminder. I put everything in, and everything was synced, from my phone to online google, to my ipad to thunderbird.

Well I still have a calendar, and it’s still colour coded, and I still have reminders popping up. However there are many more under the category of “personal”, that relate to bringing up my little girl.

So I haven’t thrown my organised schedule out the window since having Jazzlyn, on the contrary I’m thankful for it. I may not be as detailed now, but the important dates and times are still listed, my tasks get scheduled in, and I can tick them off as I complete them. I know now more than ever that  its important to be organised to stay on top of things. Sometimes when I’m stressed and things keep piling up, I find that the best thing to do is get it all down into my calendar, to list when I’m going to deal with certain things. Once I’ve put everything there, I’m freed up. It even works well to do this before praying, because you gain more focus, and are able to spend more time hearing from God and less time getting distracted by all those things you know you need to do.

And when it comes to looking after a family when running a business, there’s no way I’d remember everything if just left in my head. Though I may be a little more pedantic than most with my calendar (sometimes with shared calendars, when people don’t captilise I go into their entry and amend it because I like the calendar to look nice), I do recommend that having a reliable calendar system, that is backed up or synced. This is crucial in order to stay on top of work and remember appointments that could well be forgotten in the business of the day.

Getting organised really does decrease stress. I recommend it.

 

 

Juggling Baby and Business

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As most of you will know, we recently had our first child. Our gorgeous little 3 month old, Jazzlyn, is such a blessing. We love spending every moment with her, and of course as new babies do, she demands most of our time. How do we juggle family life and business life successfully? Well we are still working through a lot of these hurdles and will share more in coming weeks.

I personally, as full time mum, and full time business operator (Stuart works a full time job, and I look after the business), have found that running a successful business with a young baby is hard work. “Duh!” all you mums out there are saying. Perhaps I thought she’d sleep more during the day? Perhaps I thought I’d have more time? But though Jazzlyn certainly dominates my days, the biggest change I found is that I WANT her to. My life before Jazzlyn found me certainly more passionate about our business. I could get stuck into projects for hours on end, sometimes not moving from the computer or from what I was doing to even get lunch. Now I struggle to get to the computer at all during the day. My emails go into “action” folders, and sometimes are not responded to for several days! I used to respond on the spot. My editing takes place later into the night, once Jazzy is fast asleep. We have been blessed with a child that sleeps remarkably well at night though, often going down for sleep around 8pm and not waking up until 6 or 7am. So I need to make the most of those evenings, but by then… I’m exhausted! But our Photography business is still something I’m passionate about. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love it. So lately I’ve been working through what I can do, refocusing some of our energies on types of photography that can be done without neglecting Jazzlyn, and projecting for the future.

In a couple of weeks we photograph our first long wedding since having Jazzlyn. We’ll be shooting for at least 10 hours. The longest I’ve been without her so far has been around 2 hours, so this will certainly be a challenge. But we have everything in place and I’m confident that it will all work out well. My parents are booked in to babysit for the day – and they are looking forward to it, Jazzlyn being their first and only Grandchild. We’ve got the feeding part of it sorted for the day, me pumping and Jazzlyn being fed some expressed milk and some formula.  Because she is BF mostly but topped up at night with FF, it gives us the flexibility to FF (Forumla Feed) when we are apart.

I’m also concentrating more of my energies on newborn and baby shoots that can take place in the studio mid week, with Jazzlyn either watching in the studio or sleeping. This gives us the flexibility of continuing with shoots, without needing to arrange for baby sitting. I really feel it’s important to spend as much time as possible with my daughter, particularly in the early months/years, so I want to find as many avenues of shooting/working as possible that enable me to keep Jazzlyn with me. She’s been quite good during the recent shoots that we’ve done, and has been quite a hit with the clients who can’t get enough of her little smiles.

I’m sure that our business will continue to evolve and change in coming months as we settle in with our new addition. And I look forward to sharing the joys, the challenges, and the changes with you here in the hope that many of you may benefit, if you have a young family, or if you are starting one and are also building your photography business. Let’s share this journey together.

 

 

Our new blog focus

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We are bringing back the blog.

We previously stopped blogging because we felt that we were doubling up with our facebook page. We always post our images and video’s there, so there seemed no reason to blog. We have decided however to take a different tact with our blog, and focus more on the business aspect, a behind the scenes look at what we do. We feel this will benefit the photography community, and add value to those that are pursuing a photography career. We’ve found that even several of our previous clients and future clients who have come to us for their photography (ie Wedding Photography), themselves have a passion for the art, and have started to pursue photography either as a business or as a hobby. In fact many of our previous clients have attended our photography courses or have even become associate shooters for Emerald Eye Photography. Because of this we feel that we have a lot to give when it comes to photography advice, particularly business advise. And with the new addition to our family throwing a whole new aspect into the mix of juggling family life and business life, we’d love to share what we know, what we’ve learnt with you all.

So stay tuned to this blog, subscribe, send us questions and we will respond openly and honestly. We trust this openness will be a great blessing to so many of you.