Stay Gold Photography: Back to the Blog! 1 year later...

I am a bad blogger. Seriously. Bad. 1+ years in business, 2 blog posts. And the last one was nearly a year ago. So, it's time to kick my blog writing / posting butt into gear and get this thing going again. I don't know how many people are going to take the time to read this, but it's a start and it's definately worth my time, anyway, to write it.

Stay Gold turned 1 recently, some time at the beginning of September. I don't really have the actual date (!!!). It was at some point shortly after moving to Whitecourt from Terrace, BC that I realized my super sucessful Montessori preschool wasn't going to amount to nothing in Alberta. Too many other options - CHEAPER options - for preschool, and no one seemed to have ever heard of Montessori in Whitecourt. My dream of continuing my 2 classes / 4 days a week / 12 adorable 3 & 4 year olds coming into my cute little preschool every week, kinda crashed and burned. It was hard to accept. Especially after working so hard in Terrace to get qualified, to get set up, to get interest going. I had just had graduation ceremonies for my first 2 classes, and already filled all 12 spots for the next school year when we got word in June that my husband had been transfer to Whitecourt. Hubby even house-shopped with a space for the preschool in mind. Lucky for me, that space, with big windows and beautiful hardwood flooring would also work perfectly for a studio...

Fast-forward 1 year, and here I am with that preschool classroom converted into a studio, booking 3 - 4 months in advance, 20 bookings a month, wonderful clients who come often and often bring their friends too. Deciding on photography was a no-brainer for me. When my husband met me, I was a film student making student films and processing my black and white rolls of film in darkrooms. I had always been more than a hobbyist, and unlike most photographers these days, when my kids arrived, I put photography on the back-burner, realizing that I wouldn't have the time or creative energy to really fully enjoy it. As they got older, and less, well, time-consuming (!!), I got back into photography, my mom bought me a Canon Rebel (and excellent starter DSLR, by the way. I shoot now with a Canon 60D and LOVE it), and I went back at it in a more serious sense about 4 years ago. My kids were my models. Every weekend we would come up with concepts, gather up costumes and head out for a shoot. They were very willing subjects back then (not so much now) and it was always just for fun. Some of those weekend model shoot photos are still my favourites and are hanging on a few walls in my house. I started posting those photos to my facebook page and people started noticing them. At first, they asked, "who is doing those photos of your kids? They are awesome." And then, it was, "would you mind taking my kids' photos?"

One of my early portraits of my daughter and still one of my favourites .

I never thought I could do photography for a living. It never crossed my mind. I really didn't think it would be possible to make a consistent income from it. This probably stems from the fact that like most photographers, I started out working for free to build my portfolio and that leap from doing it for free to charging to do it, is a big one (but SO important - I'm planning on a future blog about this very topic soon). The other thing that made me question being able to do it for a living, especially in my area, is the sheer number of hobbyists out there who are doing it as a weekend gig, saturating the market with low priced, and often low quality, photography. As a result of all of that, my first 6 months in Whitecourt were slow, but it was steady and always working hard to provide high quality images and customer service, as well as being unique from the others, in that I started doing theme sessions for children (faires and Vintage Boys), really made me stand out and soon potential clients were no longer asking "how much for a session?", but rather, "when can you book me in?"

Just over 1 year in business, my studio is one of only 2 licensed photography studios in town and last month I finally gained membership to NAPCP, the National Association of Professional Child Photographers, a professional organization that I am so proud to be a part of. My calendar is filled up for the rest of 2013 and I already have bookings for January and March. 1 year ago, I really didn't think any of this was possible. I figured I would continue to do photography as a low-paying hobby on the weekends and have to get a "real job" (eg: consistently paying) during the week. So glad to have been proven wrong. It's at the point now where I have been seriously considering hiring an assistant in the upcoming months just to help me keep up. And that is a wonderful thought!

Not all of my posts are going to be this long - I had a year to catch up on! If you are still with me to this point, thanks for reading, and please come back. I want this to be more than just about my sessions. I want to write about the business side of photography, which I am always learning about; about the technical side, the creative side and the emotional side of photography; as well as a bit about me and my great-great grandpa who was an amazing photographer with some truly creative editing skills - and did it all decades before there was such a thing as Photoshop. Can't wait to post his pics from the early 1900's for you to see!

For now, here are some of my early weekend fun sessions with my kids that led me back into photography and helped me get to where I am now. These were all shot with my Rebel, with the kit lens and edited with Picnik (haha!) - but hey, we all have to start somewhere!!