Something has to give...

A few months back I decided to do what I should have done five years ago, go to Graduate School! Sounds exciting doesn’t it? Well, it has been a transition. First of all, who do I think I am? I work full time, have a daughter (who is three!), a husband, a house that needs to be cleaned, flower beds and gardens that need weeding, craft supplies that need using, a mildly successful photography business, a blog, family and friends I want to hang out with, brownies I want to eat… the list goes on…

Two weeks into my educational adventure, one thing became crystal clear; something had to give. It was a hard decision, but when the options were laid in front of me the choice was obvious, the photography had to go. As much as I love photography, it is soooooooooo time consuming. Many people assume the only time a photographer commits to their session is the time spent shooting and we all know what ASSuming does now don’t we … Let me be the first to tell you shooting is the easiest part. The real work begins when you get home and to start going through hundreds of images, then picking and choosing which ones to edit, then the editing (real work) begins, the lightening adjustments, the cropping, color enhancements, cloning/patching, then blogging about it, posting to face book. Ugh just thinking of all of this work is giving me carpal tunnel.

Let me give you a prime example of why editing is so time consuming. You wake up on the morning you are scheduled to have your pictures take, you wake up excited to start the day until you look in the mirror and see a zit with a heartbeat grew overnight on your forehead! The entire morning you spend feverishly applying layer after layer of concealer (if you are a girl, boys don’t put in this effort) on that juicer which is still red and is now oozing. Three weeks later you get your proofs back and notice that the zit is gone! You pat yourself on the back for your awesome makeup concealing efforts, or admire what a stud you are, when in real life you should be kissing the hands of your photographer who was up till 11:25pm cloning that zit out of 120 pictures!! But I digress...

Bottom line is I am giving up photography for the short term; any session I complete now and post about are from clients who booked earlier this year when I thought I was wonder women. On a side note, the graduate class is going very well, one thing that I am finding with this class is that there is no right or wrong answers, as long as you can back up your statements/thoughts with facts and real-world experiences you will do fine. I think I am really going to like graduate school.

Until next time… which may be a while… but stay tuned none the less.