Life
The year not only started with a new job (or old job, because I went back to this amazing agency I left in 2021) but also with a weekend filled with beach walks, bloody marys, and lots of laughter. Eight ladies organized an unbelievably fun trip to Florida for a long weekend for my bachelorette.
So, never really having thought about not showing faces in photos but rather take pictures from different angles to where you can’t see a face has only become more of a thing for me since I have a little niece. I started taking pictures of her when she was first born and I remember thinking ‘Do I really want to show her face or would I rather keep it hidden and not reveal what she looks like?’ (she is the cutest and most perfect little thing, but that’s beside the point). I then proceeded to think ‘Oh what’s the big deal, everyone is doing it’, but then thankfully my sister mentioned that she would like to not show her little girl’s face all over the web. I respect that and I think that’s how I might be with my own children as well (but I can’t really say that for certain just yet). I have also been noticing more and more that some of my friends who are new parents do not show their children’s faces online.
Now I’m guessing this is for all of my photographer friends out there. Have you had families ask you to not post pictures of their kids’ faces? If so, how do you go about it? I, personally, am a huge fan of detail shots such as the little fingers, feet, or just the fresh, golden locks of a little one.
But I’d love to hear from you and also from parents who have decided to keep their child’s identity private. Have you tried to keep it private and in a weak moment posted a picture of your cute, funny kid which opened the flood gates?
I say yes. I have experienced it and it’s been now 2 years that I ‘lost’ the person I’m still sometimes grieving today. March 19, 2017 is the day my sister left the United States after living here for almost 20 years. The last almost 3 of those years we lived in the same city, had regular wine, sushi, and movie nights. When my husband and I bought a house, she moved in for her last months in this country before heading home with a one-way ticket and her American adventure packed up in 5 big suitcases. The following months (there were many and there are still some to this day) were incredibly hard. I noticed changes in me and those were changes I did not like. I was not interested in the hobbies I had been so passionate about for most of my life. I thought I’d get over it and it would all pass since we live in a world where a person across a huge pond is just a FaceTime call away. But it was not the same and being the wife of a firemen who had gotten to know her new house and home with her sister in it, I was now sitting by myself on the couch every third night, grieving.
At first I told myself to not be so pathetic. She isn’t dead. What am I doing? Why am I feeling this way? I felt a little ridiculous and kept reminding myself of people who have REAL problems. The months kept going by and when I was still not feeling alright after about 8 months and my passion for riding horses had still not returned (I still forced myself to take lessons though just to pretend everything was okay) I started looking for help. This is something not a lot of people know and I contemplated whether I wanted to write this or not but why the hell not? Researching counselors and therapists, I stumbled upon the Atlanta International Counseling group and made an appointment. For a few months I went pretty regularly and it was an immense help. Viviane was a god sent helper and supporter. After many months of feeling completely heart-broken, or more heart-shattered, I finally started feeling a little better. There are still weak times but I keep reminding myself that I work hard in order to go home more often to spend time with my family.
I think this is the most vulnerable blog post I’ve written so far but for some reason it just spilled out of me this morning and keeping it all bottled up will not help me in any way. I can breathe now without feeling like I’m about to cry. But know, for the 1, maybe 2 people reading this, I do believe that you can grieve a person even if he/she has not died.
Over the past few weeks I’ve attended some networking events that could not have been any more different (in a good way). The first one was a dribbble meet up that I only heard about by accident from an old coworker who offered to get me and my art director/friend Nikki into the already at capacity event. The setting of this event could not have been any better. A new building called the Willoughby with a rooftop terrace, cold drinks, and hot pizza. Talking and exchanging information with a lot of designers in all different fields and from various backgrounds was very interesting. We talked graphic design, UX/UI, photography, furniture design, etc. Rhyme & Reason put on an excellent event!
The Mavens from Mavenly.co (@mavenlyco) had their conference a few weekends ago and very much to my taste they organized a happy hour for people who had not signed up for their workshop. Nikki and I went and had a great time mingling with other professional ladies who are looking to become their own bosses. It was a great night for a bunch of women coming together, drinking wine, eating appetizers.
Sometimes I wish I would have started networking way earlier in my life. I’ve met some very interesting people and if there is one advice I can give a new designer, it is ‘go out and network’. In the beginning, Atlanta gave me a hard time getting acclimated and meeting people but in regards to networking, getting to know new people, starting conversations about doing business together, it has opened doors, and by doors I mean the biggest doors you can imagine.
One of the so far most successful networking sessions was the ‘Women, Work & Worth’ workshop where I met Charlene (@ceocharlene) who quickly got in touch with me and hired me to take headshots for people who had signed up at General Assembly for one of her workshops.
Social media plays a huge part as well, and if you really want to you can find some great social groups who plan happy hours and outings on a regular basis. When I first moved to Atlanta I learned about Six Degree Society. It was a bunch of women who came together, some with their own businesses already, others still moping around in their 9-5 (I was one of them and still am). Simply exchanging experiences, getting to know how people went about starting their own business, involving business coaches and what not, was very interesting and valuable input for me. Since then I’ve attended outings like that pretty often and have formed some great business relationships and friendships with some of these ladies.
So, young people, entrepreneurs, designers, and photographers, all I can say is ‘network, network, network’.
So… having been at a stage in my life where I feel I have to decide whether to keep rolling with corporate America or just dive in and really focus on my own business, I have submitted my email to so many different business advice sites, I can’t even count it anymore.
But there is this one that I stumbled upon in my email account. Having had not such a great day, I thought I’d give it a try. Her name is Jenni Maroney (hey @jennimaroney, here the first post I promised to tag you in ;) ) and she had some great input regarding websites. How bots scan websites and how you can get to be the #1 on the Google list when people are searching for photographers. My web knowledge is limited, but I do know how to figure a few things out here and there. I followed some of her steps while listening to her, and edited some of the meta data and whatnot on my website. One of the first things though, Jenni talked about, was BLOGGING… oh gggaaawwwddddd. I gave blogging a chance a few years back, but did not think or expect people to be interested in reading what I have to say.
Now, feeling that I have reached this aforementioned weird phase in my life, I have to decide to go left or right. Since I don’t want to always be in the situation where I have to ask an employer for permission to take time off in order to spend a few days with my family in Germany, I have made the decision to give this blogging thing another chance, give those bots something to scan, and boost my website which will hopefully help in bringing in a little more business on the side.
Be prepared to see and read a little more right here and hopefully you’ll enjoy it. If you have been where I’m at right now, please share some advice. Thank you kindly in advance. :)