recharging our batteries

“Oh you’re so lucky! You get to work whenever you want!” is something we hear a lot. Let us first make it entirely clear that we love our job, and we wouldn’t change what we do for a living at all. That being said, our line of work is far from glamorous. The perception that we shoot weddings on a Saturday night then sit pool side all week is not even close to reality. Yes we do in fact have the ability to work whenever we want… that just happens to be all day every day. A wedding day (that usually lasts 12 hours mind you) is just the first 10% of our time spent working. The other 90% of our time is spent editing, communicating with couples, and running this business. Because we love this job so much, it’s hard to get us to stop working at it. Our husbands have to text us several times before we’ll leave the computer to come down to dinner. In the mornings we wake up, roll out of bed, and before even brushing our teeth we’re checking email. So yes, we get to set our own hours and work from home much of the time, but that means we each end up working 60 hours a week (on a good week).

There is an ebb and flow within each year, and we get to slow down to about 40 hours a week in the winter months. These “slow” weeks are our “time off”. This year though, we needed an actual break. A real vacation and some true life time off. It has been TEN YEARS since anyone in our family took a vacation. Since we started this company 3 years ago, the two of us have not taken any time off that we can remember. So earlier in the year when we closed our calendar for 2012 wedding dates, we noticed a nice little gap in August. Immediately we booked the first place in Ocean City we could find and told everyone to clear their schedules for that week… we were going to the beach!

Last week was our week away. We shot a wedding on Saturday while the rest of the family settled into the beach house, then we drove until 4am to get there ourselves. We spent the week sitting introducing Sweet Cheeks to the ocean, sitting with our feet in the sand, eating a ton of food, and just spending time together without emails, photo shoots, blog posts, ad spaces, website design, studio furniture assembly, or anything else. We relaxed and more importantly, we recharged.

When you love something as much as we love wedding photography, you run the risk of burning yourself out if you aren’t careful. After a wedding we clean off our gear, charge all the batteries, carefully store every item away in it’s place and let them rest until the next time we need them. Our bodies and our minds… they don’t get put away. They don’t get a recharge on a normal basis. So this week away was one of the most beneficial things we could have done for ourselves and the business. Our batteries are fully charged and we’re ready to hit the ground running in this second half of the year. By December we’ll be ready for another break 😉

Here are some favorite photos from our time at the beach with the people we love the most. Some are taken on our typical camera equipment, and some are from the “family camera” which is a point and shoot everyone used throughout the week.

The one family photo we managed to pull together on the self timer. Sweet Cheeks sat still for a total of 3 seconds, thank goodness!

We only had one cloudy/rainy day… we played in the sand, flew a kite and had a blast…

Maggie, Stew and Sweet Cheeks on the beach after a cloudy day…

Throughout the week we’d take a few minutes to get some “nice” family photos on the beach… especially on nights when we all got dressed up!

John and Mandy were Sweet Cheek’s favorite part of the trip. He said over and over “so glad you’re here!” to the two of them and broke our hearts every time. He loves his Uncle Johnny and his “girlfriend” Mandy. Watch out John… he’s moving in on your girl. 😉