2014 Goals Review & 2015 Goals List

 

So… another year has closed and a new one is just beginning. That means it’s time to share with you all that we want to accomplish in 2015. But before we do that, we need to take a look back at all that we had set out to accomplish in 2014, and see how we did!

 

2014 Goal Review:

 

• 1. Maintain an impressive photo delivery time all year long, providing final images to our couples in less time than expected. 

COMPLETE! Every couple, all year long received their engagement and wedding photos 7 to 9 days after their session/wedding! Yay!

 

• 2. Create an online Client Lounge as a source of knowledge, inspiration, recommendations, and insight into the wedding photography experience we provide.

NOPE! We totally dropped the ball on this one… kind of. After starting work on the online client lounge we realized it didn’t fit within our brand and it wasn’t really the method we wanted to share information with our couples. In short, we realized this wasn’t really a goal of ours. So, we changed up our ideas and have plans for a printed magazine in the near future!

 

• 3. Reevaluate and enhance our reception lighting structure and method of shooting. Dive into the equipment and options available to us even more to grow in this area.

COMPLETE! We have a much better understanding of off camera flash, and we have fallen in love with how much control we have gained in terms of lighting… especially during receptions. There’s still plenty more to learn, but we’re so glad we faced our fears and checked this off our list.

 

• 4. Maintain frequent to daily blogging during our prime shooting season.

COMPLETE! We did it! We blogged practically every week day in 2014!

 

• 5. Take new portraits of ourselves, with actual planned outfits and the help of hair and makeup artists;)

COMPLETE! We scratched this off our list early last year and we were so happy with the results.

 

• 6. Enhance the experience of Plume Boudoir, encouraging women to embrace their bodies and gorgeousness. Marathon weekends anyone?!;)

COMPLETE! This is one that doesn’t show on the blog, and so it’s hard to share the results with you but we have had the honor of photographing so many gorgeous women in 2014 within our boudoir studio. We look forward to containing this trend in 2015!

 

• 7. Collaborate with other vendors to produce and photograph 4 Styled Shoots in 2014.

ALMOST… We were able to fit in 3 amazing styled shoots this year and had a ton of fun doing so! We even had the task of designing and arranging flowers for one of them! Even though we didn’t reach our goal of 4 styled shoots, we are happy we managed to fit 3 into such a busy year! Our plan was to fit one in this winter, but Maggie decided to get pregnant so that put a wrinkle in our plans 😉 So, we’ll just have to be happy with the 3 we were able to accomplish.

 

• 8. Have published photos both online and in print.

COMPLETE! HOLY COW! Not only did our photos appear on several incredible online publications, but one styled shoot and two feature weddings (including the cover photo) were printed in the Southern Maryland Wedding guide! We are still pinching ourselves!

 

• 9. Wear real clothes, not yoga pants, every work day. Even days when we don’t leave the house;)

UM… COMPLETE FAIL! But let’s face it, this was probably the least realistic goal we set for ourselves. And we’re completely comfortable confessing that we see the ability to wear yoga pants to work as a luxury, and one we’re happy to take part in! Of course they are always clean, quality, good fitting yoga pants and athletic tops that “match”. If anything we looked like we were heading to the gym. Even though that’s laughable 😉 And to be fair, Betty should get way more credit for dressing nicely than Maggie. Betty is usually in jeans and a cute top. Maggie’s the one who lives in yoga pants and tunics 😉

 

• 10. Force ourselves to take one, full day a week off. With the exception of 30 minutes for emails in the morning, and 30 minutes for emails in the evening… we need to have one day a week for laundry and other “life” things. (You think we’re kidding… haha, not even close.)

NOPE… We ran ourselves into the ground this year. We love our work, we love our couples, and we are so darn adamant about putting everything we can into this business that we forgot to take care of ourselves. We never said no, always said yes, we overextended our time, and felt the wear and tear by the end of the year. We simply cannot do this anymore, and you’ll read in our 2015 goals that this will be a huge priority for us.

 

• 11. Take better care of our bodies and our health. Yoga, less coffee, MUCH less Diet Coke, treadmills, healthy food, less Chinese take out, and vitamins to name a few directions we could go.

ALMOST… We are checking this off the list because we did do a better job from 2013 in this area, but not as much as we had hoped. The Chinese take out specifically was reduced to the bare minimum, and that was a feat! Still… we made progress and we’re looking forward to doing even better in 2015.

 

• 12. Give back. This could end up being the biggest item on our list, and we really want to (wait, need to) put the goodness we’ve been given back into the world. We’re not sure what our plan is yet, but this year we want to build into our daily lives a way to pay forward all of our blessings. Big ways? Small ways? Maybe both… we will see!

COMPLETE! Through various methods we were able to give back to our community, through our photography, and also through donations. What we realized is giving back quietly, without the need to broadcast our actions was incredibly rewarding. We spent a lot of our giving back efforts working with our church and the local community. We plan on doing even more this year!

 

 

New goals for 2015:

This year we wanted to divide our professional and personal goals into two lists. Maybe that will help us keep better track of them all!

 

Professional:

• Our first and most important goal of every year – Provide an amazing experience for our couples. Right now, there are 27 weddings booked for 2015, with more to be added, and all of those Brides and Grooms deserve a photography experience unlike any other – with a few ideas in mind and tricks up our sleeves, this year’s couples should prepare to be spoiled! Our main goal of 2015, as it has been since we started in 2010, will be to give our couples everything we can, making THEM our priority in this business.

 

• Continue incredibly fast turn around time on photo delivery. This one just has to be listed as a goal. It isn’t a new goal, and it’s not something we need to reevaluate, but it is such a huge part of our client experience that it must remain at the top of our list. We never want any of our couples to feel like they’re waiting for their final photo collection delivery, and so we will continue to finish the edits in the least amount of time possible.

 

• Update the blog with a fresh look. Last year our website got a huge overhaul, and we are still in love with the look and feel to the brand. Our blog has maintained a somewhat similar look/feel but it’s VERY simple. We want to take this year to update the look of our blog, adding a few more aesthetic elements to mimic our website. We will try to do this ourselves for a while, and if that doesn’t work to our liking we’ll bring in the big guns and hire someone who can give us exactly what we’re looking for.

 

• Take new head shots, ugh. The ones we have currently are great, but we’ve learned an updated headshot on your website is essential. We meet so many couples at bridal shows that when they go home to check out our website we want them to recognize the faces they’re looking at. Every time we make a change to our appearances, and with every year that passes, a new photo should be updated to our website… at least we think so.

 

• Speaking of bridal shows… we want to make a re-design our bridal show display. We really do love the current look of our display, but it doesn’t make for an easy time chatting with the folks who come into our booth. It’s a little crowded. We want to go bigger and better, all while streamlining the look and flow of the space. This could take all year to produce, meaning the new display won’t show up until 2016’s bridal shows, but it’s on our major goal list for 2015!

 

• Design, write and print a custom magazine just for our couples! A “guide to the Birds of a Feather Photography experience” if you will. This is probably our largest undertaking of the year! When couples leave our studio after their first consultation, we want to send them home with a tangible magazine to thumb through, which will give them insight into EVERYTHING there is to know about working with us. Our hope is to accomplish this magazine design as soon as possible, in hopes of sending one out to the majority of 2015 and all of 2016’s couples. Wish us luck! This is a HUGE job

 

• Streamline the submission process, and get more of our weddings published! Because we are so focused on delivering edited photos to our couples so FAST, we don’t make enough room for the submission process which can be incredibly time consuming. So this year we want to make some adjustments to our post production workflow that will hopefully streamline the submission process, without sacrificing delivery time. Not sure yet how we’ll be arranging this adjustment, but it’s something we look forward to trying out!

 

• Take more behind the scenes photos! We realized that we only had a handful of behind the scenes shots of each other doing what we love most… photographing weddings. So this year we’ll try to make mental notes to get in the habit of snapping a few of each other at work  😉

 

Personal:

• Take one day off a week… for real this time! We were SO BAD at taking time for ourselves and for our families last year. We never gave into the fatigue, and our couples never suffered because of it… but man we got way too exhausted at the end of the year. We want to avoid that in 2015 for sure. So, we’ll be putting our foot down with ourselves and making sure to have one day a week that we have ZERO appointments/sessions on the schedule. We can sneak in an hour of emails/editing/blogging if need be, but we want to have the freedom to spend an entire day with our family.

 

• Say thank you more, to all the vendors who help create wonderful experiences for our couples and who work along side us to make each wedding day special.

 

• Take care of ourselves physically – eat better, drink more water, work out! You know the same resolution most people have! With that one day of rest each week, we are hopeful our energy levels will have a chance to go back up and we’ll be better able to make it through a cardio class, jog, or yoga class.

 

• Take more family photos! We slacked off this year during our down time. Having a camera in hand all day for work makes us lazy when it comes to picking it up again to document our own lives. We need to get back into the swing of taking photos at home, especially with the new baby on the way!

 

 

And there you have it! A 2014 Goal Recap and a 2015 Goals List. What an incredible opportunity we have to share with you all of our hopes and dreams for the future, here’s to another great year!