Our word for 2017

 

Happy New Year! Welcome 2017… we’re ready for you! With a new page comes a fresh start, and we fell in love with the idea of choosing one word to guide us through the year. Last year we tried this, and instead of making a long list of goals to achieve, we settled on the word CULTIVATE as our theme for the year. It lent itself to so many areas of our business and lives. Keeping focused on the word cultivate meant we spent much of 2016 staying focused on improving and growing in different areas. This cultivation of skills, relationships, time management practices, business strategies, and an entirely new brand was a success. Looking back, we’re so glad we took the time to choose the right word for what we needed to focus on in 2016. Our year of cultivation was a good one indeed.

Now it’s time to build on where we’ve come over the past year with CULTIVATE as our guide, and choose a new guiding word for 2017. Where can focus now? What can we grow from? How can we be better? It’s been a tough decision, but we’ve landed on a word that we think is perfect for us going into 2017, and lends itself to lots of areas we’d like to work on.

 

What does INTENTIONAL mean to us? Why is this the word the one we want to focus on? After spending all of 2016 focused on cultivating, growing, learning and leaning in we realize that now it’s time to slow down. It’s time to focus on what we’ve cultivated, and use it well. To be INTENTIONAL with our actions, thoughts, words, time, and resources. Hopefully, we will refine our skills, mindset, and daily lives on a deeper level. What we realized about the word INTENTIONAL is that it leads to so many other awesome words. Our hope is that, in our efforts to remain intentional with all we do in 2017, we’ll also find ourselves being…

present

organized

authentic

creative

balanced

meaningful

efficient

thoughtful

precise

calm

strong

As photographers, we want to be far more intentional with our work. On a wedding day, we want to take less photos. No more overshooting! We want to be ready to capture anything, but more intentional in what we are doing behind the camera. Be more present, precise, and calm behind the camera taking more authentic, creative and meaningful images. As a result of all of this intentional work, we want to deliver more awesome images to our couples. Less equals more in this scenario. We look forward to being even more intentional in our photography this year than ever before.

Being intentional with our time is going to lead to more balance in our life (which by the way was almost our word for 2017). But we realized balance is achieved, in part, with clear intention. When we sit down to edit photos, that’s what we’ll do. We will intentionally not get caught up with blogging or emails or taxes and instead we’ll do what needs to be done. When we sit down to dinner with our family, we won’t check email from our phones, or post a comment to Instagram. We will give our family the time, focus and attention they deserve. Being intentional with our time, carving out segments of our day for each necessary task, and sticking to it, will give us the ability to balance that time more evenly.

Efficiency has never been something we struggled with. We’ve always been good at productivity and meeting goals. From the get go, we’ve been hard fast in our determination to have photos edited and delivered super fast. It’s just not up for debate, we will have wedding galleries delivered in a matter of weeks, or more like days. Never, ever do we want to be stuck behind the computer screen at 2am, behind in our work, with a Bride asking where her photos are, or editing frantically before the holidays. However, there have to be new areas that we can be even more intentional with our time, and hopefully carve out even more of it for ourselves and for growing the business.

We can’t wait to see where this year takes us, and we pray that the blessings we’ve received over the past few years continue. The opportunity to photograph beautiful people on their wedding day, and the health and happiness of our family are all we ever hope and pray for. We will work and do our part in making 2017 a great year, by focusing on being INTENTIONAL. What’s your word?