Our Big Decision

Some of you (family and very close friends) are aware of what we are about to say, and some of you are not. Let me preface this all with: WE ARE NOT GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! There, I've gotten that off my chest, because I know once word gets out and we start making the change, that is what people will say. But it is wrong.

Jeff and I have made the decision to move out of our downtown studio and work from home. This is not an overnight decision. We have been talking about it for a while, and basically it comes down to these things:

1. Our business structure has changed. Years ago, when we started, we used the studio shooting space a lot. Probably about 50 - 70% of our shoots were in the studio. But that has changed a lot in the past few years. Most of our shoots are on location (obviously weddings and commercial work are done on location, but most of our engagement and family shoots are done outdoors, and we've found most of the orders from senior sessions are made of the outside shots). We like this building, but why pay for it all, when we end up utilizing only 1/5 of the space - meaning the office. Plus, we get a majority of our business from web searches, not because people saw us downtown. I know there are some of you who found us because we were downtown, but that has changed a lot lately and word of mouth, along with internet searches are the answers we get most often when we ask how people find us.

2. Conor and Lane. When it was just Jeff and me, staying late at the studio was no big deal. Have work to do? Stay until 8 or 9, go home, eat, watch TV or read, go to bed around midnight. Not quite the same plan when you have two little boys who wake up anywhere from 5:45 to 6:30 A.M.!! One of the perks of working for yourself is being able to control your schedule and spend time with your family. But lately, Jeff and I have felt we are spending less time with our kids and more time trying to juggle things to be in that 1/5 of the studio we mentioned above. If our office is at home, we can still play with the kids, eat with them, put them to bed and get work done (without having to get in the car and drive back into town - we don't live far, but that 10 minute drive, mentally can turn into a long drive you just don't want to do). There have been so many times we have been at home on a Saturday or Sunday and Jeff is doing yard work or at Lowe's, the kids are napping, and I think about the wedding I have to process or the prints I need to order, but can't do them, because I'm obviously not going to leave the kids alone. Our boys are very precious to us, and we want to be in their lives as much as possible. This will allow us to be with them more.

3.Location, location, location. The software we use to do our editing (Adobe Lightroom, which we absolutely love) is proprietary to the computer the image was originally edited on. So taking images back and forth from the studio to our home is not an option. Well, it is, but it's a big pain in the butt option. Plus, we store everything on a networked server - which has to have a central location. And networking in doesn't work when you are retouching a picture. I have networked in from home before and it's okay to work on word files, but not someones face. Trust me, it's not pretty. By being able to do work on a more flexible schedule (and not just the hours the studio is open) we will be able to get more done and we are really looking forward to that.

To let you in on the personal aspect of this a little bit, this has been a very emotional decision. This October we will have been in business for 10 years! That is a long time and we are incredibly proud of that. We both started in photography in a time when in order to be taken seriously, you had to have some sort of commercial space. So yes, it was a decision we have struggled with. There are a few worries we had when making this final, but now we are excited and actually relieved about finally having decided what to do. We know we have made the right choice and we are ready to move on with it. We will keep our Selinsgrove post office box, and hopefully our same phone number. And of course, the same email and web addresses. People have told us that we have made an reputation for ourselves, which is great to hear, and we think that combined with marketing and advertising will maintain our established presence. Since making this decision, we have had tons of positive feedback from friends who work from home and we are both now really looking forward to this change.

Presently, we are looking into possibly having a meeting space for clients elsewhere, where we will do consults, image presentation and ordering. We should know by the time we are out of this building. If not, then we will meet at a central location or at our home.

The date we plan on being out of the downtown location is October 15.

As I was about to publish this post, Jeff came in from the post office with a postcard from my cousin, Amy in Mississippi. We had spoken last week and she knew that we had made our decision final. Amy wrote on the card, "The poet Rumi said, 'Where ever you go, whatever you do, be in LOVE.' ... Let your love continue to define what you do." I think I'm going to love this change!