Dearest gentle reader, I am terrible at this blogging thing. I promise you there are many posts that are created in my head whilst driving or trying to sleep or doing any other daily task that never make it out of my brain and onto the keyboard. Alas. Never ever ever enough hours in the day and days in the week. I am writing from the finish line of the summer swim team season. When it starts back in May, first meet the first Saturday of June, it seems indeterminably long. Every week full of meets and practices, fundraiser dinners, spirit activities, which for me means events to photograph and news to post to social media, using Instagram as a virtual bulletin board since our physical one finally kicked it. 11 meets in total were photographed. Pared down to 650ish photos in an online album for people to buy prints or downloads (to fund next years media needs!). A slide show created for a banquet that almost didn’t happen due to rain in literally torrents for an hour before it was supposed to start. We pivoted. Our community rallied. And we still ended the summer with one hell of a pool party. And now? It’s the time of year when it feels like everyone goes on vacation. And yet for the 21st year in a row we stay home. Someday I’ll get an actual vacation…But I digress.
Moving on…I did three teams this year. My standard practice for schools and teams is to open up an order form, close it the weekend after I take pics, then order prints, deliver prints to a representative for distribution, and lastly open open an online album for additional purchases. I convey to folks that if you order with the order form, you get the best prices and don’t have to pay for shipping. And yet some populations cannot grasp this. They are confused why the links (with instructions!) they were given two months ago no longer work. Or they don’t understand why I’m there when they can just take a shitty photo with their phone. I want to encourage people to place orders ASAP so they don’t get forgotten. They longer people forget to order the less likely they are to actually do it. I made peanuts from one team this summer. Like almost not worth the effort. If you add up all three teams, my net comes out to just OK for the amount of time and effort. More than I make at my muggle job but not even close to what I make doing portraits and family photography.
I’m trying to brainstorm ways to improve that next year. Do I skip the online order form, the offering of better deals, and do one big online album and maybe a coupon if they spend above a certain dollar amount? Do I charge the team or school a fee to come out and then pay that fee back when or if profits reach that threshold? For some of these guys they won’t reach my fee in profits. But then others will have no problem.
And then I think about my job search. Oh yes, I’m on a job search. Have been for a while just not aggressively. I would love to have ONE job. Not half a dozen sporadic things including this seasonal photography business. I’d like to cut back the photography to only my absolute favorite forever clients because I’ve got a real 30+ hour a week job going on back at the ranch. I need to work mostly from home for a myriad of reasons,* and I feel like one decent paying position would be a godsend. Let photography not feel like a hustle and be for the joy of it and nothing more. Which is why I agree to photograph the swim team every summer. It fulfills my volunteer duties as a parent and I genuinely love it, the kids, and the challenge of getting that perfect shot.
*health, sanity, chronic pain, sanity, mom taxi, health, and the fact that I work best from 8pm-2am no matter how hard I’ve tried to change that.