We moved here in 2020.
In the middle of lockdown, we made the twenty hour journey to Missouri from O'ahu, just me, my husband, our youngest daughter, and our three cats. And as stressful and interesting as our journey here was with all the stressors that travel normally brings, PLUS the stressors of traveling during the very height of COVID, we had no idea that the next five years would triple that ante.
From making an in home studio, to finding my dream space in St. Louis and making my home the AMAZING Lemp Brewery, to attending expos, and of course connecting with all of my amazing clients, it has been such a busy, stressful, AMAZING journey. And as much as I am happy to be moving to a new place...me and Missouri have never really been best friends...I am so sad to move away from the connections I've made through being booked by my wonderful clients. I am forever grateful that I have been trusted by so many to do something so intensely intimate.
We do not know where we are moving yet...fingers crossed we find out any day...but I have decided that I will not take on any new clients. This is not really a radical change...I split my achilles tendon late last year, and made the decision to close my studio at Lemp because of it. I couldn't get up three flights of stairs without furthering my injury. My healing has been slow, but I should be right as rain by the time I open my doors again in late 2026, early 2027. In a new state, with a new space (that will be far more accessible to ALL of my clients), and with an entirely revamped website. To that end....
I will be doing a LOT of housekeeping during my downtime as we move. One of the biggest challenges I face as a photographer who is married to someone in the military is having to pick up and start all over every few years. The pattern is just so MEAN...I move somewhere new, I scope out the landscape, I network, I figure things out, and right as I get established, it's time to go. Our last two duty stations have hit my studio much harder, as COVID impacted bookings, and while I have eased up on making my clients test for COVID before our shoots, I also book fewer clients to space between exposures. I still stay masked, but COVID for sure made this iteration of starting fresh much more difficult, and much more aggravating to navigate. Learning community safety in a new world is hard when you're doing it on the fly.
Here are the things I am planning on updating:
First and foremost, my website. One of the hardest parts about having autism and ADD is burnout on the minutiae. I LOVE doing the photoshoots, and I love editing the photos....mostly, it does get kinda tedious!...but I have never cared about social media, I have never cared about a tip top website, I have never cared about updating the blog. Not because these are not important aspects of my studio, but because my brain hyperfocuses on making the art and everything else is kind of...out of sight, out of mind. I'll tell you, nothing really hammers home your weak spots like starting all over time and time again. So this year, I am giving a pretty solid work over to my website. I'll be doing my massive backlog of shoot blogs, I'll be adding several of the testimonials I've gotten from clients (not an overwhelming amount, but it's always good to refresh every few years!), and I'll be updating my gallery. If I'm doing my job correctly, I get more focused every year, and my style and flavor become more evident in my work. I'm doing myself a disservice keeping an "outdated" body of work. I'm not going to take everything away, I'm just going to give my current gallery some more recent oomph.
My social media presence is likely to stay the same. To be honest, I am EXHAUSTED by social media. I do not want to tap dance for an algorithm, or optimize my reach by paying for it, or pose questions in the hopes that I'll catch followers and convert them to clients. I just do not care to play that game, to me it feels disingenuous and tiresome. I don't want to do reels, I don't want to do tik tok, I don't want to do facebook. If the ONLY place you catch me from now on is an expo, or from word of mouth, that is much more amenable to me. My phone and social media are not some tiny techno god that I dedicate my life to in service of virality or conversion.
I think the biggest change I'll be working on is my price scheme. In the interest of really fucking full transparency, I have HATED charging the rates I charge. I hate it. What I do takes talent, it takes time, it can be really hard work, and not every client has the nicest attitude. But ultimately...I think that everyone deserves a boudoir experience that makes them feel amazing. There is nothing I find more disgusting than boudoir photographers who say they want to empower people, but they gate keep empowerment for the few people who can afford it. Life is getting more expensive, it's getting harder for all of us, and luxuries like boudoir shoots are getting further and further away from the vast majority of us. I don't want to keep that from ANYBODY. Being realistic, I know I will still have to charge more than nothing, and I cannot keep my prices as low as I would ACTUALLY want to keep them if I had my druthers. There are still operational costs to consider. But nobody should have to turn down feeling amazing because they don't have 3600 bucks...on the low end of average...to blow on a photoshoot. Keep an eye out for price changes. I will be listing my prices on my website instead of trying to hook clients by forcing an inquiry about my prices. My prices will be lowered significantly moving forward.
So much is going to stay the same. I am still the same photographer, I still have the same views and values, and my clients still matter more to me than any other aspect of my work. I'm just changing up my location, I'm changing up the way I run things internally, and I'm changing up the way the website looks. And I'm making myself more affordable for my clients. I just love working with all of you so much, and I don't want to keep that from anyone else if can help it.
Looking forward to new beginnings....again!
