What a month it has been! This has definitely been the most busy month of my photography career with a total of over 18 sessions photographed throughout the month! This month has really been full of both highs and lows and I hope to be transparent throughout my entire journey to everyone following along! Running your own business comes with a TON of perks but it’s most definitely not beautiful and as easy as it may appear all the time!
Highlights from the month:
- After Heather & Chris’ wedding Jontell got to experience Nando’s for the very first time and safe to say, she loved it!! My family is a longtime Nando’s fan and I highly recommend their Medium sauce and their Sangria pitchers!
- UVA WON THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS!!!!! I got to watch this happen in our basketball stadium at UVA and I stormed the court and CRIED! It was amazing and I’ll never forget being able to experience the moment in Charlottesville
- Spent a week in Charlottesville since we had practice for Bhangra Championships which was a competition down in Raleigh, NC! I spent so much time editing in Farmbell Kitchen, Nau and Sheepdog Café. I loved the flexibility of being able to work from there and spend a lot of time with Naveen!
- I GOT A PICTURE WITH CAV MAN!!!!
- Tried Lampo for the first time!! We waited over an hour and half since we went on a Saturday but it was definitely worth it!! The dough is UNREAL!
- LOVED taking all the graduation portraits this year! I always miss them throughout the year but am so thankful to be able to travel to Charlottesville to take these!! I had like THE sweetest set of clients this month which made running around photographing all over Virginia worth the miles driven!!
- Went to my first ever Nats game!! I don’t know how I haven’t been to one before, they’re so much fun watching the game, eating food and hanging out with friends 🙂
- Georgetown French Market was SO CUTE!! They had shops with their merchandise out on the streets to peruse, tons of great food, live French music all throughout the streets of Georgetown!
- Hanging out with friends in Historic Herndon downtown
- Trying out new places in Charlottesville: Lampo, Marie Bette cafe, The Standard Rooftop, Maru on Downtown
- I’ve loved going through the professional process of branding with Alex Collier Design who just recently relaunched her website! She’ll be doing the weddings page on my website and I absolutely can’t wait to see how that turns out! She’s done a phenomenal job so far and I can’t wait to officially launch later in May 🙂
- I always love catching up with past co-workers and I loved getting to meet up in Ballston! We went to Grand Cru Wine Bar and I loved their rosé!
- Lots of time in the car has meant that I’ve been making my way through podcasts! I’ve really loved listening to Mistakes Make Magic
- Snagged a last minute ticket to Creative at Heart!!!! I went last year and I’m so excited to be able to call it my home conference!
- Got to attend the Hustle in Heels Conference put on by Michelle Harris! It was good to get out of the day to day of emails, editing and photographing and meet other fellow photographers going through the same spring busy season and to learn and grow our businesses together!
Real life struggles from this month:
- Competing in NC was incredible along with a really high caliber of teams!! That being said, coming back to bhangra after a year I didn’t realize until Thursday that technique wise, I was dancing pigeon-toed and so my shins and ankles were in A LOT of pain. Dancing during the actual performance felt exhausting because I was tired from the first segment so it really was a performance of endurance the entire way through!!
- Scheduling things throughout April has been really really tough! I took on too many sessions for one month and so my normal business/life boundaries have gone out the window a little bit meaning that I’ve been working really long hours and definitely got sick from overextending myself. It’s really tough having to handle every single part of your business sometimes, especially while you’re sick!
- I snapped my pair of blue light glasses in half accidentally and let me tell you, they’re not inexpensive!! Have also lost two lipsticks throughout the month!
- While going to the Nats game, I tripped UP the escalator while 1. completely sober and 2. not being on my phone!! just walking normally!! I limped across the street to the Homewood Suites with my toe bleeding all over my sandals but thankfully they were able to get me a bandaid!! Keep in mind, this is the toe that is already busted from iceskating this past December haha, that toe has been through A LOT!
- Oh, our dishwasher has been broken for some time now but it FLOODED the kitchen and water was dripping from our ceiling in our basement!! Thankfully there’s no structural damage but we have been hand washing things as the dishwasher’s delivery date got pushed back and then got delivered with the wrong dimensions
- I got hit with a combo of allergies & a cough while in Charlottesville and have been sick/not had a voice for the majority of the past week despite drinking all the honey lemon ginger tea, eating spoonfuls of honey & turmeric and being on Dayquil & Claritin daily!! It’s finally easing up, despite a gross throaty cough, and I’m hoping come May I’ll be back in it at 100%!
- OH hahaha this is so unfortunate but turned out ok thankfully!!I had champagne spilled all over my Mac at a wedding! Caity rescued MY LIFE by turning it off immediately and I spent daysss wiping my keyboard to get rid of the sticky champagne but note to anyone, keep your computer on your insurance!! You never know what will happen!!
- I’ve had my blog post links redirecting to a CNN article and I could NOT for the life of me figure out what was going on!! It’s something that client have noticed as well and I have spent over 2 hours over the past couple of months trying to debug it with my parents. I FINALLY found out exactly what it was and it was a result of me accidentally embedding code onto my website the wrong way. Talk about a major fail, especially coming from someone that MAJORED in CS in college!! Safe to say, I finally figured it out and I’m so thankful for having super patient and understanding clients!! Also, I had to go through and reedit almost an entire wedding due to something that was my fault, we’re not perfect guys, it happens to everyone!
That’s all for this month, here’s some fun pictures of #reallife from around here!
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