It’s that time of year again! Time to reevaluate things, figure out what went right and what went wrong, and how to make improvements in the new year. I decided go back and look over my goals from the beginning of the year and see what I accomplished!

• Clean and organize. Right now my files are pretty much in a pile in our dining area. Uhh fail. I have an office space in our second bedroom but it is so out of control it’s embarrassing! The plan is to get that room functioning so I can keep all my work in there so I’m “off” when I come out to the couch for hang out time.

COMPLETE. In August we moved to a new apartment that had a dedicated office space for me! It’s been so nice! I still work on the couch sometimes though…old habits die hard:)

• Save. There are a thousand things on my wish list for the business! I plan on investing a little at a time… this year will be the year I will get to upgrade to OWNING a lens with a capital L on it. Hopefully that lens also has a 35 and a 1.4 on it too… but we shall see!

IN PROGRESS. I’m still working on saving. I’ll be real with you guys…saving has been really hard since I left my full time job, but I knew that was going to be the case, but so far things have been okay!

• Be a second shooter. This past year I started my photography career sort of backwards…see, most photographers assist and second shoot for established photographers first before branching out onto their own. The point of doing things that way is to learn on the job from a pro while helping them by being their backup. There is so much to be gained by being a second shooter! I started out shooting my first wedding on my own and have loved every minute of it. However, I still feel that there are some areas where I’m lacking (slacking?) that could be improved upon by second shooting.

COMPLETE. Over the past year I had the opportunity to second shoot with four different photographers. It was so interesting to see how differently peoople work! I don’t know how much second shooting I will do in the future, but I’m so glad I did this year!

• Work on my writing skills. A little known fact about me: I used to realllly want to be a novelist. In fact, when I was growing up I wrote short stories sometimes for fun! They were usually about some kind of DragonBall Z related love story (embarassing) but you can probably tell why those stories were never published…I’m not the world’s best writer! In fact, I really struggle in this area and really plan on making an effort to improve this year by blogging even more. 

IN PROGRESS. Yeah…still working on this one. I definitely improved on blogging this year, but I’m still working on my writing skills and defining my blog “voice”.

• Settle into a style. Though there is still lots for me to learn, I have come a long way with my technical skills in the past year. In 2012 I would like to start building upon the things I learned last year and begin to develop a style that is my own. I really want people to look at one of my images and be able to see a little bit of me in it. 

IN PROGRESS. I came so far with this one this year, but I still consider it a work in progress because I believe that your style is constantly going to evolve as you continue to grow as a photographer. So…finding a style can never REALLY be done. But even though I had a style crisis earlier in the year (which I’m going to blog about soon), I think I’ve hit my stride…my images are consistent and I love that!

• Be more business savvy. This one encompasses a lot of things. being a business owner is HARD. There are so many aspects that go into being a wedding photographer…you have emails to answer, bills to pay, taxes to file, blogs to write, disks to back up, licenses to file for, etc. I want to become a machine this year lol.

IN PROGRESS. I don’t know what I was thinking with this goal. Is it okay for me to call myself out like that??? I mean, this one is not really specific at all. Just become “More”. Haha.

• Learn to say no. When you work for yourself and you do something you really love, it can be hard to say no to people. I find it really hard to say no when someone asks me to shoot their family for free or to give them a discount because they are a friend. But at the end of the day I have to remember that I have a business to run and try to treat situations accordingly.

FAIL. I’m still the WORST at saying no. I get caught up in wanting people to like me and wanting people to be happy and I forget that I can have policies and say no to people. I’m going to continue to work on this one, but it is such a challenge for me.

• Develop a workflow. I still work a 40 hour a week corporate job so this one is REALLY important. I need to develop an efficient workflow so I can maximize every second I have. In fact, I kind of need to just figure out what a workflow IS. Ha!

COMPLETE. I came up with a workflow (also coming to the blog soon!!) that really works well for me. There are a few things I might want to tweak, but for the most part, it works so well, and I’m able to edit my weddings in one day! (Holler!!!) Switching over to Lightroom was really integral to this…before LR, I was opening every image in photoshop, making the same basic exposure and contrast adjustments, then clicking save on each one. Lightroom is so much more efficient!!