Karen Allen – Virginia Wedding & Portrait Photographer » Virginia Wedding & Portrait Photographer

These past few weeks have been crazy insane with weddings, engagements, a huge  birthday party, working, church, runaway dogs (seriously 4 times in 1 WEEK), and a myriad of other appointments and meetings…so much so that I feel kind of silly writing a “Balancing Act” post because I think I’ve done a terrible job at balancing it all. Ha! I’ve gone back and forth on what to write about this week, pouring over my list but nothing quite seemed to fit. So, I’m kind of winging this one, and want to talk about workflow a little bit!

As I’ve mentioned in the past (and as most of you probably know), I work full-time outside of photography. My heart and my passion is with photography, and Ben and I both dream of the day I can go full-time, but that is all in God’s hands! We have dreams and ideas, but we’ll see how it all plays out. :) That being said, it is incredibly hard to develop a consistent workflow for all of my weddings and engagements because my schedule does not always look the same. I do always ensure that I have the Monday after weddings off, either by my scheduled RDO (regular day off that I receive from working an Alternative Work Schedule), or annual leave, but other than that day, everything else is up in the air. Let’s take the 2 weddings I’ve shot so far this year, Bryan & Laci, and Candice & Steven.

Bryan and Laci were married in Richmond, with an early ceremony and an early depart time. I was home by 5pm, which I might add, is extremely rare (but nonetheless very nice!). :) As soon as I came home from that wedding, I loaded my cards and culled my images. I was done by 7pm, and felt so good having all of my images backed up and culled and ready to be tackled on Monday!

Candice and Steven were married in Hurt, about a 3 hour drive from our house, with an evening ceremony and dancing into the night. I loooove evening ceremonies and late night dancing receptions are so fun, but it also meant that we got home around 2am. I have no problem with this at all, and Candice & Steven’s wedding was absolutely 100% worth it, and I will never shy away from distance weddings! However, the thought of culling my images at 2am couldn’t even get a foothold in my mind. We got home, I washed my feet (they get pretty disgusting! TMI? Sorry), and crashed into bed. With the next day being Sunday, a day that I always try to keep as my Sabbath and not do any work, it was really tough to not touch the images. I finally couldn’t take it and was dying to see them and share a sneak peek, so I loaded one of my portrait cards, found one of my favorite images, and Facebooked a sneak peek. Totally worth it. :) I also proceeded to load and backup all of my images Sunday evening because it just scares me not having them backed up. This meant, come Monday morning, I still had to cull, and for me? Culling is the part I dread the most.

I am such a bad culler too, but more on that in a later Balancing Act post…next time!

So, the Monday after each of these weddings was spent editing (and culling in the case of Candice & Steven’s wedding). Let’s just say that I made it MUCH further in the editing process with Bryan & Laci’s wedding the Monday after their wedding than I did with Candice’s. The days following this are filled with working my day job, walking the dogs, grocery shopping, date nights with the husband (or rather lazy movie nights as they’ve become lately, ha!), small group, trying to keep editing and blogging, and maybe hanging out with friends if I can pry myself away from my work. Eeps. You can see how I become quite anti-social in the weeks after I shoot a wedding!

My goal is to always turn my weddings, engagements, portraits, any session, around in 2 weeks. Crazy? Perhaps, especially with working full-time, but to me, that’s important. It’s important to wow my clients, it’s important to take care of my clients, and I just love the thought of them receiving their wedding package right after they get back from their honeymoon! And it also helps me from getting backed-up and feeling more stressed with having multiple sessions waiting to be added. But this also puts a ton of pressure on me to ensure that I can turn the images around that quickly. So, I’m seeing the real need to develop a REAL workflow, but honestly, I don’t know how possible that is when I work full-time outside of photography.

The chances are, I will very rarely be home from a wedding by 5pm. However, no matter what time I get home, if I can garner up the energy, I will never regret culling my images that night. It saves SO much time come Monday, AND I’m really excited to see them all!  Monday’s I need to pry myself out of bed earlier, and start working before 9am. I don’t know WHY I find it so hard, because I’m up by 4:45am on my normal workdays, so really, getting up at 6:45 would be a luxury! I think I really throw off my sleep schedule when I get up at 8 or 8:30 on those Mondays. And then I need to stop editing at 5, or sometime earlier that evening. Honestly, my Monday’s normally turn into 10-12 hour workdays, and friends, that is TOO LONG to be staring at your computer and staring at your images! My mood on Monday nights is never fun and I admire my husband for putting up with me. :) I don’t have many days where I get to work from home, and I need to practice setting a work schedule and then being done with work and closing the door. Take a break. End for the evening. Editing will go MUCH better and much quicker if you haven’t been staring at the images for 12 hours straight!

And then I need to set aside which days of the week I will use the evenings for editing, and convey this schedule to Ben. It helps our relationship SO much if we are both on the same page for our plans during the week!

Having a set workflow is really difficult while working full-time, but I think having ideas and a set but flexible workflow is the way to go. Not every wedding is the same. Not every week following weddings are the same. But if I can have an idea of my goal, then I can work faster, work smarter, and enjoy every minute of it.

As always, if you have any questions, suggestions, tips, or ideas, I would love to hear them! You can comment below or send me an email at karenallenphotography@gmail.com!