Christmas Season!

For those of you who are new to the portrait world, this may sound crazy, but we have been in the middle of Christmas season since early October.  The entire portrait process takes about a month from start to finish — shooting the session, having people come back in for the order, and then processing and receiving the order — so our Christmas ordering deadlines are always around Thanksgiving.  We’re getting a lot of late calls here this year… and trying to work people in, so that means that I’m doing a lot more sessions (both shooting and ordering) than I normally do.

So, now we come to the point of this post.  If you are a photographer and you’ve sent me an email over the past couple of months and have not gotten a reply, or have gotten a delayed one, I’m not trying to be rude.   When I speak, or even when I go to conventions just as an attendee, I always hear two or three snippets of conversation about “so and so photographer who I asked for help and she didn’t even reply.”  I think that most of us who get a lot of photographer email want to help, but because of the number of emails and phone calls we get from photographers AND clients a day, something’s got to give.  I have to tell you all honestly that if I’m at work, my clients are my priority.  And if I’m at home, my kids are — especially this time of year when it seems like every hour they’re home from school is an hour that I’m with a client or working on orders.  So during my busy times, if I don’t lose your email in the in box shuffle, a reply is likely to be very delayed.  Again, it’s not because I don’t want to help, it’s that right now I just don’t have the time.  I try to be as accessible as I can be, but for the next month I have to shuffle emails from photographers into the “when things slow down” pile.

I hope you’re all having a great Christmas season!