Rae, Kev & River at Home
Hello dear readers!
I am very happy to be sitting down to write to you all. October is always more chaotic than I expect. I tell myself things will be chiller because Fall has started, but with my kiddo’s birthday on the 26th, late summer weddings to finish editing, and pumpkin patches to visit (we literally went to 3 this month), the time just flies by.
There are a lot of changes in my life right now, both big and small. I can’t possibly go into all of them in one newsletter, but I thought I would share what feels relevant to me in this moment, along with some ways I am expermenting right now as I navigate these changes.
First off, Rigby turned four last Sunday and I have all the feels about it, obviously. To my surprise, I am glad for three to be over—I enjoyed it while it lasted, but there were also a lot of challenges as Rigby learned how to assert his autonomy and we negotiated through all sorts of impasses. Already four is feeling easier to me—he knows himself so well and can communicate clearly what he needs in a lot of circumstances. And he’s obsessed with his friends, which is something I can really relate to—I still feel that way about my friends! But then I see a photo come up of when he was only 4 days old and I can’t believe how fast he is growing. Parenting is just a neverending process of ecstacy and heartbreak.
A BIG change for me lately is that I have been flirting with using Instagram again. It is hard for me to admit this to you! Even though I am just as convinced as ever that it is a platform that flattens our experiences and lines the pockets of billionaires, I really miss seeing my friends’ art. That feels self-centered, but it is true.
I am also going through a huge life transition that requires me to pull out all the stops on growing my business, and although Instagram is NOT in of itself a marketing plan (which I think I first heard from anti-capitalist business coach Bear Hebert), it is a channel where I can direct people to my website and my newsletter where I do my actual marketing. It’s a really tough call! I have not really officially decided to start posting again yet, but I have shared a couple stories and enjoyed catching up with some IG friends who I haven’t been in touch with since I left over a year ago.
So is my experiment of running a photography business without IG a failure if I decide to go back to that platform again? That is the question I am grappling with. My business has grown much more in the last year of being off IG than it did in the years before—and yet I feel like I can make use of IG again as long as it remains low on my priorities. At the end of the day, my #1 goal is to maintain the marketing practices that I’ve learned over the last couple years that really work for me—mainly SEO optimization. Most of my clients the past couple of years have found me through search engines and I am expecting that to continue to be the case (and continue to be my focus) even if I started using IG again and attract a few folks to my ecosystem that way. We will see. Thanks for being along for the ride—I’d love to hear your thoughts and reactions if you care to share.
Well honestly, I was planning to write more, but this email is already getting very long. So I will leave the updates here and plan to send another email next week—which is definitely ambitious for me, we will see what happens! Now, finally, the pictures!
I am SO excited to share with y’all today a session I photographed recently with a dear friend of mine, Rae Jimenez, and her sweet family. We shot in their gorgeous home which on a sunny morning in September was just filled with delicious light. I got to photograph Rae and her partner Kevin together while their kiddo was still sleeping, and it felt really special to capture some moments of just the two of them, gradually folding in a sleepy-eyed River once they were awake.
OK, but just one last thing! I want to start an experiment of including a Community Bulletin Board in my newsletter, in an effort to build algorithm-free networks and share my friends’ work. Do you have a project or an offering you’re excited about that you’d like to share with my audience of ~400ish people? Feel free to share with me the relevant links/information and next time I send a newsletter I will share the Community Bulletin Board submissions I receive. Why not? Seems fun.
Talk to you all again soon!
Until next time,
Holly
