Navigating Motherhood and Photography Entrepreneurship | Sunshine Lady Photography

Navigating Motherhood and ENTREPRENEURSHIP

When I was younger (as in, even in my 20s), I thought photography was a job only for really cool, adventurous, good-looking single people. Then, I realized that my understanding of the world was so limited by my own self-limiting beliefs and lack of experience knowing/engaging people outside of my little bubble, so I did a deep dive into myself and started to shift how I see the world through reading, self-education, creating new friendships, moving around, traveling, and meditating. One day, at my last job, I said very clearly and bluntly to my work wife “I will be a professional photographer.” In just saying those words allowed, I put my new life into motion.

Fast forward a few years, and my business, thankfully, is thriving! Even after a long-distance move, I picked up the pieces, put all the knowledge I’ve collected throughout the years into motion, and my business seemed to take off running. My current conundrum is figuring out how to rein it in while still continuing to make money to provide for my family and myself. Raising my prices is scary, but so is being in debt, and I have yet to find a man who questions whether he’s worth what he’s getting paid.

I would be lying if I said I wished to return to corporate America, but MAN, sometimes that life seems just a bit easier. I remember when I had a manager who found my work, coordinated with the project manager to create timelines, set up communication with the person/department we’d be working with, and HR took care of my pay and benefits. All I had to do was my single job of developing online courses! The funny thing about entrepreneurship is that you find that you tend to spend 80% of your time working on all these administrative tasks, and trying to squeeze in all the actual work in the last 20%. The busier I’ve gotten, the less time I’ve a.) developed any kind of creative shoots for myself and b.) photographed my kids. And even if I do photograph my kids, I rarely edit more than a handful of pics. When I scroll through my hundreds of thousands of lost images of my family, I could literally cry when I see how much my kids have changed over the years.

That being said, I’m cracking the whip and really putting some parameters on how my time I spend working on my business, including how often I travel and shoot during the evenings and weekends. My children are growing up before my very eyes and I’ve been too distracted to notice. I also hope to do some creative shoots with them so I can kill two birds with one stone. For these pics below, I simply set up a white backdrop in my backyard, grabbed a shiny piece of paper I folded into a triangle to shoot through, and asked my kids to sit for a few minutes each. I love how these black and whites capture their personalities.